The Future Of Philology [pp. 698-714]

THE FUTURE OF PHILOLOGY.
which they affect to discourse upon. There are indeed some
philosophers andi linguists even now who identify thought and
speech, and hold that men can think only in vocables. But the
Greek geometry proved an effectual means of enforcing on those
who invented in it the difference between pure thought and
Greek expression of it, and there have never since been wanting
philosophers who have distinguished thoughts from words,
and there have been many eminent philosophers who have
studied the mutual influence of language and thought.
The apothegms of Bacon on the influence of language on
thought and discussions of the subject in Locke and elsewhere are familiar.
A moment's thought will show any one that the qualities
which he notices in objects are for the most part determined for
him by language. Qualities which are named and talked about
are those which arrest attention. Our classification of objects is
thus determined for us by our speech; and our easy thought
about all the relations and causes of facts is guided in the same
way. But objects have been named and qualities noticed and
grouped very much as they chance to affect men, very little according to their essential nature and scientific value; and the
combinations of words have also been made according to the
laws of association acting for the most part between the words,
not according to the real relati.ons between the objects. Hence
it is a prime trait of an original thinker that he is able to think
without the common vocables, that he breaks fairly out of the
meshes of common speech, and examines the qualities of
objects at first hiand, and groups and compares them by
direct observations and natural signs of his own making.
This is all wrong. ilt is an insurmountable hindrance to
any considerable advance of common men to have to con struct language for themselves. It is a prodigious gain to
the greatest thinkers to have a scientific language ready
for their use. New-ton put as much strength into the in vention of the language of fluxions as would serve now to
solve the problem of the three bodies, and it was so cumbrous
after all, that it conme be used. All common objects of thought
should be named by their essential qualities, with sets of names
systematically frame to i-ndicate by their forms their scientific
relations. The history of the sciences clearly indicates how great
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