tific research would be, that we should wait before definitely deciding in favor of one primordial cell, and thus creating new trammels in the progress of free enquiries. Whatever the physiologist may say to the contrary, it does make a very great difference to the philosopher, whether the beginning of organic life has happened once, or may be supposed to have happened repeatedly; and though I do not grudge to the Bathybios of Haeckel the dignity of a new Adam, I cannot help feeling that in this small speck of slime, dredged up from the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, there is too much left of the old Adam, too much of what I call mythology, too much of human ignorance, concealed under the veil of positive knowledge.

The students of language have given to the problem of the origin of language a far more exact and scientific form. As long as they deal with what may be called the Biology of language, as long as they simply wish to explain the actual phenomena of spoken dialects all over the world, they are satisfied with treating the variety of living cells, or the significant roots of language, as ultimate facts. These roots are what remains in the crucible after the most careful analysis of human language, and there is nothing to lead us on to search for one primordial root, or for a small number of uniform roots, except the medieval idea that Nature loves simplicity. There was a time when scholars imagined they could derive a language from nine roots, or even from one; but these attempts were purely ephemeral.* At present we know that, though the number of roots is unlimited, the number of those which remain as the actual feeders of each single language amounts to about one thousand.

Some of these roots are, no doubt, secondary and tertiary formations, and may be reduced to a smaller number of primary forms. But here, too, philological research seems to me to show far more deference to the commandments of true philosophy than the prevalent physiological speculations. While the leading physiologists are striving to reduce all variety to uniformity, the student of language, in his treatment of roots, distinguishes where, to all outward appearance, there is no perceptible difference whatsoever. If in

*Lectures on the Science of Language, I. p. 44.

the same language, or in the same cluster of languages, there are roots of exactly the same sound, but different in their later development, a separate existence and an independent origin are allowed to each. There is, for instance, in the Aryan family, the well-known root DA. From it we have Sk. dádāmi, I give; Greek didwμi; Lat. do; Slavonic, da-mi; Lithuanian, dumi ;* and an endless variety of derivatives, such as donum, a gift; French, donner, to give, pardonner, to forgive; Latin, trado, to give over; Greek, podidout, to surrender; then Italian, tradire; French, trahir, trahison; English, treason; Latin, reddo, to give back; the French, rendre, with all its derivatives, extending as far as rente and rentier. Another derivative of DA, to give, is dōs, dōtis, a giver, in which sense it occurs at the end of sacer-dos; and dōs, dōtis, what is given to the bride, the English dower (the French douaire), which comes from the French douer, dotare, to endow; a dowager being a widow possessed of a dowry.

I might go on for hours before I could exhaust the list of words derived from this one root, DA, to give. But what I wish to show you is this, that by the side of this root DA there is another root DA, exactly the same in all outward appearance, consisting of D+A, and yet totally distinct from the former. While from the former we have, in Sanskrit, da-trám, a gift, we have from the latter da'-tram, a sickle. The meaning of the second root is to cut, to carve; from it Greek daiw, and daiouat, daiтoós, a man who carves. δαίομαι, δαιτρός, The accent remains, in Sanskrit, on the radical syllable in da'-tram, i.e. the cutting (active); whilst it leaves the radical syllable in dātrám, i.e. what is given (passive).

There are still other roots, in outward appearance identical with these two, yet totally distinct in their potential character; meaning, neither to give, nor to cut, but to bind (for instance, in diádnua, diadem, what is bound through the hair; dépa, a band or bundle, κρήδεμνον (κράς, δέμα) head-dress; and another, meaning to teach, and to know, preserved in didioкw, Aor. Pass, e-dá-ny, &c.

We have the root GAR, meaning to swallow, which yields us the Sanskrit girati, he swallows, the Greek Bißpw-okεl,

Pott, Etymologische Forschungen 2nd edit. 1867, p. 105.

the Latin vorat. We have, secondly, a root GAR, meaning to make a noise, to call, which yields us gar-ate in Sanskrit, γαργαρίζειν, βαρβαρίζειν, and βορβορύζειν in Greek, and both garrire and gingrire in Latin. It is conceivable that these two roots may have been originally one and the same, and that GAR from meaning to swallow may have come to mean the indistinct and disagreeable noise which even now is called swallowing the letters, in Sanskrit grāsa, the German Verschlucken. But a third root GAR, meaning to wake, the Greek, ¿yɛipw, perf. yphyopa, can hardly be traced back to the same source, but has a right to be treated as a legitimate and independent companion of the other root GAR.

Many more instances might be given, more than sufficient to establish the principle, that even in the same language two or more roots may be discovered, identical in all outward appearance, yet totally different from each other in meaning and origin.

Then, why, it may be asked, do students of language distinguish, where students of nature do not? Why are physiologists so anxious to establish the existence of cells, uniform from their beginning, yet I quote from Professor Haeckel-capable of producing by the processes of monogony, gemmation, polysporogony, and amphigony, the endless variety of living creatures ?* Students of language, too, might say, like the physiologists, that, in such cases as the root DA, 'the difference of mixture in the endless varieties of consonants and vowels are so fine as to be, for the present at least, beyond the powers of human perception.' If they do not follow that Siren voice, it is because they hold to a fundamental principle of reasoning, which the evolutionist philosopher abhors, viz., that if two things, be they roots or cells or anything else, which appear to be alike, become different by evolution, their difference need not always be due to outward circumstances (commonly called environment), but may be due to latent dispositions which, in their undeveloped form, are beyond the powers of human perception. If two roots of exactly the same sound

Haeckel, Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte, achte Vorlesung; Strauss, Alter und Neuer Glaube, p. 169.

produce two totally distinct families of words, we conclude that, though outwardly alike, they are different roots. And if we applied this reasoning to living germs, we should say that, if two germs, though apparently alike, grow, under all circumstances, the one always into an ape, and never beyond, the other always into a man, and never below, then the two germs, though indistinguishable at first, and though following for a time the same line of embryonic development, are different from the beginning, whatever their beginning may have been.

There is another point of difference between the treatment of cells by physiologists, and the treatment of roots by philologists, which requires careful attention. The physiologist is not satisfied with the admission of his uniform cells, but, by subjecting these organic bodies to a new chemical analysis, he arrives in the end at the ordinary chemical substances (the

pra orixeia of nature), and looks upon these, not simply as ruins, or as the residue of a violent dissolution, but as the elements out of which everything that exists, whether lifeless or living, was really built up. He maintains, in fact, the possibility of inorganic substances combining, under favorable circumstances, so as to form organic substances, and he sees in the lowest Moneres the living proof of an independent beginning of life.*

In the Science of Language we abstain from such experiments, and we do so on principle. We do not expect to discover the origin of living roots by dissolving them into their inorganic or purely phonetic elements; for, although every root may be reduced to at least one consonant and one vowel, these consonants and vowels are simply the materials, but not the elements of language; they have, in fact, no real independent existence, they are nothing but the invention of grammarians, and their

* A further distinction is made between Autotion of the most simple organic individuals from gony and Plasmogony. The former is the generaan inorganic formative fluid, a fluid which contains the requisite elements for the composition of an organism, dissolved in simple and firm combinations, e.g. carbonic acid, ammoniac, binary salts, &c. The latter is the generation of an organism from an organic formative fluid, a fluid which contains the requisite elements dissolved in complicated and loose combination of compounds of carbon, e.g., white of eggs, fat, &c. (Haeckel, Vorlesungen, p. 302.)

combination would only give rise to meaningless sounds, never to significant roots. While the physiologist still entertains a lingering hope that, with the progress of chemical science, it may be possible to produce a living cell out of given materials, we know that roots are simple, that they cannot and should not be decomposed, and that consonants and vowels are lifeless and meaningless materials, out of which no real root ever arose, and out of which certainly, nothing like a root can ever be reconstructed. The root DA, for instance, means, as we saw, to give; dissolve it into D and A, and you have meaningless slag and scum. Recompose D and A, and you have indeed the same sound, but its life and meaning are gone, and no language could, by its own free choice, accept such an artificial compound into its grammar or dictionary.

Such are some of the coincidences and some of the differences between Biology and Philology in their attempts to solve the problems of the origin of life and the origin of language; and the question does now arise, Are we, in the Science of Language, driven to admit that roots, because they yield to no further analysis, are therefore to be accepted as unintelligible in their origin, as miraculously implanted in man, but not in animals; or may we hope to be able to go beyond this limit, and discover something which, while it makes the origin of roots perfectly intelligible in man, explains to us, at the same time, why they should never have arisen in any other animal?

Now I say, without hesitation, that roots, though they must be accepted as ultimate facts in the Science of Language, are not ultimate facts in the Science of Thought. The scholar naturally shrinks from a subject which does not directly concern him, and which, according to its very nature, does not admit of that exact treatment to which he is accustomed; but the philosopher must accept facts as they are, and his interests are with the Chaos as well as with the Kosmos. As the medical man, who has to study the marvellously arranged network of the nerves, shrinks instinctively from hypothetical explanations of the first formation of nervous channels, and centres, and ganglia, and plexuses, the scholar, too, is frightened by the chaotic proceedings which are inevitable when we come to ask, how roots came to be what they are. But to those who are ready to deal with hypo

thetical subjects in a hypothetical manner, there is nothing mysterious or irrational in the origin of roots. Only let us not forget that roots are not merely sounds, but sounds full of meaning. To take the roots ga, to sing, da, to give, vā, to blow, and to ask why the three different consonants, g, d, v, should produce such difference of meaning, is absurd, and can never lead to any results. These consonants, though, when we learn our A B C, they look so very real, are nothing by themselves; they can, therefore, possess no meaning by themselves; or produce by themselves any effect whatsoever. All scholars, from Plato down to Humboldt, who imagine that they can discover certain meanings in certain consonants, have forgotten that neither consonants nor vowels are more than abstractions; and if there is any truth in their observations, as there undoubtedly is, we shall see that this must be explained in a different way. A root, on the contrary, is not, as is sometimes supposed, a mere abstraction or invention of grammarians. We have in many languages to discover them by analysis, no doubt; but no one who has ever disentangled a cluster of words can fail to see that, without granting to roots an independent, and really historical existence, the whole evolution of language would become an impossibility. There are languages, however, such as ancient Chinese, in which almost every word is still a root, and even in so modern a language as Sanskrit, there are still many words which, in outward appearance, are identical with roots.

As roots therefore have two sides, an outside, their sound, and an inside, their meaning, it is quite clear we shall never arrive at a proper understanding of their nature, unless we pay as much attention to their soul as to their body. We must, before all things, have a clear insight into the mechanism of the human mind, if we want to understand the origin of roots; and by placing before you the simplest out line of the mind in the act of knowing, (without considering what concerns emotion and will), I believe I shall be able to lay bare the exact point where the origin of of roots becomes, not only intelligible, but inevitable.

It is difficult, at the present moment, to speak of the human mind in any technical language whatsoever without being called to order by some philosopher or other.

According to some, the mind is one and indivisible, and it is the subject-matter only of our consciousness which gives to the acts of the mind the different appearances of feeling, remembering, imagining, knowing, willing, or believing. According to others, mind, as a subject, has no existence whatever, and nothing ought to be spoken of except states of consciousness, some passive, some active, some mixed. I myself have been sharply taken to task for venturing to speak, in this enlightened nineteenth century of ours, of different faculties of the mind, faculties being merely imaginary creations, the illegitimate offspring of mediæval scholasticism.

Now I confess I am amused rather than frightened by such pedantry. Faculty, facultas, seems to me so good a word, that, if it did not exist, it ought to be invented, in order to express the different modes of action of what we may still be allowed to call our Mind. It does not commit us to more than if we were to speak of the facilities or agilities of the mind, and only those who change the forces of nature into gods or demons, would be frightened by the faculties, as green-eyed monsters seated in the dark recesses of our self. I shall, therefore, retain the name of faculty, in spite of its retrogressive appearance; and, in speaking of the act of knowing in the most general, and least technical language, I shall say, that the mind acts in two different ways, or, that its knowledge has two aspects; the one sensuous or intuitional, sometimes called precentative, the other, rational or conceptual, sometimes called representative. I do not mean that the two can be separated or cut asunder, as on a dissecting table, but only that they can be, and ought to be, distinguished.*

Although knowledge is impossible, whether for man or beast, without intuitions, the knowledge of man, as soon as he has left the stage of infancy, i.e. speechlessness, is never intuitional only, but always both intuitional and conceptual. Intuition is knowledge too, but it is not knowledge in the technically defined and restricted sense of the word. It is experience concerned with individual objects only, whether external, as supplied by sense, or

Kant, Prolegomena, p. 60. 'Die Summe hiervon ist diese: die Sache der Sinne ist anzuschauen, die des Verstandes zu denken. Denken aber ist Vorstellungen in einem Bewusstsein vereinigen.'

internal, as supplied by emotion or volition.

True knowledge, even in its lowest form, always consists in the combination of an intuition and a concept. When I say, This is a dog, or, This is a tree, or, This is anything else, I must have the concept of a dog or a tree to which I refer this or that intuition, this or that state of consciousness. These concepts are not intuitive. There is no word in the whole of our dictionary, with the exception of proper names, to which anything real or intuitional corresponds. No one ever saw a dog, or a tree; but only this or that dog, a Scotch terrier or a Newfoundland dog; a fir tree, or an oak tree, or an apple tree; and then again, no one ever saw an apple tree, but only a few parts of it, a little of the bark, a few leaves, an apple here and there; and all these again, not as they really are, but one side of them only. Tree, therefore, is a concept, and, as such, can never be seen or perceived by the senses, can never acquire phenomenal or intuitional form. We live in two worlds, the world of sight and the world of thought; and, strange as it may sound, nothing that we think, nothing that we name, nothing that we find in our dictionary, can ever be seen, or heard, or perceived.

Now our concepts and our words are produced by a faculty, or by a mode of mental action, which is not simply a barrier between man and beast, but which creates a new world in which we live. If all animals were blind, and man alone possessed the faculty of seeing, that would not constitute a barrier between man and beast; it would simply be an increase of that intuitional knowledge which we share in common with the beast.

But the faculty of forming concepts is something, not simply beyond, but altogether beside the world of sense. Concepts are formed by what is called the faculty of abstraction, a very good word, as expressing the act of dissolving sensuous intuitions into their constituent parts, divesting each part of its momentary and purely intuitional character, and thus imparting to it that general capacity which enables us to gain general, conceptual, real knowledge.

There is, no doubt, considerable difference of opinion among psychologists as to the exact process by which concepts are formed; but, for the object which we here

have in view, any theory, from Plato down to Hume, will be acceptable. What is important to us is to see clearly that, as long as we have intuitional knowledge only, as long as we only see, hear, or touch this or that, we cannot predicate, we cannot name, we cannot reason, in the true sense of the word. We can do many things intuitively; perhaps the best things we ever do are done intuitively, and as if by instinct; and for the development of animal instincts, for all the clever things that, we are told, animals do, intuitional knowledge is more than sufficient, and far more important than conceptual knowledge. But, in order to form the simplest judgment, in order to say This is green,' we must have acquired the concept of green; we must possess what is generally called the idea of green, with its endless shades and varieties; we must, at least, to speak with Berkeley, have made the idea of an individual the representative of a class.' Thus only can we predicate green of any single object which produces in us, besides other impressions, that impression also which we have gathered up with many others in the concept and name of 'green.'

The difference between intuitional and conceptual knowledge has been dwelt on by all philosophers; nor do I know of any philosopher of note who has claimed for animals the possession of conceptual knowledge. Even evolutionist philosophers, who admit no difference in kind whatsoever, and who therefore can look upon human reason as a development only of brute reason, seldom venture so far as to claim for animals the actual possession of conceptual knowledge.

Locke, who can certainly not be suspected of idealistic tendencies, says,* If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree, this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them; and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to. For, it is evident, we observe no footsteps in them of making use of general signs for universal ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty of abstract

*Lectures on the Science of Language, I. 405.

ing or making general ideas, since they have no use of words or any other general signs.'

Few philosophers have studied animals so closely, and expressed their love for them so openly as Schopenhauer. 'Those, he says, who deny understanding to the higher animals, can have very little themselves.' 'It is true,' he says, in another place, 'animals cannot speak and laugh. But the dog, the only real friend of man, has something analogous,-his own peculiar, expressive, good-natured, and thoroughly honest wagging of the tail. How far better is this natural greeting than the bows and scrapings and grinnings of men! How much does it surpass in sincerity, for the present at least, all other assurances of friendship and devotion? How could we endure the endless deceits, tricks and frauds of men, if there were not dogs into whose honest faces one may look without mistrust.'

The same philosopher assigns to animals both memory and imagination (Phantasie). He quotes the case of a puppy, unwilling to jump from a table, as a proof that the category of causality belongs to animals also. But he is too expert a philosopher to allow himself to be carried away by fanciful interpretations of doubtful appearances; and when he explains the formation of general notions as the peculiar work of reason, he states, without any hesitation or qualification, that it is this function which explains all those facts which distinguish the life of men from the life of animals.'

I have said again and again that according to the strict rules of positive philosophy, we have no right either to assert or to deny anything with reference to the so-called mind of animals. But to those who think that philosophy may trust to anthropomorphic analogies, and that at least no counter arguments can be brought forward against their assertions that animals generalise, form concepts, and use them for the purpose of reasoning, exactly as we do, I may be allowed to propose at least two. cases for explanation. They are selected out of a large mass of stories which have lately been collected in illustration of the animal intellect, and they possess at least

* Frauenstädt, Schopenhauer-Lexicon, s.v. Begriff.