De l'Origine Du Langage
Par ERNEST RENAN, Membere de I'Institut. Quatrième Édition, angmentèe. Paris.
IT seems to be the law of French thought, that it shall never be exhaustive of any profound matter, and also that (Auguste Comte always excepted) it shall never be exhausting to the reader. German thought may be both ; French is neither; English thought——but the English do not think, they dogmatize. Magnificent dogmatism it may be, but dogmatism. Exceptions of course, but these are equally exceptions to the characteristic spirit of the nation.
M. Renan is thoroughly French. The power of coming after the great synthetic products of the human spirit and distributing them by analysis into special categories, eminent in his country, is preeminent in him. Tlic facility at slipping over hard points, and at coming to unity of representation, partly by the solving force of an interior principle, and partly by ingenious accommodations, characteristic of French thought, characterizes his thinking in particular. That supremacy of the critical spirit in the man which secures to it the loyalty of all the faculties is alike peculiar to France among nations, and to this writer among Frenchmen. In Germany the imagination dominates, or at least contends with, the oritical spirit; the French Ariel not only gives magic Service to the critical Prospero, but seeks no emancipation, desires nothing better. Hence an admirable clearness and shapeliness in the criticism of France. Hence, also, in its best criticism a high degree of imaginative subtilty and penetration, without prejudice either to the dominion of common sense in the thought or to clearness in the statement.
M. Renan’s essay on “ The Origin of Language ” is typical of his quality. Treatingofan abstruse, though enticing problem, — almost profound, and that in comparison with the soundest and sincerest thinking of our time, — it is yet so clear and broad, its details are so perfectly held in solution by the thought, the thought itself moves with such ease, grace, and vigor, and in its style there is such crystal perspicuity and precision, that one must be proof against good thinking and excellent writing not to feel its charm.
The main propositions of the work — whose force and significance, of course, cannot be felt in this dry enumeration — are that language issues from the spontaneity of the human spirit, — “spontaneity, which is both divine and human”; that its origin is simultaneous with the opening of consciousness in the human race ; that it preserves a constant parallel with consciousness, that is, with the developed spirit of man, in its nature and growth ; and that, by consequence, its first form is not one of analytic simplicity, but of a high synthesis and a rich complexity. The whole mind, he says, acts from the first, only not with the power of defining, distinguishing, separating, which characterizes the intellect of civilized man ; his objects are groups; he grasps totalities; sees objects and their relationships as one fact ; tends to connect his whole consciousness with all he sees, making the stone a man or a god : and language, in virtue of its perpetual parallelism with consciousness, must he equally synthetic and complex from the start.
He finds himself opposed, therefore, first, to those, “ like M. Bonald,” who attribute language to a purely extraneous, not an interior, revelation; secondly, to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who made it a product of free and reflective reason; thirdly, to the German school, who trace it back to a few hundred monosyllabic roots, each expressing with analytic precision some definite material object, from which roots the whole subsequent must he derived by etymologic spinning-out, by agglutination, and by figurative heightening of meaning.
His work, accordingly, should be read by all sincere students of the question of Language in connection with the statements of Professor Müller, as he represents another and a typical aspect of the case. He denies the existence of a “Turanian” family of tongues, such as Müller sought to constitute in Bunsen’s “Outlines”; pronouncing with great decision, and on grounds both philosophical and linguistic, against that notion of monosyllabic origin which assumes the Chinese as truest of all tongues to the original form and genius of language, he is even more decided that not the faintest trace can be found of the derivation of all existing languages from a single primitive tongue. From general principles, therefore, and equally from inspection of language, he infers with confidence that each great family of languages has come forth independently from the genius of man.
His results in Philology correspond, thus, with those of Mr. Agassiz in Natural History. They suggest multiplicity of human origins. From this result M. Renan does not recoil, and he takes care to state with great precision and vigor the entire independence of the spiritual upon the physical unity of man, — as Mr. Agassiz also did in that jewel which he set in the head of Nott and Gliddon’s toad.
But here he pauses. His results bear him no farther. The philological and physiological classifications of mankind, he says, do not correspond; their lines cross ; nothing can be concluded from one to the other. The question of unity or diversity of physical origins he leaves to the naturalist; upon that he has no right to raise his voice. Spiritual unity he asserts firmly ; linguistic unity he firmly denies ; on the question of physical unity he remains modestly and candidly silent, not finding in his peculiar studies data for a rational opinion.
M. Renan is not a Newton in his science. He satisfies, and he disappoints. The Newtonian depth, centrality, and poise, — well, one may still be a superior scholar and writer without these. And such he is. His tendency to central principles is decided, but with this there is a wavering, an unsteadiness, and you get only agility and good writing, it may be, where you had begun to look for a final word. Sometimes, too, in his desire of precision, he gives you precision indeed, but of a cheap kind, which is worse than any thoughtful vagueness. Thus, he opens his sixth section by naming I’onomatgptèe, the imitation of natural sounds, as the law of primitive language. He knew better; for he has hardly named this “ law ” before he slips away from it; and his whole work was pitched upon a much profoumler key. Why must he seize upon this ready-made word ? Why could he not have taken upon himself to say deliberately and truly, that the law of primitive language, and in the measure of its life of all language, is the symbolization of mental impression by sounds, just as man’s spirit is symbolized in his body, and absolute spirit in the universe? But this is “ vague,” and M. Renan writes in Paris.
And in Paris he has written an able and in many respects admirable treatise, — almost profound, as we have said, and creditable to him and to France. It must be reckoned, we think, a foundation-stone in the literature of the problem of Language.
In five or six pages the theological peculiarities of M. Renan appear. The reader, however, who is most rigidly indisposed to open question on such matters will find these six pages which do not please him a feeble counterbalance to the two hundred and fifty which do.