Page:Essays on the Chinese Language (1889).djvu/119

Rh the result of the violent friction of air and solids. Two kinds of air in violent collision make sounds such as echo and thunder; two solids make noises like the beating of a drum and the clapping of hands; a solid acting on the air yields a sound such as that made by a fan or an arrow; and the air working on a solid gives the human voice and the sounds of wind instruments.

Hence we find the vocal utterances of man classed with those of other animals, with the song of the bird and the cry of the wild beast; and sometimes even with the sounds yielded by lifeless matter, with the roar of the thunder, the prattle of the brook, and the ring of the struck rock. These all are the results of natural capacities moved by outward influences. They are merely the audible results of the impact of the formless essence of matter on body of definite shape; they are the call or cry of the elemental air, for the "air itself whistles and roars." Hence we find such a term as ming (鳴), for example, used for all kinds of noises. It is properly and originally, as the character indicates, the call or song of birds. But it is used for the roar of thunder, the wind's whistling, the noise of rushing water, the sough among the pines, the ring of a bell, the tones of a lyre, the cricket's chirr, the crow of the cock, the dove's coo, the ass's bray, the neigh of the horse, and the manifold voice of man.

There is only, says the Confucianist philosopher, a minute difference between man and the lower animals, and even that is lost by common people. The wise man keeps that which makes the difference and so gains moral and intellectual perfection. But at birth there is only this difference between all human beings and the lower animals, that the former have a perfect and the latter an imperfect material organisation. The first vocal utterances of man are those made from instinctive feeling, and are the natural universal sounds of humanity and living beings generally. The means which man has for expressing his feelings