The Grammar of English Grammars by Goold Brown (free ebook reader .txt) 📕

[19] "Interjections, I shewed, or passionate exclamations, were the first elements of speech. Men laboured to communicate their feelings to one another, by those expressive cries and gestures which nature taught them."—Dr. Hugh Blair's Lectures, p. 57.

[20] "It is certain that the verb was invented before the noun, in all the languages of which a tolerable account has been procured, either in ancient or modern times."—Dr. Alex. Murray's History of European Languages, Vol. I, p. 326.

[21] The Greek of this passage, together with a translation not very different from the foregoing, is given as a marginal note, in Harris's Hermes, Book III, Chap. 3d.

[22] The Bible does not say positively that there was no diversity of languages before the flood; but, since the life-time of Adam extended fifty-six years into that of Lamech, the father of Noah, and two hundred and forty-three into that of Methuselah, the father of Lamech, with both of whom Noah was contemporary nearly six hundred years, it is scarcely possible that there should have occurred any such diversity, either in Noah's day or before, except from some extraordinary cause. Lord Bacon regarded the multiplication of languages at Babel as a general evil, which had had no parallel but in the curse pronounced after Adam's transgression. When "the language of all the earth" was "confounded," Noah was yet alive, and he is computed to have lived 162 years afterwards; but whether in his day, or at how early a period, "grammar" was thought of, as a remedy for this evil, does not appear. Bacon says, "Concerning speech and words, the consideration of them hath produced the science of grammar. For man still striveth to redintegrate himself in those benedictions, of which, by his fault, he hath been deprived; and as he hath striven against the first general curse by the invention of all other arts, so hath he striven to come forth from the second general curse, which was the confusion of tongues, by the art of grammar; whereof the use in a mother tongue is small, in a foreign tongue more, but most in such foreign tongues as have ceased to be vulgar tongues, and are turned only to learned tongues."—See English Journal of Education, Vol. viii, p. 444.

[23] It should be, "to all living creatures;" for each creature had, probably, but one name.—G. Brown.

[24] Some recent German authors of note suppose language to have sprung up among men of itself, like spontaneous combustion in oiled cotton; and seem to think, that people of strong feelings and acute minds must necessarily or naturally utter their conceptions by words—and even by words both spoken and written. Frederick Von Schlegel, admitting "the spontaneous origin of language generally," and referring speech to its "original source—a deep feeling, and a clear discriminating intelligence," adds: "The oldest system of writing developed itself at the same time, and in the same manner, as the spoken language; not wearing at first the symbolic form, which it subsequently assumed in compliance with the necessities of a less civilized people, but composed of certain signs, which, in accordance with the simplest elements of language, actually conveyed the sentiments of the race of men then existing."—Millington's Translation of Schlegel's Æsthetic Works, p. 455.

[25] "Modern Europe owes a principal share of its enlightened and moral state to the restoration of learning: the advantages which have accrued to history, religion, the philosophy of the mind, and the progress of society; the benefits which have resulted from the models of Greek and Roman taste—in short, all that a knowledge of the progress and attainments of man in past ages can bestow on the present, has reached it through the medium of philology."—Dr. Murray's History of European Languages, Vol. II, p. 335.

[26] "The idea of God is a development from within, and a matter of faith, not an induction from without, and a matter of proof. When Christianity has developed its correlative principles within us, then we find evidences of its truth everywhere; nature is full of them: but we cannot find them before, simply because we have no eye to find them with."—H. N. HUDSON: Democratic Review, May, 1845.

[27] So far as mind, soul, or spirit, is a subject of natural science, (under whatever name,) it may of course be known naturally. To say to what extent theology may be considered a natural science, or how much knowledge of any kind may have been opened to men otherwise than by words, is not now in point. Dr. Campbell says, "Under the general term [physiology] I also comprehend natural theology and psychology, which, in my opinion, have been most unnaturally disjoined by philosophers. Spirit, which here comprises only the Supreme Being and the human soul, is surely as much included under the notion of natural object as a body is, and is knowable to the philosopher purely in the same way, by observation and experience."—Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 66. It is quite unnecessary for the teacher of languages to lead his pupils into any speculations on this subject. It is equally foreign to the history of grammar and to the philosophy of rhetoric.

[28] "Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? for ye shall speak into the air. There are, it may be, so many kinds of voices in the world, and none of them is without signification. Therefore, if I know not the meaning of the voice, I shall be unto him that speaketh, a barbarian; and he that speaketh, shall be a barbarian unto me."—1 Cor., xiv. 9, 10, 11. "It is impossible that our knowledge of words should outstrip our knowledge of things. It may, and often doth, come short of it. Words may be remembered as sounds, but [they] cannot be understood as signs, whilst we remain unacquainted with the things signified."—Campbell's Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 160. "Words can excite only ideas already acquired, and if no previous ideas have been formed, they are mere unmeaning sounds."—Spurzheim on Education, p. 200.

[29] Sheridan the elecutionist makes this distinction: "All that passes in the mind of man, may be reduced to two classes, which I call ideas and emotions. By ideas, I mean all thoughts which rise, and pass in succession in the mind. By emotions, all exertions of the mind in arranging, combining, and separating its ideas; as well as the effects produced on all the mind itself by those ideas; from the more violent agitation of the passions, to the calmer feelings produced by the operation of the intellect and the fancy. In short, thought is the object of the one; internal feeling, of the other. That which serves to express the former, I call the language of ideas; and the latter, the language of emotions. Words are the signs of the one: tones, of the other. Without the use of these two sorts of language, it is impossible to communicate through the ear, all that passes in the mind of man."—Sheridan's Art of Reading; Blair's Lectures, p. 333.

[30] "Language is the great instrument, by which all the faculties of the mind are brought forward, moulded, polished, and exerted."—Sheridan's Elocution, p. xiv.

[31] It should be, "These are."—G. B.

[32] It should be, "They fitly represent."—G. B.

[33] This is badly expressed; for, according to his own deduction, each part has but one sign. It should be, "We express the several parts by as many several signs."—G. Brown.

[34] It would be better English to say, "the instruments and the signs."—G. Brown.

[35] "Good speakers do not pronounce above three syllables in a second of time; and generally only two and a half, taking in the necessary pauses."—Steele's Melody of Speech.

[36] The same idea is also conveyed in the following sentence from Dr. Campbell: "Whatever regards the analysis of the operations of the mind, which is quicker than lightning in all her energies, must in a great measure be abstruse and dark."—Philosophy of Rhetoric, p. 289. Yet this philosopher has given it as his opinion, "that we really think by signs as well as speak by them."—Ib., p. 284. To reconcile these two positions with each other, we must suppose that thinking by signs, or words, is a process infinitely more rapid than speech.

[37] That generalization or abstraction which gives to similar things a common name, is certainly no laborious exercise of intellect; nor does any mind find difficulty in applying such a name to an individual by means of the article. The general sense and the particular are alike easy to the understanding, and I know not whether it is worth while to inquire which is first in order. Dr. Alexander Murray says, "It must be attentively remembered, that all terms run from a general to a particular sense. The work of abstraction, the ascent from individual feelings to classes of these, was finished before terms were invented. Man was silent till he had formed some ideas to communicate; and association of his perceptions soon led him to think and reason in ordinary matters."—Hist. of European Languages, Vol. I, p. 94. And, in a note upon this passage, he adds: "This is to be understood of primitive or radical terms. By the assertion that man was silent till he had formed ideas to communicate, is not meant, that any of our species were originally destitute of the natural expressions of feeling or thought. All that it implies, is, that man had been subjected, during an uncertain period of time, to the impressions made on his senses by the material world, before he began to express the natural varieties of these by articulated sounds. * * * * * * Though the abstraction which formed such classes, might be greatly aided or supported by the signs; yet it were absurd to suppose that the sign was invented, till the sense demanded it."—Ib., p. 399.

[38] Dr. Alexander Murray too, In accounting for the frequent abbreviation of words, seems to suggest the possibility of giving them the celerity of thought: "Contraction is a change which results from a propensity to make the signs as rapid as the thoughts which they express. Harsh combinations soon suffer contraction. Very long words preserve only the principal, that is, the accented part. If a nation accents its words on the last syllable, the preceding ones will often be short, and liable to contraction. If it follow a contrary practice, the terminations are apt to decay."—History of European Languages, Vol. I, p. 172.

[39] "We cannot form a distinct idea of any moral or intellectual quality, unless we find some trace of it in ourselves."—Beattie's Moral Science, Part Second, Natural Theology, Chap. II, No. 424.

[40] "Aristotle tells us that the world is a copy or transcript of those ideas which are in the mind of the first Being, and that those ideas which are in the mind of man, are a transcript of the world. To this we may add, that words are the transcripts of those ideas which are in the mind of man, and that writing or printing are [is] the transcript of words."—Addison, Spect., No. 166.

[41] Bolingbroke on Retirement and Study, Letters on History, p. 364.

[42] See this passage in "The Economy of Human Life," p. 105—a work feigned to be a compend of Chinese maxims, but now generally understood to have been written or compiled by Robert Dodsley, an eminent and ingenious bookseller in London.

[43] "Those philosophers whose ideas of being and knowledge are derived from body and sensation, have a short method to explain the nature of Truth.—It is a factitious thing, made by every man for himself; which comes and goes, just as it is remembered and forgot; which in the order of things makes its appearance the last of all, being not only subsequent to sensible objects, but even to our sensations of them! According to this hypothesis, there are many truths, which have been, and are no longer; others, that will be, and have not been yet; and multitudes, that possibly may never exist at all. But there are other reasoners, who must surely have had very different notions; those, I mean, who represent Truth not as the last, but as the first of beings; who call it immutable, eternal, omnipresent; attributes that all indicate something more than human."—Harris's Hermes, p. 403.

[44] Of the best method of teaching grammar, I shall discourse in an other chapter. That methods radically different must lend to different results, is no more than every intelligent person will suppose.