having had in his youth some affection for a squint-eyed per son could not prevent himself from having all his life an incli nation towards those who had this defect. Hobbes, another great philosopher, could not (they say) remain alone in a dark place, without having his mind frightened by images of ghosts, although he did not believe in them, this impression having remained from the stories told to children. ' Many persons well informed and sensible, and who are decidedly superior to superstition, cannot bring themselves to be thir teen at a repast without being extremely disconcerted, having sometime been impressed by the fancy that one of them must die during the year. There was a gentleman who, having been injured, perhaps in his infancy, by a badly fastened pin, could not see one in this condition without being ready to fall into a swoon. A prime minister, who bore in the court of his master the name of President, was offended by the title of the book of Ottavio Pisani, called Lycurgus, and wrote against this book, because the author, in speaking of the officers of justice whom he thought superfluous, had named also the Presidents, and although this term in the person of this minister meant a totally different thing, he had so attached the word to his person that he was wounded in this word. And this is a case of the most usual of the non -natural associations, capable of misleading, as those of words to things, when indeed there is any ambiguity. In order the better to understand the source of the non-natural bond of ideas, you must consider what I have already said above (Chap. 11, § II1), in speaking of the reasonings of animals, that man as well as the animal is inclined to put together in his memory and imagination what he has observed united in his perceptions and experience. It is in this that all the reasoning, if so it may be called, of animals consists, and often that of men, so far as they are empirical and govern themselves only by the senses and examples, without examining whether the same reason still has force. And as often the reasons are unknown to us, we must have regard to the examples in proportion to their frequency, for then the expectation or the reminiscence of one perception 1 Cf. ante, p. 145. Gerhardt has § 1; Erdmann and Jacques § 11; the latter reference is the correct one, and has therefore been placed in the text of tlio translation. — TK.
284 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. n on the occasion1 of another perception which is ordinarily connected therewith is reasonable; particularly when the question is about taking precautions. But as the vehemence of a very strong impression often produces as much effect at once as the frequency and repetition of many moderate impressions would be able to make in a long time, it happens that this vehemence engraves upon the fancy an image as profound and as vivid as long experience.2 Whence it comes that a chance but violent impression unites in our imagination and memory two ideas, at that time together there,3 altogether as strongly and durably and gives us the same inclination to connect them and to attend to them one after the other, as if a long usage had verified the connection; thus the same result of association is found, although the same reason does not exist. Authority, party,4 custom, produce also the same effect as experience and reason, and it is not easy to deliver one's self from these inclinations. But it would not be very difficult to keep one's self from being deceived in these judg ments, if men would attach themselves seriously enough to the search for truth, or proceed methodically, when they recognize that it is important to them to find it.]
1 Gerhardt reads: " d'une perception a 1'occasion," which Erdmann and Jacques omit. — TK.
2 Erdmann and Jacques add: "auroit pu le faire," could have done. — TR. 8 Gerhardt reads: " qui y estoient ensemble alors, tout aussi fortement et durablement; et nous donne," etc. Erdmann and Jacques, " qui de'.ja y etaient ensemble, et nous donne," etc. — TR.
4 Erdmann and Jacques omit: "le parti." — TR.
NEW ESSAYS ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING BOOK III. — WORDS CHAPTER I OF WORDS OR LANGUAGE IN GENERAL § 1. Ph. God having made man to be a social being, has not only inspired him with the desire, and placed him under the necessity of living with those of his species, but has given him also the faculty of speech which is to be the great instru ment and common bond of this society. Hence it is that ivords arise, which serve to represent and also to explain ideas.
Th. [I rejoice to see that you are averse to the view of Hobbes,1 who did not admit that man was made for society, 1 Thomas Hobbes, 1588-1079, in his De Cive, 1042, and Leviathan, 1051, maintained that man, being by nature a selfish and solitary animal, had no natural impulse for society, and that social union sprang simply from fear and from motives of gain, the natural condition being that of universal war. Leibnitz maintains, in agreement with Aristotle and Hugo Grotius, 1583-1045, that Nature herself has destined man for society in order not only that he may the better and more easily realize his highest being, but that he may realize it at all, such realization being impossible in isolation and solitude.
Cf. Aristotle, Polit. I., 2, 1253", 2: on riav <j>va-ei rj TroAis eo-Tt, KO.I on avflpcoTros fyvaei HT)8ep SfOfievoi TT}? nap' a\\ri\(av /SorjOeia? OVK e\arrov bpeyovrai TOV <rv^vf English trans lation by B. Jowett, Vol. 1, pp. 4, 78, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1885; also Eth.
NlC. IX., It, 1109h, 3 Sq., espec. 10-19: aronov &' ICTUK K<Z! TO ^ovuiTr]v noielv TOV juaxapioi' • ouSei? yap eAoir' av Ka6' avrbv To. TTO.VT' e)(fii> ayaSa. ' iroXiriKOV yap 6 arOpcuTros KO.I <rutfv ire<J>ip(c6?, I., 1, 10941', f> sq., English translation by F. H. Peters, pp. 307 sq., 3; c/. also Zeller, Philos. d. Griech., II., 2 [Vol. 4], pp. 080, 002, 3d ed., 1879. Grotius, De Jure Belli et Paris, 1(525, Preliminary Discourse, § 0: "Amongst the things peculiar to man, is his desire of society, that is, a certain inclination to live with those of his own kind, not in any manner whatever, but peace- 286 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. in conceiving that lie has been forced into it by necessity and by the wickedness of those of his species. But he did not con sider that the best men, free from all wickedness, united them selves the better to obtain their purposes, as the birds flock together the better to travel in company, and the beavers unite in large numbers to make great dams, in which work a small number of these animals could not succeed; and these dams are necessary to them, to provide reservoirs of water or little lakes, in which they build their huts and catch the fish upon which they feed. This then is the foundation of the society of the animals which are adapted to it, and nowise the fear of their kind, which is rarely found among animals.]
Ph. Very true, and it is the better to cultivate this society that man by nature has his organs so fashioned that they are adapted to the formation of the articulate sounds which we call words.
Th. [As for organs, monkeys have them apparently as suit able as ours for the formation of words, but they do not take the least step in this direction.1 Thus it must be that they lack an invisible something. We must also consider that we ably, and in a community regulated according to the best of his understand ing, -which disposition the Stoicks termed oiiceiWis "; quoted from English translation with "all the large notes of Mr. J. Barbeyrac," etc., London: Printed for W. Innys and R. Manby, and others, 1738. A French translation by Jean Barbeyrac, professor of law at Groningen, "with the author's notes which had not yet appeared in French, and new notes by the translator," 2 vols., 4to, Amsterdam, 1724; a later translation into English by Whcwell, In the formation of society, language — Ad-yo?, rational speech — plays an important part, serving as a special means of communication between men. Cf. Aristotle, Polit. I., 2-18, 1253*; Grotius, De Jure Belli et Pads, Prelim. Disc. § 7: "A man grown up...has besides an exquisite desire of society, for the satisfaction of which he alone of all animals has received from nature a peculiar instrument, viz. the use of speech." — TR.
1 Schaarschmidt states that "this earlier generally diffused view, that the apes had organs of speech — an opinion still at the present day firmly held by the negroes — has already been refuted by Peter Camper," 1722-1780, a dis tinguished Dutch anatomist and naturalist, in his Natuurkundiye Verhand- elinr/en over den Oranft-Outanrj an eenif/e andere Aapsoorten; cf. p. 147 sq., of the German translation by J. F. M. Herbell. Diisseldorf, 1791, 4to. The most important of Camper's works bearing on comparative anatomy, trans lated into French by H. C. Jansen, were published in (Enrre.s de P. Camper qui ont pour objet I'histoire naturelle, la physiolor/ie, et I' anatomic compares. Paris, 1803, 3 vols., 8vo. The piece referred to in this note is found in Vol. 1 of timed. — TR.
CH. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 287 could speak, i.e. make ourselves understood by the sounds of the mouth without forming articulate sounds, if we availed ourselves of musical tones for this effect; Imt more art would be necessary to invent a language of tones, whilst that of words may have been formed and perfected gradually by per sons Avho found themselves in a state of natural simplicity. There are, however, people like the Chinese, who by means of tones and accents vary their words, of which they have only a small number. Thus it was the opinion of Golius,1 a cele brated mathematician and great linguist, that their language is artificial, i.e. had been invented all at once by some clever man in order to establish verbal intercourse between the large num ber of different nations inhabiting this great country which we call China, although this language may now be found altered by long use.]
§ 2. Ph. [As orang-outangs and other monkeys have organs without forming words, Ave can say that parrots and some other birds have words without language], for we can train these birds and many others to form sounds quite distinct; but they are nowise capable of language. Man only is in a condition to avail himself of these sounds as signs of internal conceptions, in order that thereby they may be manifested to others.
Th. [I believe in fact that apart from the desire of making ourselves understood we should never have formed language; but being formed, it further serves man in reasoning within himself, both by the means words give him of remembering his abstract thoughts, and the benefit he finds in availing him self in reasoning of characters and surd thoughts; for he would recprire too much time, if he were obliged to explain everything and always to substitute definitions in the place of terms.]
§ 3. Ph. But as the multiplication of words would produce 1 Jacob Gobi — Latin, Golius — 159T>-1(>I>7, an eminent Dutch orientalist, who distinguished himself at Leyden University in classics, mathematics, and philosophy, was a pupil of Erpenius in Arahic, and iu 1<>24 succeeded him as professor of Arabic at Leyden. In IGL'9 he returned from Asia Minor and the East, where he had spent four years, briujjinjj; with him a larjje and valuable collection of Mss. which he placed ill the library of the university. His prin cipal work, still to-day esteemed, is the Lexicon Arabico-Latinum, 1053, folio. — TK.
288 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. HI confusion in their use, if a distinct term were necessary to designate each particular thing, language has been further perfected by the use of general terms when they signify general ideas.
Tli. [General terms serve not only for the perfection of languages, but they are necessary even to their essential constitution. For if by particular things we mean individual things, it would be impossible to speak if there were only proper names and not appellatives, i.e. if there were words only for the individuals, since at every moment something now presents itself (to the mind) when individuals, accidents, and particularly acts, which are most frequently designated, are in question. But if by particular things we understand the lowest species (species infimce), besides the fact that it is difficult very often to determine them, it is manifest that they are already universals formed upon similitude. Then as the question is only of a similitude more or less extended, accord ing as we speak of genera or species, it is natural to indicate every sort of similitude or agreement and consequently to employ general terms of all degrees; and indeed the most general being less burdened with relation to the ideas or essences they include, although they are more comprehensive in relation to the individuals to which they apply, were very often the easiest to form and are the most useful. Thus you see that children and those who know only little of the lan guage which they Avish to speak, or of the matter of which they speak, avail themselves of general terms as thing, plant, animal, instead of employing the proper terms which they lack. And it is certain that all proper or individual names were originally appellative or general.1] 1 Leibnitz seems here to be in error in deciding from a logical or meta physical point of view that language originated in or proceeded from general terms and relations rather than in those which are individual. In the order of experience the individual thing or relation is first, and first receives its name either wholly arbitrarily or by convention, or by this in combination with natural imitation or suggestion; the generalizing process and its result, the general name or term, comes afterwards. Children, it is true, use terms of general import, but with no consciousness that they are general. Every thing is for them individual, particular, separate and by itself until continued observation and increasing knowledge enable them to detect similarities and differences and to classify and generalize accordingly. Then only do they, strictly speaking, possess or use general terms. — TR.
CH. i] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 289 § 4. Ph. There are also words which men employ not to signify an idea, but the lack or absence of a certain idea, as nothing, ignorance, sterility.
Tk. [I do not see why we could not say that there are privative ideas, as there are negative truths, for the act of denial is positive. I had already touched upon this.]
§ 5. Ph. Without disputing about this point, it will be more useful to approach a little nearer the origin of all our notions and knowledge, to observe how the words employed to form actions and notions wholly removed from the senses, derive their origin from sensible ideas, whence they are transferred to significations more abstruse.
Tli. [The fact is our needs have compelled us to leave the natural order of ideas, for this order would be the same for angels, men, and all intelligences in general, and would have to be followed by us, if we had no regard for our interests. It has been necessary to attach thereto what the occasions and accidents to which our species is subject have furnished us; and this order gives not the origin of the notions, but so to speak the history of our discoveries.1^ Ph. [Very true, and it is the analysis of words which may teach us by means of the names themselves this concatenation which that of the notions cannot give by means of the reason, which you have brought forward.] Thus the following words: imagine, comprehend, to attach, conceive, instil, disgust, trouble, tranquillity, etc., are all derived from the operations of sensible things and applied to certain modes of thought. The word spirit in its primary signification is breath,2 and angel signifies a messenger. Whence we can conjecture what kind of notions 1 "The natural order of ideas," according to Leibnitz, proceeds from the general to the particular, from the abstract to the concrete, while language shows that "we have advanced from sense-impressions to abstract ideas," and thus " expresses not the essence of our knowledge, but only the history of its development. In a still broader sense the history of language is the history of the development of the human spirit in general." — TR.
2 Cf. the Hebrew Pin (Spinoza, Tract. Theol. Polit., chap. 1, Opera, ed. Van Vloten and Land, Vol. 1, p. 384; English translation by Elwes, Vol. 1, p. 19); the Greek ir^C/ua from irveiv (Cremer, Bib. Theol. Lexicon of N. T. Greek, 2d English from 2d German ed., p. 504, Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1878, says that as " the element of life"..." in & physiological sense, we often find it (' Tri/eOfia') in profane Greek, especially in the poets and in later Greek; in a psychological sense, as the element of human existence and personal life, never"); and the Latin spiritus from spirare. — Tu.
U 290 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [UK. in they had who spoke these first languages and how nature will suggest unexpectedly to men the origin and the principle of all their knowledge by the terms themselves.
Tli. [I have already remarked to you that in the credo of the Hottentots they called the Holy Spirit by a term which signifies among them a breath of air benign and sweet.1 The same is true as regards the majority of other words, and indeed the fact is not always recognized because most frequently the true etymologies are lost. A certain Dutchman, with little regard for religion, abused this truth (that the terms theology, ethics, and metaphysics are taken originally from gross things) in order to ridicule theology and the Christian faith in a little Flemish dictionary, in which he gave to the terms definitions or explications not such as usage demands, but such as the original force of the words seemed to bear, and put upon them a malicious interpretation; and as he elsewhere had given indications of impiety he is said to have been punished in the Raspel-liuys? It will, however, be well to consider this analogy of sensible and non-sensible things which has served as the basis of tropes: a matter that you will understand the better by con sidering a very extended example such as is furnished by the use of. prepositions, like to, with, from, before, in, without, by, for, upon, towards (a, avec, de, devant, en, hors, par, pour, sur, vers), which are all derived from place, from distance, and from motion, and afterwards transferred to every sort of change, order, sequence, difference, agreement. To (a) signifies approach, as in the expression: I go to (a) Rome. But as in order to attach anything we bring it near that to which we wish to unite it, we say that one thing is attached to (d) another. And further, as there is, so to speak, an immaterial attachment, when one thing follows the other from moral reasons; we say that what follows the movements and voli tions of any one belongs to (d) that person or adheres to him as if it gave signs to this person to go near it or with it. A 1 Cf. Book I., chap. 3, § 8, Th. The Apostle's Creed, the Ten Command ments, and the Lord's Prayer in the Hottentot language, as sent to Leibnitz by N. Witsen, are given in Dutens, Leibnit. opera omnia, Vol. 6, Pt. 2, pp. 204-200. Schaarschmidt remarks that " this observation of both philosophers, that the meaning of words has proceeded and still proceeds from the concrete to the abstract, is the guide to sound etymology and word-explanation." — TB.
2 Erdraanu and Jacques have: " Raspel-huyss:." — IK.
en. 11] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 291 body is ivith (avec) another when they are in the same place; but they say also that a thing is with (avec) that which is found in the same time, in the same order, or part of an order, or which concurs in one and the same act. When we come from (de) any place, the place has been our object through the sensible things it has furnished us, and it is still in our memory, which is entirely filled with it; and thence it comes, that the object is signified by the preposition of (de) as in the expression, the question is of (de) that, they speak of (de} that, i.e. as if it arose from it. And as what is included in any place or in any whole is supported by and carried away with it, the accidents are in the same way considered as in (dans) the subject, sunt in subjecto, inhcerent subjecto. The particle upon (sur) is also applied to the object; they say he is upon (sur) this matter, very much as a workman is upon (sur) the wood or upon (sur) the stone, that he cuts or forms; and as these analogies are extremely variable and do not de pend on any determinate notions, it thence comes that languages vary much in the use of these particles and cases which the prepositions govern, or rather in which they are found as things understood and virtually included.]
CHAPTER II ON THE SIGNIFICATION OF WORDS § 1. Ph. Now as words are employed by men as signs of their ideas, we may ask in the first place how their words have been determined; and we find that it is not by any natural connection existing between certain articulate sounds and cer tain ideas (for in this case there would be only one language among men), but by an arbitrary institution in virtue of which a given word has been purposely made a sign of a given idea.1 1 For early discussions of the nature and origin of language, and the ques tion whether words were given by nature or convention, cf. Plato, Cr<it i/ltis, English translation by B. Jowett, The Dialogues of Plato, 2d ed., 1875, Vol. 2, p. 20:5 sq.; 3d ed., 1802, Vol. 1, p. 323 sq., New York: Macmillan & Co.; Aristo tle, De Interpret., 2, 16", 19 sq.; E. Wallace, Outlines of the Philos. of Aris totle, 3d ed., § 11, p. 27. For modern discussions, cf. W. D. Whitney, Language 292 LEIBNITZ'S CRITIQUE OF LOCKE [BK. m Th. [I know it has been customary to say in the schools and almost everywhere else that the meanings of words are arbitrary (ex institute) and it is true that they are not deter mined by a natural necessity, but they are nevertheless determined by reasons sometimes natural, in which chance has some share, sometimes moral, where choice enters. There are perhaps some artificial languages which are wholly of choice and entirely arbitrary, as that of China is believed to have been, or as those of George Dalgarno l and the late Mr. Wil- kins,1 bishop of Chester. But those which are known to have been coined from languages already known, are from choice mixed with what there is of nature and chance in the lan guages they suppose. Thus it is in the case of those languages which thieves have coined in order to be understood only by those of their gang, which the Germans call Rothicdscli? the and the Study of Lanyuaye, Lect. XI., p. 395 sq., 4th ed., New York, 1809; B. Jowett, in his Introduction to Plato's Cratylus, op. cit., 2d ed., Vol. 2, p. 189 sq.; 3d ed., Vol. 1, p. 281 sq.; H. Steinthal, Einleitung in die Psychologic und Sprachwissenschaft; Herm. Paul, Principien der Sprachyeschichte, Halle, 1880; B. Delhi-tick, Einleitung in das Sprachstudium, Leipsic, 1880, 2d ed., 1884. Leibnitz rightly points out that both nature and freedom of choice share in the formation of language. " Nature furnishes to a certain extent the material which the mind in its progressive self-absorption shapes within certain limits arbitrarily; and every human individual in the use of the language already formed is himself still so situated as to be able up to a certain point freely to appropriate and use that which is given." — TR.
1 George Dalgarno, c. 1626-1687, published at London in 16(51, his Ars sig- norum, vulr/o character universalis et lingua philosophica. Qua poterunt, homines diversissimorum idiomatum, spatio duarum septimanarum, omnia animi sua sensa (in rebus familiar ibus) non minus intelligibiliter, sive scri- bendo, sive loquendo, mutuo communicare, quam linyuis propiis vernaculis, from which Bishop John Wilkins, 1614-1672, derived the idea of his Essay towards a real character and a philosophical lanyuaye with an alphabetical dictionary. London, 1668. For Leibnitz's plan of a General Characteristic (Characteristica Universalis — Sptcieuse yenerale) and the extent to which he followed Dalgarno and Wilkins, cf. Trendelenburg's paper: Ueber Leibni- zens Enticurf einer allfjemeinen Charakteristik, in his Historische Beitriiye zur Philos., Vol. 3, p. 1 sq., Berlin, 1867; cf. also Gerhardt, Die philos. Schrift. v. G. W. Leibniz, Vol. 7, p. 3sq.; Vol. 3, p. 216; Dutens, Leibnit. opera omnia, Vol. 6, p. 262. Dalgarno is credited with the invention of the first manual alphabet. His works were reprinted at Edinburgh, 1834, 4to. — TR.
2 Cf. Ave Lallemant, Das deutsche Gaunerthum, 4 vols., Leipzig, 1858-1862, in which, says Sehaarschmidt, " the so-called Rothwalsch, the artificial lan guage of thieves in Germany, prominent already in the sixteenth and more so in the seventeenth century, is treated with especial thoroughness of detail. In this work it is shown that the Hebrew especially has contributed to the Gaunersprache a strong word-contingent, while its grammar is conformed to en. n] ON HUMAN UNDERSTANDING 293 Italians Lingua Zerga,1 the French Narquois, but which they usually form upon (the basis of) the languages commonly known to them, either by changing the received significations of the words by means of metaphors, or by making new words by means of a composition or derivation in their own fashion. Languages are also formed through the intercourse of different peoples, either by mingling indifferently neighboring lan guages, or as most frequently happens, by taking the one as a base which is mutilated and altered, mixed and corrupted by neglecting and changing that which it observes, and even by grafting thereupon new words. The Lingua Franca, which is used in the commerce of the Mediterranean, is made from the Italian, and no regard is paid to the rules of grammar. An Armenian Dominican, with whom I conversed at Paris, had himself made, or perhaps learned from his fellows, a kind of Lingua Franca, made from Latin, which I found intelligible enough, although it had neither case, nor tense, nor other inflections, and he spoke it with ease, being accustomed to it. Father Labbe",2 a French Jesuit, very learned, known by many other works, has made a language of which Latin is the base, which is easier and has less constraint than our Latin, but