CHAPTER IX.

PROPOSITIONS AND SYLLOGISMS.

IN the first Chapter of this work I pointed out the uselessness of what I called Nursery Psychology. A study of that psychology learn words. may be useful, however, for at least one

How children

purpose, namely to bring out clearly the difference between the growth of language and thought in ourselves, as children of the nineteenth century, and the growth of language and thought in the beginning of all things. It will teach us that to transfer the observations which we make in our nursery to the earliest period in the growth of the human mind would be like looking for bricks and stucco in the lowest strata of granite. It may be that the materials out of which brick and stucco are made go back to the earliest geological periods in the formation of the earth, but even then clay, baked by geological heat, is very different from terra cotta.

If we watch the process by which children begin to speak and to think, we see that they begin at once with ready-made words, with what we may call the most finished terra cotta. Names with them are,' as Professor Bain says, and from his point of view, quite rightly, 'impressions of sense.' One person is pointed out to a child as 'Mother,' another as Father,' a third as 'Brother,' and 'Sister,' and these names remain in the memory as among the earliest

and most lasting impressions. Every one of these terms is, as we know, thousands of years old, and has passed through a long history of its own. But to a child Mother is a mere sign, almost a proper name. 'Mother has said so' implies at first no more than Mary has said so.' Gradually, however, with the growing experience of the child one attribute after another is slipt into the word, and thus what was at first a mere proper name becomes full of meaning, or, as logicians say, intension. It takes in one after another, both the visible attributes of a mother, referring to her dress, her eyes, her hair, and the invisible attributes, such as kindness, severity, and wisdom. Much later the more characteristic attributes of woman (mulier), wife (conjux), and mother (genitrix) are added, and only after all this congeries of attributes has been gathered under the name of mother does the work of definition and classification begin by which the few who think systematically assign to this and all other names their well-defined place in the universe of knowledge.

Now let us consider once more the process by which such a name as Brother was first framed. We can quite imagine a state of society in which the concept and

How names were first framed.

name of brother did not yet exist, and we can infer from the various names of brother that they were not framed after a clear concept of brother had been gained, but at a haphazard, from some attribute or other which seemed important at the time to the members of a primitive society. Suppose that bhrâtar meant originally no more than one who helps to carry (from BHA, to bear), an

attribute, which to us seems extrinsic and nonessential, would then have supplied the first germ of this name. From the very first, however, this name which meant carriers and helpers might be said to have implied every other attribute that was inseparable from these carriers. A bhrâtar or frater would have implied the outward appearance of a man, as distinguished from a woman; it would probably at first have implied a certain age also at which boys began to be helpful. The larger the number of attributes thus consciously included (the intension), the smaller would become the number of individuals to which the name was applicable (the extension). Sometimes one of these implied attributes might supply a new name. In a polyandrous state of society, for instance, particularly when questions of inheritance arose, it would become of importance to distinguish brothers of the same mother, though of different fathers. A brother of the same mother might be called bhrâtâ sa-garbhah, i. e. frater co-uterinus, a-deλpós, and when ppáτηρ drifted, as in Greek, into a more special social and political meaning, adeλpós would remain as the more useful name, though no longer confined either to children of the same mother, but of different fathers, or to children of different mothers, but of the same father.

Green, on

This process is well described by T. H. Green, though for a different purpose. 'If we say,' he writes1, 'that we know things first under the beginning a minimum of qualification and afterwards under more, we seem to contradict the fact

of know

ledge.

that knowledge begins with experience of real objects

1 Works, vol. ii. p. 193.

which, as real, are qualified with infinite complexity.' 'Can you deny (it will be said) that it so begins with experience, or that objects of experience are thus real in the most concrete sense? We answer, it does so begin and the objects are thus real, but only in themselves; for the subject learning to know, they are so only potentially, not actually. For him the beginning of knowledge is merely "there is something," in other words, his first idea is of "mere being;" this something gradually becomes further qualified, as, in virtue of that relation of the ego to the passing feeling which renders it "something," it is held in relation to other experience. Thus "concrete" objects are gradually constituted by a process which is conjointly one of synthesis and analysis.'

The earliest names must from the beginning have been appellative, not proper names, at least not in our sense of that word; their meaning must have been very small and their possible extension in consequence very wide, till new names came in to mutually limit and determine their intension, or definition was resorted to in order to exhaust once for all the whole contents of each name.

Difference between

the two processes.

It must be clear how different these two processes are, the one by which a child accepts the word brother, ready made, a mere sign, to him almost a proper name, comprehending all that it has vaguely taken in as his brother, the other by which the early framers of language predicated a special act, say that of carrying and helping, of this or that person, and thus by their own mental effort came in possession of a

which was significant of one attribute, though it

All nouns

were

synthetical.

implied, more or less consciously, many other attributes possessed by the same persons to whom the attribute of carrying was ascribed. This shows that the difference between the strata of the earth and the stories of a palace can hardly be greater than that between names formed for the first time by primitive men, and names imitated and stammered forth for the first time by our own children. What applies to such a name as frater, applies to all names. All names contained originally a synthesis of a predicate with a subject, the subject being this or that, originally qualified by a predicate which in the first instance expresses an act, though very soon also a state or a suffering. Every noun contains a synthesis of hoc and illud, or, more correctly, of the first with the third category, of the ovcía, substance, with the Tolov, the quale. The difference between a noun and a verb, between carrying he' and 'he carries,' was originally that in the noun frater, 'carrying he,' the subject was he, qualified by carrying, while in the verb fero, fers, fert, the act, as continuing in time, was the principal subject of thought and was predicated of me, thee, and him. Both substantives and verbs, however, were in the beginning complete sentences.

6

Formation of

Names.

It must not be supposed that this is a subject of interest to the etymologist only. Etymologies may be right or wrong, but nothing can affect the fact that every name expressed originally a subject, qualified by a predicate. This is very different from the process by which our best logicians suppose names to have been formed. They hold that in order to form a