Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/226

216 When a great scientific discovery is made, and given forth to the world abstracted from its applications and a full development of its uses, it is apt to fall unobserved, and perhaps sleep for years. The world knows only of seeds that have sprouted. And yet, that a theory of language which, as an organic whole, and in some degree demonstrated as true, is certainly original, should have been passed over so long, as at best but an ingenious and curious speculation, is somewhat strange. For, if it pretends to touch the heart of the matter, it must be either impertinently foolish, calling for animadversion and ridicule, or it is of serious import. The truth upon the subject has relations with every department of human knowledge and thought.

For what is language? It is the picture and vehicle of all that has been present to the mind of Humanity, stretching back beyond all histories and other literatures; and its bearings are incalculable upon the discovery and retention of truth, as well as upon the discipline and activity of the human mind which is in relation to it. The human mind is in relation to nature as the stone-cutter or the artist to the quarry; and language is at once the representation and vehicle of all that has been quarried.

&quot;One man dies, and other men enter into the fruits of his labor.&quot; How? Because these fruits are conserved, or rather live and move, in language. Language must therefore be a necessary product, and what it is, precisely because it could not be otherwise; therefore within the multitude of languages, and beneath the confusion of tongues, there must be something of a universal character, which gives meaning to the articulations of sound. This has seemed so probable, a priori, from the time of Socrates to the present day, that again and again the idea has been broached, and sometimes a clue has seemed to be caught. But all experience seems at first sight to be against it. Dr. Bushnell brings forward