Page:Mind (New Series) Volume 9.djvu/67

 PHILOSOPHICAL TERMINOLOGY. 53 to recall that it was once the scientific needs which worked in this direction. Of several attempts and plans which attracted attention in the seventeenth century, none is so remarkable and ingenious as the work of Bishop Wilkins, upon which was expended unspeakable toil. His funda- mental thought, as important as it is simple, really deserves to be constantly recalled, and it deserves a certain realisation all the more because, without knowing it himself, he merely feneralised what had long been offered by the language of gures and formulae of Mathematics. The bishop desires to invent for scientific use a universal written language ; i.e., a sign-system for " concepts and things " which is meant primarily to be written, the using it for speech also being only accidental. " Though it be true," he says, " that men did first speak before they did write, and consequently writing is but the figure of speech, and therefore in order of time subsequent to it, yet in order of Nature there is no priority between these. . . . Men, that do retain their several tongues, may yet communicate by a Real Character, which shall be legible in all languages." Thus for everything, every concept, for grammatical derivations and inflexions, he has invented a sign, and indeed the former are so related to each other as to be intended to correspond to the nature (the relation, etc.) of the represented things and concepts. He knows well that this presupposes a true theory, a universal science. Nevertheless he ventures to fill by far the greater part of his folio with tables, in which he undertakes to register all perceptible and thinkable objects. Before him Descartes also developed and approved the idea of a uni- versal language, wherein in like manner everything which could enter into the human mind should be ordered ; " but the development of such a language is dependent upon true philosophy . . . upon the basis of this it would certainly represent all things to the judgment so clearly that it would be almost impossible for it to deceive itself; instead of which, on the contrary, the words which we possess have to some extent only confused meanings, to which the human mind has long accustomed itself, and in consequence of which it has complete understanding of hardly anything". "But" says the great thinker in conclusion "such a world-language presupposes a great change in the order of things ; the whole world would have to be nothing but a paradise upon earth, and this we can expect only in romances of the imagination." This idea was not sufficient to warn off Leibniz, who pursued such world-ideas with ominous con- fusion. He would go further even than Wilkins, since he