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As we cannot tell or count quantities without numbers, we cannot tell or recount things without words. There are tribes that have no numerals beyond four. Should we say that they do not know if they have five children instead of four? They certainly do, as much as a cat knows that she has five kittens, and will look for the fifth if it has been taken away from her. But if they have no numerals beyond four, they cannot reason beyond four. They would not know, as little as children know it, that two and three make five, but only that two and three make many. Though I dwelt on this point in the last lectures of my former course, a few illustrations may not be out of place here, to make my meaning quite clear.

Man could not name a tree, or an animal, or a river, or any object whatever in which he took an interest, without discovering first some general quality that seemed at the time the most characteristic of the object to be named. In the lowest stage of language, an imitation of the neighing of the horse would have been sufficient to name the horse. Sav. age tribes are great mimics, and imitate the cries of animals with wonderful success. But this is not yet language. There are cockatoos who, when they see cocks and hens, will begin to cackle as if to inform us of what they see. This is not the way in which the words of our languages were formed. There is no trace of neighing in the Aryan names for horse. In naming the horse, the quality that struck the mind of the Aryan man as the most prominent was its swiftness. Hence from the root as, to be sharp or

1 Cf. Sk. âsı, quick, úkús, úkwêń, point, and other derivatives given

swift (which we have in Latin acus, needle, and in the French diminutive aiguille, in acuo, I sharpen, in acer, quick, sharp, shrewd, in acrimony, and even in 'cute), was derived aśva, the runner, the horse. This aśva appears in Lithuanian as aszva (mare), in Latin as ekvus, i.e. equus, in Greek as ikkos,1 i. e. ITоs, in Old Saxon as ehu. Many a name might have been given to the horse besides the one here mentioned, but whatever name was given it could only be formed by laying hold of the horse by means of some general quality, and by thus arranging the horse, together with other objects, under some general category. Many names might have been given to wheat. It might have been called eared, nutritious, graceful, waving, the incense of the earth, &c. But it was called simply the white, the white color of its grain seeming to distinguish it best from those plants with which otherwise it had the greatest similarity. For this is one of the secrets of onomatopoësis, or name-poetry, that each name should express, not the most important or specific quality, but that which strikes our fancy, and seems most useful for the purpose of making other people understand what we mean. If we adopted the language of Locke, we should say that men were guided by wit rather than by judgment, in the formation of names. Wit, he says, lies most in the assemblage of ideas, and putting those together with quickness and variety, wherein can be found any resemblance or con

by Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, i. 101. The Latin catus, sharp, has been derived from Sk. so (syati), to whet.

1 Etym. Magn., p. 474, 12., ikkos onμaível ròv inπov. Curtius, G. E ii. 49.

3 Pott, Etym. F., ii. 139.

gruity, thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable visions, in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary, lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully, one from another, ideas wherein can be found the least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by similitude, and by affinity, to take one thing for another. While the names given to things according to Bishop Wilkins's philosophical method would all be founded on judgment, those given by the early framers of language repose chiefly on wit or fancy. Thus wheat was called the white plant, hvaiteis in Gothic, in A. S. hvæte, in Lithuanian kwetys, in English wheat, and all these words point to the Sanskrit śveta, i. e. white, the Gothic hveits, the A. S. hvit. In Sanskrit, śveta, white, is not applied to wheat (which is called godhuma, the smoke or incense of the earth), but it is applied to many other herbs and weeds, and as a compound (śvetasunga, white-awned), it entered into the name of barley. In Sanskrit, silver is counted as white, and called śveta, and the feminine sveti was once a name of the dawn, just as the French aube, dawn, which was originally alba. We arrive at the same result whatever words we examine; they always express a general quality, supposed to be peculiar to the object to which they are attached. In some cases this is quite clear, in others it has to be brought out by minute etymological research. To those who approach these etymological researches with any preconceived opinions, it must be a frequent source of disappointment, when they have traced a word through all its stages to its first starting-point, to find in the end, or

1 Locke, On the Human Understanding, ii. 11, 2.

rather in the beginning, nothing but roots of the most general powers, meaning to go, to move, to run, to do. But on closer consideration, this, instead of being disappointing, should rather increase our admiration for the wonderful powers of language, man being able out of these vague and pale conceptions to produce names expressive of the minutest shades of thought and feeling. It was by a poetical fiat that the Greek próbata, which originally meant no more than things walking forward, became in time the name of cattle, and particularly of sheep. In Sanskrit, sarit, meaning goer, from sar, to go, became the name of river; sara, meaning the same, what runs or goes, was used for sap, but not for river. Thus dru, in Sanskrit, means to run, dravat, quick; but drapsa is restricted to the sense of a drop, gutta. The Latin ævum, meaning going, from i, to go, became the name of time, age; and its derivative æviternus, or æternus, was made to express eternity. Thus in French, meubles means literally anything that is movable, but it became the name of chairs, tables, and wardrobes. Viande, originally vivenda, that on which one lives, came to mean meat. table, the Latin tabula, is originally what stands, or that on which things can be placed (stood); it now means what dictionaries define as a horizontal surface raised above the ground, used for meals and other purposes." The French tableau, picture, again goes back to the Latin tabula, a thing stood up, exhibited, and at last to the root sta of stare, to stand. A stable, the Latin stabulum, comes from the same root, but it was applied to the standing-place of animals, to stalls or sheds. That on which a thing

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stands or rests is called its base, and basis in Greek meant originally no more than going, the base being conceived as ground on which it is safe to walk. What can be more general than facies, originally the make or shape of a thing, then the face? Yet the same expression is repeated in modern languages, feature being evidently a mere corruption of factura, the make. On the same principle the moon was called luna, i. e. lucna or lucina, the shining; the lightning, fulmen from fulgere, the bright; the stars stella, i.e. sterulæ, the Sanskrit staras from strî, to strew, the strewers of light. All these etymologies may seem very unsatisfactory, vague, uninteresting, yet, if we reflect for a moment, we shall see that in no other way but this could the mind, or the gathering power of man, have comprehended the endless variety of nature1 under a limited number of categories or names. What Bunsen called "the first poesy of mankind," the creation of words, is no doubt very different from the sensation poetry of later days: yet its very poverty and simplicity render it all the more valuable in the eyes of historians and philosophers. For of this first poetry, simple as it is, or of this first philosophy in all its childishness, man only is capable. He is capable of it because he can gather the single under the general; he is capable of it because he has the faculty of speech ; he is capable of it - we need not fear the tautology - because he is man.

1 Cf. Sankara on Vedânta-Sûtra, 1, 3, 28 (Muir, Sanskrit Texts, iii. 67), âkritibhis cha sabdânâm sambandho na vyaktibhiḥ, vyaktinâm ânantyât sambandhagrahaṇânupapatteḥ. "The relation of words is with the genera, not with individuals; for, as individuals are endless, it would be impossible to lay hold of relations."

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