Nothing, that is neither visible, nor conceivable, nor imaginable, ought never to have found expression, ought never to have been admitted into the dictionary of rational beings.

Now, if we consider how people talk about the Nothing, how poets make it the subject of the most harrowing strains, how it has been, and still is, one of the principal ingredients in most systems of philosophy, nay, how it has been dragged into the domain of religious thought, and, under the name of Nirvana, has become the highest goal of millions among the followers of Buddha, we may perhaps, even at this preliminary stage of our inquiries, begin to appreciate the power of language over thought, and feel less surprise at the ancient nations for having allowed the names of natural objects, the sky, the sun, the moon, the dawn, and winds, to assume the character of supernatural powers or divine personalities, or for having offered worship and sacrifice to such abstract names as Fate, Justice, or Victory. There is as much mythology in our use of the word Nothing as in the most absurd portions of the mythological phraseology of India, Greece, and Rome: and if we ascribe the former to a disease of language, the causes of which we are able to explain, we shall have to admit that in the latter, language has reached to an almost delirious state, and has ceased to be what it was meant to be, the expression of the impressions received through the senses, or of the conceptions of a rational mind.

But to return to Locke's statement, that all names of immaterial objects are derived from the names of material objects. Many philosophers, as I remarked,

instead of grappling manfully with the conclusions that are supposed to flow from Locke's observation, have preferred to question the accuracy of his observation.

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Victor Cousin, in his "Lectures on the History of Philosophy during the Eighteenth Century," endeavors to controvert Locke's assertion by the following process:-"I shall give you two words," he says, "and I shall ask you to trace them back to primitive words expressive of sensible ideas. Take the word je, I. This word, at least in all languages known to me, is not to be reduced, not to be decomposed, primitive; and it expresses no sensible idea, it represents nothing but the meaning which the mind attaches to it; it is a pure and true sign, without any reference to any sensible idea. The word être, to be, is exactly in the same case; it is primitive and altogether intellectual. I know of no language in which the French verb être is rendered by a corresponding word that expresses a sensible idea; and therefore it is not true that all the roots of language, in their last analysis, are signs of sensible ideas."

Now it must be admitted that the French je, which is the Sanskrit aham, is a word of doubtful etymology. It belongs to the earliest formations of Aryan speech, and we need not wonder that even in Sanskrit the materials out of which this pronoun was formed should have disappeared. We can explain in English such words as myself or your honor, but we could not attempt, with the means supplied by English alone, to analyze I, thou, and he. It is

1 Paris, 1841. Vol. ii. p. 274.

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the same with the Sanskrit aham, a word carried down by the stream of language from such distant ages, that even the Vedas, as compared with them, are but, as it were, of yesterday. But though the etymology of aham is doubtful, it has never been doubtful to any scholar that, like all other words, it must have an etymology, — that it must be derived either from a predicative or from a demonstrative root. Those who would derive aham from a predicative root, have thought of the root ah, to breathe, to speak. Those who would derive it from a demonstrative root, refer us to the Vedic gha, the later ha, this, used like the Greek hode. How the pronoun of the first person is expressed in Chinese we saw in an earlier Lecture, and although such expressions as "servant says," instead of " I say," may seem to us modern and artificial, they are not so in Chinese, and show at all events that even so colorless an idea as I may meet with signs sufficiently pale and faded to express it.2

With regard to être, to be, the case is different. Être is the Latin esse, changed into essere and contracted. The root, therefore, is as, which, in all the

1 I thought it possible, in my History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 21, to connect ah-am with Sanskrit âha, I said, Greek, Latin ajo and nego, nay, with Gothic ahma (instead of agma), spirit, but I do so no longer. Nor do I accept the opinion of Benfey (Sanskrit Grammatik, § 773), who derives aham from the pronominal root gha with a prosthetic a. It is a word which, for the present, must remain without a genealogy.

2 Jean Paul, in his Levana, p. 32, says: "I' is - excepting God, the true I and true Thou at once- the highest and most incomprehensible that can be uttered by language, or contemplated. It is there all at once, as the whole realm of truth and conscience, which, without 'I,' is nothing. We must ascribe it to God, as well as to unconscious beings, if we want to conceive the being of the One and the existence of the others."

Cf. Diez, Lexicon, s. v. essere.

Aryan languages, has supplied the material for the auxiliary verb. Now even in Sanskrit, it is true, this root as is completely divested of its material character; it means to be, and nothing else. But there is in Sanskrit a derivative of the root as, namely, ásu, and in this asu, which means the vital breath, the original meaning of the root as has been preserved. As, in order to give rise to such a noun as asu, must have meant to breathe, then to live, then to exist, and it must have passed through all these stages before it could have been used as the abstract auxiliary verb which we find not only in Sanskrit but in all Aryan languages. Unless this one derivative asu, life, had been preserved in Sanskrit, it would have been impossible to guess the original material meaning of the root as, to be; yet even then the student of language would have been justified in postulating such a meaning. And even in French, though être may seem an entirely abstract word, the imperfect j'étais, the participle été are clearly derived from Latin stare, to stand, and show how easily so definite an idea as to stand may dwindle down to the abstract idea of being. If we look to other languages, we shall find again and again the French verb être rendered by corresponding words that expressed originally a sensible idea. Our verb to be is derived from Sanskrit bhû, which, as we learn from Greek phýō, meant originally to grow. I was is connected with the Gothic visan, which means to dwell.

But though on this point the student of language must side with Locke, and admit, without one sin

1 See M. M.'s Essay on the Aryan and Aboriginal Languages of India, p. 344.

gle exception, the material character of all words, nothing can be more convincing than the manner in which Victor Cousin disposes of the conclusions which some philosophers, though certainly not Locke himself, seem inclined to draw from such premises. "Further," he writes, "even if this were true, and absolutely true, which is not the case, we could conclude no more than this. Man is at first, by the action of all his faculties, carried out of himself and toward the external world; the phenomena of the external world strike him first, and hence these phenomena receive the first names. The first signs are borrowed from sensible objects, and they are tinged to a certain extent by their colors. When man afterwards turns back on himself, and lays hold more or less distinctly of the intellectual phenomena which he had always, though somewhat vaguely, perceived, if, then, he wants to give expression to the new phenomena of mind and soul, analogy leads him to connect the signs he seeks with those he already possesses: for analogy is the law of each growing or developed language. Hence the metaphors to which our analysis traces back most of the signs and names of the most abstract moral ideas.”

Nothing can be truer than the caution thus given by Cousin to those who would use Locke's observation as an argument in favor of a one-sided sensualistic philosophy.

Metaphor is one of the most powerful engines in the construction of human speech, and without it we can hardly imagine how any language could have progressed beyond the simplest rudiments. Metaphor generally means the transferring of a name