THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE. 345 



speaking, because the alone thinking animal ; the Xoyos of speech being in part 

 only the outside of the \6yos of thought, and both expressed significantly in 

 Greek by the same word. We say, therefore, distinctly that the mass of 

 human language consists of an array of articulated sounds elevated by the 

 power of self-acting imperial mind — )3ao-iWos vovs, as Plato calls it — from their 

 original sensous significance into the region of thought, and made thus 

 to serve as an organ of thinking in the communications of a specifically 

 thinking animal. 



V. That the vovs in the formation of language acts in its own imperial style, 

 and not at all in the manner of Locke's unhappy simile of the sheet of blank 

 paper, will appear plainly on considering the nature of that class of words 

 which, in all languages, is found to express purely mental operations. They 

 are, of course, formed by a secondary application of originally sensuous 

 terms ; but the point lies not in their origin, but in the selection made from 

 a host of words of the same origin. Thus, in Greek — KaraXa/x/Scww, o-witj/ai, 

 crvk\oyit,(x) ; in Latin — comprehendo, concipio, intelligo ; in German — -J'assen, 

 begreifen, plainly imply a very distinctly energetic forthputting of the 

 internal moulding faculty to lay hold of the material presented by the 

 senses, as a potter lays hold of the clay. And in this regard it is not without 

 interest to remark that, whereas verbs of sensation generally in Greek govern 

 the genitive case, verbs of seeing, which is pre-eminently the intellectual sense, 

 always govern the accusative ; for the same reason evidently that active verbs 

 generally govern that case, viz., because the accusative is a case of motion 

 towards a point ; that is the appropriate case to mark the invasion, so to speak, 

 of the external material world, by the internal vital force of the observer in the 

 act of cognition. 



VI. The steps by which language grows from the original simple elements 

 into the luxuriant expanse of significant sounds found in our dictionaries is not 

 difficult to trace. The original stock, either in its single nakedness or with 

 some modifications and slight additions, is adapted to new and very diverse 

 uses by the law of similitude acting along with the law of parsimony. The law 

 of parsimony, or a wise economy and a wise laziness, forbids to invent absolutely 

 new words when old ones can serve the purpose ; and the law of similitude, 

 which the mind constantly follows in the classifications of science, as in the 

 inspirations of poetry, by easy steps of transference, leads to an unlimited 

 variety of uses of the same root, just as in the world of colour dark green may 

 pass into light yellow. The changes of meaning which the root undergoes in 

 this process of adaptation to new objects and new circumstances are always 

 instructive and often amusing. We shall content ourselves with two familiar 

 examples. The word prick, for instance, whether as a noun or a verb, is, I have 

 no doubt, derived from the slight sharp sound made by a pin or a drop of rain 



