should hear. True, again, we often
speak of loose, incoherent, indefinite language; but by doing so we
imply, and rightly, that we are calling that language which is not
true language at all. People, again, sometimes talk to themselves
without intending that any other person should hear them, but this
is not well done, and does harm to those who practise it. It is
abnormal, whereas our concern is with normal and essential
characteristics; we may, therefore, neglect both delirious
babblings, and the cases in which a person is regarding him or
herself, as it were, from outside, and treating himself as though he
were some one else.
Inquiring, then, what are the essentials, the presence of which
constitutes language, while their absence negatives it altogether,
we find that Professor Max Muller restricts them to the use of
grammatical articulate words that we can write or speak, and denies
that anything can be called language unless it can be written or
spoken in articulate words and sentences. He also denies that we
can think at all unless we do so in words; that is to say, in
sentences with verbs and nouns. Indeed he goes so far as to say
upon his title-page that there can be no reason--which I imagine
comes to much the same thing as thought--without language, and no
language without reason.
Against the assertion that there can be no true language without
reason I have nothing to say.
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