324 



NA TURE 



[Fed. 2, 1888 



" You tell me that my book on the ' Science of 

 Thought ' is thoroughly revolutionary, and that I have 

 all recognized authorities in philosophy against me. I 

 doubt it. My book is, if you like, evolutionary, but not 

 revolutionary ; I mean it is the natural outcome of that 

 philosophical and historical study of language which 

 began with Leibniz, and which during our century has 

 so widely spread and ramified as to overshadow nearly 

 all sciences, not excepting what I call the science of 

 thought. 



" If you mean by revolutionary a violent breaking with 

 the past, I hold on the contrary that a full appreciation 

 of the true nature of language and a recognition of its 

 inseparableness from thought will prove the best means 

 of recovering that unbroken thread which binds our 

 modern schools of thought most closely together with 

 those of the Middle Ages and of ancient Greece. It alone 

 will help us to reconcile systems of philosophy hitherto 

 supposed to be entirely antagonistic. If I am right — and 

 I must confess that with regard to . the fundamental 

 principle of the identity of reason and language I share 

 the common weakness of all philosophers, that I cannot 

 doubt its truth — then what we call the history of philo- 

 sophy will assume a totally new aspect. It will reveal 

 itself before our eyes as the natural growth of language, 

 though at the same time as a constant struggle of old 

 against new language — in fact, as a dialectic process in 

 the true sense of the word. 



" The very tenet that language is identical with thought 

 — what is it but a correction of language, a repentance, a 

 return of language upon itself? 



" We have two words, and therefore it requires with us 

 a strong effort to perceive that behind these two words 

 there is but one essence. To a Greek this effort would 

 be comparatively easy, because his word /og'os continued 

 to mean the undivided essence of language and thought. 

 In our modern languages we shall find it difficult to coin 

 a word that could take the place of logos. Neither dis- 

 cours in French, nor Rede in German, which meant 

 originally the same as ratio, will help us. We shall have 

 to be satisfied with such compounds as thought-word 

 or word-thought. At least, I can think of no better 

 expedient. 



" You strongly object to my saying that there is no such 

 thing as reason. But let us see whether we came honestly 

 by that word. Because we reason — that is, because we 

 reckon, because we add and subtract — therefore we say that 

 we have reason ; and thus it has happened that reason was 

 raised into something which we have or possess, into a 

 faculty, or power, or something, whatever it may be, that 

 deserves to be written with a capital R. And yet we have 

 only to look into the workshop of language in order to see 

 that there is nothing substantial corresponding to this sub- 

 stantive, and that neither the heart nor the brain, neither 

 the breath nor the spirit, of man discloses its original 

 whereabouts. It may sound violent and revolutionary to 

 you when I say that there is no such thing as reason ; and 

 yet no philosopher, not even Kant, has ever in his defini- 

 tion of reason toll us what it is really made of. But 

 remember, I am far from saying that reason is a mere 

 word. That expression, ' a mere word,' seems to me the 

 most objectionable expression in the whole of our philo- 

 sophical dictionary. 



" Reason is something — namely, language — not simply 

 as we now hear it and use it, but as it has been slowly 

 elaborated by man through all the ages of his existence 

 on earth. Reason is the growth of centuries, it is the 

 work of man, and at the same time an instrument brought 

 to higher and higher perfection by the leading thinkers 

 and speakers of the world. No reason without language — 

 no language without reason. Try to reckon without 

 numbers, whether spoken, written, or otherwise marked ; 

 and if you succeed in that I shall admit that it is possible 



to reason or reckon without words, and that there is in 

 us such a thing or such a poiver or faculty as reason, 

 apart from words. 



" You say I shall never live to see it admitted that 

 man cannot reason without words. This does not dis- 

 courage me. Through the whole of my life I have cared 

 for truth, not for success. And truth is not our own. 

 We may seek truth, serve truth, love truth ; but truth 

 takes care of herself, and she inspires her true lovers 

 with the same feeling of perfect trust. Those who can- 

 not believe in themselves, unless they are believed in by 

 others, have never known what truth is. Those who 

 have found truth know best how little it is their work, 

 and how small the merit which they can claim for them- 

 selves. They were blind before, and now they can see. 

 That is all. 



" But even if I thought that truth depended on majorities, 

 I believe I might boldly say that the majority of philo- 

 sophers of all ages and countries is really on my side (see 

 ' Science of Thought,' pp. 31 et seq.), though few only have 

 asserted the identity of reason and language without 

 some timorous reserve, still fewer have seen all the 

 consequences that flow from it. 



"Some people seem to resent it almost as a personal 

 insult that what we call our divine reason should be no 

 more than human language, and that the whole of this 

 human language should have been derived from no more 

 than 800 roots, which can be reduced to about 120 con- 

 cepts. But if I had wished to startle my readers I could 

 easily have shown that out of these 800 roots one-half 

 could really have been dispensed with, and has been 

 dispensed with in modern languages (see ' Science of 

 Thought,' p. 417), while among the 120 concepts not a 

 few are clearly secondary, and owe their place in my 

 list {ib. p. 619) merely to the fact that in Sanskrit they 

 cannot be reduced to any more primitive concept. To 

 dance, for, instance, cannot be called a primitive concept ; 

 perhaps not even to hunger, to thirst, to cook, to roast, 

 &c. Only it so happens that in Sanskrit, to which my 

 statistical remarks were restricted, we cannot go behind 

 such roots as N^^iT, KSHUDH, TiRSH, PA/ir, &c. It 

 is in that limited sense only that such roots and such 

 concepts can be called primitive. The number of really 

 primitive concepts would be so alarmingly small that for 

 the present it seemed wiser to say nothing about it. But 

 so far from being ashamed of our modest beginnings, we 

 ought really to glory rather in having raised our small 

 patrimony to the immense wealth now hoarded in our 

 dictionaries. 



'' When we once knowwhat our small original patrimony 

 consisted in, the question how we came in possession of 

 it may seem of less importance. Yet it is well to re- 

 member that the theory of the origin of roots and con- 

 cepts, as propounded by Noire, differs, not in degree, 

 but toto ca'lo from the old attempts to derive roots from 

 interjections and imitations of natural sounds. That a 

 certain number of words in every language has been 

 derived from interjections and imitations no one has 

 ever denied. But such words are not conceptual words, 

 and they become possible only after language had be- 

 come possible — that is, after man had realized his power of 

 forming concepts. No one who has not himself grappled 

 with that problem can appreciate the complete change 

 that has come over it by the recognition of the fact that 

 roots are the phonetic expressions of the consciousness of 

 our own acts. Nothing but this, our consciousness of 

 our own repeated acts, could possibly have given us 

 our first concepts. Nothing else answers the necessary 

 requirements of a concept, that it should be the con- 

 sciousness of something manifold, yet necessarily realized 

 as one. After the genesis of the first concept, everything 

 else becomes intelligible. The results of our acts become 

 the first objects of our conceptual thought ; and with 



