Still more, he has seen that men are linguistic, as truly, naturally, inevitably, as that they are locomotive or intellectual; and therefore there is a priori reason to believe, that language is not arbitrary or accidental, but springs out of nature, with which it has vital connection. He says, that man is a speaking, as he is a seeing creature; that the parable of God's bringing all creatures to Adam, to name, signifies, that men named things by a pre-established law connecting the mind and outward nature with each other. He even sees, that every word is, in the last analysis, the sign or vocal form of some material thing or action; but what is remarkable is, that while he sees all this, and farther sees that the application of words to moral and religious subjects follows the, same laws of imagination that are exemplified in those sentences which are called "figures of speech," he does not seem to see that the same laws of imagination determined the elements of single words to their subjects, so that every word which is not an imitation of nature, like hum, buzz, boom, is, as it were, a poem; in short, that there is some natural and inevitable reason why every word should be what it is; that there is a foregoing impossibility of lepus and lupus and vulpes and wolf and fox (fugax) to be tortoise or sloth, though words as different as hare and lepus may both signify the same animal, viewed according to different characteristics. He sees as much difference between sol and sun, and stella and astre, as between nubes and cloud; and ends at last with a restatement of the old and superficial theory, that language is, after all, arbitrary, the creature of convention.
But we have not introduced Dr. Bushnell's name to criticize the shortcomings of his Essay, as philological science, since he does not profess to be an adept in it; but because the justice he has done to the subject of language as a power acting and re-acting upon the mind, helping or hindering it in the investigation of truth, must awaken a sense of the importance of the subject, and affords a good opportunity to direct an intelligent attention to the philological essay, entitled the "Significance of the Alphabet."[1]
- ↑ A pamphlet published in 1837, at 13, West-street, Boston, Mass.
