ARE LANGUAGES INSTITUTIONS? 145 



which has most votaries among the students of physical science, and 

 those wlio approach the subject from the side of general anthropology, 

 is i*ather of the opposite type. That the division bears tliis aspect 

 ought, it should seem, to tell against the latter doctrine; but there is 

 no good ground for regarding tlie fact as decisive, for, until the lin- 

 guists are agreed among themselves as to fundamental points, they 

 have no common vote to throw. 



For myself, I hold the more popular doctrine to be also the truer, 

 and, in the proper sense, more philosophical ; and the other to be 

 founded on the insecure basis of combined misapprehension and exag- 

 geration. And I propose to give here, in as brief a form as it is pos- 

 sible, my reasons for thus holding. 



Every thing in the study of language, as in most other studies, 

 depends upon the way in which one approaches the fundamental 

 questions. In my opinion there is no other way here so secure and 

 so fruitful as that of inquiring what our own speech is to us, and why ; 

 how we came by it, and by what tenure we hold it. The general lin- 

 guistic philosophy we profess must, first and above all things, be con- 

 sistent with the most accessible facts of present living language ; we 

 may not be able to explain these from themselves alone, but our doc- 

 trines must at any rate not go counter to them. If physical science 

 has been worth any thing for its influence upon other sciences, it has 

 been by inculcating its method of investigation, to make the utmost 

 of what is immediately under our eyes, and reason cautiously back 

 from the present into the past. 



Nor, in getting at language from this side, must we undertake to 

 deal with it as a body or total, lest we lose ourselves in glittering 

 and indefinite generalities. We must take up only so much as we 

 can hold in the hand, as it were, and deal with competently. Let us 

 try the single word book. It is to us the sign of a very complex con- 

 ception, but one which needs no defining. How came we by it ? 

 Every other linguistic community in the world that has the thing has 

 also a name for it, but the names are all diflerent livre, lihro, huch, 

 hihlion, Jcniga, hitdh, pustaka, and so on let us say a round hundred 

 of them. Why do we use for our conception this one of the hundred ? 

 There is but one answer to this, a common-sense answer, which no 

 philosophy can possibly reason away. We learned the word, hearing 

 it used during the period when we were engaged in learning things 

 and their names, used over and over again, and in such connections 

 as showed us what it meant ; we learned to reproduce the series of 

 sounds, and to associate it with the conception, just as we could have 

 learned to reproduce and associate any otlier of the hundred, or any 

 one of a thousand other signs as a motion of the hand, or a square 

 mark. There is absolutely no tie of union to us between the sign and 

 tlie thing signified save this mental association, artificially formed 

 that is to say, brought about under the guidance of others, after their 



VOL. VII. 10 



