Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Language
THE liberal arts of grammar, rhetoric, and logic are all concerned with language.
Each of these disciplines establishes its own rules for the use of language, each by
reference to a special standard of excellence or correctness which measures language as an
instrument of thought or communication. Together these three arts regulate discourse as a
whole. Their relation to one another represents the relation of the various aspects of
discourse--the emotional, the social, and the intellectual.
The tradition of the great books is the tradition of the liberal arts. Their greatness
consists not only in the magnitude of the ideas or problems with which they deal, but also
in their formal excellence as products of liberal art. Some of the great books are
expositions of logic or rhetoric. None is a treatise on grammar. But they all plainly
exemplify, even where they do not expound, the special refinements of the arts of
language; and many of them, especially the works of science, philosophy, and theology, and
even some of the poetical works, deal explicitly with the difficulties of discourse, and
the devices that have been used to overcome them. Language is their instrument, and they
are consciously critical in its use.
One of the great books -- Augustine's treatise On Christian Doctrine -- is
directly and explicitly concerned with grammar in the broad sense of the art of reading.
Addressed to "earnest students of the word," it attempts to "lay down rules
for interpretation," and, in so doing, it is compared by Augustine to "one who
teaches reading, that is, shows others how to read for themselves." It is not reading
in general, however, but the reading of one book--the Bible with which Augustine is
concerned. We shall return later to this special problem of interpreting the word of God,
or language which is thought to be inspired.
In our day, there is a lively interest in the problems of language. This is partly because
of the development of historical and comparative studies of the various human languages,
and the scientific formulation of what is common to all languages in origin, structure,
and change. But it also results in part from the claims of a discipline popularly called
"semantics" to have discovered the properties of language as a medium of
expression, and especially to have discovered its limitations. The claims of semantics
often go so far as to find in the misuse of language the origin of many human ills. The
novelty of semantics is supposed to lie both in the diagnosis and in the remedies
proposed.
Of these two sources of current interest in language, the second calls attention to the
vitality of the liberal arts, of which semantics is a contemporary formulation. It might
almost be said that there is nothing new about semantics except the name. Hobbes, Bacon,
and Locke, for example, deal explicitly with the abuses of language and the treachery of
words. Each makes recommendations for the correction of these faults. Plato and Aristotle,
Augustine and Aquinas, Berkeley and Hume, are similarly concerned with ambiguity in
speech, with the multiple senses in which discourse of every sort can be interpreted, and
with the methods by which men can approximate precision in the use of language.
The other interest in language is also represented in the great books. Though the science
of linguistics and the history of languages are researches of recent origin, speculation
about the origin of language and, in that context, consideration of the natural and
conventional aspects of language extend throughout the tradition. At all times the
discussion of the nature of man and society considers language as one of the principal
characteristics of the specifically human world or compares the language of men with the
speech of brutes.
In addition there is the broad philosophical inquiry into the nature of signs and symbols
in general. This is not limited to the problem of how written or spoken words get their
meaning. The general question calls for an examination of every type of signifying and
every sort of symbol, verbal and non-verbal, natural and artificial, human and divine.
Though these matters are closely related to the problems of language and may therefore be
touched upon here, their main treatment is reserved for the chapter on SIGN AND SYMBOL.
THE TREATMENT of language seems to have a different tenor in ancient and modern times. The
philosophers of antiquity appreciate the need to safeguard discourse from the aberrations
of speech. Plato and Aristotle usually preface their discussion of a subject with an
examination of the relevant words in current use. Discovering the variety of meanings
attached to common words, they take pains to enumerate the various senses of a word, and
to put these meanings in some order. They pursue definitions or construct them to control
the ambiguity that is latent in the language anyone must use to express or communicate
ideas. But they do not expect to remove ambiguity entirely. They tend to accept the fact
that the same word will have to be used in a number of senses; and they discriminate
between the occasions when it is desirable to be precise about a word's meaning and those
times when the purpose of discourse is better served by permitting a word to carry a whole
range of meanings. They see no special difficulty in abstract as opposed to concrete
words, or in general names as distinguished from the proper names which designate
individuals, or in words which refer to purely intelligible objects like ideas rather than
to the objects of sense-experience.
The mood of the ancients, which also prevails for the most part among the philosophers and
theologians of the Middle Ages, seems to express a certain tolerance of the imperfections
of language. If men do not think clearly, if they do not reason cogently or argue
honestly, the fault is primarily the result of the misuse of their faculties, not of the
betrayal of their intentions by the intractable character of language as an instrument.
Even when men misunderstand one another, the inadequacy of language as a medium of
communication is not solely responsible for the failure of minds to meet through the
interchange of words. With greater effort, with a more assiduous application of the
liberal arts, men can succeed even if language works against them.
Some things are inexpressible in human speech even as they are incapable of being fully
grasped by human thought. "My vision," Dante says when he reaches the mystic
rose of Paradise, "was greater than our speech." Such knowledge as we can have
of "the highest matters and the first principles of things" Plato thinks
"does not admit of exposition like other branches of knowledge." In his Seventh
Letter, he even goes so far as to say that "no man of intelligence will venture
to express his philosophical views in language."
With these exceptions the ancients seem to adopt a mood of tolerance towards language.
This does not imply an underestimation of the difficulties of using language well. It
simply does not make of language an insidious enemy of clarity and truth. The deficiencies
of language are like the weaknesses of the flesh. As man can in large part overcome them
through the discipline of the moral virtues, so through the discipline of the liberal
arts--by skill in grammar, rhetoric, and logic--he can make language express almost as
much truth as he can acquire, and communicate it almost as clearly as he can think it. Men
need not succumb to the tyranny of words if they will make the requisite effort to master
language to serve their purpose.
- But the liberal arts do not guarantee purity of purpose. Obscurantism,
obfuscation, deception, and falsification are sometimes the aim. Men try to persuade
others at all costs, or to win the argument regardless of where the truth lies. They try
to confuse their opponents or mislead their audience. The use of language for such ends
requires as much skill as its employment in the service of truth. If such use is a misuse,
then language is equally available for use or misuse.
It is an ancient saying that only the competent in grammar can make grammatical
errors intentionally. So, as Plato recognizes, the difference between the sophist and the
philosopher is not one of skill but of purpose. When he criticizes the trickery of
sophistical argument, he also acknowledges the cleverness with which the sophists juggle
words and propound absurdities under the cover of superficially significant speech. The
sophistical fallacies which Aristotle enumerates are seldom accidental errors. Far from
being the result of the impediments which language places in the way of thought, they are
in large measure artfully contrived equivocations.
- They are ways of using language against logic.
According to Aristotle, they represent "foul fighting in disputation"
and are resorted to only by "those who are resolved to win at all costs."
IN THE MODERN treatment of language there is more of an imputation that words cause men
unwittingly to deceive themselves as often as they enable one man intentionally to deceive
another. Men are duped or tricked by the tendency of words to counterfeit a reality which
does not exist. This, in the view of Hobbes or Locke, Berkeley or Hume, is particularly
true of general or universal names--or words that signify nothing which can be perceived
or imagined.
We cannot imagine anything infinite, says Hobbes. Hence a word like "infinite"
is a form of absurd speech "taken upon credit (without any signification at all) from
deceived philosophers and deceived, or deceiving, Schoolmen." In addition to the
deceptions of ordinary ambiguity and of metaphorical speech, Hobbes pays particular
attention to the absurd, insignificant, or nonsensical use of words "whereby we
conceive nothing but the sound"; he gives as examples, not merely "round
quadrangle," but "infused virtue," "free will," and
"immaterial substance."
In the light of the examples, this theory of insignificant or meaningless speech explains
what Hobbes means when he says that
- "words are wise men's counters, they do but reckon by
them; but they are the money of fools."
It also indicates how Hobbes uses the susceptibility of men to self-deception
through language as a way of explaining the errors--he calls them
"absurdities"--into which his predecessors have fallen. What is novel here is
not that he disagrees with earlier thinkers on points of psychology and metaphysics or
theology, but that he reduces what might be supposed to be an issue between true and false
opinions to a difference between significant and absurd speech. His opponents might reply
that unless his own views about matter and mind are true, his semantic criticism of them
does not hold. They have been seduced by language into talking nonsense only if Hobbes is
right in his metaphysics and psychology.
The criticism of arguments which seem to rely on metaphors is not peculiarly modern. In
his attack on the Platonic theory of ideas, Aristotle dismisses the statement that the
Forms "are patterns and other things share in them" as a use of "empty
words and poetical metaphors." But Hobbes carries this method of criticism much
further. He frequently rests his case against other philosophers entirely on the ground
that they are talking nonsense. Though he himself catches the imagination, almost as often
as Plato does, by his skillfully wrought metaphors, he would insist that what he says can
always be rendered literally, whereas the metaphors of others conceal the insignificance
of their speech.
Bacon provides another illustration of the modern attitude which ascribes a diabolical
character to language. "There arises from a bad and unapt formation of words,"
he writes, "a wonderful obstruction to the mind. Nor can the definitions and
explanations with which learned men are wont to guard and protect themselves in some
instances afford a complete remedy--words still manifestly force the understanding, throw
everything into confusion, and lead mankind into vain and innumerable controversies and
fallacies." He goes on to say that "the idols imposed upon the understanding by
words are of two kinds. They are either names of things which have no existence . . . or
they are names of actual objects, but confused, badly defined, and hastily or irregularly
abstracted from things."
Here, as in the case of Hobbes, a theory of reality and of the way in which the mind draws
its ideas from experience seems to underlie the charge that language tangles the mind in a
web of words, so that it deals with words rather than with things. In the same spirit,
though not from the same premises, Locke tells his reader why he found it necessary to
include in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding the long third book on
language, which examines in detail the imperfections as well as the abuses of words, and
the remedies therefor.
"Vague and insignificant forms of speech, and abuse of language," he says,
"have so long passed for mysteries of science; and hard or misapplied words with
little or no meaning have, by prescription, such a right to be mistaken for deep learning
and height of speculation, that it will not be easy to persuade either those who speak, or
those who hear them, that they are but the covers of ignorance, and hinderance of true
knowledge . . . . So few are apt to think they deceive, or are deceived in the use of
words or that the language of the sect they are of has any faults in it."
Without judging the fundamental issues involved concerning the nature of things and of man
and his mind, one point seems to be clear. According as men hold different conceptions of
the relation of language to thought (and in consequence assume different attitudes toward
the imperfections or misuse of language), they inevitably take opposite sides on these
issues. Whether the discipline of language is called semantics or the liberal arts, the
standards by which one man criticizes the language of another seem to depend upon what he
holds to be true.
The present work on the great ideas aims, in part, to record the agreements and
disagreements among the great minds of the western tradition. It also records how those
minds have used the same word in different senses or have used quite distinct words for
the same thing. It could not do either unless it did both. This indicates the basic
relationship between language and thought which the great books exemplify, even when they
do not explicitly make it the basis of their discussion of the relation between language
and thought.
THE IDEAL of a perfect and universal language seems to arise in modern times from
dissatisfaction with the inadequacy of ordinary language for the analytical refinement and
precision of mathematics or science. As Descartes holds up the method of mathematics as
the procedure to be followed in all other inquiries and subject matters, so his conception
of a "universal mathesis" calls for a language which shall be the
perfect instrument of analysis and demonstration.
It is sometimes supposed that the symbolism of mathematics is itself that perfect
language. Lavoisier quotes Condillac to the effect that algebra, "in the most simple,
most exact, and best manner, is at the same time a language and an analytical
method." Of the analytical equations "which Descartes was the first to introduce
into the study of curves and surfaces," Fourier remarks that "they extend to all
general phenomena. There cannot be a language more universal and more simple, more free
from errors and obscurities, that is to say, more worthy to express the invariable
relations of natural things .... Its chief attribute is clearness; it has no marks to
express confused notions .... It follows the same course in the study of all phenomena; it
interprets them by the same language."
- This praise of mathematical symbolism indicates that one
feature of the ideal is an exact correspondence between words and ideas.
"Like three impressions of the same seal," Lavoisier says, "the
word ought to produce the idea, and the idea to be a picture of the fact." If there
were a perfect one-to-one correspondence between physical symbols and mental concepts,
there would never be any failures of communication. Men would be able to understand each
other as well as if they could see directly into each other's minds. Though they still
used external signs as a medium of communication, they would approximate the immediate
communication which the theologians attribute to angels. In addition, the process of
thinking itself, quite apart from communication, could be perfectly regulated by the rules
of grammarthe rules for manipulating symbols.
In the sense in which Lavoisier says that
- "the art of reasoning is nothing more than a language
well arranged,"
the rules of thought might be reduced to the rules of syntax if there were a
perfect language. If the symbols of mathematics lack the universality to express every
sort of concept, then it may be necessary, as Leibnitz proposes, to construct a
"universal characteristic" which would make possible a symbolic calculus for the
performance of all the operations of thought. This conception seems to contain the
principle and the motivation for the various logistical schemes which accompany the modern
development of symbolic or mathematical logic, from Boole and Venn to Peano, Couturat,
Russell, and Whitehead. The hopes to be realized by an algebra of logic find expression in
Jevons' plan for a logical abacus which, like an adding machine or comptometer, would be a
thinking machine able to solve all problems that can be put in suitable terms.
IS THE IDEAL of a perfect and universal Language a genuine hope or a utopian dream? Not
all modern scientists seem to agree with Lavoisier's point that the improvement of a
science and the improvement of its language are inseparable. Faraday, for example,
apologizing for the invention of new words to name electrical phenomena, says that he is
"fully aware that names are one thing and science another." The utopian
character of the ideal seems to be implied in Swift's satirization of a universal
language. On his voyage to the cloud-land of the scientists in Laputa, Gulliver learns of
a project which is being considered by the professors of language. "Since words are
only names for things, it would be more convenient for all men to carry about them such
things as were necessary to express the particular business they are to discourse
on." The substitution of things for words would thus provide a "universal
language to be understood in all civilized nations."
In the ancient world the imperfection of ordinary speech gives rise, not to the conception
of a perfect language which man should try to construct, but to the consideration of the
distinction between a hypothetical natural language and the existing conventional
languages actually in use. If there were a natural language, it would not only be the same
for all men everywhere, but its words would also be perfect images or imitations of
things. That human language is conventional rather than natural may be seen not only in
the plurality of tongues, but also in the fact that existing languages embody
contradictory principles of symbolization.
This fact, Plato suggests in the Cratylus, indicates that human language does not
originate as a gift from the gods, for if the gods had given men the names they use, signs
would be perfectly and consistently adapted to things signified. The hypothesis of a
natural or god-given language is not proposed as an ideal to inspire men to try to invent
a perfect language for themselves. It functions rather as a norm for the criticism of
man-made language and for discovering the natural elements common to all conventional
languages.
Like human society, human language seems to be partly natural, partly conventional. As
there are certain political principles, such as that of natural justice, common to all
societies despite the diversity of their customs and institutions, so all conventional
languages have certain common characteristics of structure which indicate their natural
basis in the physical and mental constitution of man. In the tradition of the liberal
arts, the search for a universal grammar, applicable to all conventional languages,
represents not the hope to create a universal or perfect language, but the conviction that
all languages have a common, natural basis.
THE HYPOTHESIS of a natural language takes another form and has another implication in the
Judaeo-Christian tradition, where it is discussed in the light of certain portions of
revelation. Yet it retains the same fundamental relevance to the problem of the origin and
characteristics of the many conventional languages which now exist.
Genesis relates how, after God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air,
He "brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called
every living creature, that was the name thereof." The names which Adam devised
constituted a natural language, at least insofar as, according to Augustine's
interpretation, it is the one "common language of the race" both before the
flood and for some time after. But there is the further question whether the names which
Adam gave to things were their rightful or proper names--whether they were natural signs
in the sense of true representations of the natures of the things signified.
Hobbes suggests one answer when he says that "the first author of speech was God
himself, who instructed Adam how to name such creatures as he presented to his
sight"; Augustine suggests another answer by identifying the original language of man
with Hebrew, and by affirming the continuity of the Hebrew spoken after Babel with the
language all men spoke before the confusion of tongues.
At the time when men began to build "a tower whose top may reach unto
heaven," Genesis tells us that "the whole earth was of one language and one
speech .... And the Lord said, Behold, the people is one, and they have all one language;
and this they begin to do; and now nothing will be restrained from them, which they have
imagined to do. Go to, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may
not understand one another's speech."
This, according to Hobbes, means that the language "gotten and augmented by Adam and
his posterity, was again lost at the tower of Babel, when by the hand of God every man was
stricken for his rebellion, with an oblivion of his former language." If the further
implication is that the lost language was unlike any of the conventional languages in the
historical record, then it may be supposed to have been that natural form of speech in
which each thing is named according to its nature.
- The modern ideal of a perfect and universal language may even
be looked upon as an impious wish to achieve what God took away from men at Babel.
THE PROBLEM of the origin of human language is not an easy one for the theologian.
It is more difficult still for those who speculate about it in purely naturalistic terms.
Rousseau tries to expose some of the perplexities in such speculations.
If speech did not become a social necessity until men passed from isolation in a state of
nature to living together in society, how, he asks, could societies have been formed
before languages had been invented? "If men need speech to learn to think," he
remarks, "they must have stood in much greater need of the art of thinking, to be
able to invent that of speaking." The development of languages already in existence,
or the way in which the child learns to speak through living in an environment where
speech exists, "by no means explains how languages were originally formed."
Rousseau imagines a primitive condition in which men uttered instinctive cries "to
implore assistance in case of danger, or relief in case of suffering"; he supposes
that to such cries, men may have added gestures to signify visible and movable objects,
and imitative sounds to signify audible ones. Such methods of expression being
insufficient to convey ideas about absent or future things, men had at last to invent
"the articulate sounds of the voice" and to institute these as conventional
signs. But, as he observes, "such an institution could only be made by common consent
. . . itself still more difficult to conceive, since such a common agreement must have had
motives, and speech, therefore, seems to have been highly necessary in order to establish
the use of it."
The problem of the origin of human language is not only connected with the problem of the
origin of human society, but also with the problem of the origin of man himself. The
faculty of articulate speech does not, according to Darwin, "offer any insuperable
objection to the belief that man has been developed from some lower form." Though the
habitual use of articulate language is peculiar to man, "he uses, in common with the
lower animals, inarticulate cries to express his meaning, aided by gestures and the
movements of the muscles of the face." The songs of birds and the speech of parrots
show that animals can learn to make and repeat certain definite sounds, and even to
connect words with things. It seems to Darwin quite credible that man's articulate
language "owes its origin to the imitation and modification of various natural
sounds, the voices of other animals, and man's own instinctive cries, aided by signs and
gestures."
SUCH AN ACCOUNT of the origin of human speech is not credible, however, to those who
disagree with Darwin's statement that "the lower animals differ from man solely in
his almost infinitely larger power of associating together the most diversified sounds and
ideas."
- Those who hold that human rationality differs in kind, rather
than degree, from animal intelligence tend to find a corresponding difference in kind
between human language and the sounds of brutes.
Aristotle, for example, says that man is the only animal whom nature "has
endowed with the gift of speech. Mere vocalization is only an indication of pleasure and
pain and is therefore found in other animals," but men alone have the power to
discuss the expedient and the just, and this fact distinguishes human association from the
companionship of gregarious animals.
Human speech is, for Descartes, one of the two criteria by which we can "recognize
the difference that exists between men and brutes. For it is a very remarkable fact that
there are none so depraved and stupid, without even excepting idiots, that they cannot
arrange different words together, forming of them a statement by which they can make known
their thoughts; while, on the other hand, there is no other animal . . . which can do the
same. It is not the want of organs that brings this to pass, for it is evident that
magpies and parrots can utter words just like ourselves, and yet they cannot speak as we
do, that is, so as to give evidence that they think of what they say .... This does not
merely show that the brutes have less reason than men, but that they have none at
all."
The difference between men and other animals is more fully discussed in the chapter on
MAN. Here we are concerned with opposite opinions on that subject only in relation to
opposite views of human language and its origin. When, as in Descartes' view, human
language is distinguished by syntax and grammar or, as in Locke's, by man's special power
to use sounds "as signs of internal conceptions, and to make them stand as marks for
ideas within his own mind," the origin of human speech does not seem explicable in
evolutionary terms.
THE RELATION OF grammar to the other liberal arts and to the various uses of language is
considered in the chapters on LOGIC, POETRY, and RHETORIC. Isolated from these others,
grammar is primarily concerned with the distinction of the parts of speech, such as noun
and verb, or particle and adjective.
"By a noun," says Aristotle, "we mean a sound significant by convention,
which has no reference to time, and of which no part is significant apart from the
rest." In contrast to the noun, the verb is defined by Aristotle as the sort of word
which, "in addition to its proper meaning, carries with it the notion of time . . . .
Moreover," he continues, "a verb is always a sign of something said of something
else." The grammatical function of nouns and verbs is, in Locke's opinion, more
generally recognized and better defined than that of particles, prepositions, and
conjunctions. Such words, Locke writes, "show what connexion, restriction,
distinction, opposition, emphasis, etc. a man gives to each respective part of his
discourse . ... He who would show the right use of particles, and what significancy and
force they have, must take a little more pains, enter into his own thoughts, and observe
nicely the several postures of his mind in discoursing."
Grammar is also concerned with the difference between words (or phrases) and sentences,
or, in Aristotle's terms, between simple and composite expressions; and with the rules of
syntax which govern the order and agreement of words according to their function as parts
of speech. By reference to these rules the grammarian criticizes the misuse of language
and classifies a great variety of common errors.
One test of whether grammar is a universal art applicable to all languages--not just a set
of rules for using a particular conventional language correctly--is the naturalness of its
theoretical distinctions. Does Aristotle's distinction between noun and verb, for example,
respond to something natural in all discourse, or is it peculiar to the Greek or to the
Indo-European languages?
THERE IS A MEANING of language which includes more than the speech of men and brutes. From
Hippocrates on, the physician regards the symptoms of disease as if they were a connected
system of signs, a language for which his diagnostic art provides a grammar of
interpretation. This is particularly true in the psychological realm where, in the
psychoanalysis of the neuroses and especially in Freud's interpretation of dreams, both
symptom and dream-symbol are treated as an elaborate language. That language serves to
express the unconscious thoughts and desires which cannot be expressed in the ordinary
language of social intercourse over which consciousness exercises some control.
- These medical examples represent a conception of language
according to which the whole of nature is a book to be read by the scientist.
He penetrates the mysteries of nature by learning the grammar of natural signs. To
know the relation of natural things as cause and effect or whole and part is to discover
nature's syntax. According to another conception, expressed by Galileo, the book of nature
"is written in mathematical language, its symbols being triangles, circles, and other
geometrical figures, without whose help it is impossible to comprehend a single word of
it."
The book of nature may also be read as the language of God. Prophecy or divination is such
a reading of dreams or of other events as omens and portents which bespeak the divine
purpose. When he reaches the highest heaven Dante finds in the vision of the Trinity,
"bound up with love in one volume, that which is dispersed in leaves through the
universe." Berkeley goes further than this. All of the ideas which man gets by
sense-perception are words in a divine vocabulary. The uniform appearances of nature
"may not unfitly be styled the Language of its Author, whereby He discovers His
attributes to our view and directs us how to act for the convenience and felicity of
life."
God speaks to man in still another way. Within the Judaeo-Christian tradition at least,
God is believed to have revealed himself to man through the vehicle of human language.
Written by men under divine inspiration, Sacred Scripture is the word of God. Because it
is at once human and divine, this language is the most difficult for man to interpret.
The art of interpreting the Bible involves the most elaborate theory of signs, and of the
types and levels of meaning. It involves special rules of reading. The development of this
theory and these rules by Augustine and Aquinas, Maimonides and Spinoza, Hobbes and
Pascal, has deepened the liberal arts and enlarged the scope of man's understanding of
other languages--his own or nature's. Since the heart of this larger consideration of
language lies in the analysis of meaning and the modes of signification, the discussion of
the symbolism of nature and the word of God belongs to the chapter on SIGN AND SYMBOL;
and, in its theological aspects, to the chapters on PROPHECY arid RELIGION.
THE DISCUSSION of language, as we have seen, cannot be separated from the consideration of
human nature and human society. Because He "designed man for a sociable
creature," God, according to Locke, "made him not only with an inclination, and
under a necessity to have fellowship with those of his own kind, but furnished him also
with language, which was to be the great instrument and common tie of society."
It is not merely that the fellowship of men depends upon speech. According to Locke, men
cannot enjoy "the comfort and advantage of society ... without the communication of
thoughts." The fact that "man had by nature his organs so fashioned as to be fit
to frame articulate sounds . . . was not enough to produce language"--at least not
human language, "for parrots, and several other birds, can be taught to make
articulate sounds distinct enough," and yet, Locke writes, they are "by no means
capable of language. Besides articulate sounds, therefore, it was further necessary,"
he insists, that the sounds men formed should be the instrument whereby "the thoughts
of men's minds are conveyed from one to another."
Rousseau, on the other hand, seems to think that under the primitive circumstances
surrounding the origin of both society and language, the association of men "would
not require a language much more refined than that of rooks or monkeys, who associate
together for much the same purpose. Inarticulate cries, plenty of gestures and some
imitative sounds, must have been for a long time the universal language," he writes;
"and by the addition, in every country, of some conventional articulate sounds . . .
particular languages were produced; but these were rude and imperfect, and nearly such as
are now to be found among some savage nations."
The plurality of conventional, historic languages seems to parallel the plurality of the
nations or societies into which mankind is divided. But underlying the diversity of
tongues there is also a unity which implies the possibility of mankind's unification. To
the extent that language expresses thought, diverse languages are but different mediums
for the same thing. "All men may not have the same speech sounds," Aristotle
declares, "but the mental experiences, which these directly symbolize, are the same
for all."
The human community conceived in terms of the communication of thought extends as far as
the bounds of such communication among men. It is not limited by political boundaries. It
overcomes by translation the barriers set up by a diversity of tongues. It includes the
living and the dead and extends to those as yet unborn.
- In this sense, human civilization can be described as the
civilization of the dialogue, and the tradition of the great books can be conceived as the
great conversation in which all men can participate. The extent of this conversation
measures the range of western thought.
The vocabulary of its language is the stock of ideas with which each individual
can begin to think for himself when he turns from dialogue to soliloquy;
for, as Plato observes,
- "thought and speech are the same, with this exception,
that what is called thought is the unuttered conversation of the soul with itself."
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