The Mystery of Words

Front matter

The Mystery of Words

by Ralcy Husted Bell

Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?

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|Some Other Books by Dr. Bell: Taormina The Worth of Words The Changing Values of English Speech The Religion of Beauty Words of the Wood (Poems) Art-Talks with Ranger The Philosophy of Painting Woman from Bondage to Freedom Etc.

Preface

Preface

Language first of all was a physical function. Even to-day, a man is known less by his looks than by his words. Language gradually became a mode of conduct, a symbol of emotion, a crude means of expression, and at the same time a social convention or the flowering of a gregarious instinct, as it were.

Then, as all things change under new angles of vision, language turned into a delicate, if not precise, instrument of reflection and expression. For as vision grew keener and broader, the ever-shifting points-of-view increased in number until language became so complex that man's greatest and rarest achievement is the simplicity of speech.

Finally, language long has been more than all that; if it remains the fine yet inadequate measure of individual thought, it also has become in a sense the thought of the race and a law of the mind. We are born under its dominion. We can not escape its requirements and remain either social or thinking beings. And it is not improbable that if human beings have spirits capable of surviving bodily death, these spirits will be found only in the personality that each gives to his own combination of words. No two persons ever speak alike. No man ever hides himself under his words, though he pile them mountain-high. We all are bound by the fatalism of our words.

Language, as we are accustomed to regard it, was put forth by the will; but when it reaches a certain stage, the will becomes powerless to alter its course, or at least to shape its destiny. In everything but pure science, language runs away with us, and there it balks. No one ever mastered his mother-tongue—but his mother-tongue always masters him. The mystery of words is inextricably associated with the mystery of higher consciousness; and greater than either is the mystery of the Faculty of Speech.

Language is of human origin—that should go without saying. Although its purposes are definite, it has remarkably indefinite aspects. Regarded as a law, we must accept the law as man-made. Subjected to the continual stress of subconscious habit, vivified by ceaseless activity, language has escaped the dominion of the will whilst deriving its powers from the mind. As a law, language parallels, the laws of life—but on a different plane, in common with all other laws of art. It is organic in the sense of its parallelism; and thus only is language a “natural” law. Treated as an organism, its relations in the broad conception of them are threefold: physical, physiological, and psychical. Because these relations are threefold is one reason why even group tongues or individual languages are slow to change. The co-ordinate processes are too delicate for rude or hasty readjustment.

Again, the obstinacy of language-change is one aspect of racial inertia. Thus it is easy to see why language is loath to respond to the help of learned coteries, and the reason why it is almost wholly deaf to the ablest pleadings of individuals in its behalf. When it yields quickly, it seems to react to spiritual inspiration or to succumb to spiritual slump.

Language submits to reason always grudgingly. It is such a large thing of so much complexity—it is so much a part of the race which it both serves and dominates—that it can be dealt with effectively only by the race itself. This obviously is true of language as a whole, and it is very largely true of separate tongues, as parts.

The English language is in continual use by many millions of people. We call it a “living” language, with good reason; and we know that living languages never remain static. English has undergone many changes, some of which have not seemed good. While it lives it must continue to change for better or worse. If we lengthen our time-scale, we perceive that the change in its big aspect parallels the principles of true growth, including of course those of decay. This is the rational view. For we must be aware that the span of a few centuries is not long in the life of a language. If we adopt a large standard, we find that the rules of scholarly deduction are less important to a growing language than the broad and fluent facility of service is to those who use it,—since they show so little respect for these rules.

This view may be accepted perhaps without assuming that individuals, and scholars with their collective learning, owe no obligations to the mother-tongue. For the mother-tongue is the kindest of mothers, even if she is capable also of exactions that are cruel. Indeed language, like ethics, has individual as well as social bearings. There must be reciprocal relations between the unit and the group. The one excuse for moralizing in a dissertation on linguistics is this: Just as each member of society owes wholesome conduct toward all others for the common good, so does every person owe judicious consideration to his tongue.

In morals this obligation is emphasized and made effective rather more through the spirit than by the enactment and the execution of statute laws. That is to say, enlightenment has done more for morals than force ever has done or ever could do. A sensitive regard for the feelings and the opinions of others is one very real source of ethical progress. The development of strength and purity in a language—its growth and efficiency—likewise must come very largely from the spirituality within us. For knowledge and spirit are the synchronous acquirements of mankind as it approaches a civilized state. A man’s words are his viewpoints which have been localized by convention. As he sees, understands, and speaks, so he is. Moreover, a delicate taste for wholesome speech is in some subtle manner associated with the utilitarian fitness of a language. Carelessness in speech, as in other conduct, leads to the callous indifference that precedes chaos by a step. A due regard for the sensibilities of others probably has done more for correct and decent speech than have all the books that lay bare the faults of language or those that extol its perfections.

Language is full of pitfalls, contradictions, and traps. Serious speech not always is the sign of serious character. Stinging devils use honeyed words, good men speak plainly, and wise men not always well. Only poets are the magicians, for they have mastered the mysteries of words. Only the poet understands the different characteristics of words: their tones, shades, colors, tears, and smiles. He sees that some words are as clear as dew, and that many are as smeared glass. He finds that some are harder than flint, colder than ice, hotter than fire. He knows that others are as gentle as the South breeze on the bosom of a flower; but better than all others, the poet knows that words are valued by the company they keep and that they are judged by their relations. His words may nudge each other but they never are boisterous about it; rather they are like birds on the wing, or flying arrows,—never like snakes in the grass. He sees that self-conscious words flow like molasses from the mouths of hypocrites and fools; that spontaneous words, like eagles, fly fearlessly in the face of the sun.

The trouble is, there are very few poets scattered amongst the many millions using and abusing human speech. If the masses largely were poets, our own words would not be our worst enemies, nor would our best friends necessarily be the words of others. We should have some confidence in the parts of speech and more pride in their relationships; neither should ten follies escape the tongue to one the hand, as now. The attics of our language would be cleared of rubbish and all the good, useful objects restored to use.

Some of the best pieces of furniture often are discarded and stowed away in the attic of an old house. Something like happens to many good English words. They are relegated to the accumulating dust of neglect in the attic of our dialectal or vernacular speech, called the Dictionary.

All such words (and phrases) are of historic value to linguistics; but certain of them also retain their original dynamics and beauty; and many of these no doubt could be rescued from approaching archaism to the enrichment of our tongue.

Public characters now and then give new life or fresh currency to semi-forgotten words. Desuetude, strenuous, and normalcy were galvanized into artificial vigor by Presidental patronage, as it were. The example is less felicitous than conspicuous; but the thought back of it is this: What fortuitously is possible to commonplace words in a mediocre way, clearly is possible to better words by more intelligent design.

Men and women whose utterances are scrutinized by the public, naturally have wide facilities for rescue work of this kind; but any person of knowledge and taste, however modest of station, may help to recover worthy parts of speech from the rubbish piles of our vocabulary.

There are many such words. Each person would make his choice, and the public would adopt for rejuvenation those words that should make the best appeal for usefulness to the needs of the mass-instinct.

A large number of plain words of great strength and rugged beauty have been cast aside for less virile words of effeminate taint. It may be too late in the history of English to expect a return to the shorter stronger words of an earlier epoch: the saber strokes of Saxon Speech; but it never is too late to regret their loss. A very ordinary example of the telling use of words of one syllable is given by J. A. Alexander:

Our language needs all its plain, short, strong words—all its clean words, for they challenge attention and they court inspection; their nakedness is their shield. We can say all we have to say with the very best of words, and we can get along admirably without any of the worse. Outside a few technical subjects, we have no occasion to invent words. It is very dangerous business in polite society. We should be able to express ourselves without the help of tireless and tiresome intensives. We have no use for nine-tenths of our synonyms. And while a man may be known by his expletives and a woman by her giggles, we should be as well off, all round, if they were not.

Now the question arises, how may the desire to use good language be stimulated, and how may it be gratified? Partly at least in education and in emulation discreetly practiced. Some knowledge of linguistics of course would be suggested; but we should not make the mistake of overloading linguistics with dusty science. An interest in the mysteries and the meanings of words stimulates one to study. Education enables one to discriminate between correct and incorrect forms of speech. Spiritual dignity leads one to a noble choice. Example is powerful. Faults exposed, often lead to their avoidance. Bad example by recognized authority leads thoughtless folk to evil ways in speech, as elsewhere. Also exemplars of virtue are sure to have their followers. This is true in linguistics. ‘The rule is general, and it is broad and big enough perhaps to excuse an occasional book of this kind.

R. H. B.

Part First

The Mystery of Words

Part First

Part I, Chapter I

Beginnings and Ends

Beginnings and ends are provisional conceptions. They enable us to study the changes of growth and decay between the two hypothetical extremes. We follow an endless chain of events in one direction. Having gone as far as we can go, we think of the just-beyond as a beginning. We follow as far as we can in an opposite direction, and that we call the end. But the terms beginning and end properly apply only to phases. Thus we may think of events as an endless chain having neither beginning nor end, since the beginning of one phase (or festoon of phases) links up with the end of another.

Philosophy can not deal with the origin of language as a simple phase since at this point roots in linguistics the science has many divergent roots leading to biology, physiology, comparative anatomy, the gregarious instincts, anthropology, and the basic principles of psychology. But philosophy may deal with the origin of the parts of speech, or other factors of a tongue, as a relatively simple phase of an equally complex phenomenon.

Mystery, nevertheless, veils the origin of words even from the philosopher. He may study the phenomenon of their origin; but thus far he has not succeeded in explaining it to the satisfaction of his own mind. The faculty of speech seems to be inexplicable. How words came about, and just what they were at first, no man knows. Yet all men know that countless earlier forms have perished utterly, leaving no appreciable trace behind them.

The development of speech must have been inconceivably slow. Man did not become human at a bound, but by one of the slowest of processes. When the human stage was reached, progress in certain directions was far more rapid, relatively, than that along any similar line in the prehuman stage. Still, there is no reason to suppose that speech far outstripped the other evolutionary phenomena active in primitive mankind.

Somehow, capability follows need in all the organized complexes of life. Fulfillment and desire are twin links in the chain of higher development, As the more advanced stages are reached, the energy of growth and the facility of unfolding seem to be released more readily through conscious than through subconscious effort. Aspiration may be the spiritual aspect of this general law of life as it arises from subliminal depths to the heights of consciousness, so to speak.

The humanity within us appears to be a synthesis of nature and art. Therefore, in a sense and to a degree, the nobler nature of man is self-created. Through this synthesis we catch the few glimpses of ourselves, just as we see something of our own earth in a ray of light from the sun. Art, of course, is natural but it is not nature. A poem is more than words, however skilfully combined: soil, air, moisture, and light are the least of a garden rose. Nature gives capability; art implies skill; science supplies knowledge; and the synthesis of nature and art implies a mysterious x. Consciousness is inherited; capability also is transmitted through generation; skill and knowledge must be acquired through the power of will; but x remains x.

The mystery of words lies in the faculty of speech; the secret of their origin is physiologic and psychic. That is to say, word-making is a mental process effected through physiological means not only, but a process inherent in physical function. Nevertheless, words are born of the mind as truly as children are born of the womb—with this difference: words never are separated from the mind, since they can not exist alone. The finest word in the world if uttered by an idiot has no meaning and therefore no being; it conveys nothing from one idiot to another. It may be pronounced perfectly, clearly written or plainly printed, yet it can not exist as a word apart from mind. If the absolute exists, it may be found in the subjectivity of words.

One of the early stages of speech passed through man’s desire to communicate with his fellows. It hardly had satisfied this purpose when it aspired, as it were, to a higher: that of aiding thought. In a parallel manner, writing arose above the level of the communicating of ideas to the function of better thinking. And here it is interesting to note that as writing (and printing) becomes more general the gestural element of language becomes more restricted.

Early in the history of language, signs and sounds co-operated to increase the effectiveness of both. The organs of speech aided by others, especially those of sight and hear- ing, developed. Words were invented. Simple speech developed into complicated language; and language assumed the important rôle of clarifying the understanding. Yet language never was adequate to thought, or its matrix—perhaps never will be, surely not as long as language is vivified by the spirit of progress; but words came to be the indispensable tools with which the soul must work out its destiny. What the hand was to the brain, the tongue is to the mind. Thus humanity found one of its authentic gods in itself. In that discovery lies the chief hope of the race.

Part I, Chapter II

2

Through Vague Epochs

During the long period of racial infancy, the various signs and sounds that were to develop into speech and become language, were slightly differentiated, if at all, from the things they signified. The grunt and the physical satisfaction were so closely associated that they confused the mind. The croon of pleasure was felt in a vague sort of way to call forth the pleasure itself. The scream of fright was a shield. The cry of pain was soothing to the hurt. The roar of defiance was a weapon. The call of desire was the means, partly at least, of gratifying the desire. Magic probably was born at this stage. Signs such as certain grimaces, sounds, and gestures were so agreeable to the gregarious or pack-instinct that they became conventional and in time social. The smile, the laugh, the frown, the handshake, the rubbing of noses, the embrace, peculiar inflections and guttural sounds acquired more or less definite significance, and their traces have persisted through all the many modifications that crystallized at last into social conventions. Thus language came to have functions besides those of thought and expression.

In time, man seized directly upon separate objects and he communicated to his kind such impressions of them as were most needful to be known, most readily understood, and most easily conveyed. From an idea of the things most obvious of themselves, to ideas of their simplest acts and qualities, was a long but inevitable way.

Thus the wondrous tools of the mind helped it to conceive from the simple to the complex, from the concrete to the abstract. By means of these tools the mind developed and multiplied the ideas it already had; and its greatest idea perhaps, measured by its utility,— the most ancient idea that has shown steady growth and such amazing conquest,—is the idea of practical symbolism.

The mystery of the origin of words, then, always has baffled us. Scholars have tried to penetrate it by means of interesting theories cleverly set forth. The theories have not agreed; many have been abandoned; the investigations have not been conclusive; even the epoch of word-invention remains indeterminate. Much has been conjectured, but little is known. It no longer is assumed that words were given to our ancient kind by special act of Providence. In the light of modern science it does not seem reasonable to suppose that speech was given to primitive mankind as we give prepared food to children. It is not likely that words came into existence spontaneously, since no child ever was born with one upon its lips. Indeed nothing is more evident than that words were invented; that they are, as we understand them, an artificial product of human personality; that they respond to needs as surely as tools supply wants: in brief, whatever else they may be, they certainly are tools.

Nothing is truer than that necessity is the mother of invention. Words were invented because they were needed; they have been used by man throughout the great part of his long history; all the while he has used them he has modified them; he has borrowed, discarded, and created others. Words in themselves, therefore, are not as mysterious as is the faculty for the making of them. Their deeper physiological mysteries are all the more interesting because they are related solely to man amongst all the other dwellers of earth.

No one dares to assume that man is the highest type of consciousness existent; but it does seem true that the faculty of speech raises him supremely above all his dumb fellows of this world; and the mystery of it is that anatomically he is not superior to some others, while admittedly he is inferior to many. With respect to language, man is a demi-god of this particular sphere; and through the faculty of speech he is conscious of infinity,—through that faculty he is able to perceive some scattered rays of truth so sublime that he may be excused for calling them divine.

Word-making is a generic ability of mankind. No family group of dumb humankind, however low in the scale of development, ever has been discovered. Careful studies of the Java skull show that, even in the brain of Pithecanthropis, the speech-areas, although small and undeveloped, already existed. The same is true of other relics, notably the meagre remains of the Piltdown man, whose lower-jaw, however, lacks the development necessary for articulate speech, as we know it. The most rudimentary languages familiar to us contain the essential parts of speech, nouns, verbs, etc., which require mind for their existence; and the fine relationships of these parts of speech reveal mind as the source of construction from which rules of grammar may be drawn.

The fact that this faculty pertains exclusively to human beings is startling enough; but its creative powers are more remarkable; and they emphasize, moreover, the purely human character of the faculty. All this points to the spirit (or mind or x faculty) of man as the wellspring of speech; and thus it is easy to associate language with morals.

If we concede that the conscious human mind brought forth every word of every language, then we must admit that the totality of language is infinitely richer than any of its branches. The recognition of this provisional truth gave rise to the old saying that a man adds another to himself whenever he learns a new tongue.

The epoch of word-invention must remain vague. Naturally this is true if the epoch falls within the period covering the infancy of the race. This period has been pushed back into a very remote æon. It is probable that man became man, so to speak, sometime during the 500,000 years of the Pleistocene period, when his prehuman-nature gave way to humanhood. He was manufacturing implements in Europe as early as 150,000 years ago. Long before this his speech must have had its beginnings.

During many ages the prehuman ancestors of man had aspired, subconsciously perhaps, to an upright carriage. For ages, man himself had known the benefit of the nearly erect posture. His changed physical attitude was, in some mysterious manner, the forerunner of his spiritual attitude. He was beginning to look toward the stars. But the slow change from four legs to two did not carry with it unalloyed blessings. As man arose from the more or less horizontal to the approximately perpendicular posture, he began to hope, to dream, to laugh, and to weep. Spiritual suffering came not through the “fall” of man but through his rise. His new posture also imposed anatomical penalties, the effects of which have not yet passed away. The abdominal cavity, for instance, is ill-suited to carry the viscera in an upright posture. But the liberation of the arms in locomotion; man’s ability to travel erect on two hind limbs; and the transfer of the anthropoid function of the big-toe of the fore-foot to that of an opposable thumb of the human hand, were an enormous recompense for the ills suffered through the change. From the ability to suffer as a man came his faculty to enjoy as a god. His new sorrows broke in ripples of laughter; his horizon broadened; his spirit longed for wings.

For ages, man’s brain had been helped in its development by the advantages of his opposable thumb, perfectly capable of co-operating with each of his four fingers. The hand had become an efficient assistant of the brain. The more he used his hands, the more he stimulated the development of his brain; and the more his brain developed, the more skilful became his hands. We utilize this reaction between hand and brain even to-day in the training of children.

For ages, the brain had been growing and undergoing adjustments of mass suitable to superanimal needs. One of the most marvelous acquirements of the human brain was its power of speech in one little area of either hemisphere. In the right-handed person, this speech-center became localized in the left. A little spot, situated in what is called the convolution of Broca, had become susceptible to an acquired change that made speech possible. Thus man found himself endowed with articulate speech. Without going into the reasons why, this only could have come about through the use of his hands during his individual and racial childhood.

Yet strangely enough, the faculty of speech is not congenital. Man is born as dumb as any other animal; but unlike other animals, he is born with the will-power of bringing forth in his brain a faculty that sets him apart from all the beasts of the earth. Still, no language ever came to him spontaneously. Every word was born of a need. His mind kissed his brain and words blossomed from his lips. Nor did the words issue merely as sounds, but they came full-fledged as verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech which make up a language in its infancy.

The development of the faculty of speech was not owing to any difference in brain-structure, since anatomically it is the same with several groups of primates. But in man’s brain, the particles of gray matter in a part of the cortex when subjected to the incessant repetition of certain stimuli develop the power of speech. Why is this? We say, rather loosely, that the personality longs to communicate with its fellow in accordance with one of the feminine instincts of the race. Eagerness preceded effort. The first effort to speak was a shudder; the shudder became a gesture; and the first “language” was not of the tongue, but of the hand—a gestural speech. Thus language was born of the hand; and spoken language, even in its most perfect form, still retains a large gestural element. The source of words is the mind; their impellent force is personality urged by the interaction between need and longing. Words are inventions of the mind, which the brain, the nerves, and the muscles have learned to use.

During the long period from somewhere well within the Miocene and extending through the Pliocene Age, a steady and coincident development took place of the hand, the brain, the powers of upright locomotion, and of speech. Already, as we have seen, in Early Quaternary Times this development had reached the flower called human.

At this time we find our prehistoric human ancestors in Europe. They walk as we walk; they have our hands and brains. Their speech is rudimentary, but the brain-centers related to the higher senses are well developed, and they control perfectly all motions of the bodily members. The anterior centers of the brain are keenly awake, and they have long been busy in the hoarding of experience and the developing of ideas. Fifty thousand or more years ago, these groups of intelligent human beings possessed faculties and powers in all essentials “modern,” though still in the dawn of education. These folk saw as we see, felt as we feel, and they otherwise functioned as we function to-day. They were men and women with our emotions, hopes, and dreams. They were bound to our cycle of childhood, vigor, and senility—beings of our own intellectual timbre, more roughly hewn perhaps and more ruggedly joined.

Beyond these racial groups in time, we see others vaguely that are intelligent, and still of an Eastern origin drawn Westward by migration, and ever lower in order as the period recedes, until man’s earliest ancestry is reduced to the level of brutedom.

One of the most significant facts in the study of prehistoric man, and one that yet may throw much light on his language, is his rapid spiritual ascendancy. That his higher development was relatively swift and progressive is made evident by an examination of his anatomical remains; and chief of these is the skull about which centers his most important evolutionary progress. A multitude of other facts related to his life indicate that his spiritual growth was rapid.

For much of our knowledge on these subjects we are indebted, directly and between lines, to the investigations of such scholars as Breuil, Cartailhac, Obermaier, Osborn, Avebury, Bégouen, Boule, Broca, Darwin, Déchelette, and a host of others. Through their eyes, as it were, we are enabled to visualize prehistoric times; and, as a result of their work, modern man gains a new conception of the antiquity of his race and speech; he is able to understand better than ever before the unfolding of the human spirit as it occurred in very early times. Illuminating relationships are established across thousands of changing years, forming a medium through which the human mind of to-day may come in touch with the powers of human observation, of discovery, and of invention during an antiquity so remote that in contrast with it the period of “Egyptian, Ægean, and Mesopotamian civilizations appear as of yesterday.” (Osborn.)

Part I, Chapter III

3

The Faculty of Speech and the Speech-Centers

The origin of man has been traced to Eastern prehuman groups. The origin of words has been traced to the mind through the faculty of speech. Just when our kind became human, no one knows. When man acquired the most important of his peculiar faculties, no one knows. This much seems probable: There was no common origin of language in the sense that from one primal tongue all others were derived. There are elements in the various known languages which are contrary to this view; even when all allowances have been made for transmutation under environmental pressure. Words, construction, and subtleties of meaning differ too widely in basic character to have sprung from a common ancestral speech. Conscious personality and group-variations of character at different periods under different stress must have moulded into families our primitive speech, if the mind is its mother. In later times but very far back, the earlier tribal tongues split into branches and otherwise became modified.