Language 



SCIENTIFIC SIDE-LIGHTS 



373 



die geistige Entwickelung des Menschen- 

 geschlechts. (Translated for Scientific 

 Side-Lights.) 



1817. LANGUAGE CONTROLS CUS- 

 TOMS AND TRADE The French language 

 produces French habits, French habits in- 

 troduce French products. Those who know 

 French become the patrons of France. Bul- 

 letin de V Alliance frangaise. (Translated 

 for Scientific Side-Lights.) 



1818. LANGUAGE, GRADUAL AC- 

 QUISITION OF Vocabulary of English Lan- 

 guage Number of Words in Common Use 

 Vocabulary Varies with Education. The 

 vocabulary of a rich and long-cultivated 

 language like the English may be roughly 

 estimated at about 100,000 words (altho 

 this excludes a great deal which,, if " Eng- 

 lish " were understood in its widest sense, 

 would have to be counted in) ; but thirty 

 thousand is a very large estimate for the 

 number ever used, in writing or speaking, 

 by a well-educated man; three to five thou- 

 sand, it has been carefully estimated, cover 

 the ordinary needs of cultivated intercourse; 

 and the number acquired by persons of low- 

 est training and narrowest information is 

 considerably less than this. Nowhere more 

 clearly than here does it appear that one 

 gets his language by a process of learning, 

 and only thus ; for all this gradual increase 

 of one's linguistic resources goes on in the 

 most openly external fashion, by dint of 

 hearing and reading and study; and it is 

 obviously only a continuation, under some- 

 what changed circumstances, of the process 

 of acquisition of the first nucleus: while 

 the whole is parallel to the beginning and 

 growth of one's command of a " foreign " 

 tongue. WHITNEY Life and Growth of Lan- 

 guage, ch. 2, p. 26. (A., 1900.) 



1819. LANGUAGE INVOLVES EN- 

 TIRE MIND No Single Faculty Competent 

 to the Work. Its [phrenology's] " facul- 

 ties," as a rule, are fully equipped persons 

 in a particular mental attitude. Take, for 

 example, the " faculty " of language. It in- 

 volves in reality a host of distinct powers. 

 We must first have images of concrete 

 things and ideas of abstract qualities and 

 relations ; we must next have the memory of 

 words and then the capacity so to associate 

 each idea or image with a particular word 

 that, when the word is heard, the idea shall 

 forthwith enter our mind. We must, con- 

 versely, as soon as the idea arises in our 

 mind, associate with it a mental image of 

 the word, and by means of this image we 

 must innervate our articulatory apparatus 

 so as to reproduce the word as physical 

 sound. To .read or to write a language, other 

 elements still must be introduced. But it is 

 plain that the faculty of spoken language 

 alone is so complicated as to call into play 

 almost all the elementary powers which the 

 mind possesses memory, imagination, as- 

 sociation, judgment, and volition. A por- 



tion of the brain competent to be the ade- 

 quate seat of such a faculty would needs be 

 an entire brain in miniature just as the 

 faculty itself is really a specification of the 

 entire man. JAMES Psychology, vol. i, ch. 

 2, p. 28. (H. H. &Co., 1899.) 



1820. LANGUAGE MADE MEAN- 

 INGLESS BY AUTOMATIST THEORY 



" Ought " " Duty " " Responsibility " 

 Individual Deemed Victim of Circum- 

 stances. It seems to me . . . quite 

 clear that on the automatist or determinist 

 theory, such words as " ought," " duty," 

 " responsibility," have to be used, if used at 

 all, in new significations. The welfare of 

 that aggregate of automata which we call 

 "society" may require that every individual 

 automaton shall be prevented from doing 

 what is injurious to it; and punishment for 

 offenses actually committed may be reason- 

 ably inflicted as a deterrent from the repeti- 

 tion of such offenses by the individual or by 

 others. But if the individual has in him- 

 self no power either to do the right or to 

 avoid the wrong, and if the potency of that 

 aggregate of feelings about actions as being 

 " right or wrong," which is termed " con- 

 science," entirely depends upon " circum- 

 stances " over which he neither has nor ever 

 has had any control, I fail to see in what 

 other sense he should be held " responsible " 

 for doing what he knows that he " ought 

 not " to have done, or for not doing what he 

 knows that he " ought " to have done, than 

 a steam-engine, which breaks away from its 

 " governor " in consequence of a sudden in- 

 crease of steam-pressure, or which comes to 

 a stop through the bursting of its steam- 

 pipe, can be accounted responsible for the 

 damage thence arising. CARPENTER Mental 

 Physiology, pref., p. 46. (A., 1900.) 



1821. LANGUAGE MAKES KNOWL- 

 EDGE HEREDITARY The Son Begins 

 Where the Father Ends. Language formed 

 the trellis on which mind climbed upward, 

 which continuously sustained the ripening 

 fruits of knowledge for later minds to 

 pluck. Before the savage's son was ten 

 years old he knew all that his father knew. 

 The ways of the game, the habits of birds 

 and fish, the construction of traps and 

 snares all these would be taught him. The 

 physical world, the changes of season, the 

 location of hostile tribes, the strategies of 

 war, all the details and interests of savage 

 life would be explained. And before the boy 

 was in his teens he was equipped for the 

 struggle for life as his forefathers had never 

 been even in old age. The son, in short, 

 started to evolve where his father left off. 

 Try to realize what it would be for each of 

 us to begin life afresh, to be able to learn 

 nothing by the experiences of others, to live 

 in a dumb and illiterate world, and see what 

 chance the animal had of making pro- 

 nounced progress until the acquisition of 

 speech. DRTJMMOND Ascent of Man, ch. 4, p. 

 152. ( J. P., 1900.) 



