220 



KNOWLEDGE 



[May 1, ]i 



his own. Two or more familiar syllables or words may be 

 united for the same purpose, as railwin/ ; or old words may 

 be newly applied, as revolver, a pistol that has a revolving 

 part. A word thus originated in the mind of the indi- 

 vidual, its survival depends upon its utility and fitness, 

 and, once generally adopted, it may ultimately become the 

 parent of many others, and its range of meaning may be 

 indefinitely widened. Whitney says that if every meanmg 

 attached to a word were to count as a separate word, the 

 hundred tliousand words of which the English language is 

 formed would doubtless be increased to a million or two ; 

 while the Rev. T. Hurlbut has made the stupendous calcula- 

 tion that seventeen million verbal forms may be made from 

 one Algonquin root. 



In the complicated languages of civilisation, however, it 

 is doubtful whether any one individual ever acquires the 

 whole language— that is to say, knows every word of it. 

 Each adopts that part of it which suits his own purpose. 

 The English language consists of about ninety or a hundred 

 thousand words. Out of these Shakespeare uses about 

 15,000; Milton, 8,000; a person of ordinary culture, 3,000 

 or 4,000 ; and an agricultural labourer possibly not more 

 than 300 ; while a journalist accustomed to deal with many 

 subjects would probably reach 13,000 or U,000. 



Charles Reade describes the daughter of a small shop- 

 keeper in Liverpool as having "plenty of tongue and 

 mother-wit, but she could not, and would not, study 

 anything if it had the misfortune to be written or 

 printed."* Further on,t he says, "Her whole vocabulary 

 was about nine hundred words, whereas you and I know 

 ten thousand and more ; yet she would ring a triple 

 bob-major on that small vocabulary, and talk learned 

 us to a standstill." Volubility does not necessarily imply 

 a Large command of words ; while, on the other hand, 

 we have all heard of the great man who was silent in 

 fourteen languages. 



Each language meets the average necessities of its 

 speakers. A small mind can only grasp a small part 

 of it ; but a large mind will often find it too small for 

 its requirements, and will have to seek among other 

 tongues the means of expressing its thoughts. An African 

 above the level of his race would be fettered by the 

 language to which he was born ; but English would open 

 up a wide range of ideas to him, and raise him infinitely 

 higher than he could rise without some such means of 

 marking and signifying his thoughts. A language expands 

 and contracts in adaptation to the needs and circumstances 

 of those who use it, and it is enriched or impoverished 

 with the minds of its speakers. Conversely, an English- 

 man forced to e.xpress his ideas in some African dialect 

 would be wholly at a loss, for where the ideas have never 

 been the words "cannot be found. Similarly, every language 

 possesses some words, phrases, or, as they are called, 

 idioms, which cannot be exactly translated into another 

 tongue ; every nation has some peculiar modes of thought, 

 and thus it is that the intellect is widened by the acquisi- 

 tion of foreign tongues. 



Words are learnt by children much on the same principle 

 as thev are adopted by communities. Among the hundreds 

 of words that a child hears every day, it picks up, as we 

 may say, those which apply to its own few and limited 

 ideas, leaving all others. Of course imitation plays a large 

 part in the acquirement of speech by children ; but if by 

 imitation a word is taught to a child which it cannot apply 

 to any thought, it is soon forgotten and not really adopted 

 into the little one's language. As new ideas are taken into 

 the mind or grow up in it, new words and combinations of 



words are adopted to express them. In the race new ideas 

 are acquired but slowly, and the means of exjjressing them 

 are, therefore, but of tardy growth ; but the child is 

 constantly under the tuition of older individuals who 

 have acquired a great part of the sum of thought and 

 language developed in the race, and thus it is that each 

 child acquires in the course of a few years the total results 

 of a culture which its ancestors have taken countless 

 centuries of development to gain. This acquisition is 

 limited only by the individual capacities of the child ; but 

 if these capacities are great he may himself leave behind 

 him some idea and some word which shall find a place in 

 the culture of his race. Thus it is that the processes of 

 civilisation, and among them language, are evolved. To 

 each child, with words, are taught also distinctions, classi- 

 fications, abstractions, and relations ; while by their means 

 attention is directed to matters which call for observation, 

 the senses are roused into fuller consciousness of perception, 

 and the reasoning powere are trained. 



The position has been clearly defined by Whitney, who 

 says, " Language enables each generation to lay up securely, 

 and to hand over to its succes.sors, its own collected wisdom, 

 its stores of experience, deduction, and invention, so that 

 each starts from the point which its predecessor had 

 reached, and every individual commences his career heir 

 to the gathered wealth of an immeasurable past." 



MIND ACTING ON BODY. 



J:!y Richard A. Proctor. 



' Singleheart ami Doubleface," p. 1. 



t Id. p. 2. 



ITT, striking as are the cases thus far con- 

 sidered, which relate to disorders of a kin<l 

 which have been known in many Gises to 

 yield to the action of the imagination, the 

 reader may be more struck probably by 

 cases in which the actual progress of internal 

 organic diseases would seem to have been 

 arrested by psychical means. Some thirty years ago Sir 

 John Forbes mentioned some remarkable instances of this 

 kind, which had been described in a very interesting paper 

 communicated to the British and Foreiyn Naval Review by 

 a naval surgeon whose high character was well known to 

 him. Most of these cases are not such as could be advan- 

 tageously described in full in these pages. The following 

 account, one of the most striking, has been abridged and 

 verbally modified (not at all altered in essentials) to render 

 it more suitable for my readers. In Juh' 18i5 the company 

 of a (!4overnment ship were attacked by an epidemic com- 

 plaint, which in several instances led to a severe form 

 of dysentery. Among those who suftered most was a first- 

 class petty oflicer, who, though he had had but a mild attack 

 of dysentery, had been much distressed by some of the 

 sequels of the disorder. To remove these, very powerful 

 medicines had been employed, and successfully, save in this 

 respect — that intense irritation of the stomach had been 

 produced, from which the patient suffered severely. External 

 irritants were employed until the poor fellow's skin became 

 perfectly callous ; sedatives were given until his senses were 

 muddled ; but he seemed to obtain not the least relief. 

 '• This being so," says the writer, " I determined to try the 

 effect of mental influence : stating to him, as I did to the 

 other men, that as his disease was most obstinate, so was it 

 necessary to have recourse to desperate means to relieve it ; 

 that with his sanction I would therefore put him under a 

 medicine which it was neces.siiry to watch with the greatest 

 attention le.st its effects should prove most prejudicial, 

 perhaps fatal, and so forth. Having by these statements 



