Categories as

the Growth of Words.

interest to the students of the science of language and thought. Whereas Aristotle determining accepted them simply as the given forms of predication in Greek, after that language had become possessed of the whole wealth of its words, we shall have to look upon them as representing the various processes by which those Greek words, and all our own words and thoughts too, first assumed a settled form. While Aristotle took all his words and sentences as given, and simply analysed them in order to discover how many kinds of predication they contained, we ask how we ever came into possession of such words as horse, white, many, greater, here, now, I stand, I fear, I cut, I am cut. Anybody who is in possession of such words can easily predicate, but we shall now have to show that every word by itself was from the first a predication, and that it formed a complete sentence by itself. To us, therefore, the real question is, how these primitive sentences, which afterwards dwindled away into mere words, came into existence. The true categories, in fact, are not those which are taught by grammar, but those which produced grammar, and it is these categories which we now proceed to examine.

Words formed

to the Roots.

If the Science of Language had taught us nothing else except that all terms, whether sinby applying gular or general, concrete or abstract, the Categories denotative or connotative, collective or partitive, positive or negative, relative or absolute, univocal or aequivocal, and whatever other divisions may have been devised by logicians, have all been formed from roots as the embodiments of concepts, I doubt whether it could have conferred a

greater boon on the study of philosophy in general. The whole history of philosophy has been called a struggle over the origin and the true nature of concepts and abstract terms, and the question how from the singular and concrete the human mind could possibly have arrived at the general and the abstract still forms the chief battle-field of modern philosophy. The Science of Language has proved by irrefragable evidence that human thought, in the true sense of that word, that is, human language, did not proceed from the concrete to the abstract, but from the abstract to the concrete. Roots, the elements out of which all language has been constructed, are abstract, never concrete, and it is by predicating these abstract concepts of this or that, by localising them here or there, in fact, by applying the category of ouría or substance to the roots, that the first foundations of our language and our thought were laid.

Illustrations.

On this point there ought to be no doubt or wavering. We deal here with facts, and facts only. We may explain them as we like, but no one is able to deny them. Though the subject has been alluded to several times. before, a few more illustrations may here be useful. Why was a goose called goose? As to the history of the word, we trace goose or A. S. gós back to gans, German Gans, to Latin 'anser for ganser, and lastly to Sk. hamsa. The root from which ham sa is derived must be GHÂ or GHAN, to open the mouth, to gape, in Greek xaivw, χαίνω, from which also χάος, χάσμα, etc. The Greek χήν, Xyvós comes from the same root, and the goose therefore as well as the gander was originally conceived

Ff

Goose.

as the gaping or hissing bird, whether applied to the wild or the tame bird.

Wolf.

Pig.

The wolf was called vrika, from a root VÆK (Sk. vrask), to tear, to lacerate, and the same word appears in Greek as FXúkos, in Latin as lupus for vlupus, in Gothic as vulf-s1. The pig was called sus, us, O.H.G. sû, Gothic svein, all from a root SŮ, to bring forth, to breed, the sow being probably considered as the most prolific of domestic animals. This name should not be confounded with what seems to be a purely mimetic baby-name, namely sû-kara or su-kara, i. e. the sû-maker, the grunter, which exists in Sanskrit, but in Sanskrit only. Man was called homo, probably the earth-born, from the same source as xauaí and humus. Here we have to presuppose the concept of earth, derived from some unknown general concept, and from this substantival concept of earth, homo, Goth. guma, Tix@óvios, was formed. Man is also called in Sk. marta, mortalis, the mortal, from MAR, to decay, or, as distinguished from other animals, manu, the thinker, from MAN, to remain, to retain. Birds were called vi, plur. vayas, Lat. avis,

Man.

Greek of in oiwrés, probably from a root Birds. VÎ, and VÂ, which also yielded names for wind in Sanskrit and Zend, vâyu and vayu3. This name therefore marked birds simply as flying As other distinguishing qualities of birds

creatures.

1 De Saussure, p. 99; Snow, Transactions of the Oxford Philological Society, 1884-1885, p. 18.

2 See M. M., Biographies of Words,' ii. p. 243.

See Justi, Handbuch, s. v. vi. Pictet's statement that vî in

Zend means fish, is unfounded.

as

came to be observed, they were called in Sk. pakshin, possessed of wings, from paksha, wing, and this Benfey compares with Gothic fugl, fowl. We have besides in Sanskrit such names patrin, feathered, from patatra-m, feather; andaga-s, egg-born or oviparous; dvi-ga, twice-born, first as egg, then as bird; kha-ga, sky-goer, etc. Most of these, however, are of late and poetical origin, and therefore not to be found in any of the other Aryan languages. In Greek we find besides oiwrós, opvis, opvidos, supposed to come from a root Æ, to rise; Tηvóv, the flying animal, etc. In Latin we find volucris, flying, ales, alitis, winged, etc.

Fish.

It is curious that there is no common name for fish in the Aryan languages, and neither Sk. matsya, nor Greek ix0ús, nor Latin piscis clearly reveals its original predicative power. Worms are called krimi in Sanskrit, kirmi-s in Lithuanian, cruim in Irish, all derived from the root KRAM, to walk or roam about. In Gothic, vaúrm-s is the regular representative, while in Latin, vermis, and in Greek λuis show e, which has induced some scholars to refer them to the root VAL, to twist1.

Worms.

There are of course many words which cannot, or at all events, which have not yet been analysed etymologically, and the conceptual meaning of which remains therefore for the present doubtful. But the fact that all nouns had a predicative meaning is established on such abundant evidence that no doubt is possible as to the general principle that all nouns presuppose concepts, that these concepts are em

bodied in roots, and that therefore all words, derived from roots, are from the very beginning abstract, not concrete, terms.

Naming impossible without radical concept.

And if we reflect for a moment, we shall see that it could hardly have been otherwise. For how should, for instance, an oak have been named? It does not utter a sound that could be imitated. It does not evoke an expression of awe that could be fixed upon as its name. The only way to name it, is to know it; and what is to know, except to bring something under some general concept, such as what is cut down, what is burnt, what is decorticated, or what gives shelter or food. This was done, for instance, in the Greek name for oak, nyós, derived from a root pay, in Sanskrit BHAG, meaning originally to divide, then to eat. The oak was conceived and named as the food-tree, supplying food both for man and for cattle. In Latin fagus became the name of another food-tree, the beech, the German die Buche, and as the old material used for writing in Germany consisted of small staves or tablets of beech-wood, our modern word book, das Buch, is indirectly, yet by an unbroken succession, derived from the concept of dividing and eating.

Oak.

Horse.

A horse, no doubt, might have been indicated by some sound imitating the neighing of the animal. But in equus, Sanskrit asva, Old Saxon ehu, we can discover nothing like the sound of neighing, or tramping, or kicking, but we arrive by a careful analysis at the root AS, expressive of the concept of sharpness and quickness, from which we have likewise the name for mental quickness and sharpness, such as acies and acutus. The concept