And these laws are first to be considered under the category of completed existence (gewordenes Sein), and then under that of evolving existence (werdendes Sein). According to these differences, the part contributed by the conscious activity of the individual will be greater or smaller. Religion and language show, more than any other organic activity of man, the preponderating activity of the sensus communis. Neither word nor rite suggested by an individual would otherwise be intelligible, and capable of being received or practised, as integrally their own, by a community. The composition of works of art or of science shows, on the contrary, a prevalence of the individual factor; but the artist and man of science know that their most individual works are expressions of a common perception, and therefore independent of self. The line of development in history is parallel with that manifested in nature. History reproduces in time what the visible creation displays in space-the triumph of the spirit, that is to say, the progress from inorganic to organic, from unconscious to conscious life. THE HISTORY OF THE PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE, FROM LEIBNITZ TO WILLIAM VON HUMBOLDT. OUTLINES. INTRODUCTORY PERIOD. FROM PYTHAGORAS, PLATO, AND ARISTOTLE, TO LEIBNITZ. THE profound passage in Genesis (ii. 19.), "And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field and every fowl of the air, and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them; and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof," finds its philosophical echo already in Pythagoras. Iamblichus and Proclus report the following as one of his sayings: Having been asked what was the wisest among things? he answered, "Number;" and what next as to wisdom? "The namegiver." This is explained by the account preserved in Clemens of Alexandria (Ecl. Proph., i. 32.; compare Cic. Tusc., i. 25.), that Pythagoras thought of all wise men he was not only the most rational, but also the most ancient, who gave the names to things. Pythagoras, as well as the Bible, supposes man to have formed language, and both consider this act as primitive and analogous to that of the divine mind, by which there is order and measure in the universe. With Heraclitus "the dark” and Democritus, his cotemporary, begins the antagonism which pervades the whole Greek and Latin philosophy of language. Heraclitus considered the words of language as the shadow of bodies, or the image reflected in the mirrortypes of objective reality; whereas the other school saw in them the product of convention: according to the one, language existed by nature (objectively); according to the other, by a positive, arbitrary act of man (subjectively). The first were, according to another term, analogists; the others, anomalists. Plato, in his "Cratylus," and Aristotle, in his " Organon," may be said, however, to be the men who, on the traces of their predecessors, have laid the foundations of the philosophy of language. Plato, following Pythagoras and Socrates, is an analogist; Aristotle tends to anomalism; but, as Plato acknowledges the positive or conventional element, so Aristotle does not deny the objectivity which is at the bottom of language. He is startled by the fact that the languages of men are so many and so different, and therefore places the conventional element first; but, as he expressly says (De Anima, c. i.), that the sounds of the voice are symbolical of the affections of the soul, we must not interpret this only of the interjectional sounds, but also of the words expressing things and thought, or of real language. The speculations of Plato, when rightly understood, bear upon the highest problems of the philosophy of language; the categories and definitions of Aristotle lay the logical foundations of our grammatical system, and establish by themselves the great principle, that language is the immediate product and expression, as it were the mirror, of logic and thought. In the speculations of both we see the entire want of an abstract knowledge of the etymological rules of their own language, and still more of a system, or even a tendency, to compare the Greek tongue with those of the barbarians. Nor did the later philosophers and philologers of Greece and Rome pursue such a course. Epicurus acknowledges expressly the two elements, and places that which comes from nature through the affections of the soul first, the positive element second. The Stoics originated the grammar, and in particular proposed the first theory of the Greek verb and its conjugation. Aristophanes, Aristarchus, and Crates, and, at a later period, Apollonius Dyscolus, were the acute and learned members of the Alexandrian Academy who erected that fabric of grammatical definitions and terms, which, brought nearer to us by Varro and the later Latin grammarians (of whom Priscian and Donatus are known by name to our schoolboys), has formed the basis of our grammatical system, and through the Syrian christians of that of the Arabs. The Indian grammar, however, is original and ancient. As to the lexicographical inquiries and speculations of the ancients, their blunders in both are proverbial, and constitute an important fact in the history of the human mind. Their absurd etymologies are the most striking proof of the impossibility of man becoming conscious of his peculiarities, except by contrast and comparison with those of others. They prove, moreover, the incapacity of any nation to understand itself, without having realized, understood, and appreciated the idea of humanity. For a detailed history of the philosophy of language among the Greeks and Romans our readers will find excellent and complete materials, solid researches and sound judgment, in Lersch's Philosophy of Language among the Ancients" (3 volumes, 1838 to 1841). If the Roman world did little for the philosophy of language, although even Cæsar speculated and wrote upon it, the Byzantine age, in this branch also, did nothing but preserve the corpse of ancient science, reduced to formularies and epitomes, such as ages, sinking into materialism or any other form of barbarism, generally prefer to scientific and learned investiga tions. The Germanic middle ages had not the means, and did not |