Page:Aesthetic Papers.djvu/228

218 left school, and come into relation with things, that his lessons are vivified, made to cultivate his mind, and stimulate his character. But the desired revolution in school-education would be accomplished, if words were looked at as transparent vases of realities of nature, and every department of science was treated in terms that, instead of hiding, revealed these realities clearly, as a picture reveals the objects of natural history. And why is it not so? The reason is, that the key to the meaning of language—its secret—is not in the common possession.

Dr. Bushnell has seen, and verified to his mind in a sufficient number of instances, that words which consist of several syllables elucidate complex ideas by the combination. He might have spoken of the word consider in English, made of con and sedeo. We consider a subject, when we sit down in company with it. In German, the same act of the mind is expressed by überlegen. The German lies over the subject of his consideration. To occur means to run (curro) to meet (ob), and in England thoughts occur, and sometimes strike, while in Germany they fall into people (einfallen). It is curious enough to run through languages, and trace national characteristics evinced by words of this kind, that reveal operations of mind which are familiar or easily explained. But it is not necessary to stop here, as Dr. Bushnell has done. He says, p. 48:—

&quot;There is only a single class of intellectual words that can be said to have a perfectly determinate significance, viz. those which relate to what are called necessary ideas. They are such as time, space, cause, truth, right, arithmetical numbers, and geometrical figures. Here the names applied are settled into a perfectly determinate meaning, not by any peculiar virtue in them, but by reason of the absolute exactness of the ideas themselves. Time cannot be any thing more or less than time; truth cannot, in its idea, be any thing different from truth; the numbers suffer no ambiguity of count or measure; a circle must be a circle, a square a square. As far as language, therefore, has to do with these, it is a perfectly exact algebra of thought, but no further.&quot;

He, however, had already asked:—