proofreading team a philosophicall essay for the reunion of the languages, or, the art of knowing all by the mastery of one. oxford printed by hen: hall for james good. . the printer to the reader. _meeting by chance with this ingenuous offer, i thought it might not be improper since i found it in another dresse, to make it speak another language too, which among the most creditable of europe, hath not desisted from its claim to antiquity: there are very few nations but have, at sometime or other, laid in their pretences to a supremacy for their language, and have boasted an assistance from unsuspected reason and authority: but however variously the controversie hath been manag'd, the modesty, and ingenuity of this author hath rendred, his designe more plausible, for having without any private regard (in such cases most usuall to the spruce and flourishing air of his owne native tongue) made that noble language of the romans the basis of his project; and finding him throughout altogether free from prejudice and partiality, i thought an anteview of so excellent and usefull, a designe would not be unacceptable to the more ingenious part of the world, and that i ought not to neglect so faire an opportunity of recommending to their consideration that illustrious dialect, which as it is certainly of all others the most valuable, so to the shame of these modern ages, is either exceedingly impair'd or lost in its familiar uses among those who challenge the title of the _beaux esprits_ of the times. the aime therefore of this projector being to facilitate and expedite the mastery of this as well as others, its survey may possibly appear not altogether ungratefull if it be but in hopes to find this incouragement that we shall he able to reserve some number of years from our usually tædious application to its study for other eminent uses, and commence men & schollers at a much easier rate and in an earlier age then now commonly practic'd; i should prevent the author if i should entertaine you with any farther commendation of it then that he hath taken for his model the most creditable and plausible language of the world. if at any time you divert your selfe with reading novels; you will here meet with notions that are both philosophicall and airy, and in order to the maine designe for the most part purely scientifick and demonstrative; and after if all you shall think that you have not mispent your time by observing something that is either a usefull or pleasurable i shall have my designe and the author the credit._ _farewell._ * * * * * as the knowledge of forreign languages ought not to be reputed one of those vain and useless curiosities that serve only to amuse the mind, but is certainly conducive to a thousand different ends; so we ought not to think it strange if our age, which gives such æquall and secure judgement of the value of things shew more of passion then ever for it, notwithstanding all the difficulties that are pretended. i am of an opinion, that one cannot do the world a more acceptable piece of service, then to invent a certain and easie way to become universally acquainted with the languages, and to quit a subject from those intrigues, in which the more knowing have at present involv'd it, either from a pure impotence to disingage it, or possibly from a fond desire of a freer breath of popular air from those who are ordinarily most taken with what they least understand. this designe being only a proper entertainment for the most criticall of the virtuoses, i am the more inclinable to expose to the public, the project and plain i have form'd, before i intirely abandon the whole to their censure; that i may at first anticipate all manner of reply, and take advantage from the lights of the most accomplisht and intelligent persons, if their zeale hath courage enough to make them willing to serve the world in their love and communication. _the authors designe._ most men being prepossest with two unjust prejudices against the nature of the languages, th'one, that they have not all either resemblance or accord among them, the other, that they only depend upon the inconstancie of chance, and the whisling toyishness of custome, it might be thought no matter of extraordinary concernment, if one pretended to succeed in a study of this nature by the single efforts of the memory, without either the vivacitie of imagination, or the force of reason being interress'd. but being not very well perswaded of the agreeableness of this method, in direct opposition to it, i have fastn'd the whole designe in hand upon these two propositions: first, that _there is a certain accord between the severall languages:_ and that therefore they are attainable by comparison. secondly, _they are unquestionably founded upon reason_, and therefore that must be made use of in their mutuall reference. it is upon these two foundations that i pretend to establish the true method of gaining a mastery of the languages, making it appear to the world by a sensible experience that the mind can as easily make reflections upon words, as upon the things they represent: _imagination_ and _reason_ being the two faculties, that can reflect upon their objects, they both will appear in the present designe in their uses suitable to their nature, the effects of _imagination_ shall be visible in the severall resemblances, and the inferences that are thence made; and it will be the worke of _reason_ to reduce all to certain principles, upon which the argumentative part must relye. _the first part of the designe._ for the easier exercise of imagination, i shall acquaint you with a method that will appeare very naturall, by which insteed of considering the languages precisely in themselves (as hitherto hath been usuall) they may be compar'd one with the other without much difficultie, and at the same time their accord, dependance, and mutuall relation, discover'd either from the resemblance of words, the proportion of their scope or compasse, and the conformity of their expressions. tis true that this agreement, and relation is not a little obscur'd by the severall od constitutions of mens minds, that checque at, and satisfie themselves with the first, and naked appearance without any farther inquirie, but withall its presently, and easily perceiv'd by those who are happy enough, in a genius for such kind of learning. its something like the paradoxes geometry proposeth upon the relation, and proportion of figures, where we are mus'd at the first draught, and there appeares so little likelihood in them that the unexperienc't would take them only for the tricks and whims of a melancholique brain; whereas an ingenuous artist, from the most naturall, and simple notions gradually conducts the mind to a kind of insensible discovery of truth, and makes it see on a suddain what it could not expect, and that with such open assurances as quit that from all suspicion, which but now had scarce any face of truth. knowing no other method then this, that may be proper to make new discoveries in the sciences i endeavour'd to make what use i could of it, so farr as my subject permitted; and since amidst the severall resemblances of the languages, there are some so evident, as necessarily grance upon the most unobserving eye, i have so order'd my reflections, that by a reference to these, as models, i might by degrees arrive at the knowledge of the others, which although reserv'd, and sometimes more distanc't, yet are neither less certain, nor reall: not unlike the subalternate conclusions in speculation, which are not a jot the lesse true for being farther remov'd from their first principle. thus tis that a language with which we are already acquainted, either by the assistance of art, or conversation, leads us to an intimacy with those that were altogether unknown to us before, and that their relation redresseth the treachery of the memory in the close and juncture of one with the other. but that i may compasse this my designe with lesse trouble, my greatest care is to make choise of one language as a rule to measure by, and a principle to reduce all the rest too: for to pretend to compare them immediately one with another, as some would have it, is to cherish confusion among those things that demand the most of order. the veneration that i have alwayes had for antiquity, made me think at first of ingaging for the _hebrew_, as being (for ought we know) the earliest, the most noble, and most naturall language of the world and that from which all others, in a manner, derive themselves. but it was not long before i began to consider, that this would directly crosse the first principles of my intended method, and appear a kind of indeavour to teach an unknown language, by another, of which we have the most imperfect, and slender information of all. the kindnesse, and inclination i ought to have for my own country, had almost perswaded me to rest my self there, and to make my native tongue the basis of this universall reduction but then the rest of the europæan world (which i have no reason to slur or contemne) would have as ill resented the project, as we did it in the germans, who would long agoe have challenged this honour to themselves. i had in the end no other course to take, but to throw myselfe upon the _latine_, in which i luckily met with all the necessary conditions that did easily, and plausibly conduce to my design'd attempt. to say the truth _aristotle_ himselfe, a man of a judgement in such things the most exact that ever was to take a _measure_ from, demanded but three qualifications, viz. _universality_, _certainty_, and _proportion_; that it should be generally known to all those that are to make use of it in the quality of a measure, that it should be fixt, and determin'd in its selfe, and then that it should be proportion'd to all those things, to which it prescribes their bounds, all which characters do with advantage combine in the latine, and that with such propriety that they cannot be attributed to any other without some sort of injustice; for the greatest part of the other languages they are determind to the extent of a particular kingdom or country, the latine hath no such disadvantage upon it. it is to speak properly the language of europe: religion, and the sciences have more enlarg'd its dominions, then all the conquests of the romans; tis almost the common idiom of the north, and universally knowne to persons of birth and education, who alone are presum'd to stand in need of the assistance of forraigne languages. it disownes the common imperfection of others, which by nature being subject to change, cannot by consequence, serve for a certain determinate rule in all ages; and if it now survive through the large extent of its entertainment, it hath much the advantage of others, that are in a manner deceas'd to this that is fixt, and retaind by a well assur'd custome and if its being universally known allows all persons to share its uses, so its being steddy, and unalterable, secures it from all the uneven changes of time. as to its proportion, it in a manner keeps a mean between the ancient and modern languages, it is neither altogether so pure as the one, nor so corrupt as the other, and so with the same ease is applicable to both; and in earnest is infinitely the most compendious, it being farre less trouble to passe from the mean to an extream, or from the extream to the mean, then to trace it from one extream to another. however this would seem incommodious beyond all redresse, to attempt to reduce all the languages, either to the most ancient, or else to any one of the most modern, because in reality, the former have no more relation to the later, then these have with others of the same age, which have been as so many channels to derive antiquity to us. besides the latin makes a friendly meeting between the eastern, and western languages; as to the first alone it owes its birth and life, so the others do to it. it seems then no more difficult to attain the one, by streaming it up to the fountain, then to gain all the rest by making a like descent, by way of resemblance to what we observe in nature when we discern, as well the effect by the cause, as the cause by the effect. in one word, to make up all the differences that may arise about the supremacie of the languages, i consider the latin under three different regards, as the _daughter_ of the languages of the _east_, as the _mother_ of those in the _west_, and as the _sister_ of the more _northerne_. as it is abundantly copious, and rich, having been refind, and improv'd for more then years by an infinite variety of nations, with whose spoyls it is now invested, so it may have a very great number of resemblances, under which with little difficultie it will admit of a reference to all the rest. for in conclusion, to reduce all to the most refin'd, and polite language, is not what i pretend to; the barbarous stile of the ancient romans will do me as much service, as the quaintnesse, and elegance of cicero; the latin of the declining empire, since the irruptions of the northern nations, may be admitted into this designe to as good purpose, as the language of augustus his time; any sense is the same of that of the _sciences_, which makes one almost altogether distinct from what is common and vulgar; the proper names of philosophy, naturall history, and divinity, those of physick, and the mathematicks, of arts, law, and commerce; the names of illustrious persons, people and places, of which history furnisheth us with a plausible account, will afford me no lesse assistance on this occasion, then the names of things that are most common. after having made choice of a language in order to the design, i am in the next place to determine my self to a _certain number of them_, the reunion of which may be justly thought a modest and reasonable attempt; for as there are some, the knowledge of which will be of very little use; so i am obliged to prescribe some bounds to a designe that would lead me to something indetermin'd, and infinite, and withall i suspect the inlargement both of mind, and memory to compasse all; especially considering the consequence of some to be indifferent, neither that of biscany, nor the lower brettaigne should in my opinion much afflict any mans braine, nor do i believe that there are many more in the world interest for them, then there are for the dialect of finland or frizland, or the barbarous jangling of the negroes and savages. in the choise that i was to make i could not but give the preference to those of the greatest credit and repute, _took some prince_ (excuse the allusion) _who having laid his design to reunite all the kingdomes of the world, began his conquest upon those nations that were most formidable and renown'd, from an apprehension that the rest in a little time would be less able to make any opposition._ as i am not of an humour to attempt any thing without an incouragement from reason; or to give my selfe any trouble through a kind of caprice, purely to gratifie my curiositie; _religion_, _state_, and the _sciences_ are the _three grand rules_ from which i make a judgement what languages are really the most important and noble; i have only therefore selected such as _europe_ may use to the best advantage, either for the defence of the church, the good of the state, the advancement of the sciences, or the perfection of the most laudable arts. it is for this end that i have entertained in my designe all the languages that concerne religion, and make a particular mention of such as furnish us with originall texts, and the most authentick translations of the bible, being of no mean consequence towards the faithfull interpretation of our sacred records, and the confirmation of the articles of our creed. i am in the next place obliged to find a place for such as concern and relate to state affaires, the most renowned empires, kingdomes, and warlike nations, which may afford a suitable entertainment for all sorts of people, and withall very much conduce to the succesful management of forraigne businesse, the most important negotiations, embassies, the transactions of war or peace, as well as the most hopefull designes of travellers. but above all i find myself concern'd for those that give us the most refin'd and polite discoveries of wit and science, and have been cherisht and nurst up to our hands by the most knowing and ingenious of all nations. i can hardly believe i shall meet with any inclinable to quarrell me for the number of . that i have thought on for my designe, since i presume it no easie matter for the most nicely curious to find a just occasion; and although there are none of them that are not unquestionably deriv'd from the same originall, it being no great difficulty to convince any well settled head, that in the propriety of speech there is but one mother language: yet to avoid confusion i distribute them all into . different orders, as they seem to carry an immediate reference to the languages, which are the commonly suppos'd originals: such are in the opinion of the learned the _roman_, and the _greec_, the _teutonic_ and _sclavonic_, the _hebrew_, _scythian_, and the _persian_. the roman idioms are the _italian_, _spanish_ and _french_, which cannot now be unknowne to any but such as are shamefully ignorant; i may adde likewise the _portuguese_, which although not very different from the _castilian_, yet is not wanting in its owne particular beauties, and hath receiv'd no mean accession of use and honour from the conquests of its kings in the most remote parts of the world. to the greec i shall reduce its . principall relations, _viz_ the literall greec, such as we meet with in our old classic authors, the vulgar as it is commonly used since the declining age of the empire at constantinople, and the coptique or Ægyptian, which is but a remainder of the famous government of the ptolomies in Ægypt: for although in its idiome there be something yet remaining of an originall stamp, either in that its words seem to touch upon the auntient language of the pharaohs, or that its inflection no way resembles the greec, yet the empire of alexander and his successors induc'd such a confusion, that the greec hath almost got the better, and involv'd all the lesser remains of antiquity. under the teutonic i comprehend the almain or high german, the flemmish or low dutch, the english and the danish, which is to this day entertain/'d in the most northerne regions, and may give us some intimations of a clearer light then any besides, as having yet carefully secured some footsteps of the ancient language. the sclavonic is accompani'd with . more considerable dialects the true sclavonic, the polish, and muscovitish, to which the valour of the nations that speak them have brought more reputation then any other ingenious performances. the hebrew hath no less then seven in its retinue, the pure hebrew, such as we meet with in our bible, the language of the rabbins and talmudists, the chaldee, the syriaque, the Æthiopick or abyssin, the samaritan, and the arabique, which in our age hath so inlarg'd its dominion, that its either spoke or understood in the three parts of the old world asia, africa and europe; and hath alone produc't such a prodigious number of books, that one would scarce believe how a nation so famous for its exploits in warr should have so much leasure to attend to the improvement of learning. the scythian hath two very illustrious dialects in its traine, the turkish and lesser tartarian, both which may serve in some measure to acquaint us what languages are used in the north of asia. the last is the persian, which is not only universally priz'd in the empire of the sophy, but a common entertainment in the court of the grand seigneur, as well as in that of the mogull, where it is hugely valued and esteem'd. as this reference of the languages to one another would be to litle purpose, if the less qualifi'd and accomplisht were not capable of judging of it, since tis for them principally i am most concern'd, i believ'd therefore it would be necessary intirely to retrench all that strange variety of characters, whose od and fantasticall figures do strangely divert the imaginations of those, who are not well qualifi'd to conceive them. neither do i intend to humour my selfe in that vaine kind of ostentation that some affect, to make this kind of writing one of that most mysterious parts of their learning, but have found out a method of expressing the sounds of all the distinguishing characters of each language onely by the roman, and that in a manner as easie and disingag'd as it is accurate and new; insomuch that the resemblances of words, which altogether disappear'd under those uncouth figures (which like a veile intercepted them from the less clarify'd eye) presently face the light, there being nothing left to interpose between them, and a closer consideration, which notwithstanding shall not acquit me from my designe of discovering an expedient to decypher with ease all those severall kinds of writing, and of fixing them upon the imagination in such a manner as without difficulty can admit of no confusion. after having remov'd this first obstruction, which hath so long imbroild and retarded the knowledge of the languages, that i may with less trouble reduce them to their first principle, i shall run near the same course, that hath been successively taken in their removall, so farr as any history can informe us, upon which i principally lay the stresse and basis of my designe by producing such arguments from it, the force of which cannot plausibly be eluded. for i do not believe that any of the more curious will find fault with me for fastning the origine, and alliance of the language upon the same bottome with the begining and first society of mankind, who are observed never to shift their country, without having their language to bear their arms and customes company. as i never thought fit to dispute it with the learned, why they did not make use of the affinity of the languages, which sometimes are of clearer notice to them to discover the the first rise of a people more remote, and with which they are lesse acquainted; so i hope i may be permitted to make what advantage i can of the first combinations and colonies to give a clearer light to the beginnings and connexion of the severall tongues, there being something near the same, or a like proportion between both: as for instance, to make good the opinion of dionysius halicarnasseus, and quintilian, who both pretend that the latin tongue is no more then a dialect of the antient greek, is but in plain and easie words to give an account of all the little settlements, and plantations in italy, which for some continuance of time was only inhabited by colonies from greece. upon what other terms i hardly understand this new project should be surprizing to any, it being not the meer effect of imagination, or an humorous idea, neither will it much ingage any sort of people, but only such as can easily dislodge their prejudices when their owne lights shall assist in their conviction, and that from such assurances as shall be most free from suspicion, being faithfull deductions from the histories of the colonies. but as it is impossible that the languages should not be liable to severall alterations and mixtures from the different associations of people in severall removes, so neither is it to be believ'd that this was done all on a sudden; there seems to be a resemblance between the words that make up the language and travellers, who do not put off their accustom'd usages and manners so soon as they arrive at a new country, neither are they naturaliz'd, but with time and by degrees become masters of the air, humors, and qualities of the persons with whom they converse. since then this corruption is but of a graduall and intensible growth, there is a necessitie, for its more certain discovery, of an orderly reflection upon the very first beginnings of the differences, being in the interim very sollicitous to prevent a false retreat that might either ingage me too farr, or else in some unluckie circumstances, from which it would be no little difficulty to retire. and this seems to be the only way that i could find out to scatter a certain air and appearance of truth upon all that regard the present subject, which hath no farther a probability then what is given it from such a carefull mannagement, that shall suffer no pass from one extreame to the other without touching upon that mean which is as it were the time of communication between both, for it is from this chain of words and sequel of alterations that all the suitablenesse, and likelyhood of this present method principally depends. although in reality there is no reason to doubt but that the french is a corruption of the latine, i could not however very easily perswade my selfe that the word _dechoir_ should derive its selfe from _cadere_ of the latines, if i did not perceive all its severall and distinct conveiances through the alembic. they that first corrupted the language of the _romans_ instead of _cadere_ made use of _cader_, as the italians do to this day, who commonly cut off the final vowels where they obseve them to follow liquids. they that came after proceeded yet farther in their retrenchment, and from _cader_ form'd _caer_, as the spaniards now use it, by taking away the letter _d_ according to their ordinary custome, when it is seated in the middle of words. there are another sort of people yet more sturdy and blunt in their formes of speech, who would say _car_ or _ker_ by a contraction of the two vowels into one, as is observable among the peasants of france, and those of picardy, who retain very much of antiquity, which seems to be agreeable with the manner of speech among the ancient french, who delighted to shorten and contract their words as much as possible, that they might make up a language altogether as free as their humour, some of the most remote of these would instead of _ker_ pronounce _cher_ by a change of that firm and surly letter into one more easy and soft as we yet find it customary in the remains of some of the ancient romans, and then after all by the turn of a vowel into a dipthong, from _cher_ is form'd _choir_, which now begins to be out of date altho its composit _dechoir_ be still of plausible and commendable use. thus 'tis that _cadere_, _cader_, _caer_, _car_, _ker_, _cher_, _choir_, and _dechoir_ make up but one intire chain and connexion, yet all to very little purpose if any one of the degrees by chance should have been wanting. for this reason altho i consider every language in its greatest perfection, yet for clearing its originall in rendring this sequel of words more open and palpable i have been oblidg'd to make numerous reflections upon the older forms of speech as well as orthographie, by which a better discovery may be made of all the varieties that occure in pronunciation, as also of the severall medlies and gibrish of the provinces of each empire that speak the same language, but most of them in a singular fashion. so that it is most certain that that language which is most quaint and polite is very often the lesse pure and most debaucht, if we make an æquall judgment from its originall which is the most unquestionable rule: upon which account the dialects of province, gascogne, languedoc, and that which is known by the name of the antient gauls is infinitely lesse alter'd and distanc't from its original, then the languages of the court and nobility, who take a pleasure in receding from the latin: those of lombardy and naples are for the most part lesse corrupt than these of siena and florence; altho the spaniards have a saying among them, that the catalonian and that of arragon is commonly more pure then the castilian that is more pompous. and not to spare the french more then the spaniard, if they have reason to boast their language to be the most refin'd and polite of the world, yet their neighbours might justly returne upon them, that of all the dialects of the latin, there is none more degenerate than theirs, forasmuch as its quaintness ariseth from its sweetnesse, so that it is not attainable without a strange descent from its principle. thus _le capo_ of the italians, _le cabo_, of the spaniards, _le cap_, of the old french and _le kef_ of picardy are all variously alterd from _caput_ of the latins, but none so much as _le chef_ of the french, which notwithstanding claims the same originall. but this is not all; as the resemblance and connexion of the languages is not alwaies the same but depends more or lesse upon the communication of the nations that speak them, so it's not necessary that this method should be invariable, it must admitt of alteration with its subjects, and accomodate it selfe to the diversity of tongues. there is much more of art requir'd to reduce those which only carry a resemblance in their words, and abundantly lesse for those which withall admitt of an analogie in inflexion, and since the same words which allow of this accord may have it in severall distinct manners they are not all (if i may be permitted to say so) neither of kin, nor alliance in the same degree; their relation is sometimes nearer, sometimes at a greater distance, for we may by way of analogie discours at the same rate of the genealogie of words as we do of the degrees of consanguinity; for if the one sort be rang'd under the same line either direct or collaterall, the others admitt of a little deflection and do not exactly corespond; some are allied in the first, some in the d degree, some in advancing from the branches to the stock, others in a descent from that to the branches, in a word this accord is neither always immediate nor at all directly opposite. i add besides that as there are, some allied two or three ways and that since the first division have contracted new and closer relations, so i confesse there are others that content themselves with their originall reference, and that have scarce any other agreement among them than what depends upon the common tie and union that they have with their first principle, which in reallity is no more then this famous mother tongue of which some make a mystery without well understanding what they say: for altho it hath subsisted in its selfe before the first confusion, yet we must not think of discoursing of it at the same rate, nor put our minds upon the harasse of receiving it. 'tis no more now as some fondly imagaine a particular and distinct language from others, so that there is but one way to regain it and reestablish it at least so far as is necessary for a compleat execution of my designe, and that is to make a judicious choice of all that is primitive and most simple among the remains of the antient language either by considering the first combinations of sounds or by a regard to the earnest ideas of the mind, that were apply'd to these sounds; to the end that we may referr thither by a sequel, all the essentiall and fundamentall words of each language as to their fountaine; which admiting of divisions, runnes now in lesser streams which assume the names of originalls; because they have their rise from that grand source where the first inhabitants of the world ingrost all. so that it may be truly said of this mother tongue that it is in no sense a part as being really every where either in sums of its divisions or in its effects and dependances something like your vertues of the elements and the originall seeds of things, that subsist not of themselves but in the mixtures that compose them. i shall possibly be wonderd at, that being able to accomplish all by this single method, i have not in the interim recours to it, when all other ways prove unserviceable; but after all, tho this method be perhaps more ingenuous and of a more profound speculation, it is not however the most naturall and compendious, be it never so refind'd or accomodate to my designe, and i hardly understand the reason why any man should affect a crooked and uncouth road to active at his purpose when the streight lyes before him. _the second part of the desine._ comparison alone is not (in the opinion of some) sufficient to accomplish the present intention, however accurate it be; if it want the supports of _reason_, it may rationally be suspected for being more airy then solid, and without injustice the same character may be given to some of those unusuall chances that sometimes produce the most surprizing effects. besides altho the vivacity and force of imagination be easily admitted into the relations of the languages, and leaves there forcible impressions, yet it neither warrants certitude, nor dislodgeth confusion; 'tis reason alone that establisheth the mind in its cognizances, and credits all its conceptions with order, tis that alone which perfects the combination of all their relations and agreements according to the naturall connexion which they have with the same principles on which they depend in common. that which seems to be of greatest moment is that the principles be plausible and rationall and such as man may lay a stress on without suspicion or fear, and this is that which in a singular manner the principles of this art challenge to themselves, being in my opinion infinitely more sensible then those which philosophy proposeth under the characters of uncontroleable truths; i have therefore taken them all from the very natures of the subject of which i am treating _viz_: from the deflections and different regards under which the consideration of words may be manag'd; wch may last of all serve for an assurance, that chance hath not all that empire and authority, that is given it over the languages; and that it would be no great difficulty to make it appear, that in the languages themselves there are well fram'd and solid reasons, for every thing that appears otherwise, and hath been hitherto suppos'd to be the bare effect of caprice. it may be perceiv'd by the very effects themselves that it will make up a science fully demonstrative, and back't with such consequences, as may very well passe for compleat models in this kind: and above all the scope of its principles infinitely shortens the way without being at all oblig'd to make a descent to a thousand tædious and wearisome differences; which appear much better, and in a more elegant manner in their principles then in themselves, which is an incouragement for me to hope that a language for the acquest of which we have formerly by a close application numbred severall years, will by this means be made the divertisement of some hours, or at most but some few days. words being in the opinion of all men but significant sounds, they may be taken either as they are _natural sounds_, or _arbitrary signs_, i would say, either as they are the proper effect of the motion of our organs, or as the lively representation of the thought of our minds. and since they make their passes from one language to another they cannot well admit of any alteration in this their transit but in three respects; for whatsoever change be suppos'd it will necessarily fall out, either in the _sounds themselves_ that compose the words, or in _their significations_, or in their _different modifications_, and its from these three distinct regards that the generall principles have their rise, upon which i have fastn'd this new systime of the philosophie of the languages. that i may make my procedure more justificable and artificiall, i examine with all exactnesse the different organs of the voice, the various motions of the muscles belonging to these organs, and the admirable concent and accord of those motions; and these i make use of to demonstratively explaine the precise number of all the simple sounds, that enter into the composition of the languages, to discover the nature and proper pronunciation of these sounds, and by consequence to disclose their nearnesse and affinity, the resemblances of some, and the disproportion of others, their accord and opposition, their sympathy and antipathy, in a word, all their combinations and mixtures, their divisions and distinctions, their orders and severall degrees. from whence i conclude that all the astonishing and surprizing depravations and corruptions that are met withall in the words that one language borrows from another, in changing or in transposing, in adding or retrenching, have their basis in nature; which never attempts any thing but to the purpose, and with a sollicitous care, when to us it appears to have acted with an open and observable neglect. we may study nature upon the latine it selfe which may serve as well for a model as it doth for a principle; it will in the first place acquaint us that the vowels are almost accounted for nothing, for altho there are some of them that admitt of easie changes among themselves according as they are more open or reserv'd, we know neverthelesse that there are none of them but what may be absolutely shifted into the place of another of what kind soever, either immediately, or by succession and degrees. for a finall confirmation of this we have no more to doe but to make an easie comparison of the different derivative of the same word, the reference of these three _cepa_; _incipio_ and _occupo_, to the verb _capio_ may serve for an instance, if we shall but grant the truth of this principle which the orientalists have always suppos'd, who form the greatest part of their words from the sole change of their vowels. the same is not altogether allowable in relation to the consonants, where we must not admitt indifferently all sorts of changes; the sole affinity of the organs is that which must regulate almost all their varieties: the labiall letters easily supplant one another but the dentall or linguall with more difficulty succeed them as being not of the same order; for as these consonants, m. b. p. v. f. make neer the same sound, which is modified by the divers force of the air opening the lips after severall forms. so the letters d. t. z. s. ought to make an order by themselves, having a particular relation to the point of the tongue, which only by touching upon the teeth in various manners frames their pronunciation. but it is not a single and easie reflexion, that can absolutely determine whether two letters have resemblance and proportion, because there are some of them that being made up of the movements of severall organs, maybe differently alter'd according to their various resemblances, so the letter h. carrys not only the resemblance of a gutturall as it is pronounc'd by the assistance of the muscles of the throat, but also as an aspiration besides the regard it hath to the whispers of the tongue, and the . aspirates of the lips, teeth, and palate. however if the precipitance or forwardnesse of any, hath by chance brought into use, other methods of altering sounds, as they have not so certain a foundation in reason, so neither can they be receiv'd within the compas of this art, at least being not establisht by a regular and constant analogie. from the sound of words, i passe to their _signification_, which in the same dialect may be call'd the soul of a word, as the sound is its body; to expresse it in other terms, then what seem to rellish the dry and unpleasant humour of the pedant or grammarian; i suppose that words being the expressions of our thoughts, and our thoughts the representations of objects, the different significations that are given to words, principally depend upon the various conceptions, that every nation frames of the same objects, agreeable to what seems most neerly to concern it. this ingageth me to explaine the intire sequel, and naturall dependances of our ideas, and the manner of their forming; of which the world hath yet receiv'd a very imperfect account. in order to this, you may understand what those objects are, of which we have proper ideas, and what those are which we conceive by forreigne images, and that we do not name but in figurative terms; whence ariseth that alliance and resemblance of our ideas, and why the greatest share of our words if refer'd to their first originall, are but metaphors which represent objects to us in such terms as are proper to another, with which it hath some agreement, or neere relation, and withall what are the grand principles of metaphors; either of attribution or proportion, that do not only make op the beauty, but almost the intire body of the language. our ancestors that gave no names to things, but by a directing prudence, purposing to distinguish the works of nature and art, had an especiall regard to the naturall resemblance they had with any thing that was most known to them, and that was already distinguisht by its character, or to any one of their most prevailing properties, or to the principall action that distinguisht them from other beings. they made use of almost the same artifice, to impose names upon things more expressive of their properties, by considering them only with reference to their operations, of which they were the immediate principles. as for the operations, themselves being not æqually knowne, nor æqually obvious to sense they plac't the same subordination in the terms they made use of to represent them, that nature hath establisht in our apprehensions and cognisances. there being therefore nothing in the world of which they could have fram'd a more distinct idea, then of the _motion_ of bodies; which is obvious to all the senses, we must not wonder if considering locall motion as the first and principall object of their knowledge, they afterwards gave no names to the operations of each being, but such as seem'd to express some relation either to motion in generall, or to its different species, or to some one of its dependances such as are place, figure, situation, extention, union and seperation, in a word to all the resemblances and agreements that in any way or kind relye upon motion. for if modern philosophy that studies nature by a closer application then formerly, pretend to a clear and evident explication of naturall effects in the referring them all to the _sole movement of matter_ as their true cause; there is much more reason that in order to the giveing an account of all that is to this day past among the languages, we should have recours to such terms as are expressive of motion, since it is not to be doubted but that all others that are reducible, may be referr'd hither as to the first principle of their signfication. besides motion is allow'd a far greater scope and extent among the languages then in nature for 'tis to that we referr our most refin'd and spirituall conceptions i mean such as we frame of the operations of our souls and the propensions of our wills, so when we say that the mind or understanding applyes it self to think, to conceive, to discours, to explaine, to disimbroile, to disingage a businesse, to discover a truth; when we talke of troubles, aversions, of hurries and consternations of the soul, to expresse such actions as are most remote from sense, we make use of such images as are corporeall in their first originall, although for the most part they have lost their proper significance to assume another that is purely figurative. 'tis by their principles i reduce to naturall reason all imaginable ways by which words alter their primitive signification to imbrace another, either more inlarg'd or reserv'd, or never so little diversifi'd either in proportion or alliance; for tis no easie matter for words to travell from one country to another without meeting with the same casualties, that use to befall forreign plants which, are seldome remov'd into a new soile, but degenerate and either lose some of their native virtue, or acquire some new. but most people having met wich this generally proposall, to expresse at first appearance, what they think with as little trouble as is possible, it thence falls out that to ingrosse a great deal of sense in a few words, they scarce allow enough precisely to marke out the simple ideas of their minds, fitted out to all their severall resemblances, they that are most simple in themselves, are commonly compounds in their significations, neither is there any one of the least considerable, but what is diversify'd in each language by a thousand different modifications. from thence proceed all the methods of inflexion, derivation, and composition that give being to the most subtle kind of sophistry; all the species and forms of nouns, verbs, and particles that make up the oeconomy of a language, together withall diversity of numbers, genders, cases, tenses, modes, and persons which have more of art than at first sight is imagin'd, for the custome of nations hath not only authoriz'd these inventions to vary the cadence of words, but with an admirable facility to expresse all the deflexions, by which an idea of the same object may be represented to our conceptions according as it admitts of a mixture of resemblances, which it may have either to its effects or causes, or as it is related to the severall estates, wherein it subsists, to the differences of time or place, and to all the circumstances that may accompany it, either within or without us. as the more sensible differences of the languages principally consist in all these modifications; so one of the greatest secrets of this art is to know how choisly to select and distinguish, both in our ideas and in the words that expresse them, that which is principall and essentiall from what is purely accessory, subtly to difference the first ideas from the second, the second from the third, the simple from the compound, the primitive and originall signification from its dependences and references, its modifications and divers restrictions, in one word (if i may so expresse it) not to confound the habit with the person. for in a manner these modifications are the same words, that the habit is to the body; this new dresse that is given to forreign words to fitt them up alamode to the country, for the most part time so disfigures them and renders them so obscure, that they impose as well upon our eyes as ears, and passe for origalls and natives of the country, although in reality they are borrow'd from our neighbourhood, and sometime from beyond the seas. to make a secure judgement therefore of the originall, there remains nothing but to consider them all, naked and intirely disspoil'd of all that trompery that disguis'd them; and that this may be done with more safety we must follow them step by step in their travels, and espie out the different ranges they have taken and the habits they have shifted, to come thus vizarded and masqued to us. these are the most inlarg'd principles and infallible ways by which i discover this secret and misterious accord of the languages which without doubt will appear so much the more admirable, as haveing been never to this hour been believ'd that they had any such close tie or relation: but these principles may be apply'd severall ways, and therefore least they should continue undermin'd, i make it appear by the sequel, what in particular must be done in each language in conformity to its genius and proper character. this is that which obligeth me to make an exact inquirie into the nature of those languages i pretend to reduce, i do not content my selfe infallibly to take my draught either in the generall consent of nations, which are as often cheated in their ideas they have of the language of each nation as they are commonly in its manners, or from the particular sentiments of the more knowing or learned, who without any preoccupation of mind have studied their own native language with more then ordinary care. but to make all yet more certain, i principally form my examinations from the very history of the languages, which is the most æquall rule we can take our measures from, in relation to the present designe. in order to this, 'tis necessary that we make reflexions upon the first beginnings of each nation, and that from other memoires then such with which we are for the most part furnish't by the criticks, and seriously to examine the continuall comerce it hath had with the most considerable of its neighbours, the wars, feuds and leagues of its governours with other princes, the irruptions and invasions of conquering nations, that have corrupted its language as they ingrost its spoils, the frequent colonies that conquerors have sent thither besides its voyages at sea, and its traffick, with the most remote plantations, these are the more immediate causes of this confusion and mixture. it may perhaps withall be no mean pleasure to see the basis of each language distinguisht from the changes and accessions of time or revolutions of state, what every nation hath contributed of its owne to inrich it, what religion, the government and what sciences have communicated to it, what it retains of antiquity and what new acquests it hath made to retrieve its losses with advantage. afterall, this is yet but the sceleton, or at most but the body of a language, its necessary that this rude, and indigested masse made up of so many different dialects should be animated by some secret spirit that should expand it selfe through all its parts and severall members, and reduce them to unity by communicating the same air to them, and that this spirit or soul should be the individuall principle of all the effects, and sensible changes, which make us easily distinguish one language from another: the temper, humour, and nature of a people, the dispositions of their minds, their genius and particular gusts, their more generall and forcible inclinations, their ordinary passions, and such singular qualities, by which one nation is remarq'd and distinguisht from another, are the most evident signs to discover the true genius of a language, because they are in reality the immediate causes and the very originalls after which i have copied all my draughts to compleat the present piece, which in my opinion is not wanting in something that is very naturall, besides this, the very manners and customes of nations, their laws and policy, and their publick transactions, both of peace and war, are things so universally known, that there is no need of any farther search, how to be able to judge by proportion of the genius, and characters of the languages so securely, as by that of the people that speak them. but as the care of a nation to improve and advance the arts and sciences and other kinds of good learning, is that which contributes most to the perfection of its language, so tis upon the manner in which its receiv'd, and the characters of its authors, that i cheifly depend to determine, whether it be modest or imperious, whether it rellish more of a softnesse, sweetnesse, and delicacy, than of a certain noble brisque and generous air, whether it incline more to the simplicity of nature, or the subtile refinements of art, whether it be polite to affectation, or betray a certain negligence which hath its graces too, as well as its measures of art, and last of all whether it be not a little crampt in attempting to be too exact, or else better accomodate it selfe by its freedome from all restraint. having discoverd the genius and proper character of each language, i have fram'd the most perfect idea that is possible, by way of analogie with the principles of the platonists, with whose method i was always as much taken as i am dissatisfy'd with their doctrine. this idea being unmasqued serves me in the sequell for a generall rule, to establish the true and proper reasons of all that passe for singular and remarqueable in each language, either in relation to the choice, the mixture, and union of sounds, the force and significations of words, or the air and manner of expression; for tis most certain that all these things are alter'd according to the genius of a people: so the spaniards would distinguish themselves from other nations by their haughtinesse, and affected gravity, and their words are easily understood by a certain pompous air, that seems to border upon grandeur and majesty: on the contrary the italians are the nation of the world that seems to be most fond of its pleasure, and its naturall, that this softnesse should be communicated to their language, and that all their words should breath nothing, but what is sweet, polite, and the most exact harmony; their compositions admitt of no sounds but such, as can flatter the ear, they suffer not the concours of consonants, whose rudenesse may never so little offend the organ, but they are extreamly in love with vowels, and often allow their sequences to make their pronunciation more sweet and delicate. for their signification, that they might mixe an accord with their energie, they have hardly any but what are more or lesse figurative, from a persuasion, that a metaphor represents objects to the mind, in that most curious and diverting manner, and withall they are carefull to make choise of none, but such as represent the fairest images: they are no lesse sollicitous to diversifie their words by agreeable modifications, their inflexion hath very little uneasie in it, it is all of it æqually facile and gay; their diminutives are exceedingly rellishing, because there is something more than ordinarily pretty in them, they are rich in derivatives, and compounds, not only because their pronunciation is more harmonious, but also because they expresse themselves in a more naturall manner, in one word they banish every thing that may appear ingratefull, and are passionately in quest of all that may conduce to the sweetnesse of their language. my sense is much the same of other languages, but because reason it selfe may be suspected by some, especially if at any time it appear too just or plausible, i was the rather concern'd so to order my instances, that besides the induction, i intended custome and experience should support reason, and reason should confirme experience, and withall the examples are so naturally chain'd with their principles, and all of them so distributed in their proper places, that without so much as making the least reflexion, i imperceptibly comprize all the fundamentall and essentiall words of each language, being willing my selfe to draw all my conclusions from the principles i have mention'd, and to make all necessary inductions, without leaving any thing of trouble or disease to the reader, who in such cases is glad to be quitt from paines and inconvenience, i have some hopes, that a competition thus differently made up of history, reflexions and criticismes supported by principles, deductions and examples may contribute something to the agreeableness of the designe, and sett off a subject that of itselfe is dry and knotty enough, without making it more unacceptable by that mean and disreputed method, that hath so much decry'd the critiques, and ordinarily hath given a disgust to a science before it hath been allow'd the least consideration, besides that didacticque way, is by no means proper in the present case, for as there is little pleasure in being taken notice of under the character of a scholler, so the only remedy is to contrive some way to come to the knowledge of things without lying under the suspicion of having a master. thus you see in grosse and generall, the whole designe exprest in as few words as the brevity of the subject would permitt me; and however rationall it may be in it selfe yet it wants not its adversaryes; some with a great deal of heat, plead that if this method acquiring the languages, hath any thing in it that is curious by way of speculation, it is however uselesse enough in relation to its practice, since _custome_ and _conversation_ only (say they) is the great master of language, and that we must intirely relye upon memory and the assiduity of constant and resolv'd industry. others confesse that it hath in earnest its advantages, but doubt much of the possibility of its execution, hardly beleeving that the languages have in good truth such an accord and resemblance as i suppose they have, or that there is a possibility for the witt of man now to discover it. by way of reply to the first, i confesse that one thing i wonder at, is that persons so knowing and ingenuous should so highly declare themselves against the judgement in favour of the memory, i have a very great regard to their qualitie and worth, but cannot submitt my selfe to their opinion, the only way (as i imagine) to learn the languages, and that in what number we please, to do it with ease without tædiousnesse, confusion, trouble and losse of time, and without the common hazard, of forgetting them with as much ease as we acquire them with difficulty, and to be master of them all in such a manner, as shall rellish nothing that is mean or not becomeing a rationall man, is in one word, to attribute more to the judging and reflecting faculty then to the memory; for if the memory depend and relye only upon the reflexions of the judgement, we have no reason to expect much from its single conduct, for however plausible it may appear, it will always be slow, limited, confus'd, and faithlesse; its action is not vigorous enough to take us off from those fatigues that distast our most likely enterprizes, and its efforts to weak and languishing in a little time to execute a designe of so large a compasse as this; being so determin'd as it is, it is impossible it should reduce so great a number of languages so distanc't in appearance one from another; if at any time it seem extraordinary in an action, its species are soon displac't by their multitude, and when they are rang'd in the best order imaginable, they continue not so long without being either effact by those that supervene or disappearing of themselves, haveing nothing that can fixe and retaine them, so that the languages being of so vast an extent, there is no reason that the memory alone should be confided to for their acquest, unlesse we could be content to sacrifice an infinite space of time to the sole knowledge of words, which being so valuable as it ought to be to us, may be imployd with more discretion and successe, either towards the cognizance of things or the management of businesse. to satisfie others, i have nothing more at present to say to them but that if the designe shall appear to them at first sight either fantasticall or temerarious, the execution will soon justifie me, and perhaps convince them that it is not always rationall positively to passe a judgement upon any thing before a close and a narrow search, and that we ought not hastily to despaire of any thing; the gaining of which hath not been attempted all imaginable wayes. last of all, as i do not beleeve my selfe to be deceiv'd in that which make up the grosse and main of the designe, so i do not expect that all that i shall advance in the sequel upon this connexion of the languages, should be receiv'd by all for uncontrouleable truths, of which i my selfe am sufficiently perswaded; i am too well acquainted with the nature of truth to beleeve my selfe so succesfull as to have alwayes uncover'd that in the most imbroyld and the most doubtfull affaires of the world; yet i confesse that notwithstanding that great respect that is due to it, i have in some cases lesse regarded it when it did not appear to comply with the capacityes of ordinary men, persuading my selfe that conjecture well fram'd and adjusted by a plausible air is more rellishing to ingenious persons, then an obscure and fainting truth, of which sort there is a very great number in the present subject. i propose then to the learned, this new systeme of the languages, not as an incontestable thesis in all its parts but only as an hypothesis, not altogether irrationall and which besides hath this particular advantage, that although it should be the falsest thing in the world in speculation, it may at least be allowable in the practice, and i hope to receive the same favour that persons (that were most obstinately resolv'd against his hypothesis) granted copernicus by their confession, that let it be never so false it is however the best accommodated to use and astronomicall supputations. finis. * * * * * transcriber's note: this etext was produced from amazing stories, february, . extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the u.s. copyright on this publication was renewed. what need of man? by harold calin illustrated by summers bannister was a rocket scientist. he started with the premise of testing man's reaction to space probes under actual conditions; but now he was just testing space probes--and man was a necessary evil to contend with. * * * * * when you are out in a clear night in summer, the sky looks very warm and friendly. the moon is a big pleasant place where it may not be so humid as where you are, and it is lighter than anything you've ever seen. that's the way it is in summer. you never think about space being "out there". it's all one big wonderful thing, and you can never really fall off, or have anything bad happen to you. there is just that much more to see. you lie on the grass and look at the sky long enough and you fall into sort of a detached mood. it's suddenly as if you're looking down at the sky and you're lying on a ceiling by some reverse process of gravitation, and everything is absolutely pleasant. [illustration] in winter it's quite another thing, of course. that's because the sky never looks warm. in winter, if you are in a cold climate, the sky doesn't appear at all friendly. it's beautiful, mind you, but never friendly. that is when you see it as it really is. summer has a way of making it look friendly. the way you see it on a winter night is only the merest idea of what it is really like. that's why i can't feel too bad about the monkey. you see, it might have been a man, maybe me. i've been out there, too. * * * * * there are two types of classified government information. one is the type that is really classified because it is concerned with efforts and events that are of true importance and go beyond public evaluation. occasional unauthorized reports on this type of information, within the scope that i knew it at least, are written off as unidentified flying objects or such. the second type of classified information is the kind that somehow always gets into the newspapers all over the world ... like the x- , and project dyna-soar ... and project argus. project argus had as its basis a theory that was proven completely unsound six years ago. it was proven unsound by dennis lynds. he got killed doing it. it had to do with return vehicles from capsules traveling at escape velocity, being oriented and controlled completely by telemetering devices. it didn't work. this time, the monkey was used for newspaper consumption. i'm sure bannister would have preferred it if the monkey had been killed on contact. it would have been simpler that way. no mass hysteria about torturing a poor, ignorant beast. a simple scientific sacrifice, already dead upon announcement, would have been a _fait accompli_, so to speak, and nothing could overshadow the success of project argus. but project argus was a failure. maybe someday you'll understand why. because of the monkey? possibly. you see, i flew the second shot after lynds got killed. after that, came the hearing, and after that no men flew in bannister's ships anymore. they proved lynds nuts, and got rid of me, but nobody would try it, even with manual controls, where there is no atmosphere. when you're putting down after a maximum velocity flight, you feed a set of landing coordinates into the computer, and you wait for the computer to punch out a landing configuration and the controls set themselves and lock into pattern. then you just sit there. i haven't yet met a pilot who didn't begin to sweat at that moment, and sweat all the way down. we weren't geared for that kind of flying. we still aren't, for that matter. we had always done it ourselves, (even on instruments, we interpreted their meaning to the controls ourselves) and we didn't like it. we had good reason. the telemetry circuits were no good. that's a bad part of a truly classified operation: they don't have to be too careful, there aren't any voters to offend. about the circuits, sometimes they worked, sometimes not. that was the way it went. they wouldn't put manual controls in for us. it wasn't that they regarded man with too little faith, and electronic equipment with too much. they just didn't regard man at all. they looked upon scientific reason and technology as completely infallible. nothing is infallible. not their controls, not their vehicles, and not their blasted egos. * * * * * lynds was assigned the first flight at escape velocity. they could not be dissuaded from the belief that at ultimate speed, a pilot operating manual controls was completely ineffectual. like kids that have to run electric trains all by themselves, playing god with a transformer. that was when i asked them why bother with a pilot altogether. they talked about the whole point being a test of man's ability to survive; they'd deal with control in proper order. they didn't believe it, and neither did we. we all got very peculiar feelings about the whole business after that. the position on controls was made pretty final by bannister. "there will be no manuals in my ships," he said. "it would negate the primary purpose of this project. we must ascertain the successful completion of escape and return by completely automatic operation." "how about emergency controls?" i asked. "with a switch-off from automatic if they should fail." "they will not fail. any manual controls would be inoperative by the pilot in any case. no more questions." i feel the way i do about the monkey, argus, because, in a way, we all quit about that time. you don't like having spent your life in a rather devoted way with purposes and all that, and then being placed in the hands of a collection of technologists like just so many white mice ... or monkeys, if you will. lynds, of course, had little choice. the project was cleared and the assignment set. he hated it well enough, i know, but it was his place to perform the only way one does. it ended the way we knew it would. i heard it all. it wasn't gruesome, as you might imagine. i spoke with lynds the whole time. it was sort of a resigned horror. the initial countdown went off without a hitch and the hissing of the escape valves on the carrier rocket changed to a sound that hammered the sky apart as it lifted off the pad. "well, she's off," somebody said. "let's don't count chickens," bannister said tautly. wellington g. bannister worked for the germans on v- s. he is the chief executive of technology in the section to which we were assigned at that time. he is the world's leading expert on exotic fuel rocket projectile systems, rocket design, and a brilliant electronic engineer as well. high enough subordinates call him wellie. pilots always called him professor bannister. i issued the report that was read in closed session in london in which i accused bannister of murdering lynds. that's how come i'm here now. i was cashiered out, just short of a general court martial. that's one of the nice parts about truly classified work. they can't make you out an idiot in public. living on a boat in the mediterranean is far nicer than looking up at the earth through a porthole in a smashed up ship on the moon, you must admit. well, bannister could have well counted chickens on that launching. the first, second and third stages fired off perfectly, and within fourteen minutes the capsule detached into orbit just under escape velocity. the orbit was enormously far out. they let lynds complete a single orbit, then fired the capsule's rockets. he ran off tangential to orbit at escape velocity on a pattern that would probably run in a straight path to infinity. in fact, the capsule is probably still on its way, and as i said, it's six years now. after four minutes, the return vehicle was activated and as it broke away from the capsule, lynds blacked out for twenty seconds. that was the only time i was out of direct contact with him after he went into orbit. * * * * * "now do you understand about the manual controls?" bannister said. "he'll come out of it in less than a minute." "one can never be sure." "there's still no reason why you can't use duplicate control systems." "with a switch-off on the automatic, if they fail?" "yes. if for nothing more than to give a man a chance to save his own neck." "they won't fail." "the simplest things fail, bannister. campbell was killed in a far less elaborate way." he looked at me. "campbell? oh, yes. the landing over the reef. i had nothing to do with that." "you designed the power shut-off that failed." "improper servicing. a simple mechanical failure." "or the inability of a mechanism to compensate. the wind shifted after computer coordination. a pilot can feel it. your instruments can't. there was no failure, there. the shut-off worked perfectly and campbell was killed because of it." i watched the tracking screen, listened to the high keening noises coming from the receivers. the computers clicked rapidly, feeding out triangulated data on the positions of the escape vehicle and the capsule. the capsule had been diverted from its path slightly by reaction to the vehicle's ejection. its speed, however, was increasing as it moved farther out. the vehicle with lynds was in a path parabolic to the capsule, almost like the start of an orbit, but at a fantastic distance. he was, of course, traveling at escape velocity or better, and you do not orbit at escape velocity. * * * * * "harry. harry, how long was i out?" we heard lynds' voice come alive suddenly through the crackling static. "hello, dennis. listen to me. how are you?" "i'm fine, harry. what's wrong? how long was i out?" "nothing is wrong. you were out less than half a minute. the ejection gear worked perfectly." "that's good." the tension left his voice and he settled back to a checking and rechecking of instruments, reactions and what he would see. they activated the scanner. the transmitting equipment brought us a view that was little more than a spotty blackness. but i think the equipment was not working properly. you see, what lynds said did not quite match what we saw. they later used the recording of his voice together with an affidavit sworn to by a technician that our receiver was operating perfectly, as evidence in my hearing. they proved, in their own way, that lynds had suffered continual delirium after blacking out. the speed, they said, was the cause. it became known as danger v. nobody ever bothered to explain why i never encountered the phenomenon of danger v. it became official record, and my experience was the deviant. it was bannister's alibi. we watched the spotty blackness on the screen and listened to lynds. "harry, i can see it all pretty well now," he began. "there's slight spin on this bomb so it comes and goes. about sixty second revolutions. nice and slow. terribly nauseating to look at. but i'm feeling fine now, better than fine. give me a stick and i'll move the earth. who was it said that? clever fellow. you say i was out about half a minute. that makes it about three more minutes until bannister's controls are supposed to bring me back." "yes, dennis, but what do you see? do you hear me? what do you see?" "let me tell you something, harry," he said. "they aren't going to work. they're not wrecked or anything. i just know they aren't worth sweet damn all. like when campbell had it. he knew it was going to happen. you can trust the machines just so long. after that, you're batty to lay anything on them at all. but can you see the screen? there it is again. we're turning into view. i can see the earth now. the whole of it." there was silence then. we looked at the screen but saw only the spotty blackness. i looked from the screen to the speaker overhead, then back at the screen. i looked about the control room. everyone was doing his work. the instruments all were working. the computers were clicking and nobody looked particularly alarmed, except one other pilot who was there too, forrest. maybe forrest and i pictured ourselves in lynds' place. maybe we both had the same premonitions. maybe we both held the same dislike and distrust of the rest of them. maybe a lot of things, but one thing was sure. the papers would never get hold of this story, and because of that, bannister and the rest of them didn't really care a hang about lynds or me or forrest or any of the others that might be up there. * * * * * it seemed an age passed until we heard lynds again. the tape later showed it was no more than half a minute. "bannister, can you hear me?" he said suddenly. "bannister, do you know what it feels like to be tied into a barrel and tossed over victoria falls? do you? that's what it's like out here. not that you care a damn. you'll never come up here, you're smart enough for that. give me a paddle, bannister, that's what i want. it's no more than a man in a barrel deserves. it's black out here, black and there's nothing to stand on. the earth looks like a flat circle of light and very big, but it doesn't make me feel any better. these buggies of yours won't be any use to anybody until you let the pilot do his own work. i crashed once, in a gypsy moth, with my controls all shot away by an overenthusiastic russian fighter pilot near the turkish border. coming down, i felt the way i do now. "look at the instruments and remember, bannister. my reflexes are perfect. there's nothing wrong with me. i could split rails with an axe now, if i had an axe. an axe or a paddle. harry, i'm not getting back down in one piece. somehow, i know it. don't you let them do it to anyone else unless there are manual controls from the ejection onwards. don't do it. this isn't just nosing into the slot, over the reef between the town and the island and letting go then, and beginning to sweat. this is much more, harry. this is bloody frightening. are the three minutes up yet? my stomach is crawling at the thought of you pushing that button and nothing happening. listen, bannister, you're not getting me down, so forget any assurances. i hope they never let you put anybody else up here like this. it's black again. we've swung away." bannister looked at my eyes. "it's almost time," he said. eight seconds later they pushed the button. perhaps it would have been better if nothing happened then. but that part worked. they got him out of the parabolic curve and headed back down. they fired reverse rockets that slowed him. they threw him into a broad equatorial orbit and let him ride. it took over an hour to be sure he was in orbit. i admired them that, but began to hate them very much. they ascertained the orbit and began new calculations. here was where he should have had the controls on in. * * * * * the escape vehicle was a small delta shaped craft. the wings, if one could call them that, spanned just under seven feet. they planned to bring him down in a pattern based on very orthodox principles of flight. there remained sufficient fuel for a twelve second burst of power. this would decelerate the craft to a point where it would drop from orbit and begin a descent. i later utilized the same pattern by letting down easy into the atmosphere after the power ran down and sort of bouncing off the upper layers several times to further decelerate and finally gliding down through it at about mach , decelerating rapidly then, almost too rapidly, and finally passing through the exosphere into the ionosphere. the true stratosphere begins between sixty and seventy miles up, and once you've passed through that level and not burnt up, the rest of it is with the pilot and his craft. it takes hours. i came down gradually, approaching within striking distance west of australia, then finally nosed in and took my chance on stretching it to one of the ten mile strips for a powerless landing. i did it in australia. but if i had not had orthodox controls, had i even gotten that far, i would have churned up a good part of the coral sea between sydney and new zealand. you see, you've got to feel your way down through all that. that's the better part of flying, the "feel" of it. automatic controls don't possess that particular human element. and let me tell you, no matter what they call it now--space probing, astronautics or what have you--it's still flying. and it's still men that will have to do it, escape velocity or no. like they talk about push-button wars, but they keep training infantry and basing grand strategy on the infantry penetration tactics all down through the history of warfare. they call clausewitz obsolete today, but they still learn him very thoroughly. i once discussed it with bannister. he didn't like clausewitz. perhaps because clausewitz was a german before they became nazis. clausewitz would not look too kindly on a commander whose concern with a battle precluded his concern for his men. he valued men very highly. they were the greatest instrument then. they still are today. that's why i can't really make too much out of the monkey. i feel pretty rotten about him and all that. but the monkey up there means a man someplace is still down here. [illustration] anyway, after lynds completed six orbital revolutions, they began the deceleration and descent. the whole affair, as i said, was very solidly based on technical determinations of stresses, heat limits, patterns of glide, and bannister's absolute conviction that nothing would let go. the bitter part was that it let go just short of where lynds might have made it. he was through the bad part of it, the primary and secondary decelerations, the stretches where you think if you don't fry from the heat, the ship will melt apart under you, and the buffeting in the upper levels when ionospheric resistance really starts to take hold. and believe me, the buffeting that you know about, when you approach mach in an after-burnered machine, is a piece of cake to the buffeting at mach in a rocket when you hit the atmosphere, any level of atmosphere. the meteorites that strike our atmosphere don't just burn up, we know that now. they also get knocked to bits. and they're solid iron. lynds was about seventy miles up, his velocity down to a point or two over mach , in level flight heading east over the south atlantic. from about that altitude, manual controls are essential, not just to make one feel better, but because you really need them. the automated controls did not have any tolerance. you don't understand, do you? look, when one flies and wants to alter direction, one applies pressure to the control surfaces, altering their positions, redirecting the flow of air over the wings, the rudder and so forth. now, in applying pressure, you occasionally have to ease up or perhaps press a bit more, as the case may be, to counteract turbulence, shift in air current, or any of a million other circumstances that can occur. that all depends on touch. it's what makes some flyers live longer than others. it's like the drag on a fishing reel. you set it tight or loose according to the weight of the fish you're playing. when you reel in, the line can't become too tight or it will snap, so you have the drag. it's really quite ingenious. it lets the fish pull out line as you reel in. it's the degree of tolerance that makes it work well as an instrument. in flying, the degree of tolerance, the compensating factor is in man's hands. in the atmosphere, it's too unpredictable for any other way. * * * * * well, they calculated to set the dive brakes at twelve degrees at the point where lynds was. lynds saw it all. "this is more like my cup of tea," he said at that point. "harry, the sky is a strange kind of purple black up here." "they're going to activate the brakes, den," i said. "what's it like?" "not yet, harry. not yet." i looked at bannister. he noted the chart, his finger under a line of calculations. "the precise rate of speed and the exact instant of calculation, captain jackson," bannister said. "would you care to question anything further." "he said not yet," i told him. "therefore you would say not yet?" "i would say this. he's about in the stratosphere. he knows where he is now. he's one of the finest pilots in the world. he'll feel the right moment better than your instruments." "ridiculous. fourteen seconds. stand by." "wait," i said. "and if we wait, where does he come down, i ask you? you cannot calculate haphazardly, by feel. there are only four points at which the landing can be made. it must be now." i flipped the communications switch, still looking at bannister. "this is it, den. they're coming out now." "yes, i see them. what are they set for?" "twelve degrees." "i'm dropping like a stone, harry. tell them to ease up on the brake. bannister, do you hear me? bring them in or they'll tear off. this is not flying, anymore." his voice sounded as if he was having difficulty breathing. "harry," he called. they held the brakes at twelve degrees, of course. the calculations dictated that. they tore away in fifteen seconds. "bannister! they're gone," dennis shouted. "they're gone, bannister, you butcher. now what do you say?" bannister's face didn't flinch. he watched the controls steadily. "try half-degree rudder in either direction," i said. bannister looked at me for a second. "his direction is vertical, captain. would you attempt a rudder manipulation in a vertical dive?" "not a terminal velocity drive, bannister. he said it's not flying anymore. lord knows which way he's falling." "so?" "so i'd try anything. you've got to slow him." "or return him to level flight." "at this speed?" we both looked at the controls now. the ship was accelerating again, and dropping so rapidly i couldn't follow the revolutions counter. "engage the ailerons," bannister ordered. "point seven degrees, negative." dennis came back on. "harry, what are you doing? the ship is falling apart. the ailerons. it won't help. listen, harry, you've got to be careful. the flight configuration is so tenuous, anything can turn this thing into a falling stone. it had to happen, i knew, but i don't want to believe it now. this sitting here with that noise getting louder. it's spiraling out at me, getting bigger. now it's smaller again. i'm afraid, harry. the ailerons, harry, they're gone. very tenuous. they're gone. i can't see anything. the screens are black. no more shaking. no more noise. it's quiet and i hear myself breathing, harry. harry, the wrist straps on the suits are too tight. and the helmet, when you want to scratch your face, you can go mad. and harry--" * * * * * that was the end of the communications. something in the transmitter must have gone. they never found out. he didn't hit until almost a minute later, and nobody ever saw it. the tracking screen followed him down very precisely and very silently. there was no retrieving anything, of course. you don't conduct salvage operations in the middle of the south atlantic. * * * * * i turned in my report after that. no one had asked for it, so it went through unorthodox channels. it took an awfully long time and my suspension did not become effective until after the second shot. i was the pilot on that one, you know. i got them to install the duplicate controls, over the insistence by bannister that resorting to them, even in the event that it became necessary, would prove nothing. he even went as far as to talk about load redistribution electric control design. as a matter of fact, i thought he had me for a while, but i think in the end they decided to try to avoid the waste of another vehicle. at least, that might be the kind of argument that would carry weight. the vehicles were enormously expensive, you realize. i made it all right, as i said. it took me nine hours and then some, once they dropped me from orbit. i switched off the automatic controls at the point where the dive brakes were to have been engaged. this time, the brakes had not responded to the auto controls and they did not open at all. i found out readily enough why lynds was against opening them at that point. metal fatigue had brought the ship to a point where even a shift in my position could cause it to stop flying. i came down in australia and the braking 'chute tore right out when i released it. i skidded nine miles. a royal australian air force helicopter picked me up two hours later. i learned of the suspension while in the hospital. i didn't get out until just in time to get to london for the hearing. my evidence and forrest's, and lynds' recorded voice all served to no purpose. you don't become a hero by proving an expert wrong. it doesn't work that way. it would not do to have bannister looked upon as a bad gambit, not after all they went through to stay in power after putting him in. the reason, after all, was all in the way you looked at it. and a human element could always be overlooked in the cause of human endeavor. especially when the constituents never find out about it. * * * * * after that, they started experimentation with powered returns. the atmosphere has been conquered, and now there remained the last stage. they never did it successfully. they couldn't. but it did not really matter. what it all proved was that they did not really need pilots for what bannister was after. he had started with a premise of testing man's reactions to space probes under actual conditions, but what he was actually doing was testing space probes alone, with man as a necessary evil to contend with to give the project a reason. it was all like putting a man in a racing car traveling flat out on the salts in bonneville, utah. he'll survive, of course. but put the man in the car with no controls for him to operate and then run the thing completely through remote transmission, and you've eliminated the purpose for the man. survival as an afterthought might be a thing to test, if you didn't care a hoot about man. survival for its own sake doesn't mean anything unless i've missed the whole point of living, somewhere along the line. bannister once described to me the firing of a prototype v- . the firing took place after sunset. when the rocket had achieved a certain altitude, it suddenly took on a brilliant yellow glow. it had passed beyond the shadow of the earth and risen into the sunlight. here was bannister's passion. he was out to establish the feasibility of putting a rocket vehicle on the moon. it could have a man in it, or a monkey. both were just as useless. neither could fly the thing back, even if it did get down in one piece. it could tell us nothing about the moon we didn't already know. getting it down in one piece, of course, was the reason why they gave bannister the project to begin with. so bannister is now a triumphant hero, despite the societies for the prevention of cruelty to animals. but nobody understood it. bannister put a vehicle on the moon. we were the first to do it. we proved something by doing nothing. perhaps the situation of true classified information is not too healthy a one, at that. you see, we've had rockets with that kind of power for an awfully long time now. maybe some of them know what he's up to. when i think about that, i really become frightened. * * * * * the monkey, i suppose, is dead. the most we can hope for is that he died fast. it's very like another kind of miserable hope i felt once, a long time ago, for a lot of people who could be offered little more than hope for a fast death, because of something somebody was trying to prove. there's some consolation this time. it's really only a monkey. this i know, they'll never publish a picture of the vehicle. someone might start to wonder why the cabin seems equipped to carry a man. * * * * * when you're out in a clear night in summer, the sky looks very friendly, the moon a big pleasant place where nothing at all can happen to you. the vehicle used in project argus had a porthole. i can't imagine why. the monkey must have been able to see out the porthole. did he notice, i wonder, whether the earth looks friendly from out there. the end * * * * * proofreaders language an introduction to the study of speech by edward sapir preface this little book aims to give a certain perspective on the subject of language rather than to assemble facts about it. it has little to say of the ultimate psychological basis of speech and gives only enough of the actual descriptive or historical facts of particular languages to illustrate principles. its main purpose is to show what i conceive language to be, what is its variability in place and time, and what are its relations to other fundamental human interests--the problem of thought, the nature of the historical process, race, culture, art. the perspective thus gained will be useful, i hope, both to linguistic students and to the outside public that is half inclined to dismiss linguistic notions as the private pedantries of essentially idle minds. knowledge of the wider relations of their science is essential to professional students of language if they are to be saved from a sterile and purely technical attitude. among contemporary writers of influence on liberal thought croce is one of the very few who have gained an understanding of the fundamental significance of language. he has pointed out its close relation to the problem of art. i am deeply indebted to him for this insight. quite aside from their intrinsic interest, linguistic forms and historical processes have the greatest possible diagnostic value for the understanding of some of the more difficult and elusive problems in the psychology of thought and in the strange, cumulative drift in the life of the human spirit that we call history or progress or evolution. this value depends chiefly on the unconscious and unrationalized nature of linguistic structure. i have avoided most of the technical terms and all of the technical symbols of the linguistic academy. there is not a single diacritical mark in the book. where possible, the discussion is based on english material. it was necessary, however, for the scheme of the book, which includes a consideration of the protean forms in which human thought has found expression, to quote some exotic instances. for these no apology seems necessary. owing to limitations of space i have had to leave out many ideas or principles that i should have liked to touch upon. other points have had to be barely hinted at in a sentence or flying phrase. nevertheless, i trust that enough has here been brought together to serve as a stimulus for the more fundamental study of a neglected field. i desire to express my cordial appreciation of the friendly advice and helpful suggestions of a number of friends who have read the work in manuscript, notably profs. a.l. kroeber and r.h. lowie of the university of california, prof. w.d. wallis of reed college, and prof. j. zeitlin of the university of illinois. edward sapir. ottawa, ont., april , . contents preface chapter i. introductory: language defined language a cultural, not a biologically inherited, function. futility of interjectional and sound-imitative theories of the origin of speech. definition of language. the psycho-physical basis of speech. concepts and language. is thought possible without language? abbreviations and transfers of the speech process. the universality of language. ii. the elements of speech sounds not properly elements of speech. words and significant parts of words (radical elements, grammatical elements). types of words. the word a formal, not a functional unit. the word has a real psychological existence. the sentence. the cognitive, volitional, and emotional aspects of speech. feeling-tones of words. iii. the sounds of language the vast number of possible sounds. the articulating organs and their share in the production of speech sounds: lungs, glottal cords, nose, mouth and its parts. vowel articulations. how and where consonants are articulated. the phonetic habits of a language. the "values" of sounds. phonetic patterns. iv. form in language: grammatical processes formal processes as distinct from grammatical functions. intercrossing of the two points of view. six main types of grammatical process. word sequence as a method. compounding of radical elements. affixing: prefixes and suffixes; infixes. internal vocalic change; consonantal change. reduplication. functional variations of stress; of pitch. v. form in language: grammatical concepts analysis of a typical english sentence. types of concepts illustrated by it. inconsistent expression of analogous concepts. how the same sentence may be expressed in other languages with striking differences in the selection and grouping of concepts. essential and non-essential concepts. the mixing of essential relational concepts with secondary ones of more concrete order. form for form's sake. classification of linguistic concepts: basic or concrete, derivational, concrete relational, pure relational. tendency for these types of concepts to flow into each other. categories expressed in various grammatical systems. order and stress as relating principles in the sentence. concord. parts of speech: no absolute classification possible; noun and verb. vi. types of linguistic structure the possibility of classifying languages. difficulties. classification into form-languages and formless languages not valid. classification according to formal processes used not practicable. classification according to degree of synthesis. "inflective" and "agglutinative." fusion and symbolism as linguistic techniques. agglutination. "inflective" a confused term. threefold classification suggested: what types of concepts are expressed? what is the prevailing technique? what is the degree of synthesis? four fundamental conceptual types. examples tabulated. historical test of the validity of the suggested conceptual classification. vii. language as a historical product: drift variability of language. individual and dialectic variations. time variation or "drift." how dialects arise. linguistic stocks. direction or "slope" of linguistic drift. tendencies illustrated in an english sentence. hesitations of usage as symptomatic of the direction of drift. leveling tendencies in english. weakening of case elements. tendency to fixed position in the sentence. drift toward the invariable word. viii. language as a historical product: phonetic law parallels in drift in related languages. phonetic law as illustrated in the history of certain english and german vowels and consonants. regularity of phonetic law. shifting of sounds without destruction of phonetic pattern. difficulty of explaining the nature of phonetic drifts. vowel mutation in english and german. morphological influence on phonetic change. analogical levelings to offset irregularities produced by phonetic laws. new morphological features due to phonetic change. ix. how languages influence each other linguistic influences due to cultural contact. borrowing of words. resistances to borrowing. phonetic modification of borrowed words. phonetic interinfluencings of neighboring languages. morphological borrowings. morphological resemblances as vestiges of genetic relationship. x. language, race, and culture naïve tendency to consider linguistic, racial, and cultural groupings as congruent. race and language need not correspond. cultural and linguistic boundaries not identical. coincidences between linguistic cleavages and those of language and culture due to historical, not intrinsic psychological, causes. language does not in any deep sense "reflect" culture. xl language and literature language as the material or medium of literature. literature may move on the generalized linguistic plane or may be inseparable from specific linguistic conditions. language as a collective art. necessary esthetic advantages or limitations in any language. style as conditioned by inherent features of the language. prosody as conditioned by the phonetic dynamics of a language. index i introductory: language defined speech is so familiar a feature of daily life that we rarely pause to define it. it seems as natural to man as walking, and only less so than breathing. yet it needs but a moment's reflection to convince us that this naturalness of speech is but an illusory feeling. the process of acquiring speech is, in sober fact, an utterly different sort of thing from the process of learning to walk. in the case of the latter function, culture, in other words, the traditional body of social usage, is not seriously brought into play. the child is individually equipped, by the complex set of factors that we term biological heredity, to make all the needed muscular and nervous adjustments that result in walking. indeed, the very conformation of these muscles and of the appropriate parts of the nervous system may be said to be primarily adapted to the movements made in walking and in similar activities. in a very real sense the normal human being is predestined to walk, not because his elders will assist him to learn the art, but because his organism is prepared from birth, or even from the moment of conception, to take on all those expenditures of nervous energy and all those muscular adaptations that result in walking. to put it concisely, walking is an inherent, biological function of man. not so language. it is of course true that in a certain sense the individual is predestined to talk, but that is due entirely to the circumstance that he is born not merely in nature, but in the lap of a society that is certain, reasonably certain, to lead him to its traditions. eliminate society and there is every reason to believe that he will learn to walk, if, indeed, he survives at all. but it is just as certain that he will never learn to talk, that is, to communicate ideas according to the traditional system of a particular society. or, again, remove the new-born individual from the social environment into which he has come and transplant him to an utterly alien one. he will develop the art of walking in his new environment very much as he would have developed it in the old. but his speech will be completely at variance with the speech of his native environment. walking, then, is a general human activity that varies only within circumscribed limits as we pass from individual to individual. its variability is involuntary and purposeless. speech is a human activity that varies without assignable limit as we pass from social group to social group, because it is a purely historical heritage of the group, the product of long-continued social usage. it varies as all creative effort varies--not as consciously, perhaps, but none the less as truly as do the religions, the beliefs, the customs, and the arts of different peoples. walking is an organic, an instinctive, function (not, of course, itself an instinct); speech is a non-instinctive, acquired, "cultural" function. there is one fact that has frequently tended to prevent the recognition of language as a merely conventional system of sound symbols, that has seduced the popular mind into attributing to it an instinctive basis that it does not really possess. this is the well-known observation that under the stress of emotion, say of a sudden twinge of pain or of unbridled joy, we do involuntarily give utterance to sounds that the hearer interprets as indicative of the emotion itself. but there is all the difference in the world between such involuntary expression of feeling and the normal type of communication of ideas that is speech. the former kind of utterance is indeed instinctive, but it is non-symbolic; in other words, the sound of pain or the sound of joy does not, as such, indicate the emotion, it does not stand aloof, as it were, and announce that such and such an emotion is being felt. what it does is to serve as a more or less automatic overflow of the emotional energy; in a sense, it is part and parcel of the emotion itself. moreover, such instinctive cries hardly constitute communication in any strict sense. they are not addressed to any one, they are merely overheard, if heard at all, as the bark of a dog, the sound of approaching footsteps, or the rustling of the wind is heard. if they convey certain ideas to the hearer, it is only in the very general sense in which any and every sound or even any phenomenon in our environment may be said to convey an idea to the perceiving mind. if the involuntary cry of pain which is conventionally represented by "oh!" be looked upon as a true speech symbol equivalent to some such idea as "i am in great pain," it is just as allowable to interpret the appearance of clouds as an equivalent symbol that carries the definite message "it is likely to rain." a definition of language, however, that is so extended as to cover every type of inference becomes utterly meaningless. the mistake must not be made of identifying our conventional interjections (our oh! and ah! and sh!) with the instinctive cries themselves. these interjections are merely conventional fixations of the natural sounds. they therefore differ widely in various languages in accordance with the specific phonetic genius of each of these. as such they may be considered an integral portion of speech, in the properly cultural sense of the term, being no more identical with the instinctive cries themselves than such words as "cuckoo" and "kill-deer" are identical with the cries of the birds they denote or than rossini's treatment of a storm in the overture to "william tell" is in fact a storm. in other words, the interjections and sound-imitative words of normal speech are related to their natural prototypes as is art, a purely social or cultural thing, to nature. it may be objected that, though the interjections differ somewhat as we pass from language to language, they do nevertheless offer striking family resemblances and may therefore be looked upon as having grown up out of a common instinctive base. but their case is nowise different from that, say, of the varying national modes of pictorial representation. a japanese picture of a hill both differs from and resembles a typical modern european painting of the same kind of hill. both are suggested by and both "imitate" the same natural feature. neither the one nor the other is the same thing as, or, in any intelligible sense, a direct outgrowth of, this natural feature. the two modes of representation are not identical because they proceed from differing historical traditions, are executed with differing pictorial techniques. the interjections of japanese and english are, just so, suggested by a common natural prototype, the instinctive cries, and are thus unavoidably suggestive of each other. they differ, now greatly, now but little, because they are builded out of historically diverse materials or techniques, the respective linguistic traditions, phonetic systems, speech habits of the two peoples. yet the instinctive cries as such are practically identical for all humanity, just as the human skeleton or nervous system is to all intents and purposes a "fixed," that is, an only slightly and "accidentally" variable, feature of man's organism. interjections are among the least important of speech elements. their discussion is valuable mainly because it can be shown that even they, avowedly the nearest of all language sounds to instinctive utterance, are only superficially of an instinctive nature. were it therefore possible to demonstrate that the whole of language is traceable, in its ultimate historical and psychological foundations, to the interjections, it would still not follow that language is an instinctive activity. but, as a matter of fact, all attempts so to explain the origin of speech have been fruitless. there is no tangible evidence, historical or otherwise, tending to show that the mass of speech elements and speech processes has evolved out of the interjections. these are a very small and functionally insignificant proportion of the vocabulary of language; at no time and in no linguistic province that we have record of do we see a noticeable tendency towards their elaboration into the primary warp and woof of language. they are never more, at best, than a decorative edging to the ample, complex fabric. what applies to the interjections applies with even greater force to the sound-imitative words. such words as "whippoorwill," "to mew," "to caw" are in no sense natural sounds that man has instinctively or automatically reproduced. they are just as truly creations of the human mind, flights of the human fancy, as anything else in language. they do not directly grow out of nature, they are suggested by it and play with it. hence the onomatopoetic theory of the origin of speech, the theory that would explain all speech as a gradual evolution from sounds of an imitative character, really brings us no nearer to the instinctive level than is language as we know it to-day. as to the theory itself, it is scarcely more credible than its interjectional counterpart. it is true that a number of words which we do not now feel to have a sound-imitative value can be shown to have once had a phonetic form that strongly suggests their origin as imitations of natural sounds. such is the english word "to laugh." for all that, it is quite impossible to show, nor does it seem intrinsically reasonable to suppose, that more than a negligible proportion of the elements of speech or anything at all of its formal apparatus is derivable from an onomatopoetic source. however much we may be disposed on general principles to assign a fundamental importance in the languages of primitive peoples to the imitation of natural sounds, the actual fact of the matter is that these languages show no particular preference for imitative words. among the most primitive peoples of aboriginal america, the athabaskan tribes of the mackenzie river speak languages in which such words seem to be nearly or entirely absent, while they are used freely enough in languages as sophisticated as english and german. such an instance shows how little the essential nature of speech is concerned with the mere imitation of things. the way is now cleared for a serviceable definition of language. language is a purely human and non-instinctive method of communicating ideas, emotions, and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols. these symbols are, in the first instance, auditory and they are produced by the so-called "organs of speech." there is no discernible instinctive basis in human speech as such, however much instinctive expressions and the natural environment may serve as a stimulus for the development of certain elements of speech, however much instinctive tendencies, motor and other, may give a predetermined range or mold to linguistic expression. such human or animal communication, if "communication" it may be called, as is brought about by involuntary, instinctive cries is not, in our sense, language at all. i have just referred to the "organs of speech," and it would seem at first blush that this is tantamount to an admission that speech itself is an instinctive, biologically predetermined activity. we must not be misled by the mere term. there are, properly speaking, no organs of speech; there are only organs that are incidentally useful in the production of speech sounds. the lungs, the larynx, the palate, the nose, the tongue, the teeth, and the lips, are all so utilized, but they are no more to be thought of as primary organs of speech than are the fingers to be considered as essentially organs of piano-playing or the knees as organs of prayer. speech is not a simple activity that is carried on by one or more organs biologically adapted to the purpose. it is an extremely complex and ever-shifting network of adjustments--in the brain, in the nervous system, and in the articulating and auditory organs--tending towards the desired end of communication. the lungs developed, roughly speaking, in connection with the necessary biological function known as breathing; the nose, as an organ of smell; the teeth, as organs useful in breaking up food before it was ready for digestion. if, then, these and other organs are being constantly utilized in speech, it is only because any organ, once existent and in so far as it is subject to voluntary control, can be utilized by man for secondary purposes. physiologically, speech is an overlaid function, or, to be more precise, a group of overlaid functions. it gets what service it can out of organs and functions, nervous and muscular, that have come into being and are maintained for very different ends than its own. it is true that physiological psychologists speak of the localization of speech in the brain. this can only mean that the sounds of speech are localized in the auditory tract of the brain, or in some circumscribed portion of it, precisely as other classes of sounds are localized; and that the motor processes involved in speech (such as the movements of the glottal cords in the larynx, the movements of the tongue required to pronounce the vowels, lip movements required to articulate certain consonants, and numerous others) are localized in the motor tract precisely as are all other impulses to special motor activities. in the same way control is lodged in the visual tract of the brain over all those processes of visual recognition involved in reading. naturally the particular points or clusters of points of localization in the several tracts that refer to any element of language are connected in the brain by paths of association, so that the outward, or psycho-physical, aspect of language, is of a vast network of associated localizations in the brain and lower nervous tracts, the auditory localizations being without doubt the most fundamental of all for speech. however, a speechsound localized in the brain, even when associated with the particular movements of the "speech organs" that are required to produce it, is very far from being an element of language. it must be further associated with some element or group of elements of experience, say a visual image or a class of visual images or a feeling of relation, before it has even rudimentary linguistic significance. this "element" of experience is the content or "meaning" of the linguistic unit; the associated auditory, motor, and other cerebral processes that lie immediately back of the act of speaking and the act of hearing speech are merely a complicated symbol of or signal for these "meanings," of which more anon. we see therefore at once that language as such is not and cannot be definitely localized, for it consists of a peculiar symbolic relation--physiologically an arbitrary one--between all possible elements of consciousness on the one hand and certain selected elements localized in the auditory, motor, and other cerebral and nervous tracts on the other. if language can be said to be definitely "localized" in the brain, it is only in that general and rather useless sense in which all aspects of consciousness, all human interest and activity, may be said to be "in the brain." hence, we have no recourse but to accept language as a fully formed functional system within man's psychic or "spiritual" constitution. we cannot define it as an entity in psycho-physical terms alone, however much the psycho-physical basis is essential to its functioning in the individual. from the physiologist's or psychologist's point of view we may seem to be making an unwarrantable abstraction in desiring to handle the subject of speech without constant and explicit reference to that basis. however, such an abstraction is justifiable. we can profitably discuss the intention, the form, and the history of speech, precisely as we discuss the nature of any other phase of human culture--say art or religion--as an institutional or cultural entity, leaving the organic and psychological mechanisms back of it as something to be taken for granted. accordingly, it must be clearly understood that this introduction to the study of speech is not concerned with those aspects of physiology and of physiological psychology that underlie speech. our study of language is not to be one of the genesis and operation of a concrete mechanism; it is, rather, to be an inquiry into the function and form of the arbitrary systems of symbolism that we term languages. i have already pointed out that the essence of language consists in the assigning of conventional, voluntarily articulated, sounds, or of their equivalents, to the diverse elements of experience. the word "house" is not a linguistic fact if by it is meant merely the acoustic effect produced on the ear by its constituent consonants and vowels, pronounced in a certain order; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which make up the articulation of the word; nor the visual perception on the part of the hearer of this articulation; nor the visual perception of the word "house" on the written or printed page; nor the motor processes and tactile feelings which enter into the writing of the word; nor the memory of any or all of these experiences. it is only when these, and possibly still other, associated experiences are automatically associated with the image of a house that they begin to take on the nature of a symbol, a word, an element of language. but the mere fact of such an association is not enough. one might have heard a particular word spoken in an individual house under such impressive circumstances that neither the word nor the image of the house ever recur in consciousness without the other becoming present at the same time. this type of association does not constitute speech. the association must be a purely symbolic one; in other words, the word must denote, tag off, the image, must have no other significance than to serve as a counter to refer to it whenever it is necessary or convenient to do so. such an association, voluntary and, in a sense, arbitrary as it is, demands a considerable exercise of self-conscious attention. at least to begin with, for habit soon makes the association nearly as automatic as any and more rapid than most. but we have traveled a little too fast. were the symbol "house"--whether an auditory, motor, or visual experience or image--attached but to the single image of a particular house once seen, it might perhaps, by an indulgent criticism, be termed an element of speech, yet it is obvious at the outset that speech so constituted would have little or no value for purposes of communication. the world of our experiences must be enormously simplified and generalized before it is possible to make a symbolic inventory of all our experiences of things and relations; and this inventory is imperative before we can convey ideas. the elements of language, the symbols that ticket off experience, must therefore be associated with whole groups, delimited classes, of experience rather than with the single experiences themselves. only so is communication possible, for the single experience lodges in an individual consciousness and is, strictly speaking, incommunicable. to be communicated it needs to be referred to a class which is tacitly accepted by the community as an identity. thus, the single impression which i have had of a particular house must be identified with all my other impressions of it. further, my generalized memory or my "notion" of this house must be merged with the notions that all other individuals who have seen the house have formed of it. the particular experience that we started with has now been widened so as to embrace all possible impressions or images that sentient beings have formed or may form of the house in question. this first simplification of experience is at the bottom of a large number of elements of speech, the so-called proper nouns or names of single individuals or objects. it is, essentially, the type of simplification which underlies, or forms the crude subject of, history and art. but we cannot be content with this measure of reduction of the infinity of experience. we must cut to the bone of things, we must more or less arbitrarily throw whole masses of experience together as similar enough to warrant their being looked upon--mistakenly, but conveniently--as identical. this house and that house and thousands of other phenomena of like character are thought of as having enough in common, in spite of great and obvious differences of detail, to be classed under the same heading. in other words, the speech element "house" is the symbol, first and foremost, not of a single perception, nor even of the notion of a particular object, but of a "concept," in other words, of a convenient capsule of thought that embraces thousands of distinct experiences and that is ready to take in thousands more. if the single significant elements of speech are the symbols of concepts, the actual flow of speech may be interpreted as a record of the setting of these concepts into mutual relations. the question has often been raised whether thought is possible without speech; further, if speech and thought be not but two facets of the same psychic process. the question is all the more difficult because it has been hedged about by misunderstandings. in the first place, it is well to observe that whether or not thought necessitates symbolism, that is speech, the flow of language itself is not always indicative of thought. we have seen that the typical linguistic element labels a concept. it does not follow from this that the use to which language is put is always or even mainly conceptual. we are not in ordinary life so much concerned with concepts as such as with concrete particularities and specific relations. when i say, for instance, "i had a good breakfast this morning," it is clear that i am not in the throes of laborious thought, that what i have to transmit is hardly more than a pleasurable memory symbolically rendered in the grooves of habitual expression. each element in the sentence defines a separate concept or conceptual relation or both combined, but the sentence as a whole has no conceptual significance whatever. it is somewhat as though a dynamo capable of generating enough power to run an elevator were operated almost exclusively to feed an electric door-bell. the parallel is more suggestive than at first sight appears. language may be looked upon as an instrument capable of running a gamut of psychic uses. its flow not only parallels that of the inner content of consciousness, but parallels it on different levels, ranging from the state of mind that is dominated by particular images to that in which abstract concepts and their relations are alone at the focus of attention and which is ordinarily termed reasoning. thus the outward form only of language is constant; its inner meaning, its psychic value or intensity, varies freely with attention or the selective interest of the mind, also, needless to say, with the mind's general development. from the point of view of language, thought may be defined as the highest latent or potential content of speech, the content that is obtained by interpreting each of the elements in the flow of language as possessed of its very fullest conceptual value. from this it follows at once that language and thought are not strictly coterminous. at best language can but be the outward facet of thought on the highest, most generalized, level of symbolic expression. to put our viewpoint somewhat differently, language is primarily a pre-rational function. it humbly works up to the thought that is latent in, that may eventually be read into, its classifications and its forms; it is not, as is generally but naïvely assumed, the final label put upon, the finished thought. most people, asked if they can think without speech, would probably answer, "yes, but it is not easy for me to do so. still i know it can be done." language is but a garment! but what if language is not so much a garment as a prepared road or groove? it is, indeed, in the highest degree likely that language is an instrument originally put to uses lower than the conceptual plane and that thought arises as a refined interpretation of its content. the product grows, in other words, with the instrument, and thought may be no more conceivable, in its genesis and daily practice, without speech than is mathematical reasoning practicable without the lever of an appropriate mathematical symbolism. no one believes that even the most difficult mathematical proposition is inherently dependent on an arbitrary set of symbols, but it is impossible to suppose that the human mind is capable of arriving at or holding such a proposition without the symbolism. the writer, for one, is strongly of the opinion that the feeling entertained by so many that they can think, or even reason, without language is an illusion. the illusion seems to be due to a number of factors. the simplest of these is the failure to distinguish between imagery and thought. as a matter of fact, no sooner do we try to put an image into conscious relation with another than we find ourselves slipping into a silent flow of words. thought may be a natural domain apart from the artificial one of speech, but speech would seem to be the only road we know of that leads to it. a still more fruitful source of the illusive feeling that language may be dispensed with in thought is the common failure to realize that language is not identical with its auditory symbolism. the auditory symbolism may be replaced, point for point, by a motor or by a visual symbolism (many people can read, for instance, in a purely visual sense, that is, without the intermediating link of an inner flow of the auditory images that correspond to the printed or written words) or by still other, more subtle and elusive, types of transfer that are not so easy to define. hence the contention that one thinks without language merely because he is not aware of a coexisting auditory imagery is very far indeed from being a valid one. one may go so far as to suspect that the symbolic expression of thought may in some cases run along outside the fringe of the conscious mind, so that the feeling of a free, nonlinguistic stream of thought is for minds of a certain type a relatively, but only a relatively, justified one. psycho-physically, this would mean that the auditory or equivalent visual or motor centers in the brain, together with the appropriate paths of association, that are the cerebral equivalent of speech, are touched off so lightly during the process of thought as not to rise into consciousness at all. this would be a limiting case--thought riding lightly on the submerged crests of speech, instead of jogging along with it, hand in hand. the modern psychology has shown us how powerfully symbolism is at work in the unconscious mind. it is therefore easier to understand at the present time than it would have been twenty years ago that the most rarefied thought may be but the conscious counterpart of an unconscious linguistic symbolism. one word more as to the relation between language and thought. the point of view that we have developed does not by any means preclude the possibility of the growth of speech being in a high degree dependent on the development of thought. we may assume that language arose pre-rationally--just how and on what precise level of mental activity we do not know--but we must not imagine that a highly developed system of speech symbols worked itself out before the genesis of distinct concepts and of thinking, the handling of concepts. we must rather imagine that thought processes set in, as a kind of psychic overflow, almost at the beginning of linguistic expression; further, that the concept, once defined, necessarily reacted on the life of its linguistic symbol, encouraging further linguistic growth. we see this complex process of the interaction of language and thought actually taking place under our eyes. the instrument makes possible the product, the product refines the instrument. the birth of a new concept is invariably foreshadowed by a more or less strained or extended use of old linguistic material; the concept does not attain to individual and independent life until it has found a distinctive linguistic embodiment. in most cases the new symbol is but a thing wrought from linguistic material already in existence in ways mapped out by crushingly despotic precedents. as soon as the word is at hand, we instinctively feel, with something of a sigh of relief, that the concept is ours for the handling. not until we own the symbol do we feel that we hold a key to the immediate knowledge or understanding of the concept. would we be so ready to die for "liberty," to struggle for "ideals," if the words themselves were not ringing within us? and the word, as we know, is not only a key; it may also be a fetter. language is primarily an auditory system of symbols. in so far as it is articulated it is also a motor system, but the motor aspect of speech is clearly secondary to the auditory. in normal individuals the impulse to speech first takes effect in the sphere of auditory imagery and is then transmitted to the motor nerves that control the organs of speech. the motor processes and the accompanying motor feelings are not, however, the end, the final resting point. they are merely a means and a control leading to auditory perception in both speaker and hearer. communication, which is the very object of speech, is successfully effected only when the hearer's auditory perceptions are translated into the appropriate and intended flow of imagery or thought or both combined. hence the cycle of speech, in so far as we may look upon it as a purely external instrument, begins and ends in the realm of sounds. the concordance between the initial auditory imagery and the final auditory perceptions is the social seal or warrant of the successful issue of the process. as we have already seen, the typical course of this process may undergo endless modifications or transfers into equivalent systems without thereby losing its essential formal characteristics. the most important of these modifications is the abbreviation of the speech process involved in thinking. this has doubtless many forms, according to the structural or functional peculiarities of the individual mind. the least modified form is that known as "talking to one's self" or "thinking aloud." here the speaker and the hearer are identified in a single person, who may be said to communicate with himself. more significant is the still further abbreviated form in which the sounds of speech are not articulated at all. to this belong all the varieties of silent speech and of normal thinking. the auditory centers alone may be excited; or the impulse to linguistic expression may be communicated as well to the motor nerves that communicate with the organs of speech but be inhibited either in the muscles of these organs or at some point in the motor nerves themselves; or, possibly, the auditory centers may be only slightly, if at all, affected, the speech process manifesting itself directly in the motor sphere. there must be still other types of abbreviation. how common is the excitation of the motor nerves in silent speech, in which no audible or visible articulations result, is shown by the frequent experience of fatigue in the speech organs, particularly in the larynx, after unusually stimulating reading or intensive thinking. all the modifications so far considered are directly patterned on the typical process of normal speech. of very great interest and importance is the possibility of transferring the whole system of speech symbolism into other terms than those that are involved in the typical process. this process, as we have seen, is a matter of sounds and of movements intended to produce these sounds. the sense of vision is not brought into play. but let us suppose that one not only hears the articulated sounds but sees the articulations themselves as they are being executed by the speaker. clearly, if one can only gain a sufficiently high degree of adroitness in perceiving these movements of the speech organs, the way is opened for a new type of speech symbolism--that in which the sound is replaced by the visual image of the articulations that correspond to the sound. this sort of system has no great value for most of us because we are already possessed of the auditory-motor system of which it is at best but an imperfect translation, not all the articulations being visible to the eye. however, it is well known what excellent use deaf-mutes can make of "reading from the lips" as a subsidiary method of apprehending speech. the most important of all visual speech symbolisms is, of course, that of the written or printed word, to which, on the motor side, corresponds the system of delicately adjusted movements which result in the writing or typewriting or other graphic method of recording speech. the significant feature for our recognition in these new types of symbolism, apart from the fact that they are no longer a by-product of normal speech itself, is that each element (letter or written word) in the system corresponds to a specific element (sound or sound-group or spoken word) in the primary system. written language is thus a point-to-point equivalence, to borrow a mathematical phrase, to its spoken counterpart. the written forms are secondary symbols of the spoken ones--symbols of symbols--yet so close is the correspondence that they may, not only in theory but in the actual practice of certain eye-readers and, possibly, in certain types of thinking, be entirely substituted for the spoken ones. yet the auditory-motor associations are probably always latent at the least, that is, they are unconsciously brought into play. even those who read and think without the slightest use of sound imagery are, at last analysis, dependent on it. they are merely handling the circulating medium, the money, of visual symbols as a convenient substitute for the economic goods and services of the fundamental auditory symbols. the possibilities of linguistic transfer are practically unlimited. a familiar example is the morse telegraph code, in which the letters of written speech are represented by a conventionally fixed sequence of longer or shorter ticks. here the transfer takes place from the written word rather than directly from the sounds of spoken speech. the letter of the telegraph code is thus a symbol of a symbol of a symbol. it does not, of course, in the least follow that the skilled operator, in order to arrive at an understanding of a telegraphic message, needs to transpose the individual sequence of ticks into a visual image of the word before he experiences its normal auditory image. the precise method of reading off speech from the telegraphic communication undoubtedly varies widely with the individual. it is even conceivable, if not exactly likely, that certain operators may have learned to think directly, so far as the purely conscious part of the process of thought is concerned, in terms of the tick-auditory symbolism or, if they happen to have a strong natural bent toward motor symbolism, in terms of the correlated tactile-motor symbolism developed in the sending of telegraphic messages. still another interesting group of transfers are the different gesture languages, developed for the use of deaf-mutes, of trappist monks vowed to perpetual silence, or of communicating parties that are within seeing distance of each other but are out of earshot. some of these systems are one-to-one equivalences of the normal system of speech; others, like military gesture-symbolism or the gesture language of the plains indians of north america (understood by tribes of mutually unintelligible forms of speech) are imperfect transfers, limiting themselves to the rendering of such grosser speech elements as are an imperative minimum under difficult circumstances. in these latter systems, as in such still more imperfect symbolisms as those used at sea or in the woods, it may be contended that language no longer properly plays a part but that the ideas are directly conveyed by an utterly unrelated symbolic process or by a quasi-instinctive imitativeness. such an interpretation would be erroneous. the intelligibility of these vaguer symbolisms can hardly be due to anything but their automatic and silent translation into the terms of a fuller flow of speech. we shall no doubt conclude that all voluntary communication of ideas, aside from normal speech, is either a transfer, direct or indirect, from the typical symbolism of language as spoken and heard or, at the least, involves the intermediary of truly linguistic symbolism. this is a fact of the highest importance. auditory imagery and the correlated motor imagery leading to articulation are, by whatever devious ways we follow the process, the historic fountain-head of all speech and of all thinking. one other point is of still greater importance. the ease with which speech symbolism can be transferred from one sense to another, from technique to technique, itself indicates that the mere sounds of speech are not the essential fact of language, which lies rather in the classification, in the formal patterning, and in the relating of concepts. once more, language, as a structure, is on its inner face the mold of thought. it is this abstracted language, rather more than the physical facts of speech, that is to concern us in our inquiry. there is no more striking general fact about language than its universality. one may argue as to whether a particular tribe engages in activities that are worthy of the name of religion or of art, but we know of no people that is not possessed of a fully developed language. the lowliest south african bushman speaks in the forms of a rich symbolic system that is in essence perfectly comparable to the speech of the cultivated frenchman. it goes without saying that the more abstract concepts are not nearly so plentifully represented in the language of the savage, nor is there the rich terminology and the finer definition of nuances that reflect the higher culture. yet the sort of linguistic development that parallels the historic growth of culture and which, in its later stages, we associate with literature is, at best, but a superficial thing. the fundamental groundwork of language--the development of a clear-cut phonetic system, the specific association of speech elements with concepts, and the delicate provision for the formal expression of all manner of relations--all this meets us rigidly perfected and systematized in every language known to us. many primitive languages have a formal richness, a latent luxuriance of expression, that eclipses anything known to the languages of modern civilization. even in the mere matter of the inventory of speech the layman must be prepared for strange surprises. popular statements as to the extreme poverty of expression to which primitive languages are doomed are simply myths. scarcely less impressive than the universality of speech is its almost incredible diversity. those of us that have studied french or german, or, better yet, latin or greek, know in what varied forms a thought may run. the formal divergences between the english plan and the latin plan, however, are comparatively slight in the perspective of what we know of more exotic linguistic patterns. the universality and the diversity of speech lead to a significant inference. we are forced to believe that language is an immensely ancient heritage of the human race, whether or not all forms of speech are the historical outgrowth of a single pristine form. it is doubtful if any other cultural asset of man, be it the art of drilling for fire or of chipping stone, may lay claim to a greater age. i am inclined to believe that it antedated even the lowliest developments of material culture, that these developments, in fact, were not strictly possible until language, the tool of significant expression, had itself taken shape. ii the elements of speech we have more than once referred to the "elements of speech," by which we understood, roughly speaking, what are ordinarily called "words." we must now look more closely at these elements and acquaint ourselves with the stuff of language. the very simplest element of speech--and by "speech" we shall hence-forth mean the auditory system of speech symbolism, the flow of spoken words--is the individual sound, though, as we shall see later on, the sound is not itself a simple structure but the resultant of a series of independent, yet closely correlated, adjustments in the organs of speech. and yet the individual sound is not, properly considered, an element of speech at all, for speech is a significant function and the sound as such has no significance. it happens occasionally that the single sound is an independently significant element (such as french _a_ "has" and _à_ "to" or latin _i_ "go!"), but such cases are fortuitous coincidences between individual sound and significant word. the coincidence is apt to be fortuitous not only in theory but in point of actual historic fact; thus, the instances cited are merely reduced forms of originally fuller phonetic groups--latin _habet_ and _ad_ and indo-european _ei_ respectively. if language is a structure and if the significant elements of language are the bricks of the structure, then the sounds of speech can only be compared to the unformed and unburnt clay of which the bricks are fashioned. in this chapter we shall have nothing further to do with sounds as sounds. the true, significant elements of language are generally sequences of sounds that are either words, significant parts of words, or word groupings. what distinguishes each of these elements is that it is the outward sign of a specific idea, whether of a single concept or image or of a number of such concepts or images definitely connected into a whole. the single word may or may not be the simplest significant element we have to deal with. the english words _sing_, _sings_, _singing_, _singer_ each conveys a perfectly definite and intelligible idea, though the idea is disconnected and is therefore functionally of no practical value. we recognize immediately that these words are of two sorts. the first word, _sing_, is an indivisible phonetic entity conveying the notion of a certain specific activity. the other words all involve the same fundamental notion but, owing to the addition of other phonetic elements, this notion is given a particular twist that modifies or more closely defines it. they represent, in a sense, compounded concepts that have flowered from the fundamental one. we may, therefore, analyze the words _sings_, _singing_, and _singer_ as binary expressions involving a fundamental concept, a concept of subject matter (_sing_), and a further concept of more abstract order--one of person, number, time, condition, function, or of several of these combined. if we symbolize such a term as _sing_ by the algebraic formula a, we shall have to symbolize such terms as _sings_ and _singer_ by the formula a + b.[ ] the element a may be either a complete and independent word (_sing_) or the fundamental substance, the so-called root or stem[ ] or "radical element" (_sing-_) of a word. the element b (_-s_, _-ing_, _-er_) is the indicator of a subsidiary and, as a rule, a more abstract concept; in the widest sense of the word "form," it puts upon the fundamental concept a formal limitation. we may term it a "grammatical element" or affix. as we shall see later on, the grammatical element or the grammatical increment, as we had better put it, need not be suffixed to the radical element. it may be a prefixed element (like the _un-_ of _unsingable_), it may be inserted into the very body of the stem (like the _n_ of the latin _vinco_ "i conquer" as contrasted with its absence in _vici_ "i have conquered"), it may be the complete or partial repetition of the stem, or it may consist of some modification of the inner form of the stem (change of vowel, as in _sung_ and _song_; change of consonant as in _dead_ and _death_; change of accent; actual abbreviation). each and every one of these types of grammatical element or modification has this peculiarity, that it may not, in the vast majority of cases, be used independently but needs to be somehow attached to or welded with a radical element in order to convey an intelligible notion. we had better, therefore, modify our formula, a + b, to a + (b), the round brackets symbolizing the incapacity of an element to stand alone. the grammatical element, moreover, is not only non-existent except as associated with a radical one, it does not even, as a rule, obtain its measure of significance unless it is associated with a particular class of radical elements. thus, the _-s_ of english _he hits_ symbolizes an utterly different notion from the _-s_ of _books_, merely because _hit_ and _book_ are differently classified as to function. we must hasten to observe, however, that while the radical element may, on occasion, be identical with the word, it does not follow that it may always, or even customarily, be used as a word. thus, the _hort-_ "garden" of such latin forms as _hortus_, _horti_, and _horto_ is as much of an abstraction, though one yielding a more easily apprehended significance, than the _-ing_ of _singing_. neither exists as an independently intelligible and satisfying element of speech. both the radical element, as such, and the grammatical element, therefore, are reached only by a process of abstraction. it seemed proper to symbolize _sing-er_ as a + (b); _hort-us_ must be symbolized as (a) + (b). [footnote : we shall reserve capitals for radical elements.] [footnote : these words are not here used in a narrowly technical sense.] so far, the first speech element that we have found which we can say actually "exists" is the word. before defining the word, however, we must look a little more closely at the type of word that is illustrated by _sing_. are we, after all, justified in identifying it with a radical element? does it represent a simple correspondence between concept and linguistic expression? is the element _sing-_, that we have abstracted from _sings_, _singing_, and _singer_ and to which we may justly ascribe a general unmodified conceptual value, actually the same linguistic fact as the word _sing_? it would almost seem absurd to doubt it, yet a little reflection only is needed to convince us that the doubt is entirely legitimate. the word _sing_ cannot, as a matter of fact, be freely used to refer to its own conceptual content. the existence of such evidently related forms as _sang_ and _sung_ at once shows that it cannot refer to past time, but that, for at least an important part of its range of usage, it is limited to the present. on the other hand, the use of _sing_ as an "infinitive" (in such locutions as _to sing_ and _he will sing_) does indicate that there is a fairly strong tendency for the word _sing_ to represent the full, untrammeled amplitude of a specific concept. yet if _sing_ were, in any adequate sense, the fixed expression of the unmodified concept, there should be no room for such vocalic aberrations as we find in _sang_ and _sung_ and _song_, nor should we find _sing_ specifically used to indicate present time for all persons but one (third person singular _sings_). the truth of the matter is that _sing_ is a kind of twilight word, trembling between the status of a true radical element and that of a modified word of the type of _singing_. though it has no outward sign to indicate that it conveys more than a generalized idea, we do feel that there hangs about it a variable mist of added value. the formula a does not seem to represent it so well as a + ( ). we might suspect _sing_ of belonging to the a + (b) type, with the reservation that the (b) had vanished. this report of the "feel" of the word is far from fanciful, for historical evidence does, in all earnest, show that _sing_ is in origin a number of quite distinct words, of type a + (b), that have pooled their separate values. the (b) of each of these has gone as a tangible phonetic element; its force, however, lingers on in weakened measure. the _sing_ of _i sing_ is the correspondent of the anglo-saxon _singe_; the infinitive _sing_, of _singan_; the imperative _sing_ of _sing_. ever since the breakdown of english forms that set in about the time of the norman conquest, our language has been straining towards the creation of simple concept-words, unalloyed by formal connotations, but it has not yet succeeded in this, apart, possibly, from isolated adverbs and other elements of that sort. were the typical unanalyzable word of the language truly a pure concept-word (type a) instead of being of a strangely transitional type (type a + [ ]), our _sing_ and _work_ and _house_ and thousands of others would compare with the genuine radical-words of numerous other languages.[ ] such a radical-word, to take a random example, is the nootka[ ] word _hamot_ "bone." our english correspondent is only superficially comparable. _hamot_ means "bone" in a quite indefinite sense; to our english word clings the notion of singularity. the nootka indian can convey the idea of plurality, in one of several ways, if he so desires, but he does not need to; _hamot_ may do for either singular or plural, should no interest happen to attach to the distinction. as soon as we say "bone" (aside from its secondary usage to indicate material), we not merely specify the nature of the object but we imply, whether we will or no, that there is but one of these objects to be considered. and this increment of value makes all the difference. [footnote : it is not a question of the general isolating character of such languages as chinese (see chapter vi). radical-words may and do occur in languages of all varieties, many of them of a high degree of complexity.] [footnote : spoken by a group of indian tribes in vancouver island.] we now know of four distinct formal types of word: a (nootka _hamot_); a + ( ) (_sing_, _bone_); a + (b) (_singing_); (a) + (b) (latin _hortus_). there is but one other type that is fundamentally possible: a + b, the union of two (or more) independently occurring radical elements into a single term. such a word is the compound _fire-engine_ or a sioux form equivalent to _eat-stand_ (i.e., "to eat while standing"). it frequently happens, however, that one of the radical elements becomes functionally so subordinated to the other that it takes on the character of a grammatical element. we may symbolize this by a + b, a type that may gradually, by loss of external connection between the subordinated element b and its independent counterpart b merge with the commoner type a + (b). a word like _beautiful_ is an example of a + b, the _-ful_ barely preserving the impress of its lineage. a word like _homely_, on the other hand, is clearly of the type a + (b), for no one but a linguistic student is aware of the connection between the _-ly_ and the independent word _like_. in actual use, of course, these five (or six) fundamental types may be indefinitely complicated in a number of ways. the ( ) may have a multiple value; in other words, the inherent formal modification of the basic notion of the word may affect more than one category. in such a latin word as _cor_ "heart," for instance, not only is a concrete concept conveyed, but there cling to the form, which is actually shorter than its own radical element (_cord-_), the three distinct, yet intertwined, formal concepts of singularity, gender classification (neuter), and case (subjective-objective). the complete grammatical formula for _cor_ is, then, a + ( ) + ( ) + ( ), though the merely external, phonetic formula would be (a)--, (a) indicating the abstracted "stem" _cord-_, the minus sign a loss of material. the significant thing about such a word as _cor_ is that the three conceptual limitations are not merely expressed by implication as the word sinks into place in a sentence; they are tied up, for good and all, within the very vitals of the word and cannot be eliminated by any possibility of usage. other complications result from a manifolding of parts. in a given word there may be several elements of the order a (we have already symbolized this by the type a + b), of the order (a), of the order b, and of the order (b). finally, the various types may be combined among themselves in endless ways. a comparatively simple language like english, or even latin, illustrates but a modest proportion of these theoretical possibilities. but if we take our examples freely from the vast storehouse of language, from languages exotic as well as from those that we are more familiar with, we shall find that there is hardly a possibility that is not realized in actual usage. one example will do for thousands, one complex type for hundreds of possible types. i select it from paiute, the language of the indians of the arid plateaus of southwestern utah. the word _wii-to-kuchum-punku-rügani-yugwi-va-ntü-m(ü)_[ ] is of unusual length even for its own language, but it is no psychological monster for all that. it means "they who are going to sit and cut up with a knife a black cow (_or_ bull)," or, in the order of the indian elements, "knife-black-buffalo-pet-cut up-sit(plur.)-future-participle-animate plur." the formula for this word, in accordance with our symbolism, would be (f) + (e) + c + d + a + b + (g) + (h) + (i) + ( ). it is the plural of the future participle of a compound verb "to sit and cut up"--a + b. the elements (g)--which denotes futurity--, (h)--a participial suffix--, and (i)--indicating the animate plural--are grammatical elements which convey nothing when detached. the formula ( ) is intended to imply that the finished word conveys, in addition to what is definitely expressed, a further relational idea, that of subjectivity; in other words, the form can only be used as the subject of a sentence, not in an objective or other syntactic relation. the radical element a ("to cut up"), before entering into combination with the coördinate element b ("to sit"), is itself compounded with two nominal elements or element-groups--an instrumentally used stem (f) ("knife"), which may be freely used as the radical element of noun forms but cannot be employed as an absolute noun in its given form, and an objectively used group--(e) + c + d ("black cow _or_ bull"). this group in turn consists of an adjectival radical element (e) ("black"), which cannot be independently employed (the absolute notion of "black" can be rendered only as the participle of a verb: "black-be-ing"), and the compound noun c + d ("buffalo-pet"). the radical element c properly means "buffalo," but the element d, properly an independently occurring noun meaning "horse" (originally "dog" or "domesticated animal" in general), is regularly used as a quasi-subordinate element indicating that the animal denoted by the stem to which it is affixed is owned by a human being. it will be observed that the whole complex (f) + (e) + c + d + a + b is functionally no more than a verbal base, corresponding to the _sing-_ of an english form like _singing_; that this complex remains verbal in force on the addition of the temporal element (g)--this (g), by the way, must not be understood as appended to b alone, but to the whole basic complex as a unit--; and that the elements (h) + (i) + ( ) transform the verbal expression into a formally well-defined noun. [footnote : in this and other examples taken from exotic languages i am forced by practical considerations to simplify the actual phonetic forms. this should not matter perceptibly, as we are concerned with form as such, not with phonetic content.] it is high time that we decided just what is meant by a word. our first impulse, no doubt, would have been to define the word as the symbolic, linguistic counterpart of a single concept. we now know that such a definition is impossible. in truth it is impossible to define the word from a functional standpoint at all, for the word may be anything from the expression of a single concept--concrete or abstract or purely relational (as in _of_ or _by_ or _and_)--to the expression of a complete thought (as in latin _dico_ "i say" or, with greater elaborateness of form, in a nootka verb form denoting "i have been accustomed to eat twenty round objects [e.g., apples] while engaged in [doing so and so]"). in the latter case the word becomes identical with the sentence. the word is merely a form, a definitely molded entity that takes in as much or as little of the conceptual material of the whole thought as the genius of the language cares to allow. thus it is that while the single radical elements and grammatical elements, the carriers of isolated concepts, are comparable as we pass from language to language, the finished words are not. radical (or grammatical) element and sentence--these are the primary _functional_ units of speech, the former as an abstracted minimum, the latter as the esthetically satisfying embodiment of a unified thought. the actual _formal_ units of speech, the words, may on occasion identify themselves with either of the two functional units; more often they mediate between the two extremes, embodying one or more radical notions and also one or more subsidiary ones. we may put the whole matter in a nutshell by saying that the radical and grammatical elements of language, abstracted as they are from the realities of speech, respond to the conceptual world of science, abstracted as it is from the realities of experience, and that the word, the existent unit of living speech, responds to the unit of actually apprehended experience, of history, of art. the sentence is the logical counterpart of the complete thought only if it be felt as made up of the radical and grammatical elements that lurk in the recesses of its words. it is the psychological counterpart of experience, of art, when it is felt, as indeed it normally is, as the finished play of word with word. as the necessity of defining thought solely and exclusively for its own sake becomes more urgent, the word becomes increasingly irrelevant as a means. we can therefore easily understand why the mathematician and the symbolic logician are driven to discard the word and to build up their thought with the help of symbols which have, each of them, a rigidly unitary value. but is not the word, one may object, as much of an abstraction as the radical element? is it not as arbitrarily lifted out of the living sentence as is the minimum conceptual element out of the word? some students of language have, indeed, looked upon the word as such an abstraction, though with very doubtful warrant, it seems to me. it is true that in particular cases, especially in some of the highly synthetic languages of aboriginal america, it is not always easy to say whether a particular element of language is to be interpreted as an independent word or as part of a larger word. these transitional cases, puzzling as they may be on occasion, do not, however, materially weaken the case for the psychological validity of the word. linguistic experience, both as expressed in standardized, written form and as tested in daily usage, indicates overwhelmingly that there is not, as a rule, the slightest difficulty in bringing the word to consciousness as a psychological reality. no more convincing test could be desired than this, that the naive indian, quite unaccustomed to the concept of the written word, has nevertheless no serious difficulty in dictating a text to a linguistic student word by word; he tends, of course, to run his words together as in actual speech, but if he is called to a halt and is made to understand what is desired, he can readily isolate the words as such, repeating them as units. he regularly refuses, on the other hand, to isolate the radical or grammatical element, on the ground that it "makes no sense."[ ] what, then, is the objective criterion of the word? the speaker and hearer feel the word, let us grant, but how shall we justify their feeling? if function is not the ultimate criterion of the word, what is? [footnote : these oral experiences, which i have had time and again as a field student of american indian languages, are very neatly confirmed by personal experiences of another sort. twice i have taught intelligent young indians to write their own languages according to the phonetic system which i employ. they were taught merely how to render accurately the sounds as such. both had some difficulty in learning to break up a word into its constituent sounds, but none whatever in determining the words. this they both did with spontaneous and complete accuracy. in the hundreds of pages of manuscript nootka text that i have obtained from one of these young indians the words, whether abstract relational entities like english _that_ and _but_ or complex sentence-words like the nootka example quoted above, are, practically without exception, isolated precisely as i or any other student would have isolated them. such experiences with naïve speakers and recorders do more to convince one of the definitely plastic unity of the word than any amount of purely theoretical argument.] it is easier to ask the question than to answer it. the best that we can do is to say that the word is one of the smallest, completely satisfying bits of isolated "meaning" into which the sentence resolves itself. it cannot be cut into without a disturbance of meaning, one or the other or both of the severed parts remaining as a helpless waif on our hands. in practice this unpretentious criterion does better service than might be supposed. in such a sentence as _it is unthinkable_, it is simply impossible to group the elements into any other and smaller "words" than the three indicated. _think_ or _thinkable_ might be isolated, but as neither _un-_ nor _-able_ nor _is-un_ yields a measurable satisfaction, we are compelled to leave _unthinkable_ as an integral whole, a miniature bit of art. added to the "feel" of the word are frequently, but by no means invariably, certain external phonetic characteristics. chief of these is accent. in many, perhaps in most, languages the single word is marked by a unifying accent, an emphasis on one of the syllables, to which the rest are subordinated. the particular syllable that is to be so distinguished is dependent, needless to say, on the special genius of the language. the importance of accent as a unifying feature of the word is obvious in such english examples as _unthinkable_, _characterizing_. the long paiute word that we have analyzed is marked as a rigid phonetic unit by several features, chief of which are the accent on its second syllable (_wii'_-"knife") and the slurring ("unvoicing," to use the technical phonetic term) of its final vowel (_-mü_, animate plural). such features as accent, cadence, and the treatment of consonants and vowels within the body of a word are often useful as aids in the external demarcation of the word, but they must by no means be interpreted, as is sometimes done, as themselves responsible for its psychological existence. they at best but strengthen a feeling of unity that is already present on other grounds. we have already seen that the major functional unit of speech, the sentence, has, like the word, a psychological as well as a merely logical or abstracted existence. its definition is not difficult. it is the linguistic expression of a proposition. it combines a subject of discourse with a statement in regard to this subject. subject and "predicate" may be combined in a single word, as in latin _dico_; each may be expressed independently, as in the english equivalent, _i say_; each or either may be so qualified as to lead to complex propositions of many sorts. no matter how many of these qualifying elements (words or functional parts of words) are introduced, the sentence does not lose its feeling of unity so long as each and every one of them falls in place as contributory to the definition of either the subject of discourse or the core of the predicate[ ]. such a sentence as _the mayor of new york is going to deliver a speech of welcome in french_ is readily felt as a unified statement, incapable of reduction by the transfer of certain of its elements, in their given form, to the preceding or following sentences. the contributory ideas of _of new york_, _of welcome_, and _in french_ may be eliminated without hurting the idiomatic flow of the sentence. _the mayor is going to deliver a speech_ is a perfectly intelligible proposition. but further than this we cannot go in the process of reduction. we cannot say, for instance, _mayor is going to deliver_.[ ] the reduced sentence resolves itself into the subject of discourse--_the mayor_--and the predicate--_is going to deliver a speech_. it is customary to say that the true subject of such a sentence is _mayor_, the true predicate _is going_ or even _is_, the other elements being strictly subordinate. such an analysis, however, is purely schematic and is without psychological value. it is much better frankly to recognize the fact that either or both of the two terms of the sentence-proposition may be incapable of expression in the form of single words. there are languages that can convey all that is conveyed by _the-mayor is-going-to-deliver-a-speech_ in two words, a subject word and a predicate word, but english is not so highly synthetic. the point that we are really making here is that underlying the finished sentence is a living sentence type, of fixed formal characteristics. these fixed types or actual sentence-groundworks may be freely overlaid by such additional matter as the speaker or writer cares to put on, but they are themselves as rigidly "given" by tradition as are the radical and grammatical elements abstracted from the finished word. new words may be consciously created from these fundamental elements on the analogy of old ones, but hardly new types of words. in the same way new sentences are being constantly created, but always on strictly traditional lines. the enlarged sentence, however, allows as a rule of considerable freedom in the handling of what may be called "unessential" parts. it is this margin of freedom which gives us the opportunity of individual style. [footnote : "coordinate sentences" like _i shall remain but you may go_ may only doubtfully be considered as truly unified predications, as true sentences. they are sentences in a stylistic sense rather than from the strictly formal linguistic standpoint. the orthography _i shall remain. but you may go_ is as intrinsically justified as _i shall remain. now you may go_. the closer connection in sentiment between the first two propositions has led to a conventional visual representation that must not deceive the analytic spirit.] [footnote : except, possibly, in a newspaper headline. such headlines, however, are language only in a derived sense.] the habitual association of radical elements, grammatical elements, words, and sentences with concepts or groups of concepts related into wholes is the fact itself of language. it is important to note that there is in all languages a certain randomness of association. thus, the idea of "hide" may be also expressed by the word "conceal," the notion of "three times" also by "thrice." the multiple expression of a single concept is universally felt as a source of linguistic strength and variety, not as a needless extravagance. more irksome is a random correspondence between idea and linguistic expression in the field of abstract and relational concepts, particularly when the concept is embodied in a grammatical element. thus, the randomness of the expression of plurality in such words as _books_, _oxen_, _sheep_, and _geese_ is felt to be rather more, i fancy, an unavoidable and traditional predicament than a welcome luxuriance. it is obvious that a language cannot go beyond a certain point in this randomness. many languages go incredibly far in this respect, it is true, but linguistic history shows conclusively that sooner or later the less frequently occurring associations are ironed out at the expense of the more vital ones. in other words, all languages have an inherent tendency to economy of expression. were this tendency entirely inoperative, there would be no grammar. the fact of grammar, a universal trait of language, is simply a generalized expression of the feeling that analogous concepts and relations are most conveniently symbolized in analogous forms. were a language ever completely "grammatical," it would be a perfect engine of conceptual expression. unfortunately, or luckily, no language is tyrannically consistent. all grammars leak. up to the present we have been assuming that the material of language reflects merely the world of concepts and, on what i have ventured to call the "pre-rational" plane, of images, which are the raw material of concepts. we have, in other words, been assuming that language moves entirely in the ideational or cognitive sphere. it is time that we amplified the picture. the volitional aspect of consciousness also is to some extent explicitly provided for in language. nearly all languages have special means for the expression of commands (in the imperative forms of the verb, for example) and of desires, unattained or unattainable (_would he might come!_ or _would he were here!_) the emotions, on the whole, seem to be given a less adequate outlet. emotion, indeed, is proverbially inclined to speechlessness. most, if not all, the interjections are to be put to the credit of emotional expression, also, it may be, a number of linguistic elements expressing certain modalities, such as dubitative or potential forms, which may be interpreted as reflecting the emotional states of hesitation or doubt--attenuated fear. on the whole, it must be admitted that ideation reigns supreme in language, that volition and emotion come in as distinctly secondary factors. this, after all, is perfectly intelligible. the world of image and concept, the endless and ever-shifting picture of objective reality, is the unavoidable subject-matter of human communication, for it is only, or mainly, in terms of this world that effective action is possible. desire, purpose, emotion are the personal color of the objective world; they are applied privately by the individual soul and are of relatively little importance to the neighboring one. all this does not mean that volition and emotion are not expressed. they are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature. the nuances of emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and continuity of utterance, the accompanying bodily movements, all these express something of the inner life of impulse and feeling, but as these means of expression are, at last analysis, but modified forms of the instinctive utterance that man shares with the lower animals, they cannot be considered as forming part of the essential cultural conception of language, however much they may be inseparable from its actual life. and this instinctive expression of volition and emotion is, for the most part, sufficient, often more than sufficient, for the purposes of communication. there are, it is true, certain writers on the psychology of language[ ] who deny its prevailingly cognitive character but attempt, on the contrary, to demonstrate the origin of most linguistic elements within the domain of feeling. i confess that i am utterly unable to follow them. what there is of truth in their contentions may be summed up, it seems to me, by saying that most words, like practically all elements of consciousness, have an associated feeling-tone, a mild, yet none the less real and at times insidiously powerful, derivative of pleasure or pain. this feeling-tone, however, is not as a rule an inherent value in the word itself; it is rather a sentimental growth on the word's true body, on its conceptual kernel. not only may the feeling-tone change from one age to another (this, of course, is true of the conceptual content as well), but it varies remarkably from individual to individual according to the personal associations of each, varies, indeed, from time to time in a single individual's consciousness as his experiences mold him and his moods change. to be sure, there are socially accepted feeling-tones, or ranges of feeling-tone, for many words over and above the force of individual association, but they are exceedingly variable and elusive things at best. they rarely have the rigidity of the central, primary fact. we all grant, for instance, that _storm_, _tempest_, and _hurricane_, quite aside from their slight differences of actual meaning, have distinct feeling-tones, tones that are felt by all sensitive speakers and readers of english in a roughly equivalent fashion. _storm_, we feel, is a more general and a decidedly less "magnificent" word than the other two; _tempest_ is not only associated with the sea but is likely, in the minds of many, to have obtained a softened glamour from a specific association with shakespeare's great play; _hurricane_ has a greater forthrightness, a directer ruthlessness than its synonyms. yet the individual's feeling-tones for these words are likely to vary enormously. to some _tempest_ and _hurricane_ may seem "soft," literary words, the simpler _storm_ having a fresh, rugged value which the others do not possess (think of _storm and stress_). if we have browsed much in our childhood days in books of the spanish main, _hurricane_ is likely to have a pleasurably bracing tone; if we have had the misfortune to be caught in one, we are not unlikely to feel the word as cold, cheerless, sinister. [footnote : e.g., the brilliant dutch writer, jac van ginneken.] the feeling-tones of words are of no use, strictly speaking, to science; the philosopher, if he desires to arrive at truth rather than merely to persuade, finds them his most insidious enemies. but man is rarely engaged in pure science, in solid thinking. generally his mental activities are bathed in a warm current of feeling and he seizes upon the feeling-tones of words as gentle aids to the desired excitation. they are naturally of great value to the literary artist. it is interesting to note, however, that even to the artist they are a danger. a word whose customary feeling-tone is too unquestioningly accepted becomes a plushy bit of furniture, a _cliché_. every now and then the artist has to fight the feeling-tone, to get the word to mean what it nakedly and conceptually should mean, depending for the effect of feeling on the creative power of an individual juxtaposition of concepts or images. iii the sounds of language we have seen that the mere phonetic framework of speech does not constitute the inner fact of language and that the single sound of articulated speech is not, as such, a linguistic element at all. for all that, speech is so inevitably bound up with sounds and their articulation that we can hardly avoid giving the subject of phonetics some general consideration. experience has shown that neither the purely formal aspects of a language nor the course of its history can be fully understood without reference to the sounds in which this form and this history are embodied. a detailed survey of phonetics would be both too technical for the general reader and too loosely related to our main theme to warrant the needed space, but we can well afford to consider a few outstanding facts and ideas connected with the sounds of language. the feeling that the average speaker has of his language is that it is built up, acoustically speaking, of a comparatively small number of distinct sounds, each of which is rather accurately provided for in the current alphabet by one letter or, in a few cases, by two or more alternative letters. as for the languages of foreigners, he generally feels that, aside from a few striking differences that cannot escape even the uncritical ear, the sounds they use are the same as those he is familiar with but that there is a mysterious "accent" to these foreign languages, a certain unanalyzed phonetic character, apart from the sounds as such, that gives them their air of strangeness. this naïve feeling is largely illusory on both scores. phonetic analysis convinces one that the number of clearly distinguishable sounds and nuances of sounds that are habitually employed by the speakers of a language is far greater than they themselves recognize. probably not one english speaker out of a hundred has the remotest idea that the _t_ of a word like _sting_ is not at all the same sound as the _t_ of _teem_, the latter _t_ having a fullness of "breath release" that is inhibited in the former case by the preceding _s_; that the _ea_ of _meat_ is of perceptibly shorter duration than the _ea_ of _mead_; or that the final _s_ of a word like _heads_ is not the full, buzzing _z_ sound of the _s_ in such a word as _please_. it is the frequent failure of foreigners, who have acquired a practical mastery of english and who have eliminated all the cruder phonetic shortcomings of their less careful brethren, to observe such minor distinctions that helps to give their english pronunciation the curiously elusive "accent" that we all vaguely feel. we do not diagnose the "accent" as the total acoustic effect produced by a series of slight but specific phonetic errors for the very good reason that we have never made clear to ourselves our own phonetic stock in trade. if two languages taken at random, say english and russian, are compared as to their phonetic systems, we are more apt than not to find that very few of the phonetic elements of the one find an exact analogue in the other. thus, the _t_ of a russian word like _tam_ "there" is neither the english _t_ of _sting_ nor the english _t_ of _teem_. it differs from both in its "dental" articulation, in other words, in being produced by contact of the tip of the tongue with the upper teeth, not, as in english, by contact of the tongue back of the tip with the gum ridge above the teeth; moreover, it differs from the _t_ of _teem_ also in the absence of a marked "breath release" before the following vowel is attached, so that its acoustic effect is of a more precise, "metallic" nature than in english. again, the english _l_ is unknown in russian, which possesses, on the other hand, two distinct _l_-sounds that the normal english speaker would find it difficult exactly to reproduce--a "hollow," guttural-like _l_ and a "soft," palatalized _l_-sound that is only very approximately rendered, in english terms, as _ly_. even so simple and, one would imagine, so invariable a sound as _m_ differs in the two languages. in a russian word like _most_ "bridge" the _m_ is not the same as the _m_ of the english word _most_; the lips are more fully rounded during its articulation, so that it makes a heavier, more resonant impression on the ear. the vowels, needless to say, differ completely in english and russian, hardly any two of them being quite the same. i have gone into these illustrative details, which are of little or no specific interest for us, merely in order to provide something of an experimental basis to convince ourselves of the tremendous variability of speech sounds. yet a complete inventory of the acoustic resources of all the european languages, the languages nearer home, while unexpectedly large, would still fall far short of conveying a just idea of the true range of human articulation. in many of the languages of asia, africa, and aboriginal america there are whole classes of sounds that most of us have no knowledge of. they are not necessarily more difficult of enunciation than sounds more familiar to our ears; they merely involve such muscular adjustments of the organs of speech as we have never habituated ourselves to. it may be safely said that the total number of possible sounds is greatly in excess of those actually in use. indeed, an experienced phonetician should have no difficulty in inventing sounds that are unknown to objective investigation. one reason why we find it difficult to believe that the range of possible speech sounds is indefinitely large is our habit of conceiving the sound as a simple, unanalyzable impression instead of as the resultant of a number of distinct muscular adjustments that take place simultaneously. a slight change in any one of these adjustments gives us a new sound which is akin to the old one, because of the continuance of the other adjustments, but which is acoustically distinct from it, so sensitive has the human ear become to the nuanced play of the vocal mechanism. another reason for our lack of phonetic imagination is the fact that, while our ear is delicately responsive to the sounds of speech, the muscles of our speech organs have early in life become exclusively accustomed to the particular adjustments and systems of adjustment that are required to produce the traditional sounds of the language. all or nearly all other adjustments have become permanently inhibited, whether through inexperience or through gradual elimination. of course the power to produce these inhibited adjustments is not entirely lost, but the extreme difficulty we experience in learning the new sounds of foreign languages is sufficient evidence of the strange rigidity that has set in for most people in the voluntary control of the speech organs. the point may be brought home by contrasting the comparative lack of freedom of voluntary speech movements with the all but perfect freedom of voluntary gesture.[ ] our rigidity in articulation is the price we have had to pay for easy mastery of a highly necessary symbolism. one cannot be both splendidly free in the random choice of movements and selective with deadly certainty.[ ] [footnote : observe the "voluntary." when we shout or grunt or otherwise allow our voices to take care of themselves, as we are likely to do when alone in the country on a fine spring day, we are no longer fixing vocal adjustments by voluntary control. under these circumstances we are almost certain to hit on speech sounds that we could never learn to control in actual speech.] [footnote : if speech, in its acoustic and articulatory aspect, is indeed a rigid system, how comes it, one may plausibly object, that no two people speak alike? the answer is simple. all that part of speech which falls out of the rigid articulatory framework is not speech in idea, but is merely a superadded, more or less instinctively determined vocal complication inseparable from speech in practice. all the individual color of speech--personal emphasis, speed, personal cadence, personal pitch--is a non-linguistic fact, just as the incidental expression of desire and emotion are, for the most part, alien to linguistic expression. speech, like all elements of culture, demands conceptual selection, inhibition of the randomness of instinctive behavior. that its "idea" is never realized as such in practice, its carriers being instinctively animated organisms, is of course true of each and every aspect of culture.] there are, then, an indefinitely large number of articulated sounds available for the mechanics of speech; any given language makes use of an explicit, rigidly economical selection of these rich resources; and each of the many possible sounds of speech is conditioned by a number of independent muscular adjustments that work together simultaneously towards its production. a full account of the activity of each of the organs of speech--in so far as its activity has a bearing on language--is impossible here, nor can we concern ourselves in a systematic way with the classification of sounds on the basis of their mechanics.[ ] a few bold outlines are all that we can attempt. the organs of speech are the lungs and bronchial tubes; the throat, particularly that part of it which is known as the larynx or, in popular parlance, the "adam's apple"; the nose; the uvula, which is the soft, pointed, and easily movable organ that depends from the rear of the palate; the palate, which is divided into a posterior, movable "soft palate" or velum and a "hard palate"; the tongue; the teeth; and the lips. the palate, lower palate, tongue, teeth, and lips may be looked upon as a combined resonance chamber, whose constantly varying shape, chiefly due to the extreme mobility of the tongue, is the main factor in giving the outgoing breath its precise quality[ ] of sound. [footnote : purely acoustic classifications, such as more easily suggest themselves to a first attempt at analysis, are now in less favor among students of phonetics than organic classifications. the latter have the advantage of being more objective. moreover, the acoustic quality of a sound is dependent on the articulation, even though in linguistic consciousness this quality is the primary, not the secondary, fact.] [footnote : by "quality" is here meant the inherent nature and resonance of the sound as such. the general "quality" of the individual's voice is another matter altogether. this is chiefly determined by the individual anatomical characteristics of the larynx and is of no linguistic interest whatever.] the lungs and bronchial tubes are organs of speech only in so far as they supply and conduct the current of outgoing air without which audible articulation is impossible. they are not responsible for any specific sound or acoustic feature of sounds except, possibly, accent or stress. it may be that differences of stress are due to slight differences in the contracting force of the lung muscles, but even this influence of the lungs is denied by some students, who explain the fluctuations of stress that do so much to color speech by reference to the more delicate activity of the glottal cords. these glottal cords are two small, nearly horizontal, and highly sensitive membranes within the larynx, which consists, for the most part, of two large and several smaller cartilages and of a number of small muscles that control the action of the cords. the cords, which are attached to the cartilages, are to the human speech organs what the two vibrating reeds are to a clarinet or the strings to a violin. they are capable of at least three distinct types of movement, each of which is of the greatest importance for speech. they may be drawn towards or away from each other, they may vibrate like reeds or strings, and they may become lax or tense in the direction of their length. the last class of these movements allows the cords to vibrate at different "lengths" or degrees of tenseness and is responsible for the variations in pitch which are present not only in song but in the more elusive modulations of ordinary speech. the two other types of glottal action determine the nature of the voice, "voice" being a convenient term for breath as utilized in speech. if the cords are well apart, allowing the breath to escape in unmodified form, we have the condition technically known as "voicelessness." all sounds produced under these circumstances are "voiceless" sounds. such are the simple, unmodified breath as it passes into the mouth, which is, at least approximately, the same as the sound that we write _h_, also a large number of special articulations in the mouth chamber, like _p_ and _s_. on the other hand, the glottal cords may be brought tight together, without vibrating. when this happens, the current of breath is checked for the time being. the slight choke or "arrested cough" that is thus made audible is not recognized in english as a definite sound but occurs nevertheless not infrequently.[ ] this momentary check, technically known as a "glottal stop," is an integral element of speech in many languages, as danish, lettish, certain chinese dialects, and nearly all american indian languages. between the two extremes of voicelessness, that of completely open breath and that of checked breath, lies the position of true voice. in this position the cords are close together, but not so tightly as to prevent the air from streaming through; the cords are set vibrating and a musical tone of varying pitch results. a tone so produced is known as a "voiced sound." it may have an indefinite number of qualities according to the precise position of the upper organs of speech. our vowels, nasals (such as _m_ and _n_), and such sounds as _b_, _z_, and _l_ are all voiced sounds. the most convenient test of a voiced sound is the possibility of pronouncing it on any given pitch, in other words, of singing on it.[ ] the voiced sounds are the most clearly audible elements of speech. as such they are the carriers of practically all significant differences in stress, pitch, and syllabification. the voiceless sounds are articulated noises that break up the stream of voice with fleeting moments of silence. acoustically intermediate between the freely unvoiced and the voiced sounds are a number of other characteristic types of voicing, such as murmuring and whisper.[ ] these and still other types of voice are relatively unimportant in english and most other european languages, but there are languages in which they rise to some prominence in the normal flow of speech. [footnote : as at the end of the snappily pronounced _no!_ (sometimes written _nope!_) or in the over-carefully pronounced _at all_, where one may hear a slight check between the _t_ and the _a_.] [footnote : "singing" is here used in a wide sense. one cannot sing continuously on such a sound as _b_ or _d_, but one may easily outline a tune on a series of _b_'s or _d_'s in the manner of the plucked "pizzicato" on stringed instruments. a series of tones executed on continuant consonants, like _m_, _z_, or _l_, gives the effect of humming, droning, or buzzing. the sound of "humming," indeed, is nothing but a continuous voiced nasal, held on one pitch or varying in pitch, as desired.] [footnote : the whisper of ordinary speech is a combination of unvoiced sounds and "whispered" sounds, as the term is understood in phonetics.] the nose is not an active organ of speech, but it is highly important as a resonance chamber. it may be disconnected from the mouth, which is the other great resonance chamber, by the lifting of the movable part of the soft palate so as to shut off the passage of the breath into the nasal cavity; or, if the soft palate is allowed to hang down freely and unobstructively, so that the breath passes into both the nose and the mouth, these make a combined resonance chamber. such sounds as _b_ and _a_ (as in _father_) are voiced "oral" sounds, that is, the voiced breath does not receive a nasal resonance. as soon as the soft palate is lowered, however, and the nose added as a participating resonance chamber, the sounds _b_ and _a_ take on a peculiar "nasal" quality and become, respectively, _m_ and the nasalized vowel written _an_ in french (e.g., _sang_, _tant_). the only english sounds[ ] that normally receive a nasal resonance are _m_, _n_, and the _ng_ sound of _sing_. practically all sounds, however, may be nasalized, not only the vowels--nasalized vowels are common in all parts of the world--but such sounds as _l_ or _z_. voiceless nasals are perfectly possible. they occur, for instance, in welsh and in quite a number of american indian languages. [footnote : aside from the involuntary nasalizing of all voiced sounds in the speech of those that talk with a "nasal twang."] the organs that make up the oral resonance chamber may articulate in two ways. the breath, voiced or unvoiced, nasalized or unnasalized, may be allowed to pass through the mouth without being checked or impeded at any point; or it may be either momentarily checked or allowed to stream through a greatly narrowed passage with resulting air friction. there are also transitions between the two latter types of articulation. the unimpeded breath takes on a particular color or quality in accordance with the varying shape of the oral resonance chamber. this shape is chiefly determined by the position of the movable parts--the tongue and the lips. as the tongue is raised or lowered, retracted or brought forward, held tense or lax, and as the lips are pursed ("rounded") in varying degree or allowed to keep their position of rest, a large number of distinct qualities result. these oral qualities are the vowels. in theory their number is infinite, in practice the ear can differentiate only a limited, yet a surprisingly large, number of resonance positions. vowels, whether nasalized or not, are normally voiced sounds; in not a few languages, however, "voiceless vowels"[ ] also occur. [footnote : these may be also defined as free unvoiced breath with varying vocalic timbres. in the long paiute word quoted on page the first _u_ and the final _ü_ are pronounced without voice.] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to line .] the remaining oral sounds are generally grouped together as "consonants." in them the stream of breath is interfered with in some way, so that a lesser resonance results, and a sharper, more incisive quality of tone. there are four main types of articulation generally recognized within the consonantal group of sounds. the breath may be completely stopped for a moment at some definite point in the oral cavity. sounds so produced, like _t_ or _d_ or _p_, are known as "stops" or "explosives."[ ] or the breath may be continuously obstructed through a narrow passage, not entirely checked. examples of such "spirants" or "fricatives," as they are called, are _s_ and _z_ and _y_. the third class of consonants, the "laterals," are semi-stopped. there is a true stoppage at the central point of articulation, but the breath is allowed to escape through the two side passages or through one of them. our english _d_, for instance, may be readily transformed into _l_, which has the voicing and the position of _d_, merely by depressing the sides of the tongue on either side of the point of contact sufficiently to allow the breath to come through. laterals are possible in many distinct positions. they may be unvoiced (the welsh _ll_ is an example) as well as voiced. finally, the stoppage of the breath may be rapidly intermittent; in other words, the active organ of contact--generally the point of the tongue, less often the uvula[ ]--may be made to vibrate against or near the point of contact. these sounds are the "trills" or "rolled consonants," of which the normal english _r_ is a none too typical example. they are well developed in many languages, however, generally in voiced form, sometimes, as in welsh and paiute, in unvoiced form as well. [footnote : nasalized stops, say _m_ or _n_, can naturally not be truly "stopped," as there is no way of checking the stream of breath in the nose by a definite articulation.] [footnote : the lips also may theoretically so articulate. "labial trills," however, are certainly rare in natural speech.] the oral manner of articulation is naturally not sufficient to define a consonant. the place of articulation must also be considered. contacts may be formed at a large number of points, from the root of the tongue to the lips. it is not necessary here to go at length into this somewhat complicated matter. the contact is either between the root of the tongue and the throat,[ ] some part of the tongue and a point on the palate (as in _k_ or _ch_ or _l_), some part of the tongue and the teeth (as in the english _th_ of _thick_ and _then_), the teeth and one of the lips (practically always the upper teeth and lower lip, as in _f_), or the two lips (as in _p_ or english _w_). the tongue articulations are the most complicated of all, as the mobility of the tongue allows various points on its surface, say the tip, to articulate against a number of opposed points of contact. hence arise many positions of articulation that we are not familiar with, such as the typical "dental" position of russian or italian _t_ and _d_; or the "cerebral" position of sanskrit and other languages of india, in which the tip of the tongue articulates against the hard palate. as there is no break at any point between the rims of the teeth back to the uvula nor from the tip of the tongue back to its root, it is evident that all the articulations that involve the tongue form a continuous organic (and acoustic) series. the positions grade into each other, but each language selects a limited number of clearly defined positions as characteristic of its consonantal system, ignoring transitional or extreme positions. frequently a language allows a certain latitude in the fixing of the required position. this is true, for instance, of the english _k_ sound, which is articulated much further to the front in a word like _kin_ than in _cool_. we ignore this difference, psychologically, as a non-essential, mechanical one. another language might well recognize the difference, or only a slightly greater one, as significant, as paralleling the distinction in position between the _k_ of _kin_ and the _t_ of _tin_. [footnote : this position, known as "faucal," is not common.] the organic classification of speech sounds is a simple matter after what we have learned of their production. any such sound may be put into its proper place by the appropriate answer to four main questions:--what is the position of the glottal cords during its articulation? does the breath pass into the mouth alone or is it also allowed to stream into the nose? does the breath pass freely through the mouth or is it impeded at some point and, if so, in what manner? what are the precise points of articulation in the mouth?[ ] this fourfold classification of sounds, worked out in all its detailed ramifications,[ ] is sufficient to account for all, or practically all, the sounds of language.[ ] [footnote : "points of articulation" must be understood to include tongue and lip positions of the vowels.] [footnote : including, under the fourth category, a number of special resonance adjustments that we have not been able to take up specifically.] [footnote : in so far, it should be added, as these sounds are expiratory, i.e., pronounced with the outgoing breath. certain languages, like the south african hottentot and bushman, have also a number of inspiratory sounds, pronounced by sucking in the breath at various points of oral contact. these are the so-called "clicks."] the phonetic habits of a given language are not exhaustively defined by stating that it makes use of such and such particular sounds out of the all but endless gamut that we have briefly surveyed. there remains the important question of the dynamics of these phonetic elements. two languages may, theoretically, be built up of precisely the same series of consonants and vowels and yet produce utterly different acoustic effects. one of them may not recognize striking variations in the lengths or "quantities" of the phonetic elements, the other may note such variations most punctiliously (in probably the majority of languages long and short vowels are distinguished; in many, as in italian or swedish or ojibwa, long consonants are recognized as distinct from short ones). or the one, say english, may be very sensitive to relative stresses, while in the other, say french, stress is a very minor consideration. or, again, the pitch differences which are inseparable from the actual practice of language may not affect the word as such, but, as in english, may be a more or less random or, at best, but a rhetorical phenomenon, while in other languages, as in swedish, lithuanian, chinese, siamese, and the majority of african languages, they may be more finely graduated and felt as integral characteristics of the words themselves. varying methods of syllabifying are also responsible for noteworthy acoustic differences. most important of all, perhaps, are the very different possibilities of combining the phonetic elements. each language has its peculiarities. the _ts_ combination, for instance, is found in both english and german, but in english it can only occur at the end of a word (as in _hats_), while it occurs freely in german as the psychological equivalent of a single sound (as in _zeit_, _katze_). some languages allow of great heapings of consonants or of vocalic groups (diphthongs), in others no two consonants or no two vowels may ever come together. frequently a sound occurs only in a special position or under special phonetic circumstances. in english, for instance, the _z_-sound of _azure_ cannot occur initially, while the peculiar quality of the _t_ of _sting_ is dependent on its being preceded by the _s_. these dynamic factors, in their totality, are as important for the proper understanding of the phonetic genius of a language as the sound system itself, often far more so. we have already seen, in an incidental way, that phonetic elements or such dynamic features as quantity and stress have varying psychological "values." the english _ts_ of _fiats_ is merely a _t_ followed by a functionally independent _s_, the _ts_ of the german word _zeit_ has an integral value equivalent, say, to the _t_ of the english word _tide_. again, the _t_ of _time_ is indeed noticeably distinct from that of _sting_, but the difference, to the consciousness of an english-speaking person, is quite irrelevant. it has no "value." if we compare the _t_-sounds of haida, the indian language spoken in the queen charlotte islands, we find that precisely the same difference of articulation has a real value. in such a word as _sting_ "two," the _t_ is pronounced precisely as in english, but in _sta_ "from" the _t_ is clearly "aspirated," like that of _time_. in other words, an objective difference that is irrelevant in english is of functional value in haida; from its own psychological standpoint the _t_ of _sting_ is as different from that of _sta_ as, from our standpoint, is the _t_ of _time_ from the _d_ of _divine_. further investigation would yield the interesting result that the haida ear finds the difference between the english _t_ of _sting_ and the _d_ of _divine_ as irrelevant as the naïve english ear finds that of the _t_-sounds of _sting_ and _time_. the objective comparison of sounds in two or more languages is, then, of no psychological or historical significance unless these sounds are first "weighted," unless their phonetic "values" are determined. these values, in turn, flow from the general behavior and functioning of the sounds in actual speech. these considerations as to phonetic value lead to an important conception. back of the purely objective system of sounds that is peculiar to a language and which can be arrived at only by a painstaking phonetic analysis, there is a more restricted "inner" or "ideal" system which, while perhaps equally unconscious as a system to the naïve speaker, can far more readily than the other be brought to his consciousness as a finished pattern, a psychological mechanism. the inner sound-system, overlaid though it may be by the mechanical or the irrelevant, is a real and an immensely important principle in the life of a language. it may persist as a pattern, involving number, relation, and functioning of phonetic elements, long after its phonetic content is changed. two historically related languages or dialects may not have a sound in common, but their ideal sound-systems may be identical patterns. i would not for a moment wish to imply that this pattern may not change. it may shrink or expand or change its functional complexion, but its rate of change is infinitely less rapid than that of the sounds as such. every language, then, is characterized as much by its ideal system of sounds and by the underlying phonetic pattern (system, one might term it, of symbolic atoms) as by a definite grammatical structure. both the phonetic and conceptual structures show the instinctive feeling of language for form.[ ] [footnote : the conception of the ideal phonetic system, the phonetic pattern, of a language is not as well understood by linguistic students as it should be. in this respect the unschooled recorder of language, provided he has a good ear and a genuine instinct for language, is often at a great advantage as compared with the minute phonetician, who is apt to be swamped by his mass of observations. i have already employed my experience in teaching indians to write their own language for its testing value in another connection. it yields equally valuable evidence here. i found that it was difficult or impossible to teach an indian to make phonetic distinctions that did not correspond to "points in the pattern of his language," however these differences might strike our objective ear, but that subtle, barely audible, phonetic differences, if only they hit the "points in the pattern," were easily and voluntarily expressed in writing. in watching my nootka interpreter write his language, i often had the curious feeling that he was transcribing an ideal flow of phonetic elements which he heard, inadequately from a purely objective standpoint, as the intention of the actual rumble of speech.] iv form in language: grammatical processes the question of form in language presents itself under two aspects. we may either consider the formal methods employed by a language, its "grammatical processes," or we may ascertain the distribution of concepts with reference to formal expression. what are the formal patterns of the language? and what types of concepts make up the content of these formal patterns? the two points of view are quite distinct. the english word _unthinkingly_ is, broadly speaking, formally parallel to the word _reformers_, each being built up on a radical element which may occur as an independent verb (_think_, _form_), this radical element being preceded by an element (_un-_, _re-_) that conveys a definite and fairly concrete significance but that cannot be used independently, and followed by two elements (_-ing_, _-ly_; _-er_, _-s_) that limit the application of the radical concept in a relational sense. this formal pattern--(b) + a + (c) + (d)[ ]--is a characteristic feature of the language. a countless number of functions may be expressed by it; in other words, all the possible ideas conveyed by such prefixed and suffixed elements, while tending to fall into minor groups, do not necessarily form natural, functional systems. there is no logical reason, for instance, why the numeral function of _-s_ should be formally expressed in a manner that is analogous to the expression of the idea conveyed by _-ly_. it is perfectly conceivable that in another language the concept of manner (_-ly_) may be treated according to an entirely different pattern from that of plurality. the former might have to be expressed by an independent word (say, _thus unthinking_), the latter by a prefixed element (say, _plural[ ]-reform-er_). there are, of course, an unlimited number of other possibilities. even within the confines of english alone the relative independence of form and function can be made obvious. thus, the negative idea conveyed by _un-_ can be just as adequately expressed by a suffixed element (_-less_) in such a word as _thoughtlessly_. such a twofold formal expression of the negative function would be inconceivable in certain languages, say eskimo, where a suffixed element would alone be possible. again, the plural notion conveyed by the _-s_ of _reformers_ is just as definitely expressed in the word _geese_, where an utterly distinct method is employed. furthermore, the principle of vocalic change (_goose_--_geese_) is by no means confined to the expression of the idea of plurality; it may also function as an indicator of difference of time (e.g., _sing_--_sang_, _throw_--_threw_). but the expression in english of past time is not by any means always bound up with a change of vowel. in the great majority of cases the same idea is expressed by means of a distinct suffix (_die-d_, _work-ed_). functionally, _died_ and _sang_ are analogous; so are _reformers_ and _geese_. formally, we must arrange these words quite otherwise. both _die-d_ and _re-form-er-s_ employ the method of suffixing grammatical elements; both _sang_ and _geese_ have grammatical form by virtue of the fact that their vowels differ from the vowels of other words with which they are closely related in form and meaning (_goose_; _sing_, _sung_). [footnote : for the symbolism, see chapter ii.] [footnote : "_plural_" is here a symbol for any prefix indicating plurality.] every language possesses one or more formal methods or indicating the relation of a secondary concept to the main concept of the radical element. some of these grammatical processes, like suffixing, are exceedingly wide-spread; others, like vocalic change, are less common but far from rare; still others, like accent and consonantal change, are somewhat exceptional as functional processes. not all languages are as irregular as english in the assignment of functions to its stock of grammatical processes. as a rule, such basic concepts as those of plurality and time are rendered by means of one or other method alone, but the rule has so many exceptions that we cannot safely lay it down as a principle. wherever we go we are impressed by the fact that pattern is one thing, the utilization of pattern quite another. a few further examples of the multiple expression of identical functions in other languages than english may help to make still more vivid this idea of the relative independence of form and function. in hebrew, as in other semitic languages, the verbal idea as such is expressed by three, less often by two or four, characteristic consonants. thus, the group _sh-m-r_ expresses the idea of "guarding," the group _g-n-b_ that of "stealing," _n-t-n_ that of "giving." naturally these consonantal sequences are merely abstracted from the actual forms. the consonants are held together in different forms by characteristic vowels that vary according to the idea that it is desired to express. prefixed and suffixed elements are also frequently used. the method of internal vocalic change is exemplified in _shamar_ "he has guarded," _shomer_ "guarding," _shamur_ "being guarded," _shmor_ "(to) guard." analogously, _ganab_ "he has stolen," _goneb_ "stealing," _ganub_ "being stolen," _gnob_ "(to) steal." but not all infinitives are formed according to the type of _shmor_ and _gnob_ or of other types of internal vowel change. certain verbs suffix a _t_-element for the infinitive, e.g., _ten-eth_ "to give," _heyo-th_ "to be." again, the pronominal ideas may be expressed by independent words (e.g., _anoki_ "i"), by prefixed elements (e.g., _e-shmor_ "i shall guard"), or by suffixed elements (e.g., _shamar-ti_ "i have guarded"). in nass, an indian language of british columbia, plurals are formed by four distinct methods. most nouns (and verbs) are reduplicated in the plural, that is, part of the radical element is repeated, e.g., _gyat_ "person," _gyigyat_ "people." a second method is the use of certain characteristic prefixes, e.g., _an'on_ "hand," _ka-an'on_ "hands"; _wai_ "one paddles," _lu-wai_ "several paddle." still other plurals are formed by means of internal vowel change, e.g., _gwula_ "cloak," _gwila_ "cloaks." finally, a fourth class of plurals is constituted by such nouns as suffix a grammatical element, e.g., _waky_ "brother," _wakykw_ "brothers." from such groups of examples as these--and they might be multiplied _ad nauseam_--we cannot but conclude that linguistic form may and should be studied as types of patterning, apart from the associated functions. we are the more justified in this procedure as all languages evince a curious instinct for the development of one or more particular grammatical processes at the expense of others, tending always to lose sight of any explicit functional value that the process may have had in the first instance, delighting, it would seem, in the sheer play of its means of expression. it does not matter that in such a case as the english _goose_--_geese_, _foul_--_defile_, _sing_--_sang_--_sung_ we can prove that we are dealing with historically distinct processes, that the vocalic alternation of _sing_ and _sang_, for instance, is centuries older as a specific type of grammatical process than the outwardly parallel one of _goose_ and _geese_. it remains true that there is (or was) an inherent tendency in english, at the time such forms as _geese_ came into being, for the utilization of vocalic change as a significant linguistic method. failing the precedent set by such already existing types of vocalic alternation as _sing_--_sang_--_sung_, it is highly doubtful if the detailed conditions that brought about the evolution of forms like _teeth_ and _geese_ from _tooth_ and _goose_ would have been potent enough to allow the native linguistic feeling to win through to an acceptance of these new types of plural formation as psychologically possible. this feeling for form as such, freely expanding along predetermined lines and greatly inhibited in certain directions by the lack of controlling types of patterning, should be more clearly understood than it seems to be. a general survey of many diverse types of languages is needed to give us the proper perspective on this point. we saw in the preceding chapter that every language has an inner phonetic system of definite pattern. we now learn that it has also a definite feeling for patterning on the level of grammatical formation. both of these submerged and powerfully controlling impulses to definite form operate as such, regardless of the need for expressing particular concepts or of giving consistent external shape to particular groups of concepts. it goes without saying that these impulses can find realization only in concrete functional expression. we must say something to be able to say it in a certain manner. let us now take up a little more systematically, however briefly, the various grammatical processes that linguistic research has established. they may be grouped into six main types: word order; composition; affixation, including the use of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes; internal modification of the radical or grammatical element, whether this affects a vowel or a consonant; reduplication; and accentual differences, whether dynamic (stress) or tonal (pitch). there are also special quantitative processes, like vocalic lengthening or shortening and consonantal doubling, but these may be looked upon as particular sub-types of the process of internal modification. possibly still other formal types exist, but they are not likely to be of importance in a general survey. it is important to bear in mind that a linguistic phenomenon cannot be looked upon as illustrating a definite "process" unless it has an inherent functional value. the consonantal change in english, for instance, of _book-s_ and _bag-s_ (_s_ in the former, _z_ in the latter) is of no functional significance. it is a purely external, mechanical change induced by the presence of a preceding voiceless consonant, _k_, in the former case, of a voiced consonant, _g_, in the latter. this mechanical alternation is objectively the same as that between the noun _house_ and the verb _to house_. in the latter case, however, it has an important grammatical function, that of transforming a noun into a verb. the two alternations belong, then, to entirely different psychological categories. only the latter is a true illustration of consonantal modification as a grammatical process. the simplest, at least the most economical, method of conveying some sort of grammatical notion is to juxtapose two or more words in a definite sequence without making any attempt by inherent modification of these words to establish a connection between them. let us put down two simple english words at random, say _sing praise_. this conveys no finished thought in english, nor does it clearly establish a relation between the idea of singing and that of praising. nevertheless, it is psychologically impossible to hear or see the two words juxtaposed without straining to give them some measure of coherent significance. the attempt is not likely to yield an entirely satisfactory result, but what is significant is that as soon as two or more radical concepts are put before the human mind in immediate sequence it strives to bind them together with connecting values of some sort. in the case of _sing praise_ different individuals are likely to arrive at different provisional results. some of the latent possibilities of the juxtaposition, expressed in currently satisfying form, are: _sing praise (to him)!_ or _singing praise, praise expressed in a song_ or _to sing and praise_ or _one who sings a song of praise_ (compare such english compounds as _killjoy_, i.e., _one who kills joy_) or _he sings a song of praise (to him)_. the theoretical possibilities in the way of rounding out these two concepts into a significant group of concepts or even into a finished thought are indefinitely numerous. none of them will quite work in english, but there are numerous languages where one or other of these amplifying processes is habitual. it depends entirely on the genius of the particular language what function is inherently involved in a given sequence of words. some languages, like latin, express practically all relations by means of modifications within the body of the word itself. in these, sequence is apt to be a rhetorical rather than a strictly grammatical principle. whether i say in latin _hominem femina videt_ or _femina hominem videt_ or _hominem videt femina_ or _videt femina hominem_ makes little or no difference beyond, possibly, a rhetorical or stylistic one. _the woman sees the man_ is the identical significance of each of these sentences. in chinook, an indian language of the columbia river, one can be equally free, for the relation between the verb and the two nouns is as inherently fixed as in latin. the difference between the two languages is that, while latin allows the nouns to establish their relation to each other and to the verb, chinook lays the formal burden entirely on the verb, the full content of which is more or less adequately rendered by _she-him-sees_. eliminate the latin case suffixes (_-a_ and _-em_) and the chinook pronominal prefixes (_she-him-_) and we cannot afford to be so indifferent to our word order. we need to husband our resources. in other words, word order takes on a real functional value. latin and chinook are at one extreme. such languages as chinese, siamese, and annamite, in which each and every word, if it is to function properly, falls into its assigned place, are at the other extreme. but the majority of languages fall between these two extremes. in english, for instance, it may make little grammatical difference whether i say _yesterday the man saw the dog_ or _the man saw the dog yesterday_, but it is not a matter of indifference whether i say _yesterday the man saw the dog_ or _yesterday the dog saw the man_ or whether i say _he is here_ or _is he here?_ in the one case, of the latter group of examples, the vital distinction of subject and object depends entirely on the placing of certain words of the sentence, in the latter a slight difference of sequence makes all the difference between statement and question. it goes without saying that in these cases the english principle of word order is as potent a means of expression as is the latin use of case suffixes or of an interrogative particle. there is here no question of functional poverty, but of formal economy. we have already seen something of the process of composition, the uniting into a single word of two or more radical elements. psychologically this process is closely allied to that of word order in so far as the relation between the elements is implied, not explicitly stated. it differs from the mere juxtaposition of words in the sentence in that the compounded elements are felt as constituting but parts of a single word-organism. such languages as chinese and english, in which the principle of rigid sequence is well developed, tend not infrequently also to the development of compound words. it is but a step from such a chinese word sequence as _jin tak_ "man virtue," i.e., "the virtue of men," to such more conventionalized and psychologically unified juxtapositions as _t'ien tsz_ "heaven son," i.e., "emperor," or _shui fu_ "water man," i.e., "water carrier." in the latter case we may as well frankly write _shui-fu_ as a single word, the meaning of the compound as a whole being as divergent from the precise etymological values of its component elements as is that of our english word _typewriter_ from the merely combined values of _type_ and _writer_. in english the unity of the word _typewriter_ is further safeguarded by a predominant accent on the first syllable and by the possibility of adding such a suffixed element as the plural _-s_ to the whole word. chinese also unifies its compounds by means of stress. however, then, in its ultimate origins the process of composition may go back to typical sequences of words in the sentence, it is now, for the most part, a specialized method of expressing relations. french has as rigid a word order as english but does not possess anything like its power of compounding words into more complex units. on the other hand, classical greek, in spite of its relative freedom in the placing of words, has a very considerable bent for the formation of compound terms. it is curious to observe how greatly languages differ in their ability to make use of the process of composition. one would have thought on general principles that so simple a device as gives us our _typewriter_ and _blackbird_ and hosts of other words would be an all but universal grammatical process. such is not the case. there are a great many languages, like eskimo and nootka and, aside from paltry exceptions, the semitic languages, that cannot compound radical elements. what is even stranger is the fact that many of these languages are not in the least averse to complex word-formations, but may on the contrary effect a synthesis that far surpasses the utmost that greek and sanskrit are capable of. such a nootka word, for instance, as "when, as they say, he had been absent for four days" might be expected to embody at least three radical elements corresponding to the concepts of "absent," "four," and "day." as a matter of fact the nootka word is utterly incapable of composition in our sense. it is invariably built up out of a single radical element and a greater or less number of suffixed elements, some of which may have as concrete a significance as the radical element itself. in, the particular case we have cited the radical element conveys the idea of "four," the notions of "day" and "absent" being expressed by suffixes that are as inseparable from the radical nucleus of the word as is an english element like _-er_ from the _sing_ or _hunt_ of such words as _singer_ and _hunter_. the tendency to word synthesis is, then, by no means the same thing as the tendency to compounding radical elements, though the latter is not infrequently a ready means for the synthetic tendency to work with. there is a bewildering variety of types of composition. these types vary according to function, the nature of the compounded elements, and order. in a great many languages composition is confined to what we may call the delimiting function, that is, of the two or more compounded elements one is given a more precisely qualified significance by the others, which contribute nothing to the formal build of the sentence. in english, for instance, such compounded elements as _red_ in _redcoat_ or _over_ in _overlook_ merely modify the significance of the dominant _coat_ or _look_ without in any way sharing, as such, in the predication that is expressed by the sentence. some languages, however, such as iroquois and nahuatl,[ ] employ the method of composition for much heavier work than this. in iroquois, for instance, the composition of a noun, in its radical form, with a following verb is a typical method of expressing case relations, particularly of the subject or object. _i-meat-eat_ for instance, is the regular iroquois method of expressing the sentence _i am eating meat_. in other languages similar forms may express local or instrumental or still other relations. such english forms as _killjoy_ and _marplot_ also illustrate the compounding of a verb and a noun, but the resulting word has a strictly nominal, not a verbal, function. we cannot say _he marplots_. some languages allow the composition of all or nearly all types of elements. paiute, for instance, may compound noun with noun, adjective with noun, verb with noun to make a noun, noun with verb to make a verb, adverb with verb, verb with verb. yana, an indian language of california, can freely compound noun with noun and verb with noun, but not verb with verb. on the other hand, iroquois can compound only noun with verb, never noun and noun as in english or verb and verb as in so many other languages. finally, each language has its characteristic types of order of composition. in english the qualifying element regularly precedes; in certain other languages it follows. sometimes both types are used in the same language, as in yana, where "beef" is "bitter-venison" but "deer-liver" is expressed by "liver-deer." the compounded object of a verb precedes the verbal element in paiute, nahuatl, and iroquois, follows it in yana, tsimshian,[ ] and the algonkin languages. [footnote : the language of the aztecs, still spoken in large parts of mexico.] [footnote : indian language of british columbia closely related to the nass already cited.] of all grammatical processes affixing is incomparably the most frequently employed. there are languages, like chinese and siamese, that make no grammatical use of elements that do not at the same time possess an independent value as radical elements, but such languages are uncommon. of the three types of affixing--the use of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes--suffixing is much the commonest. indeed, it is a fair guess that suffixes do more of the formative work of language than all other methods combined. it is worth noting that there are not a few affixing languages that make absolutely no use of prefixed elements but possess a complex apparatus of suffixes. such are turkish, hottentot, eskimo, nootka, and yana. some of these, like the three last mentioned, have hundreds of suffixed elements, many of them of a concreteness of significance that would demand expression in the vast majority of languages by means of radical elements. the reverse case, the use of prefixed elements to the complete exclusion of suffixes, is far less common. a good example is khmer (or cambodgian), spoken in french cochin-china, though even here there are obscure traces of old suffixes that have ceased to function as such and are now felt to form part of the radical element. a considerable majority of known languages are prefixing and suffixing at one and the same time, but the relative importance of the two groups of affixed elements naturally varies enormously. in some languages, such as latin and russian, the suffixes alone relate the word to the rest of the sentence, the prefixes being confined to the expression of such ideas as delimit the concrete significance of the radical element without influencing its bearing in the proposition. a latin form like _remittebantur_ "they were being sent back" may serve as an illustration of this type of distribution of elements. the prefixed element _re-_ "back" merely qualifies to a certain extent the inherent significance of the radical element _mitt-_ "send," while the suffixes _-eba-_, _-nt-_, and _-ur_ convey the less concrete, more strictly formal, notions of time, person, plurality, and passivity. on the other hand, there are languages, like the bantu group of africa or the athabaskan languages[ ] of north america, in which the grammatically significant elements precede, those that follow the radical element forming a relatively dispensable class. the hupa word _te-s-e-ya-te_ "i will go," for example, consists of a radical element _-ya-_ "to go," three essential prefixes and a formally subsidiary suffix. the element _te-_ indicates that the act takes place here and there in space or continuously over space; practically, it has no clear-cut significance apart from such verb stems as it is customary to connect it with. the second prefixed element, _-s-_, is even less easy to define. all we can say is that it is used in verb forms of "definite" time and that it marks action as in progress rather than as beginning or coming to an end. the third prefix, _-e-_, is a pronominal element, "i," which can be used only in "definite" tenses. it is highly important to understand that the use of _-e-_ is conditional on that of _-s-_ or of certain alternative prefixes and that _te-_ also is in practice linked with _-s-_. the group _te-s-e-ya_ is a firmly knit grammatical unit. the suffix _-te_, which indicates the future, is no more necessary to its formal balance than is the prefixed _re-_ of the latin word; it is not an element that is capable of standing alone but its function is materially delimiting rather than strictly formal.[ ] [footnote : including such languages as navaho, apache, hupa, carrier, chipewyan, loucheux.] [footnote : this may seem surprising to an english reader. we generally think of time as a function that is appropriately expressed in a purely formal manner. this notion is due to the bias that latin grammar has given us. as a matter of fact the english future (_i shall go_) is not expressed by affixing at all; moreover, it may be expressed by the present, as in _to-morrow i leave this place_, where the temporal function is inherent in the independent adverb. though in lesser degree, the hupa _-te_ is as irrelevant to the vital word as is _to-morrow_ to the grammatical "feel" of _i leave_.] it is not always, however, that we can clearly set off the suffixes of a language as a group against its prefixes. in probably the majority of languages that use both types of affixes each group has both delimiting and formal or relational functions. the most that we can say is that a language tends to express similar functions in either the one or the other manner. if a certain verb expresses a certain tense by suffixing, the probability is strong that it expresses its other tenses in an analogous fashion and that, indeed, all verbs have suffixed tense elements. similarly, we normally expect to find the pronominal elements, so far as they are included in the verb at all, either consistently prefixed or suffixed. but these rules are far from absolute. we have already seen that hebrew prefixes its pronominal elements in certain cases, suffixes them in others. in chimariko, an indian language of california, the position of the pronominal affixes depends on the verb; they are prefixed for certain verbs, suffixed for others. it will not be necessary to give many further examples of prefixing and suffixing. one of each category will suffice to illustrate their formative possibilities. the idea expressed in english by the sentence _i came to give it to her_ is rendered in chinook[ ] by _i-n-i-a-l-u-d-am_. this word--and it is a thoroughly unified word with a clear-cut accent on the first _a_--consists of a radical element, _-d-_ "to give," six functionally distinct, if phonetically frail, prefixed elements, and a suffix. of the prefixes, _i-_ indicates recently past time; _n-_, the pronominal subject "i"; _-i-_, the pronominal object "it";[ ] _-a-_, the second pronominal object "her"; _-l-_, a prepositional element indicating that the preceding pronominal prefix is to be understood as an indirect object (_-her-to-_, i.e., "to her"); and _-u-_, an element that it is not easy to define satisfactorily but which, on the whole, indicates movement away from the speaker. the suffixed _-am_ modifies the verbal content in a local sense; it adds to the notion conveyed by the radical element that of "arriving" or "going (or coming) for that particular purpose." it is obvious that in chinook, as in hupa, the greater part of the grammatical machinery resides in the prefixes rather than in the suffixes. [footnote : wishram dialect.] [footnote : really "him," but chinook, like latin or french, possesses grammatical gender. an object may be referred to as "he," "she," or "it," according to the characteristic form of its noun.] a reverse case, one in which the grammatically significant elements cluster, as in latin, at the end of the word is yielded by fox, one of the better known algonkin languages of the mississippi valley. we may take the form _eh-kiwi-n-a-m-oht-ati-wa-ch(i)_ "then they together kept (him) in flight from them." the radical element here is _kiwi-_, a verb stem indicating the general notion of "indefinite movement round about, here and there." the prefixed element _eh-_ is hardly more than an adverbial particle indicating temporal subordination; it may be conveniently rendered as "then." of the seven suffixes included in this highly-wrought word, _-n-_ seems to be merely a phonetic element serving to connect the verb stem with the following _-a-_;[ ] _-a-_ is a "secondary stem"[ ] denoting the idea of "flight, to flee"; _-m-_ denotes causality with reference to an animate object;[ ] _-o(ht)-_ indicates activity done for the subject (the so-called "middle" or "medio-passive" voice of greek); _-(a)ti-_ is a reciprocal element, "one another"; _-wa-ch(i)_ is the third person animate plural (_-wa-_, plural; _-chi_, more properly personal) of so-called "conjunctive" forms. the word may be translated more literally (and yet only approximately as to grammatical feeling) as "then they (animate) caused some animate being to wander about in flight from one another of themselves." eskimo, nootka, yana, and other languages have similarly complex arrays of suffixed elements, though the functions performed by them and their principles of combination differ widely. [footnote : this analysis is doubtful. it is likely that _-n-_ possesses a function that still remains to be ascertained. the algonkin languages are unusually complex and present many unsolved problems of detail.] [footnote : "secondary stems" are elements which are suffixes from a formal point of view, never appearing without the support of a true radical element, but whose function is as concrete, to all intents and purposes, as that of the radical element itself. secondary verb stems of this type are characteristic of the algonkin languages and of yana.] [footnote : in the algonkin languages all persons and things are conceived of as either animate or inanimate, just as in latin or german they are conceived of as masculine, feminine, or neuter.] we have reserved the very curious type of affixation known as "infixing" for separate illustration. it is utterly unknown in english, unless we consider the _-n-_ of _stand_ (contrast _stood_) as an infixed element. the earlier indo-european languages, such as latin, greek and sanskrit, made a fairly considerable use of infixed nasals to differentiate the present tense of a certain class of verbs from other forms (contrast latin _vinc-o_ "i conquer" with _vic-i_ "i conquered"; greek _lamb-an-o_ "i take" with _e-lab-on_ "i took"). there are, however, more striking examples of the process, examples in which it has assumed a more clearly defined function than in these latin and greek cases. it is particularly prevalent in many languages of southeastern asia and of the malay archipelago. good examples from khmer (cambodgian) are _tmeu_ "one who walks" and _daneu_ "walking" (verbal noun), both derived from _deu_ "to walk." further examples may be quoted from bontoc igorot, a filipino language. thus, an infixed _-in-_ conveys the idea of the product of an accomplished action, e.g., _kayu_ "wood," _kinayu_ "gathered wood." infixes are also freely used in the bontoc igorot verb. thus, an infixed _-um-_ is characteristic of many intransitive verbs with personal pronominal suffixes, e.g., _sad-_ "to wait," _sumid-ak_ "i wait"; _kineg_ "silent," _kuminek-ak_ "i am silent." in other verbs it indicates futurity, e.g., _tengao-_ "to celebrate a holiday," _tumengao-ak_ "i shall have a holiday." the past tense is frequently indicated by an infixed _-in-_; if there is already an infixed _-um-_, the two elements combine to _-in-m-_, e.g., _kinminek-ak_ "i am silent." obviously the infixing process has in this (and related) languages the same vitality that is possessed by the commoner prefixes and suffixes of other languages. the process is also found in a number of aboriginal american languages. the yana plural is sometimes formed by an infixed element, e.g., _k'uruwi_ "medicine-men," _k'uwi_ "medicine-man"; in chinook an infixed _-l-_ is used in certain verbs to indicate repeated activity, e.g., _ksik'ludelk_ "she keeps looking at him," _iksik'lutk_ "she looked at him" (radical element _-tk_). a peculiarly interesting type of infixation is found in the siouan languages, in which certain verbs insert the pronominal elements into the very body of the radical element, e.g., sioux _cheti_ "to build a fire," _chewati_ "i build a fire"; _shuta_ "to miss," _shuunta-pi_ "we miss." a subsidiary but by no means unimportant grammatical process is that of internal vocalic or consonantal change. in some languages, as in english (_sing_, _sang_, _sung_, _song_; _goose_, _geese_), the former of these has become one of the major methods of indicating fundamental changes of grammatical function. at any rate, the process is alive enough to lead our children into untrodden ways. we all know of the growing youngster who speaks of having _brung_ something, on the analogy of such forms as _sung_ and _flung_. in hebrew, as we have seen, vocalic change is of even greater significance than in english. what is true of hebrew is of course true of all other semitic languages. a few examples of so-called "broken" plurals from arabic[ ] will supplement the hebrew verb forms that i have given in another connection. the noun _balad_ "place" has the plural form _bilad_;[ ] _gild_ "hide" forms the plural _gulud_; _ragil_ "man," the plural _rigal_; _shibbak_ "window," the plural _shababik_. very similar phenomena are illustrated by the hamitic languages of northern africa, e.g., shilh[ ] _izbil_ "hair," plural _izbel_; _a-slem_ "fish," plural _i-slim-en_; _sn_ "to know," _sen_ "to be knowing"; _rmi_ "to become tired," _rumni_ "to be tired"; _ttss_[ ] "to fall asleep," _ttoss_ "to sleep." strikingly similar to english and greek alternations of the type _sing_--_sang_ and _leip-o_ "i leave," _leloip-a_ "i have left," are such somali[ ] cases as _al_ "i am," _il_ "i was"; _i-dah-a_ "i say," _i-di_ "i said," _deh_ "say!" [footnote : egyptian dialect.] [footnote : there are changes of accent and vocalic quantity in these forms as well, but the requirements of simplicity force us to neglect them.] [footnote : a berber language of morocco.] [footnote : some of the berber languages allow consonantal combinations that seem unpronounceable to us.] [footnote : one of the hamitic languages of eastern africa.] vocalic change is of great significance also in a number of american indian languages. in the athabaskan group many verbs change the quality or quantity of the vowel of the radical element as it changes its tense or mode. the navaho verb for "i put (grain) into a receptacle" is _bi-hi-sh-ja_, in which _-ja_ is the radical element; the past tense, _bi-hi-ja'_, has a long _a_-vowel, followed by the "glottal stop"[ ]; the future is _bi-h-de-sh-ji_ with complete change of vowel. in other types of navaho verbs the vocalic changes follow different lines, e.g., _yah-a-ni-ye_ "you carry (a pack) into (a stable)"; past, _yah-i-ni-yin_ (with long _i_ in _-yin_; _-n_ is here used to indicate nasalization); future, _yah-a-di-yehl_ (with long _e_). in another indian language, yokuts[ ], vocalic modifications affect both noun and verb forms. thus, _buchong_ "son" forms the plural _bochang-i_ (contrast the objective _buchong-a_); _enash_ "grandfather," the plural _inash-a_; the verb _engtyim_ "to sleep" forms the continuative _ingetym-ad_ "to be sleeping" and the past _ingetym-ash_. [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] [footnote : spoken in the south-central part of california.] consonantal change as a functional process is probably far less common than vocalic modifications, but it is not exactly rare. there is an interesting group of cases in english, certain nouns and corresponding verbs differing solely in that the final consonant is voiceless or voiced. examples are _wreath_ (with _th_ as in _think_), but _to wreathe_ (with _th_ as in _then_); _house_, but _to house_ (with _s_ pronounced like _z_). that we have a distinct feeling for the interchange as a means of distinguishing the noun from the verb is indicated by the extension of the principle by many americans to such a noun as _rise_ (e.g., _the rise of democracy_)--pronounced like _rice_--in contrast to the verb _to rise_ (_s_ like _z_). in the celtic languages the initial consonants undergo several types of change according to the grammatical relation that subsists between the word itself and the preceding word. thus, in modern irish, a word like _bo_ "ox" may under the appropriate circumstances, take the forms _bho_ (pronounce _wo_) or _mo_ (e.g., _an bo_ "the ox," as a subject, but _tir na mo_ "land of the oxen," as a possessive plural). in the verb the principle has as one of its most striking consequences the "aspiration" of initial consonants in the past tense. if a verb begins with _t_, say, it changes the _t_ to _th_ (now pronounced _h_) in forms of the past; if it begins with _g_, the consonant changes, in analogous forms, to _gh_ (pronounced like a voiced spirant[ ] _g_ or like _y_, according to the nature of the following vowel). in modern irish the principle of consonantal change, which began in the oldest period of the language as a secondary consequence of certain phonetic conditions, has become one of the primary grammatical processes of the language. [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] perhaps as remarkable as these irish phenomena are the consonantal interchanges of ful, an african language of the soudan. here we find that all nouns belonging to the personal class form the plural by changing their initial _g_, _j_, _d_, _b_, _k_, _ch_, and _p_ to _y_ (or _w_), _y_, _r_, _w_, _h_, _s_ and _f_ respectively; e.g., _jim-o_ "companion," _yim-'be_ "companions"; _pio-o_ "beater," _fio-'be_ "beaters." curiously enough, nouns that belong to the class of things form their singular and plural in exactly reverse fashion, e.g., _yola-re_ "grass-grown place," _jola-je_ "grass-grown places"; _fitan-du_ "soul," _pital-i_ "souls." in nootka, to refer to but one other language in which the process is found, the _t_ or _tl_[ ] of many verbal suffixes becomes _hl_ in forms denoting repetition, e.g., _hita-'ato_ "to fall out," _hita-'ahl_ "to keep falling out"; _mat-achisht-utl_ "to fly on to the water," _mat-achisht-ohl_ "to keep flying on to the water." further, the _hl_ of certain elements changes to a peculiar _h_-sound in plural forms, e.g., _yak-ohl_ "sore-faced," _yak-oh_ "sore-faced (people)." [footnote : these orthographies are but makeshifts for simple sounds.] nothing is more natural than the prevalence of reduplication, in other words, the repetition of all or part of the radical element. the process is generally employed, with self-evident symbolism, to indicate such concepts as distribution, plurality, repetition, customary activity, increase of size, added intensity, continuance. even in english it is not unknown, though it is not generally accounted one of the typical formative devices of our language. such words as _goody-goody_ and _to pooh-pooh_ have become accepted as part of our normal vocabulary, but the method of duplication may on occasion be used more freely than is indicated by such stereotyped examples. such locutions as _a big big man_ or _let it cool till it's thick thick_ are far more common, especially in the speech of women and children, than our linguistic text-books would lead one to suppose. in a class by themselves are the really enormous number of words, many of them sound-imitative or contemptuous in psychological tone, that consist of duplications with either change of the vowel or change of the initial consonant--words of the type _sing-song_, _riff-raff_, _wishy-washy_, _harum-skarum_, _roly-poly_. words of this type are all but universal. such examples as the russian _chudo-yudo_ (a dragon), the chinese _ping-pang_ "rattling of rain on the roof,"[ ] the tibetan _kyang-kyong_ "lazy," and the manchu _porpon parpan_ "blear-eyed" are curiously reminiscent, both in form and in psychology, of words nearer home. but it can hardly be said that the duplicative process is of a distinctively grammatical significance in english. we must turn to other languages for illustration. such cases as hottentot _go-go_ "to look at carefully" (from _go_ "to see"), somali _fen-fen_ "to gnaw at on all sides" (from _fen_ "to gnaw at"), chinook _iwi iwi_ "to look about carefully, to examine" (from _iwi_ "to appear"), or tsimshian _am'am_ "several (are) good" (from _am_ "good") do not depart from the natural and fundamental range of significance of the process. a more abstract function is illustrated in ewe,[ ] in which both infinitives and verbal adjectives are formed from verbs by duplication; e.g., _yi_ "to go," _yiyi_ "to go, act of going"; _wo_ "to do," _wowo_[ ] "done"; _mawomawo_ "not to do" (with both duplicated verb stem and duplicated negative particle). causative duplications are characteristic of hottentot, e.g., _gam-gam_[ ] "to cause to tell" (from _gam_ "to tell"). or the process may be used to derive verbs from nouns, as in hottentot _khoe-khoe_ "to talk hottentot" (from _khoe-b_ "man, hottentot"), or as in kwakiutl _metmat_ "to eat clams" (radical element _met-_ "clam"). [footnote : whence our _ping-pong_.] [footnote : an african language of the guinea coast.] [footnote : in the verbal adjective the tone of the second syllable differs from that of the first.] [footnote : initial "click" (see page , note ) omitted.] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to footnote , beginning on line .] the most characteristic examples of reduplication are such as repeat only part of the radical element. it would be possible to demonstrate the existence of a vast number of formal types of such partial duplication, according to whether the process makes use of one or more of the radical consonants, preserves or weakens or alters the radical vowel, or affects the beginning, the middle, or the end of the radical element. the functions are even more exuberantly developed than with simple duplication, though the basic notion, at least in origin, is nearly always one of repetition or continuance. examples illustrating this fundamental function can be quoted from all parts of the globe. initially reduplicating are, for instance, shilh _ggen_ "to be sleeping" (from _gen_ "to sleep"); ful _pepeu-'do_ "liar" (i.e., "one who always lies"), plural _fefeu-'be_ (from _fewa_ "to lie"); bontoc igorot _anak_ "child," _ananak_ "children"; _kamu-ek_ "i hasten," _kakamu-ek_ "i hasten more"; tsimshian _gyad_ "person," _gyigyad_ "people"; nass _gyibayuk_ "to fly," _gyigyibayuk_ "one who is flying." psychologically comparable, but with the reduplication at the end, are somali _ur_ "body," plural _urar_; hausa _suna_ "name," plural _sunana-ki;_ washo[ ] _gusu_ "buffalo," _gususu_ "buffaloes"; takelma[ ] _himi-d-_ "to talk to," _himim-d-_ "to be accustomed to talk to." even more commonly than simple duplication, this partial duplication of the radical element has taken on in many languages functions that seem in no way related to the idea of increase. the best known examples are probably the initial reduplication of our older indo-european languages, which helps to form the perfect tense of many verbs (e.g., sanskrit _dadarsha_ "i have seen," greek _leloipa_ "i have left," latin _tetigi_ "i have touched," gothic _lelot_ "i have let"). in nootka reduplication of the radical element is often employed in association with certain suffixes; e.g., _hluch-_ "woman" forms _hluhluch-'ituhl_ "to dream of a woman," _hluhluch-k'ok_ "resembling a woman." psychologically similar to the greek and latin examples are many takelma cases of verbs that exhibit two forms of the stem, one employed in the present or past, the other in the future and in certain modes and verbal derivatives. the former has final reduplication, which is absent in the latter; e.g., _al-yebeb-i'n_ "i show (or showed) to him," _al-yeb-in_ "i shall show him." [footnote : an indian language of nevada.] [footnote : an indian language of oregon.] we come now to the subtlest of all grammatical processes, variations in accent, whether of stress or pitch. the chief difficulty in isolating accent as a functional process is that it is so often combined with alternations in vocalic quantity or quality or complicated by the presence of affixed elements that its grammatical value appears as a secondary rather than as a primary feature. in greek, for instance, it is characteristic of true verbal forms that they throw the accent back as far as the general accentual rules will permit, while nouns may be more freely accented. there is thus a striking accentual difference between a verbal form like _eluthemen_ "we were released," accented on the second syllable of the word, and its participial derivative _lutheis_ "released," accented on the last. the presence of the characteristic verbal elements _e-_ and _-men_ in the first case and of the nominal _-s_ in the second tends to obscure the inherent value of the accentual alternation. this value comes out very neatly in such english doublets as _to refund_ and _a refund_, _to extract_ and _an extract, to come down_ and _a come down_, _to lack luster_ and _lack-luster eyes_, in which the difference between the verb and the noun is entirely a matter of changing stress. in the athabaskan languages there are not infrequently significant alternations of accent, as in navaho _ta-di-gis_ "you wash yourself" (accented on the second syllable), _ta-di-gis_ "he washes himself" (accented on the first).[ ] [footnote : it is not unlikely, however, that these athabaskan alternations are primarily tonal in character.] pitch accent may be as functional as stress and is perhaps more often so. the mere fact, however, that pitch variations are phonetically essential to the language, as in chinese (e.g., _feng_ "wind" with a level tone, _feng_ "to serve" with a falling tone) or as in classical greek (e.g., _lab-on_ "having taken" with a simple or high tone on the suffixed participial _-on_, _gunaik-on_ "of women" with a compound or falling tone on the case suffix _-on_) does not necessarily constitute a functional, or perhaps we had better say grammatical, use of pitch. in such cases the pitch is merely inherent in the radical element or affix, as any vowel or consonant might be. it is different with such chinese alternations as _chung_ (level) "middle" and _chung_ (falling) "to hit the middle"; _mai_ (rising) "to buy" and _mai_ (falling) "to sell"; _pei_ (falling) "back" and _pei_ (level) "to carry on the back." examples of this type are not exactly common in chinese and the language cannot be said to possess at present a definite feeling for tonal differences as symbolic of the distinction between noun and verb. there are languages, however, in which such differences are of the most fundamental grammatical importance. they are particularly common in the soudan. in ewe, for instance, there are formed from _subo_ "to serve" two reduplicated forms, an infinitive _subosubo_ "to serve," with a low tone on the first two syllables and a high one on the last two, and an adjectival _subosubo_ "serving," in which all the syllables have a high tone. even more striking are cases furnished by shilluk, one of the languages of the headwaters of the nile. the plural of the noun often differs in tone from the singular, e.g., _yit_ (high) "ear" but _yit_ (low) "ears." in the pronoun three forms may be distinguished by tone alone; _e_ "he" has a high tone and is subjective, _-e_ "him" (e.g., _a chwol-e_ "he called him") has a low tone and is objective, _-e_ "his" (e.g., _wod-e_ "his house") has a middle tone and is possessive. from the verbal element _gwed-_ "to write" are formed _gwed-o_ "(he) writes" with a low tone, the passive _gwet_ "(it was) written" with a falling tone, the imperative _gwet_ "write!" with a rising tone, and the verbal noun _gwet_ "writing" with a middle tone. in aboriginal america also pitch accent is known to occur as a grammatical process. a good example of such a pitch language is tlingit, spoken by the indians of the southern coast of alaska. in this language many verbs vary the tone of the radical element according to tense; _hun_ "to sell," _sin_ "to hide," _tin_ "to see," and numerous other radical elements, if low-toned, refer to past time, if high-toned, to the future. another type of function is illustrated by the takelma forms _hel_ "song," with falling pitch, but _hel_ "sing!" with a rising inflection; parallel to these forms are _sel_ (falling) "black paint," _sel_ (rising) "paint it!" all in all it is clear that pitch accent, like stress and vocalic or consonantal modifications, is far less infrequently employed as a grammatical process than our own habits of speech would prepare us to believe probable. v form in language: grammatical concepts we have seen that the single word expresses either a simple concept or a combination of concepts so interrelated as to form a psychological unity. we have, furthermore, briefly reviewed from a strictly formal standpoint the main processes that are used by all known languages to affect the fundamental concepts--those embodied in unanalyzable words or in the radical elements of words--by the modifying or formative influence of subsidiary concepts. in this chapter we shall look a little more closely into the nature of the world of concepts, in so far as that world is reflected and systematized in linguistic structure. let us begin with a simple sentence that involves various kinds of concepts--_the farmer kills the duckling_. a rough and ready analysis discloses here the presence of three distinct and fundamental concepts that are brought into connection with each other in a number of ways. these three concepts are "farmer" (the subject of discourse), "kill" (defining the nature of the activity which the sentence informs us about), and "duckling" (another subject[ ] of discourse that takes an important though somewhat passive part in this activity). we can visualize the farmer and the duckling and we have also no difficulty in constructing an image of the killing. in other words, the elements _farmer_, _kill_, and _duckling_ define concepts of a concrete order. [footnote : not in its technical sense.] but a more careful linguistic analysis soon brings us to see that the two subjects of discourse, however simply we may visualize them, are not expressed quite as directly, as immediately, as we feel them. a "farmer" is in one sense a perfectly unified concept, in another he is "one who farms." the concept conveyed by the radical element (_farm-_) is not one of personality at all but of an industrial activity (_to farm_), itself based on the concept of a particular type of object (_a farm_). similarly, the concept of _duckling_ is at one remove from that which is expressed by the radical element of the word, _duck_. this element, which may occur as an independent word, refers to a whole class of animals, big and little, while _duckling_ is limited in its application to the young of that class. the word _farmer_ has an "agentive" suffix _-er_ that performs the function of indicating the one that carries out a given activity, in this case that of farming. it transforms the verb _to farm_ into an agentive noun precisely as it transforms the verbs _to sing_, _to paint_, _to teach_ into the corresponding agentive nouns _singer_, _painter_, _teacher_. the element _-ling_ is not so freely used, but its significance is obvious. it adds to the basic concept the notion of smallness (as also in _gosling_, _fledgeling_) or the somewhat related notion of "contemptible" (as in _weakling_, _princeling_, _hireling_). the agentive _-er_ and the diminutive _-ling_ both convey fairly concrete ideas (roughly those of "doer" and "little"), but the concreteness is not stressed. they do not so much define distinct concepts as mediate between concepts. the _-er_ of _farmer_ does not quite say "one who (farms)" it merely indicates that the sort of person we call a "farmer" is closely enough associated with activity on a farm to be conventionally thought of as always so occupied. he may, as a matter of fact, go to town and engage in any pursuit but farming, yet his linguistic label remains "farmer." language here betrays a certain helplessness or, if one prefers, a stubborn tendency to look away from the immediately suggested function, trusting to the imagination and to usage to fill in the transitions of thought and the details of application that distinguish one concrete concept (_to farm_) from another "derived" one (_farmer_). it would be impossible for any language to express every concrete idea by an independent word or radical element. the concreteness of experience is infinite, the resources of the richest language are strictly limited. it must perforce throw countless concepts under the rubric of certain basic ones, using other concrete or semi-concrete ideas as functional mediators. the ideas expressed by these mediating elements--they may be independent words, affixes, or modifications of the radical element--may be called "derivational" or "qualifying." some concrete concepts, such as _kill_, are expressed radically; others, such as _farmer_ and _duckling_, are expressed derivatively. corresponding to these two modes of expression we have two types of concepts and of linguistic elements, radical (_farm_, _kill_, _duck_) and derivational (_-er_, _-ling_). when a word (or unified group of words) contains a derivational element (or word) the concrete significance of the radical element (_farm-_, _duck-_) tends to fade from consciousness and to yield to a new concreteness (_farmer_, _duckling_) that is synthetic in expression rather than in thought. in our sentence the concepts of _farm_ and _duck_ are not really involved at all; they are merely latent, for formal reasons, in the linguistic expression. returning to this sentence, we feel that the analysis of _farmer_ and _duckling_ are practically irrelevant to an understanding of its content and entirely irrelevant to a feeling for the structure of the sentence as a whole. from the standpoint of the sentence the derivational elements _-er_ and _-ling_ are merely details in the local economy of two of its terms (_farmer_, _duckling_) that it accepts as units of expression. this indifference of the sentence as such to some part of the analysis of its words is shown by the fact that if we substitute such radical words as _man_ and _chick_ for _farmer_ and _duckling_, we obtain a new material content, it is true, but not in the least a new structural mold. we can go further and substitute another activity for that of "killing," say "taking." the new sentence, _the man takes the chick_, is totally different from the first sentence in what it conveys, not in how it conveys it. we feel instinctively, without the slightest attempt at conscious analysis, that the two sentences fit precisely the same pattern, that they are really the same fundamental sentence, differing only in their material trappings. in other words, they express identical relational concepts in an identical manner. the manner is here threefold--the use of an inherently relational word (_the_) in analogous positions, the analogous sequence (subject; predicate, consisting of verb and object) of the concrete terms of the sentence, and the use of the suffixed element _-s_ in the verb. change any of these features of the sentence and it becomes modified, slightly or seriously, in some purely relational, non-material regard. if _the_ is omitted (_farmer kills duckling_, _man takes chick_), the sentence becomes impossible; it falls into no recognized formal pattern and the two subjects of discourse seem to hang incompletely in the void. we feel that there is no relation established between either of them and what is already in the minds of the speaker and his auditor. as soon as a _the_ is put before the two nouns, we feel relieved. we know that the farmer and duckling which the sentence tells us about are the same farmer and duckling that we had been talking about or hearing about or thinking about some time before. if i meet a man who is not looking at and knows nothing about the farmer in question, i am likely to be stared at for my pains if i announce to him that "the farmer [what farmer?] kills the duckling [didn't know he had any, whoever he is]." if the fact nevertheless seems interesting enough to communicate, i should be compelled to speak of "_a farmer_ up my way" and of "_a duckling_ of his." these little words, _the_ and _a_, have the important function of establishing a definite or an indefinite reference. if i omit the first _the_ and also leave out the suffixed _-s_, i obtain an entirely new set of relations. _farmer, kill the duckling_ implies that i am now speaking to the farmer, not merely about him; further, that he is not actually killing the bird, but is being ordered by me to do so. the subjective relation of the first sentence has become a vocative one, one of address, and the activity is conceived in terms of command, not of statement. we conclude, therefore, that if the farmer is to be merely talked about, the little _the_ must go back into its place and the _-s_ must not be removed. the latter element clearly defines, or rather helps to define, statement as contrasted with command. i find, moreover, that if i wish to speak of several farmers, i cannot say _the farmers kills the duckling_, but must say _the farmers kill the duckling_. evidently _-s_ involves the notion of singularity in the subject. if the noun is singular, the verb must have a form to correspond; if the noun is plural, the verb has another, corresponding form.[ ] comparison with such forms as _i kill_ and _you kill_ shows, moreover, that the _-s_ has exclusive reference to a person other than the speaker or the one spoken to. we conclude, therefore, that it connotes a personal relation as well as the notion of singularity. and comparison with a sentence like _the farmer killed the duckling_ indicates that there is implied in this overburdened _-s_ a distinct reference to present time. statement as such and personal reference may well be looked upon as inherently relational concepts. number is evidently felt by those who speak english as involving a necessary relation, otherwise there would be no reason to express the concept twice, in the noun and in the verb. time also is clearly felt as a relational concept; if it were not, we should be allowed to say _the farmer killed-s_ to correspond to _the farmer kill-s_. of the four concepts inextricably interwoven in the _-s_ suffix, all are felt as relational, two necessarily so. the distinction between a truly relational concept and one that is so felt and treated, though it need not be in the nature of things, will receive further attention in a moment. [footnote : it is, of course, an "accident" that _-s_ denotes plurality in the noun, singularity in the verb.] finally, i can radically disturb the relational cut of the sentence by changing the order of its elements. if the positions of _farmer_ and _kills_ are interchanged, the sentence reads _kills the farmer the duckling_, which is most naturally interpreted as an unusual but not unintelligible mode of asking the question, _does the farmer kill the duckling?_ in this new sentence the act is not conceived as necessarily taking place at all. it may or it may not be happening, the implication being that the speaker wishes to know the truth of the matter and that the person spoken to is expected to give him the information. the interrogative sentence possesses an entirely different "modality" from the declarative one and implies a markedly different attitude of the speaker towards his companion. an even more striking change in personal relations is effected if we interchange _the farmer_ and _the duckling_. _the duckling kills the farmer_ involves precisely the same subjects of discourse and the same type of activity as our first sentence, but the roles of these subjects of discourse are now reversed. the duckling has turned, like the proverbial worm, or, to put it in grammatical terminology, what was "subject" is now "object," what was object is now subject. the following tabular statement analyzes the sentence from the point of view of the concepts expressed in it and of the grammatical processes employed for their expression. i. concrete concepts: . first subject of discourse: _farmer_ . second subject of discourse: _duckling_ . activity: _kill_ ---- analyzable into: a. radical concepts: . verb: _(to) farm_ . noun: _duck_ . verb: _kill_ b. derivational concepts: . agentive: expressed by suffix _-er_ . diminutive: expressed by suffix _-ling_ ii. relational concepts: reference: . definiteness of reference to first subject of discourse: expressed by first _the_, which has preposed position . definiteness of reference to second subject of discourse: expressed by second _the_, which has preposed position modality: . declarative: expressed by sequence of "subject" plus verb; and implied by suffixed _-s_ personal relations: . subjectivity of _farmer_: expressed by position of _farmer_ before kills; and by suffixed _-s_ . objectivity of _duckling_: expressed by position of _duckling_ after _kills_ number: . singularity of first subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _farmer_; and by suffix _-s_ in following verb . singularity of second subject of discourse: expressed by lack of plural suffix in _duckling_ time: . present: expressed by lack of preterit suffix in verb; and by suffixed _-s_ in this short sentence of five words there are expressed, therefore, thirteen distinct concepts, of which three are radical and concrete, two derivational, and eight relational. perhaps the most striking result of the analysis is a renewed realization of the curious lack of accord in our language between function and form. the method of suffixing is used both for derivational and for relational elements; independent words or radical elements express both concrete ideas (objects, activities, qualities) and relational ideas (articles like _the_ and _a_; words defining case relations, like _of_, _to_, _for_, _with_, _by_; words defining local relations, like _in_, _on_, _at_); the same relational concept may be expressed more than once (thus, the singularity of _farmer_ is both negatively expressed in the noun and positively in the verb); and one element may convey a group of interwoven concepts rather than one definite concept alone (thus the _-s_ of _kills_ embodies no less than four logically independent relations). our analysis may seem a bit labored, but only because we are so accustomed to our own well-worn grooves of expression that they have come to be felt as inevitable. yet destructive analysis of the familiar is the only method of approach to an understanding of fundamentally different modes of expression. when one has learned to feel what is fortuitous or illogical or unbalanced in the structure of his own language, he is already well on the way towards a sympathetic grasp of the expression of the various classes of concepts in alien types of speech. not everything that is "outlandish" is intrinsically illogical or far-fetched. it is often precisely the familiar that a wider perspective reveals as the curiously exceptional. from a purely logical standpoint it is obvious that there is no inherent reason why the concepts expressed in our sentence should have been singled out, treated, and grouped as they have been and not otherwise. the sentence is the outgrowth of historical and of unreasoning psychological forces rather than of a logical synthesis of elements that have been clearly grasped in their individuality. this is the case, to a greater or less degree, in all languages, though in the forms of many we find a more coherent, a more consistent, reflection than in our english forms of that unconscious analysis into individual concepts which is never entirely absent from speech, however it may be complicated with or overlaid by the more irrational factors. a cursory examination of other languages, near and far, would soon show that some or all of the thirteen concepts that our sentence happens to embody may not only be expressed in different form but that they may be differently grouped among themselves; that some among them may be dispensed with; and that other concepts, not considered worth expressing in english idiom, may be treated as absolutely indispensable to the intelligible rendering of the proposition. first as to a different method of handling such concepts as we have found expressed in the english sentence. if we turn to german, we find that in the equivalent sentence (_der bauer tötet das entelein_) the definiteness of reference expressed by the english _the_ is unavoidably coupled with three other concepts--number (both _der_ and _das_ are explicitly singular), case (_der_ is subjective; _das_ is subjective or objective, by elimination therefore objective), and gender, a new concept of the relational order that is not in this case explicitly involved in english (_der_ is masculine, _das_ is neuter). indeed, the chief burden of the expression of case, gender, and number is in the german sentence borne by the particles of reference rather than by the words that express the concrete concepts (_bauer_, _entelein_) to which these relational concepts ought logically to attach themselves. in the sphere of concrete concepts too it is worth noting that the german splits up the idea of "killing" into the basic concept of "dead" (_tot_) and the derivational one of "causing to do (or be) so and so" (by the method of vocalic change, _töt-_); the german _töt-et_ (analytically _tot-_+vowel change+_-et_) "causes to be dead" is, approximately, the formal equivalent of our _dead-en-s_, though the idiomatic application of this latter word is different.[ ] [footnote : "to cause to be dead" or "to cause to die" in the sense of "to kill" is an exceedingly wide-spread usage. it is found, for instance, also in nootka and sioux.] wandering still further afield, we may glance at the yana method of expression. literally translated, the equivalent yana sentence would read something like "kill-s he farmer[ ] he to duck-ling," in which "he" and "to" are rather awkward english renderings of a general third personal pronoun (_he_, _she_, _it_, or _they_) and an objective particle which indicates that the following noun is connected with the verb otherwise than as subject. the suffixed element in "kill-s" corresponds to the english suffix with the important exceptions that it makes no reference to the number of the subject and that the statement is known to be true, that it is vouched for by the speaker. number is only indirectly expressed in the sentence in so far as there is no specific verb suffix indicating plurality of the subject nor specific plural elements in the two nouns. had the statement been made on another's authority, a totally different "tense-modal" suffix would have had to be used. the pronouns of reference ("he") imply nothing by themselves as to number, gender, or case. gender, indeed, is completely absent in yana as a relational category. [footnote : agriculture was not practised by the yana. the verbal idea of "to farm" would probably be expressed in some such synthetic manner as "to dig-earth" or "to grow-cause." there are suffixed elements corresponding to _-er_ and _-ling_.] the yana sentence has already illustrated the point that certain of our supposedly essential concepts may be ignored; both the yana and the german sentence illustrate the further point that certain concepts may need expression for which an english-speaking person, or rather the english-speaking habit, finds no need whatever. one could go on and give endless examples of such deviations from english form, but we shall have to content ourselves with a few more indications. in the chinese sentence "man kill duck," which may be looked upon as the practical equivalent of "the man kills the duck," there is by no means present for the chinese consciousness that childish, halting, empty feeling which we experience in the literal english translation. the three concrete concepts--two objects and an action--are each directly expressed by a monosyllabic word which is at the same time a radical element; the two relational concepts--"subject" and "object"--are expressed solely by the position of the concrete words before and after the word of action. and that is all. definiteness or indefiniteness of reference, number, personality as an inherent aspect of the verb, tense, not to speak of gender--all these are given no expression in the chinese sentence, which, for all that, is a perfectly adequate communication--provided, of course, there is that context, that background of mutual understanding that is essential to the complete intelligibility of all speech. nor does this qualification impair our argument, for in the english sentence too we leave unexpressed a large number of ideas which are either taken for granted or which have been developed or are about to be developed in the course of the conversation. nothing has been said, for example, in the english, german, yana, or chinese sentence as to the place relations of the farmer, the duck, the speaker, and the listener. are the farmer and the duck both visible or is one or the other invisible from the point of view of the speaker, and are both placed within the horizon of the speaker, the listener, or of some indefinite point of reference "off yonder"? in other words, to paraphrase awkwardly certain latent "demonstrative" ideas, does this farmer (invisible to us but standing behind a door not far away from me, you being seated yonder well out of reach) kill that duckling (which belongs to you)? or does that farmer (who lives in your neighborhood and whom we see over there) kill that duckling (that belongs to him)? this type of demonstrative elaboration is foreign to our way of thinking, but it would seem very natural, indeed unavoidable, to a kwakiutl indian. what, then, are the absolutely essential concepts in speech, the concepts that must be expressed if language is to be a satisfactory means of communication? clearly we must have, first of all, a large stock of basic or radical concepts, the concrete wherewithal of speech. we must have objects, actions, qualities to talk about, and these must have their corresponding symbols in independent words or in radical elements. no proposition, however abstract its intent, is humanly possible without a tying on at one or more points to the concrete world of sense. in every intelligible proposition at least two of these radical ideas must be expressed, though in exceptional cases one or even both may be understood from the context. and, secondly, such relational concepts must be expressed as moor the concrete concepts to each other and construct a definite, fundamental form of proposition. in this fundamental form there must be no doubt as to the nature of the relations that obtain between the concrete concepts. we must know what concrete concept is directly or indirectly related to what other, and how. if we wish to talk of a thing and an action, we must know if they are coördinately related to each other (e.g., "he is fond of _wine and gambling_"); or if the thing is conceived of as the starting point, the "doer" of the action, or, as it is customary to say, the "subject" of which the action is predicated; or if, on the contrary, it is the end point, the "object" of the action. if i wish to communicate an intelligible idea about a farmer, a duckling, and the act of killing, it is not enough to state the linguistic symbols for these concrete ideas in any order, higgledy-piggledy, trusting that the hearer may construct some kind of a relational pattern out of the general probabilities of the case. the fundamental syntactic relations must be unambiguously expressed. i can afford to be silent on the subject of time and place and number and of a host of other possible types of concepts, but i can find no way of dodging the issue as to who is doing the killing. there is no known language that can or does dodge it, any more than it succeeds in saying something without the use of symbols for the concrete concepts. we are thus once more reminded of the distinction between essential or unavoidable relational concepts and the dispensable type. the former are universally expressed, the latter are but sparsely developed in some languages, elaborated with a bewildering exuberance in others. but what prevents us from throwing in these "dispensable" or "secondary" relational concepts with the large, floating group of derivational, qualifying concepts that we have already discussed? is there, after all is said and done, a fundamental difference between a qualifying concept like the negative in _unhealthy_ and a relational one like the number concept in _books_? if _unhealthy_ may be roughly paraphrased as _not healthy_, may not _books_ be just as legitimately paraphrased, barring the violence to english idiom, as _several book?_ there are, indeed, languages in which the plural, if expressed at all, is conceived of in the same sober, restricted, one might almost say casual, spirit in which we feel the negative in _unhealthy_. for such languages the number concept has no syntactic significance whatever, is not essentially conceived of as defining a relation, but falls into the group of derivational or even of basic concepts. in english, however, as in french, german, latin, greek--indeed in all the languages that we have most familiarity with--the idea of number is not merely appended to a given concept of a thing. it may have something of this merely qualifying value, but its force extends far beyond. it infects much else in the sentence, molding other concepts, even such as have no intelligible relation to number, into forms that are said to correspond to or "agree with" the basic concept to which it is attached in the first instance. if "a man falls" but "men fall" in english, it is not because of any inherent change that has taken place in the nature of the action or because the idea of plurality inherent in "men" must, in the very nature of ideas, relate itself also to the action performed by these men. what we are doing in these sentences is what most languages, in greater or less degree and in a hundred varying ways, are in the habit of doing--throwing a bold bridge between the two basically distinct types of concept, the concrete and the abstractly relational, infecting the latter, as it were, with the color and grossness of the former. by a certain violence of metaphor the material concept is forced to do duty for (or intertwine itself with) the strictly relational. the case is even more obvious if we take gender as our text. in the two english phrases, "the white woman that comes" and "the white men that come," we are not reminded that gender, as well as number, may be elevated into a secondary relational concept. it would seem a little far-fetched to make of masculinity and femininity, crassly material, philosophically accidental concepts that they are, a means of relating quality and person, person and action, nor would it easily occur to us, if we had not studied the classics, that it was anything but absurd to inject into two such highly attenuated relational concepts as are expressed by "the" and "that" the combined notions of number and sex. yet all this, and more, happens in latin. _illa alba femina quae venit_ and _illi albi homines qui veniunt_, conceptually translated, amount to this: _that_-one-feminine-doer[ ] one-feminine-_white_-doer feminine-doing-one-_woman_ _which_-one-feminine-doer other[ ]-one-now-_come_; and: _that_-several-masculine-doer several-masculine-_white_-doer masculine-doing-several-_man_ _which_-several-masculine-doer other-several-now-_come_. each word involves no less than four concepts, a radical concept (either properly concrete--_white_, _man_, _woman_, _come_--or demonstrative--_that_, _which_) and three relational concepts, selected from the categories of case, number, gender, person, and tense. logically, only case[ ] (the relation of _woman_ or _men_ to a following verb, of _which_ to its antecedent, of _that_ and _white_ to _woman_ or _men_, and of _which_ to _come_) imperatively demands expression, and that only in connection with the concepts directly affected (there is, for instance, no need to be informed that the whiteness is a doing or doer's whiteness[ ]). the other relational concepts are either merely parasitic (gender throughout; number in the demonstrative, the adjective, the relative, and the verb) or irrelevant to the essential syntactic form of the sentence (number in the noun; person; tense). an intelligent and sensitive chinaman, accustomed as he is to cut to the very bone of linguistic form, might well say of the latin sentence, "how pedantically imaginative!" it must be difficult for him, when first confronted by the illogical complexities of our european languages, to feel at home in an attitude that so largely confounds the subject-matter of speech with its formal pattern or, to be more accurate, that turns certain fundamentally concrete concepts to such attenuated relational uses. [footnote : "doer," not "done to." this is a necessarily clumsy tag to represent the "nominative" (subjective) in contrast to the "accusative" (objective).] [footnote : i.e., not you or i.] [footnote : by "case" is here meant not only the subjective-objective relation but also that of attribution.] [footnote : except in so far as latin uses this method as a rather awkward, roundabout method of establishing the attribution of the color to the particular object or person. in effect one cannot in latin directly say that a person is white, merely that what is white is identical with the person who is, acts, or is acted upon in such and such a manner. in origin the feel of the latin _illa alba femina_ is really "that-one, the-white-one, (namely) the-woman"--three substantive ideas that are related to each other by a juxtaposition intended to convey an identity. english and chinese express the attribution directly by means of order. in latin the _illa_ and _alba_ may occupy almost any position in the sentence. it is important to observe that the subjective form of _illa_ and _alba_, does not truly define a relation of these qualifying concepts to _femina_. such a relation might be formally expressed _via_ an attributive case, say the genitive (_woman of whiteness_). in tibetan both the methods of order and of true case relation may be employed: _woman white_ (i.e., "white woman") or _white-of woman_ (i.e., "woman of whiteness, woman who is white, white woman").] i have exaggerated somewhat the concreteness of our subsidiary or rather non-syntactical relational concepts in order that the essential facts might come out in bold relief. it goes without saying that a frenchman has no clear sex notion in his mind when he speaks of _un arbre_ ("a-masculine tree") or of _une pomme_ ("a-feminine apple"). nor have we, despite the grammarians, a very vivid sense of the present as contrasted with all past and all future time when we say _he comes_.[ ] this is evident from our use of the present to indicate both future time ("he comes to-morrow") and general activity unspecified as to time ("whenever he comes, i am glad to see him," where "comes" refers to past occurrences and possible future ones rather than to present activity). in both the french and english instances the primary ideas of sex and time have become diluted by form-analogy and by extensions into the relational sphere, the concepts ostensibly indicated being now so vaguely delimited that it is rather the tyranny of usage than the need of their concrete expression that sways us in the selection of this or that form. if the thinning-out process continues long enough, we may eventually be left with a system of forms on our hands from which all the color of life has vanished and which merely persist by inertia, duplicating each other's secondary, syntactic functions with endless prodigality. hence, in part, the complex conjugational systems of so many languages, in which differences of form are attended by no assignable differences of function. there must have been a time, for instance, though it antedates our earliest documentary evidence, when the type of tense formation represented by _drove_ or _sank_ differed in meaning, in however slightly nuanced a degree, from the type (_killed_, _worked_) which has now become established in english as the prevailing preterit formation, very much as we recognize a valuable distinction at present between both these types and the "perfect" (_has driven, has killed_) but may have ceased to do so at some point in the future.[ ] now form lives longer than its own conceptual content. both are ceaselessly changing, but, on the whole, the form tends to linger on when the spirit has flown or changed its being. irrational form, form for form's sake--however we term this tendency to hold on to formal distinctions once they have come to be--is as natural to the life of language as is the retention of modes of conduct that have long outlived the meaning they once had. [footnote : aside, naturally, from the life and imminence that may be created for such a sentence by a particular context.] [footnote : this has largely happened in popular french and german, where the difference is stylistic rather than functional. the preterits are more literary or formal in tone than the perfects.] there is another powerful tendency which makes for a formal elaboration that does not strictly correspond to clear-cut conceptual differences. this is the tendency to construct schemes of classification into which all the concepts of language must be fitted. once we have made up our minds that all things are either definitely good or bad or definitely black or white, it is difficult to get into the frame of mind that recognizes that any particular thing may be both good and bad (in other words, indifferent) or both black and white (in other words, gray), still more difficult to realize that the good-bad or black-white categories may not apply at all. language is in many respects as unreasonable and stubborn about its classifications as is such a mind. it must have its perfectly exclusive pigeon-holes and will tolerate no flying vagrants. any concept that asks for expression must submit to the classificatory rules of the game, just as there are statistical surveys in which even the most convinced atheist must perforce be labeled catholic, protestant, or jew or get no hearing. in english we have made up our minds that all action must be conceived of in reference to three standard times. if, therefore, we desire to state a proposition that is as true to-morrow as it was yesterday, we have to pretend that the present moment may be elongated fore and aft so as to take in all eternity.[ ] in french we know once for all that an object is masculine or feminine, whether it be living or not; just as in many american and east asiatic languages it must be understood to belong to a certain form-category (say, ring-round, ball-round, long and slender, cylindrical, sheet-like, in mass like sugar) before it can be enumerated (e.g., "two ball-class potatoes," "three sheet-class carpets") or even said to "be" or "be handled in a definite way" (thus, in the athabaskan languages and in yana, "to carry" or "throw" a pebble is quite another thing than to carry or throw a log, linguistically no less than in terms of muscular experience). such instances might be multiplied at will. it is almost as though at some period in the past the unconscious mind of the race had made a hasty inventory of experience, committed itself to a premature classification that allowed of no revision, and saddled the inheritors of its language with a science that they no longer quite believed in nor had the strength to overthrow. dogma, rigidly prescribed by tradition, stiffens into formalism. linguistic categories make up a system of surviving dogma--dogma of the unconscious. they are often but half real as concepts; their life tends ever to languish away into form for form's sake. [footnote : hence, "the square root of _is_ ," precisely as "my uncle _is_ here now." there are many "primitive" languages that are more philosophical and distinguish between a true "present" and a "customary" or "general" tense.] there is still a third cause for the rise of this non-significant form, or rather of non-significant differences of form. this is the mechanical operation of phonetic processes, which may bring about formal distinctions that have not and never had a corresponding functional distinction. much of the irregularity and general formal complexity of our declensional and conjugational systems is due to this process. the plural of _hat_ is _hats_, the plural of _self_ is _selves_. in the former case we have a true _-s_ symbolizing plurality, in the latter a _z_-sound coupled with a change in the radical element of the word of _f_ to _v_. here we have not a falling together of forms that originally stood for fairly distinct concepts--as we saw was presumably the case with such parallel forms as _drove_ and _worked_--but a merely mechanical manifolding of the same formal element without a corresponding growth of a new concept. this type of form development, therefore, while of the greatest interest for the general history of language, does not directly concern us now in our effort to understand the nature of grammatical concepts and their tendency to degenerate into purely formal counters. we may now conveniently revise our first classification of concepts as expressed in language and suggest the following scheme: i. _basic (concrete) concepts_ (such as objects, actions, qualities): normally expressed by independent words or radical elements; involve no relation as such[ ] ii. _derivational concepts_ (less concrete, as a rule, than i, more so than iii): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements or by inner modification of these; differ from type i in defining ideas that are irrelevant to the proposition as a whole but that give a radical element a particular increment of significance and that are thus inherently related in a specific way to concepts of type i[ ] iii. _concrete relational concepts_ (still more abstract, yet not entirely devoid of a measure of concreteness): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements, but generally at a greater remove from these than is the case with elements of type ii, or by inner modification of radical elements; differ fundamentally from type ii in indicating or implying relations that transcend the particular word to which they are immediately attached, thus leading over to iv. _pure relational concepts_ (purely abstract): normally expressed by affixing non-radical elements to radical elements (in which case these concepts are frequently intertwined with those of type iii) or by their inner modification, by independent words, or by position; serve to relate the concrete elements of the proposition to each other, thus giving it definite syntactic form. [footnote : except, of course, the fundamental selection and contrast necessarily implied in defining one concept as against another. "man" and "white" possess an inherent relation to "woman" and "black," but it is a relation of conceptual content only and is of no direct interest to grammar.] [footnote : thus, the _-er_ of _farmer_ may he defined as indicating that particular substantive concept (object or thing) that serves as the habitual subject of the particular verb to which it is affixed. this relation of "subject" (_a farmer farms_) is inherent in and specific to the word; it does not exist for the sentence as a whole. in the same way the _-ling_ of _duckling_ defines a specific relation of attribution that concerns only the radical element, not the sentence.] the nature of these four classes of concepts as regards their concreteness or their power to express syntactic relations may be thus symbolized: _ material _/ i. basic concepts content \_ ii. derivational concepts _ relation _/ iii. concrete relational concepts \_ iv. pure relational concepts these schemes must not be worshipped as fetiches. in the actual work of analysis difficult problems frequently arise and we may well be in doubt as to how to group a given set of concepts. this is particularly apt to be the case in exotic languages, where we may be quite sure of the analysis of the words in a sentence and yet not succeed in acquiring that inner "feel" of its structure that enables us to tell infallibly what is "material content" and what is "relation." concepts of class i are essential to all speech, also concepts of class iv. concepts ii and iii are both common, but not essential; particularly group iii, which represents, in effect, a psychological and formal confusion of types ii and iv or of types i and iv, is an avoidable class of concepts. logically there is an impassable gulf between i and iv, but the illogical, metaphorical genius of speech has wilfully spanned the gulf and set up a continuous gamut of concepts and forms that leads imperceptibly from the crudest of materialities ("house" or "john smith") to the most subtle of relations. it is particularly significant that the unanalyzable independent word belongs in most cases to either group i or group iv, rather less commonly to ii or iii. it is possible for a concrete concept, represented by a simple word, to lose its material significance entirely and pass over directly into the relational sphere without at the same time losing its independence as a word. this happens, for instance, in chinese and cambodgian when the verb "give" is used in an abstract sense as a mere symbol of the "indirect objective" relation (e.g., cambodgian "we make story this give all that person who have child," i.e., "we have made this story _for_ all those that have children"). there are, of course, also not a few instances of transitions between groups i and ii and i and iii, as well as of the less radical one between ii and iii. to the first of these transitions belongs that whole class of examples in which the independent word, after passing through the preliminary stage of functioning as the secondary or qualifying element in a compound, ends up by being a derivational affix pure and simple, yet without losing the memory of its former independence. such an element and concept is the _full_ of _teaspoonfull_, which hovers psychologically between the status of an independent, radical concept (compare _full_) or of a subsidiary element in a compound (cf. _brim-full_) and that of a simple suffix (cf. _dutiful_) in which the primary concreteness is no longer felt. in general, the more highly synthetic our linguistic type, the more difficult and even arbitrary it becomes to distinguish groups i and ii. not only is there a gradual loss of the concrete as we pass through from group i to group iv, there is also a constant fading away of the feeling of sensible reality within the main groups of linguistic concepts themselves. in many languages it becomes almost imperative, therefore, to make various sub-classifications, to segregate, for instance, the more concrete from the more abstract concepts of group ii. yet we must always beware of reading into such abstracter groups that purely formal, relational feeling that we can hardly help associating with certain of the abstracter concepts which, with us, fall in group iii, unless, indeed, there is clear evidence to warrant such a reading in. an example or two should make clear these all-important distinctions.[ ] in nootka we have an unusually large number of derivational affixes (expressing concepts of group ii). some of these are quite material in content (e.g., "in the house," "to dream of"), others, like an element denoting plurality and a diminutive affix, are far more abstract in content. the former type are more closely welded with the radical element than the latter, which can only be suffixed to formations that have the value of complete words. if, therefore, i wish to say "the small fires in the house"--and i can do this in one word--i must form the word "fire-in-the-house," to which elements corresponding to "small," our plural, and "the" are appended. the element indicating the definiteness of reference that is implied in our "the" comes at the very end of the word. so far, so good. "fire-in-the-house-the" is an intelligible correlate of our "the house-fire."[ ] but is the nootka correlate of "the small fires in the house" the true equivalent of an english "_the house-firelets_"?[ ] by no means. first of all, the plural element precedes the diminutive in nootka: "fire-in-the-house-plural-small-the," in other words "the house-fires-let," which at once reveals the important fact that the plural concept is not as abstractly, as relationally, felt as in english. a more adequate rendering would be "the house-fire-several-let," in which, however, "several" is too gross a word, "-let" too choice an element ("small" again is too gross). in truth we cannot carry over into english the inherent feeling of the nootka word, which seems to hover somewhere between "the house-firelets" and "the house-fire-several-small." but what more than anything else cuts off all possibility of comparison between the english _-s_ of "house-firelets" and the "-several-small" of the nootka word is this, that in nootka neither the plural nor the diminutive affix corresponds or refers to anything else in the sentence. in english "the house-firelets burn" (not "burns"), in nootka neither verb, nor adjective, nor anything else in the proposition is in the least concerned with the plurality or the diminutiveness of the fire. hence, while nootka recognizes a cleavage between concrete and less concrete concepts within group ii, the less concrete do not transcend the group and lead us into that abstracter air into which our plural _-s_ carries us. but at any rate, the reader may object, it is something that the nootka plural affix is set apart from the concreter group of affixes; and may not the nootka diminutive have a slenderer, a more elusive content than our _-let_ or _-ling_ or the german _-chen_ or _-lein?_[ ] [footnote : it is precisely the failure to feel the "value" or "tone," as distinct from the outer significance, of the concept expressed by a given grammatical element that has so often led students to misunderstand the nature of languages profoundly alien to their own. not everything that calls itself "tense" or "mode" or "number" or "gender" or "person" is genuinely comparable to what we mean by these terms in latin or french.] [footnote : suffixed articles occur also in danish and swedish and in numerous other languages. the nootka element for "in the house" differs from our "house-" in that it is suffixed and cannot occur as an independent word; nor is it related to the nootka word for "house."] [footnote : assuming the existence of a word "firelet."] [footnote : the nootka diminutive is doubtless more of a feeling-element, an element of nuance, than our _-ling_. this is shown by the fact that it may be used with verbs as well as with nouns. in speaking to a child, one is likely to add the diminutive to any word in the sentence, regardless of whether there is an inherent diminutive meaning in the word or not.] can such a concept as that of plurality ever be classified with the more material concepts of group ii? indeed it can be. in yana the third person of the verb makes no formal distinction between singular and plural. nevertheless the plural concept can be, and nearly always is, expressed by the suffixing of an element (_-ba-_) to the radical element of the verb. "it burns in the east" is rendered by the verb _ya-hau-si_ "burn-east-s."[ ] "they burn in the east" is _ya-ba-hau-si_. note that the plural affix immediately follows the radical element (_ya-_), disconnecting it from the local element (_-hau-_). it needs no labored argument to prove that the concept of plurality is here hardly less concrete than that of location "in the east," and that the yana form corresponds in feeling not so much to our "they burn in the east" (_ardunt oriente_) as to a "burn-several-east-s, it plurally burns in the east," an expression which we cannot adequately assimilate for lack of the necessary form-grooves into which to run it. [footnote : _-si_ is the third person of the present tense. _-hau-_ "east" is an affix, not a compounded radical element.] but can we go a step farther and dispose of the category of plurality as an utterly material idea, one that would make of "books" a "plural book," in which the "plural," like the "white" of "white book," falls contentedly into group i? our "many books" and "several books" are obviously not cases in point. even if we could say "many book" and "several book" (as we can say "many a book" and "each book"), the plural concept would still not emerge as clearly as it should for our argument; "many" and "several" are contaminated by certain notions of quantity or scale that are not essential to the idea of plurality itself. we must turn to central and eastern asia for the type of expression we are seeking. in tibetan, for instance, _nga-s mi mthong_[ ] "i-by man see, by me a man is seen, i see a man" may just as well be understood to mean "i see men," if there happens to be no reason to emphasize the fact of plurality.[ ] if the fact is worth expressing, however, i can say _nga-s mi rnams mthong_ "by me man plural see," where _rnams_ is the perfect conceptual analogue of _-s_ in _books_, divested of all relational strings. _rnams_ follows its noun as would any other attributive word--"man plural" (whether two or a million) like "man white." no need to bother about his plurality any more than about his whiteness unless we insist on the point. [footnote : these are classical, not modern colloquial, forms.] [footnote : just as in english "he has written books" makes no commitment on the score of quantity ("a few, several, many").] what is true of the idea of plurality is naturally just as true of a great many other concepts. they do not necessarily belong where we who speak english are in the habit of putting them. they may be shifted towards i or towards iv, the two poles of linguistic expression. nor dare we look down on the nootka indian and the tibetan for their material attitude towards a concept which to us is abstract and relational, lest we invite the reproaches of the frenchman who feels a subtlety of relation in _femme blanche_ and _homme blanc_ that he misses in the coarser-grained _white woman_ and _white man_. but the bantu negro, were he a philosopher, might go further and find it strange that we put in group ii a category, the diminutive, which he strongly feels to belong to group iii and which he uses, along with a number of other classificatory concepts,[ ] to relate his subjects and objects, attributes and predicates, as a russian or a german handles his genders and, if possible, with an even greater finesse. [footnote : such as person class, animal class, instrument class, augmentative class.] it is because our conceptual scheme is a sliding scale rather than a philosophical analysis of experience that we cannot say in advance just where to put a given concept. we must dispense, in other words, with a well-ordered classification of categories. what boots it to put tense and mode here or number there when the next language one handles puts tense a peg "lower down" (towards i), mode and number a peg "higher up" (towards iv)? nor is there much to be gained in a summary work of this kind from a general inventory of the types of concepts generally found in groups ii, iii, and iv. there are too many possibilities. it would be interesting to show what are the most typical noun-forming and verb-forming elements of group ii; how variously nouns may be classified (by gender; personal and non-personal; animate and inanimate; by form; common and proper); how the concept of number is elaborated (singular and plural; singular, dual, and plural; singular, dual, trial, and plural; single, distributive, and collective); what tense distinctions may be made in verb or noun (the "past," for instance, may be an indefinite past, immediate, remote, mythical, completed, prior); how delicately certain languages have developed the idea of "aspect"[ ] (momentaneous, durative, continuative, inceptive, cessative, durative-inceptive, iterative, momentaneous-iterative, durative-iterative, resultative, and still others); what modalities may be recognized (indicative, imperative, potential, dubitative, optative, negative, and a host of others[ ]); what distinctions of person are possible (is "we," for instance, conceived of as a plurality of "i" or is it as distinct from "i" as either is from "you" or "he"?--both attitudes are illustrated in language; moreover, does "we" include you to whom i speak or not?--"inclusive" and "exclusive" forms); what may be the general scheme of orientation, the so-called demonstrative categories ("this" and "that" in an endless procession of nuances);[ ] how frequently the form expresses the source or nature of the speaker's knowledge (known by actual experience, by hearsay,[ ] by inference); how the syntactic relations may be expressed in the noun (subjective and objective; agentive, instrumental, and person affected;[ ] various types of "genitive" and indirect relations) and, correspondingly, in the verb (active and passive; active and static; transitive and intransitive; impersonal, reflexive, reciprocal, indefinite as to object, and many other special limitations on the starting-point and end-point of the flow of activity). these details, important as many of them are to an understanding of the "inner form" of language, yield in general significance to the more radical group-distinctions that we have set up. it is enough for the general reader to feel that language struggles towards two poles of linguistic expression--material content and relation--and that these poles tend to be connected by a long series of transitional concepts. [footnote : a term borrowed from slavic grammar. it indicates the lapse of action, its nature from the standpoint of continuity. our "cry" is indefinite as to aspect, "be crying" is durative, "cry put" is momentaneous, "burst into tears" is inceptive, "keep crying" is continuative, "start in crying" is durative-inceptive, "cry now and again" is iterative, "cry out every now and then" or "cry in fits and starts" is momentaneous-iterative. "to put on a coat" is momentaneous, "to wear a coat" is resultative. as our examples show, aspect is expressed in english by all kinds of idiomatic turns rather than by a consistently worked out set of grammatical forms. in many languages aspect is of far greater formal significance than tense, with which the naive student is apt to confuse it.] [footnote : by "modalities" i do not mean the matter of fact statement, say, of negation or uncertainty as such, rather their implication in terms of form. there are languages, for instance, which have as elaborate an apparatus of negative forms for the verb as greek has of the optative or wish-modality.] [footnote : compare page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] [footnote : it is because of this classification of experience that in many languages the verb forms which are proper, say, to a mythical narration differ from those commonly used in daily intercourse. we leave these shades to the context or content ourselves with a more explicit and roundabout mode of expression, e.g., "he is dead, as i happen to know," "they say he is dead," "he must be dead by the looks of things."] [footnote : we say "_i_ sleep" and "_i_ go," as well as "_i_ kill him," but "he kills _me_." yet _me_ of the last example is at least as close psychologically to _i_ of "i sleep" as is the latter to _i_ of "i kill him." it is only by form that we can classify the "i" notion of "i sleep" as that of an acting subject. properly speaking, i am handled by forces beyond my control when i sleep just as truly as when some one is killing me. numerous languages differentiate clearly between active subject and static subject (_i go_ and _i kill him_ as distinct from _i sleep_, _i am good_, _i am killed_) or between transitive subject and intransitive subject (_i kill him_ as distinct from _i sleep_, _i am good_, _i am killed_, _i go_). the intransitive or static subjects may or may not be identical with the object of the transitive verb.] in dealing with words and their varying forms we have had to anticipate much that concerns the sentence as a whole. every language has its special method or methods of binding words into a larger unity. the importance of these methods is apt to vary with the complexity of the individual word. the more synthetic the language, in other words, the more clearly the status of each word in the sentence is indicated by its own resources, the less need is there for looking beyond the word to the sentence as a whole. the latin _agit_ "(he) acts" needs no outside help to establish its place in a proposition. whether i say _agit dominus_ "the master acts" or _sic femina agit_ "thus the woman acts," the net result as to the syntactic feel of the _agit_ is practically the same. it can only be a verb, the predicate of a proposition, and it can only be conceived as a statement of activity carried out by a person (or thing) other than you or me. it is not so with such a word as the english _act_. _act_ is a syntactic waif until we have defined its status in a proposition--one thing in "they act abominably," quite another in "that was a kindly act." the latin sentence speaks with the assurance of its individual members, the english word needs the prompting of its fellows. roughly speaking, to be sure. and yet to say that a sufficiently elaborate word-structure compensates for external syntactic methods is perilously close to begging the question. the elements of the word are related to each other in a specific way and follow each other in a rigorously determined sequence. this is tantamount to saying that a word which consists of more than a radical element is a crystallization of a sentence or of some portion of a sentence, that a form like _agit_ is roughly the psychological[ ] equivalent of a form like _age is_ "act he." breaking down, then, the wall that separates word and sentence, we may ask: what, at last analysis, are the fundamental methods of relating word to word and element to element, in short, of passing from the isolated notions symbolized by each word and by each element to the unified proposition that corresponds to a thought? [footnote : ultimately, also historical--say, _age to_ "act that (one)."] the answer is simple and is implied in the preceding remarks. the most fundamental and the most powerful of all relating methods is the method of order. let us think of some more or less concrete idea, say a color, and set down its symbol--_red_; of another concrete idea, say a person or object, setting down its symbol--_dog_; finally, of a third concrete idea, say an action, setting down its symbol--_run_. it is hardly possible to set down these three symbols--_red dog run_--without relating them in some way, for example _(the) red dog run(s)_. i am far from wishing to state that the proposition has always grown up in this analytic manner, merely that the very process of juxtaposing concept to concept, symbol to symbol, forces some kind of relational "feeling," if nothing else, upon us. to certain syntactic adhesions we are very sensitive, for example, to the attributive relation of quality (_red dog_) or the subjective relation (_dog run_) or the objective relation (_kill dog_), to others we are more indifferent, for example, to the attributive relation of circumstance (_to-day red dog run_ or _red dog to-day run_ or _red dog run to-day_, all of which are equivalent propositions or propositions in embryo). words and elements, then, once they are listed in a certain order, tend not only to establish some kind of relation among themselves but are attracted to each other in greater or in less degree. it is presumably this very greater or less that ultimately leads to those firmly solidified groups of elements (radical element or elements plus one or more grammatical elements) that we have studied as complex words. they are in all likelihood nothing but sequences that have shrunk together and away from other sequences or isolated elements in the flow of speech. while they are fully alive, in other words, while they are functional at every point, they can keep themselves at a psychological distance from their neighbors. as they gradually lose much of their life, they fall back into the embrace of the sentence as a whole and the sequence of independent words regains the importance it had in part transferred to the crystallized groups of elements. speech is thus constantly tightening and loosening its sequences. in its highly integrated forms (latin, eskimo) the "energy" of sequence is largely locked up in complex word formations, it becomes transformed into a kind of potential energy that may not be released for millennia. in its more analytic forms (chinese, english) this energy is mobile, ready to hand for such service as we demand of it. there can be little doubt that stress has frequently played a controlling influence in the formation of element-groups or complex words out of certain sequences in the sentence. such an english word as _withstand_ is merely an old sequence _with stand_, i.e., "against[ ] stand," in which the unstressed adverb was permanently drawn to the following verb and lost its independence as a significant element. in the same way french futures of the type _irai_ "(i) shall go" are but the resultants of a coalescence of originally independent words: _ir[ ] a'i_ "to-go i-have," under the influence of a unifying accent. but stress has done more than articulate or unify sequences that in their own right imply a syntactic relation. stress is the most natural means at our disposal to emphasize a linguistic contrast, to indicate the major element in a sequence. hence we need not be surprised to find that accent too, no less than sequence, may serve as the unaided symbol of certain relations. such a contrast as that of _go' between_ ("one who goes between") and _to go between'_ may be of quite secondary origin in english, but there is every reason to believe that analogous distinctions have prevailed at all times in linguistic history. a sequence like _see' man_ might imply some type of relation in which _see_ qualifies the following word, hence "a seeing man" or "a seen (or visible) man," or is its predication, hence "the man sees" or "the man is seen," while a sequence like _see man'_ might indicate that the accented word in some way limits the application of the first, say as direct object, hence "to see a man" or "(he) sees the man." such alternations of relation, as symbolized by varying stresses, are important and frequent in a number of languages.[ ] [footnote : for _with_ in the sense of "against," compare german _wider_ "against."] [footnote : cf. latin _ire_ "to go"; also our english idiom "i have to go," i.e., "must go."] [footnote : in chinese no less than in english.] it is a somewhat venturesome and yet not an altogether unreasonable speculation that sees in word order and stress the primary methods for the expression of all syntactic relations and looks upon the present relational value of specific words and elements as but a secondary condition due to a transfer of values. thus, we may surmise that the latin _-m_ of words like _feminam_, _dominum_, and _civem_ did not originally[ ] denote that "woman," "master," and "citizen" were objectively related to the verb of the proposition but indicated something far more concrete,[ ] that the objective relation was merely implied by the position or accent of the word (radical element) immediately preceding the _-m_, and that gradually, as its more concrete significance faded away, it took over a syntactic function that did not originally belong to it. this sort of evolution by transfer is traceable in many instances. thus, the _of_ in an english phrase like "the law of the land" is now as colorless in content, as purely a relational indicator as the "genitive" suffix _-is_ in the latin _lex urbis_ "the law of the city." we know, however, that it was originally an adverb of considerable concreteness of meaning,[ ] "away, moving from," and that the syntactic relation was originally expressed by the case form[ ] of the second noun. as the case form lost its vitality, the adverb took over its function. if we are actually justified in assuming that the expression of all syntactic relations is ultimately traceable to these two unavoidable, dynamic features of speech--sequence and stress[ ]--an interesting thesis results:--all of the actual content of speech, its clusters of vocalic and consonantal sounds, is in origin limited to the concrete; relations were originally not expressed in outward form but were merely implied and articulated with the help of order and rhythm. in other words, relations were intuitively felt and could only "leak out" with the help of dynamic factors that themselves move on an intuitional plane. [footnote : by "originally" i mean, of course, some time antedating the earliest period of the indo-european languages that we can get at by comparative evidence.] [footnote : perhaps it was a noun-classifying element of some sort.] [footnote : compare its close historical parallel _off_.] [footnote : "ablative" at last analysis.] [footnote : very likely pitch should be understood along with stress.] there is a special method for the expression of relations that has been so often evolved in the history of language that we must glance at it for a moment. this is the method of "concord" or of like signaling. it is based on the same principle as the password or label. all persons or objects that answer to the same counter-sign or that bear the same imprint are thereby stamped as somehow related. it makes little difference, once they are so stamped, where they are to be found or how they behave themselves. they are known to belong together. we are familiar with the principle of concord in latin and greek. many of us have been struck by such relentless rhymes as _vidi ilium bonum dominum_ "i saw that good master" or _quarum dearum saevarum_ "of which stern goddesses." not that sound-echo, whether in the form of rhyme or of alliteration[ ] is necessary to concord, though in its most typical and original forms concord is nearly always accompanied by sound repetition. the essence of the principle is simply this, that words (elements) that belong together, particularly if they are syntactic equivalents or are related in like fashion to another word or element, are outwardly marked by the same or functionally equivalent affixes. the application of the principle varies considerably according to the genius of the particular language. in latin and greek, for instance, there is concord between noun and qualifying word (adjective or demonstrative) as regards gender, number, and case, between verb and subject only as regards number, and no concord between verb and object. [footnote : as in bantu or chinook.] in chinook there is a more far-reaching concord between noun, whether subject or object, and verb. every noun is classified according to five categories--masculine, feminine, neuter,[ ] dual, and plural. "woman" is feminine, "sand" is neuter, "table" is masculine. if, therefore, i wish to say "the woman put the sand on the table," i must place in the verb certain class or gender prefixes that accord with corresponding noun prefixes. the sentence reads then, "the (fem.)-woman she (fem.)-it (neut.)-it (masc.)-on-put the (neut.)-sand the (masc.)-table." if "sand" is qualified as "much" and "table" as "large," these new ideas are expressed as abstract nouns, each with its inherent class-prefix ("much" is neuter or feminine, "large" is masculine) and with a possessive prefix referring to the qualified noun. adjective thus calls to noun, noun to verb. "the woman put much sand on the large table," therefore, takes the form: "the (fem.)-woman she (fem.)-it (neut.)-it (masc.)-on-put the (fem.)-thereof (neut.)-quantity the (neut.)-sand the (masc.)-thereof (masc.)-largeness the (masc.)-table." the classification of "table" as masculine is thus three times insisted on--in the noun, in the adjective, and in the verb. in the bantu languages,[ ] the principle of concord works very much as in chinook. in them also nouns are classified into a number of categories and are brought into relation with adjectives, demonstratives, relative pronouns, and verbs by means of prefixed elements that call off the class and make up a complex system of concordances. in such a sentence as "that fierce lion who came here is dead," the class of "lion," which we may call the animal class, would be referred to by concording prefixes no less than six times,--with the demonstrative ("that"), the qualifying adjective, the noun itself, the relative pronoun, the subjective prefix to the verb of the relative clause, and the subjective prefix to the verb of the main clause ("is dead"). we recognize in this insistence on external clarity of reference the same spirit as moves in the more familiar _illum bonum dominum_. [footnote : perhaps better "general." the chinook "neuter" may refer to persons as well as things and may also be used as a plural. "masculine" and "feminine," as in german and french, include a great number of inanimate nouns.] [footnote : spoken in the greater part of the southern half of africa. chinook is spoken in a number of dialects in the lower columbia river valley. it is impressive to observe how the human mind has arrived at the same form of expression in two such historically unconnected regions.] psychologically the methods of sequence and accent lie at the opposite pole to that of concord. where they are all for implication, for subtlety of feeling, concord is impatient of the least ambiguity but must have its well-certificated tags at every turn. concord tends to dispense with order. in latin and chinook the independent words are free in position, less so in bantu. in both chinook and bantu, however, the methods of concord and order are equally important for the differentiation of subject and object, as the classifying verb prefixes refer to subject, object, or indirect object according to the relative position they occupy. these examples again bring home to us the significant fact that at some point or other order asserts itself in every language as the most fundamental of relating principles. the observant reader has probably been surprised that all this time we have had so little to say of the time-honored "parts of speech." the reason for this is not far to seek. our conventional classification of words into parts of speech is only a vague, wavering approximation to a consistently worked out inventory of experience. we imagine, to begin with, that all "verbs" are inherently concerned with action as such, that a "noun" is the name of some definite object or personality that can be pictured by the mind, that all qualities are necessarily expressed by a definite group of words to which we may appropriately apply the term "adjective." as soon as we test our vocabulary, we discover that the parts of speech are far from corresponding to so simple an analysis of reality. we say "it is red" and define "red" as a quality-word or adjective. we should consider it strange to think of an equivalent of "is red" in which the whole predication (adjective and verb of being) is conceived of as a verb in precisely the same way in which we think of "extends" or "lies" or "sleeps" as a verb. yet as soon as we give the "durative" notion of being red an inceptive or transitional turn, we can avoid the parallel form "it becomes red, it turns red" and say "it reddens." no one denies that "reddens" is as good a verb as "sleeps" or even "walks." yet "it is red" is related to "it reddens" very much as is "he stands" to "he stands up" or "he rises." it is merely a matter of english or of general indo-european idiom that we cannot say "it reds" in the sense of "it is red." there are hundreds of languages that can. indeed there are many that can express what we should call an adjective only by making a participle out of a verb. "red" in such languages is merely a derivative "being red," as our "sleeping" or "walking" are derivatives of primary verbs. just as we can verbify the idea of a quality in such cases as "reddens," so we can represent a quality or an action to ourselves as a thing. we speak of "the height of a building" or "the fall of an apple" quite as though these ideas were parallel to "the roof of a building" or "the skin of an apple," forgetting that the nouns (_height_, _fall_) have not ceased to indicate a quality and an act when we have made them speak with the accent of mere objects. and just as there are languages that make verbs of the great mass of adjectives, so there are others that make nouns of them. in chinook, as we have seen, "the big table" is "the-table its-bigness"; in tibetan the same idea may be expressed by "the table of bigness," very much as we may say "a man of wealth" instead of "a rich man." but are there not certain ideas that it is impossible to render except by way of such and such parts of speech? what can be done with the "to" of "he came to the house"? well, we can say "he reached the house" and dodge the preposition altogether, giving the verb a nuance that absorbs the idea of local relation carried by the "to." but let us insist on giving independence to this idea of local relation. must we not then hold to the preposition? no, we can make a noun of it. we can say something like "he reached the proximity of the house" or "he reached the house-locality." instead of saying "he looked into the glass" we may say "he scrutinized the glass-interior." such expressions are stilted in english because they do not easily fit into our formal grooves, but in language after language we find that local relations are expressed in just this way. the local relation is nominalized. and so we might go on examining the various parts of speech and showing how they not merely grade into each other but are to an astonishing degree actually convertible into each other. the upshot of such an examination would be to feel convinced that the "part of speech" reflects not so much our intuitive analysis of reality as our ability to compose that reality into a variety of formal patterns. a part of speech outside of the limitations of syntactic form is but a will o' the wisp. for this reason no logical scheme of the parts of speech--their number, nature, and necessary confines--is of the slightest interest to the linguist. each language has its own scheme. everything depends on the formal demarcations which it recognizes. yet we must not be too destructive. it is well to remember that speech consists of a series of propositions. there must be something to talk about and something must be said about this subject of discourse once it is selected. this distinction is of such fundamental importance that the vast majority of languages have emphasized it by creating some sort of formal barrier between the two terms of the proposition. the subject of discourse is a noun. as the most common subject of discourse is either a person or a thing, the noun clusters about concrete concepts of that order. as the thing predicated of a subject is generally an activity in the widest sense of the word, a passage from one moment of existence to another, the form which has been set aside for the business of predicating, in other words, the verb, clusters about concepts of activity. no language wholly fails to distinguish noun and verb, though in particular cases the nature of the distinction may be an elusive one. it is different with the other parts of speech. not one of them is imperatively required for the life of language.[ ] [footnote : in yana the noun and the verb are well distinct, though there are certain features that they hold in common which tend to draw them nearer to each other than we feel to be possible. but there are, strictly speaking, no other parts of speech. the adjective is a verb. so are the numeral, the interrogative pronoun (e.g., "to be what?"), and certain "conjunctions" and adverbs (e.g., "to be and" and "to be not"; one says "and-past-i go," i.e., "and i went"). adverbs and prepositions are either nouns or merely derivative affixes in the verb.] vi types of linguistic structure so far, in dealing with linguistic form, we have been concerned only with single words and with the relations of words in sentences. we have not envisaged whole languages as conforming to this or that general type. incidentally we have observed that one language runs to tight-knit synthesis where another contents itself with a more analytic, piece-meal handling of its elements, or that in one language syntactic relations appear pure which in another are combined with certain other notions that have something concrete about them, however abstract they may be felt to be in practice. in this way we may have obtained some inkling of what is meant when we speak of the general form of a language. for it must be obvious to any one who has thought about the question at all or who has felt something of the spirit of a foreign language that there is such a thing as a basic plan, a certain cut, to each language. this type or plan or structural "genius" of the language is something much more fundamental, much more pervasive, than any single feature of it that we can mention, nor can we gain an adequate idea of its nature by a mere recital of the sundry facts that make up the grammar of the language. when we pass from latin to russian, we feel that it is approximately the same horizon that bounds our view, even though the near, familiar landmarks have changed. when we come to english, we seem to notice that the hills have dipped down a little, yet we recognize the general lay of the land. and when we have arrived at chinese, it is an utterly different sky that is looking down upon us. we can translate these metaphors and say that all languages differ from one another but that certain ones differ far more than others. this is tantamount to saying that it is possible to group them into morphological types. strictly speaking, we know in advance that it is impossible to set up a limited number of types that would do full justice to the peculiarities of the thousands of languages and dialects spoken on the surface of the earth. like all human institutions, speech is too variable and too elusive to be quite safely ticketed. even if we operate with a minutely subdivided scale of types, we may be quite certain that many of our languages will need trimming before they fit. to get them into the scheme at all it will be necessary to overestimate the significance of this or that feature or to ignore, for the time being, certain contradictions in their mechanism. does the difficulty of classification prove the uselessness of the task? i do not think so. it would be too easy to relieve ourselves of the burden of constructive thinking and to take the standpoint that each language has its unique history, therefore its unique structure. such a standpoint expresses only a half truth. just as similar social, economic, and religious institutions have grown up in different parts of the world from distinct historical antecedents, so also languages, traveling along different roads, have tended to converge toward similar forms. moreover, the historical study of language has proven to us beyond all doubt that a language changes not only gradually but consistently, that it moves unconsciously from one type towards another, and that analogous trends are observable in remote quarters of the globe. from this it follows that broadly similar morphologies must have been reached by unrelated languages, independently and frequently. in assuming the existence of comparable types, therefore, we are not gainsaying the individuality of all historical processes; we are merely affirming that back of the face of history are powerful drifts that move language, like other social products, to balanced patterns, in other words, to types. as linguists we shall be content to realize that there are these types and that certain processes in the life of language tend to modify them. why similar types should be formed, just what is the nature of the forces that make them and dissolve them--these questions are more easily asked than answered. perhaps the psychologists of the future will be able to give us the ultimate reasons for the formation of linguistic types. when it comes to the actual task of classification, we find that we have no easy road to travel. various classifications have been suggested, and they all contain elements of value. yet none proves satisfactory. they do not so much enfold the known languages in their embrace as force them down into narrow, straight-backed seats. the difficulties have been of various kinds. first and foremost, it has been difficult to choose a point of view. on what basis shall we classify? a language shows us so many facets that we may well be puzzled. and is one point of view sufficient? secondly, it is dangerous to generalize from a small number of selected languages. to take, as the sum total of our material, latin, arabic, turkish, chinese, and perhaps eskimo or sioux as an afterthought, is to court disaster. we have no right to assume that a sprinkling of exotic types will do to supplement the few languages nearer home that we are more immediately interested in. thirdly, the strong craving for a simple formula[ ] has been the undoing of linguists. there is something irresistible about a method of classification that starts with two poles, exemplified, say, by chinese and latin, clusters what it conveniently can about these poles, and throws everything else into a "transitional type." hence has arisen the still popular classification of languages into an "isolating" group, an "agglutinative" group, and an "inflective" group. sometimes the languages of the american indians are made to straggle along as an uncomfortable "polysynthetic" rear-guard to the agglutinative languages. there is justification for the use of all of these terms, though not perhaps in quite the spirit in which they are commonly employed. in any case it is very difficult to assign all known languages to one or other of these groups, the more so as they are not mutually exclusive. a language may be both agglutinative and inflective, or inflective and polysynthetic, or even polysynthetic and isolating, as we shall see a little later on. [footnote : if possible, a triune formula.] there is a fourth reason why the classification of languages has generally proved a fruitless undertaking. it is probably the most powerful deterrent of all to clear thinking. this is the evolutionary prejudice which instilled itself into the social sciences towards the middle of the last century and which is only now beginning to abate its tyrannical hold on our mind. intermingled with this scientific prejudice and largely anticipating it was another, a more human one. the vast majority of linguistic theorists themselves spoke languages of a certain type, of which the most fully developed varieties were the latin and greek that they had learned in their childhood. it was not difficult for them to be persuaded that these familiar languages represented the "highest" development that speech had yet attained and that all other types were but steps on the way to this beloved "inflective" type. whatever conformed to the pattern of sanskrit and greek and latin and german was accepted as expressive of the "highest," whatever departed from it was frowned upon as a shortcoming or was at best an interesting aberration.[ ] now any classification that starts with preconceived values or that works up to sentimental satisfactions is self-condemned as unscientific. a linguist that insists on talking about the latin type of morphology as though it were necessarily the high-water mark of linguistic development is like the zoölogist that sees in the organic world a huge conspiracy to evolve the race-horse or the jersey cow. language in its fundamental forms is the symbolic expression of human intuitions. these may shape themselves in a hundred ways, regardless of the material advancement or backwardness of the people that handle the forms, of which, it need hardly be said, they are in the main unconscious. if, therefore, we wish to understand language in its true inwardness we must disabuse our minds of preferred "values"[ ] and accustom ourselves to look upon english and hottentot with the same cool, yet interested, detachment. [footnote : one celebrated american writer on culture and language delivered himself of the dictum that, estimable as the speakers of agglutinative languages might be, it was nevertheless a crime for an inflecting woman to marry an agglutinating man. tremendous spiritual values were evidently at stake. champions of the "inflective" languages are wont to glory in the very irrationalities of latin and greek, except when it suits them to emphasize their profoundly "logical" character. yet the sober logic of turkish or chinese leaves them cold. the glorious irrationalities and formal complexities of many "savage" languages they have no stomach for. sentimentalists are difficult people.] [footnote : i have in mind valuations of form as such. whether or not a language has a large and useful vocabulary is another matter. the actual size of a vocabulary at a given time is not a thing of real interest to the linguist, as all languages have the resources at their disposal for the creation of new words, should need for them arise. furthermore, we are not in the least concerned with whether or not a language is of great practical value or is the medium of a great culture. all these considerations, important from other standpoints, have nothing to do with form value.] we come back to our first difficulty. what point of view shall we adopt for our classification? after all that we have said about grammatical form in the preceding chapter, it is clear that we cannot now make the distinction between form languages and formless languages that used to appeal to some of the older writers. every language can and must express the fundamental syntactic relations even though there is not a single affix to be found in its vocabulary. we conclude that every language is a form language. aside from the expression of pure relation a language may, of course, be "formless"--formless, that is, in the mechanical and rather superficial sense that it is not encumbered by the use of non-radical elements. the attempt has sometimes been made to formulate a distinction on the basis of "inner form." chinese, for instance, has no formal elements pure and simple, no "outer form," but it evidences a keen sense of relations, of the difference between subject and object, attribute and predicate, and so on. in other words, it has an "inner form" in the same sense in which latin possesses it, though it is outwardly "formless" where latin is outwardly "formal." on the other hand, there are supposed to be languages[ ] which have no true grasp of the fundamental relations but content themselves with the more or less minute expression of material ideas, sometimes with an exuberant display of "outer form," leaving the pure relations to be merely inferred from the context. i am strongly inclined to believe that this supposed "inner formlessness" of certain languages is an illusion. it may well be that in these languages the relations are not expressed in as immaterial a way as in chinese or even as in latin,[ ] or that the principle of order is subject to greater fluctuations than in chinese, or that a tendency to complex derivations relieves the language of the necessity of expressing certain relations as explicitly as a more analytic language would have them expressed.[ ] all this does not mean that the languages in question have not a true feeling for the fundamental relations. we shall therefore not be able to use the notion of "inner formlessness," except in the greatly modified sense that syntactic relations may be fused with notions of another order. to this criterion of classification we shall have to return a little later. [footnote : e.g., malay, polynesian.] [footnote : where, as we have seen, the syntactic relations are by no means free from an alloy of the concrete.] [footnote : very much as an english _cod-liver oil_ dodges to some extent the task of explicitly defining the relations of the three nouns. contrast french _huile de foie de morue_ "oil of liver of cod."] more justifiable would be a classification according to the formal processes[ ] most typically developed in the language. those languages that always identify the word with the radical element would be set off as an "isolating" group against such as either affix modifying elements (affixing languages) or possess the power to change the significance of the radical element by internal changes (reduplication; vocalic and consonantal change; changes in quantity, stress, and pitch). the latter type might be not inaptly termed "symbolic" languages.[ ] the affixing languages would naturally subdivide themselves into such as are prevailingly prefixing, like bantu or tlingit, and such as are mainly or entirely suffixing, like eskimo or algonkin or latin. there are two serious difficulties with this fourfold classification (isolating, prefixing, suffixing, symbolic). in the first place, most languages fall into more than one of these groups. the semitic languages, for instance, are prefixing, suffixing, and symbolic at one and the same time. in the second place, the classification in its bare form is superficial. it would throw together languages that differ utterly in spirit merely because of a certain external formal resemblance. there is clearly a world of difference between a prefixing language like cambodgian, which limits itself, so far as its prefixes (and infixes) are concerned, to the expression of derivational concepts, and the bantu languages, in which the prefixed elements have a far-reaching significance as symbols of syntactic relations. the classification has much greater value if it is taken to refer to the expression of relational concepts[ ] alone. in this modified form we shall return to it as a subsidiary criterion. we shall find that the terms "isolating," "affixing," and "symbolic" have a real value. but instead of distinguishing between prefixing and suffixing languages, we shall find that it is of superior interest to make another distinction, one that is based on the relative firmness with which the affixed elements are united with the core of the word.[ ] [footnote : see chapter iv.] [footnote : there is probably a real psychological connection between symbolism and such significant alternations as _drink_, _drank_, _drunk_ or chinese _mai_ (with rising tone) "to buy" and _mai_ (with falling tone) "to sell." the unconscious tendency toward symbolism is justly emphasized by recent psychological literature. personally i feel that the passage from _sing_ to _sang_ has very much the same feeling as the alternation of symbolic colors--e.g., green for safe, red for danger. but we probably differ greatly as to the intensity with which we feel symbolism in linguistic changes of this type.] [footnote : pure or "concrete relational." see chapter v.] [footnote : in spite of my reluctance to emphasize the difference between a prefixing and a suffixing language, i feel that there is more involved in this difference than linguists have generally recognized. it seems to me that there is a rather important psychological distinction between a language that settles the formal status of a radical element before announcing it--and this, in effect, is what such languages as tlingit and chinook and bantu are in the habit of doing--and one that begins with the concrete nucleus of a word and defines the status of this nucleus by successive limitations, each curtailing in some degree the generality of all that precedes. the spirit of the former method has something diagrammatic or architectural about it, the latter is a method of pruning afterthoughts. in the more highly wrought prefixing languages the word is apt to affect us as a crystallization of floating elements, the words of the typical suffixing languages (turkish, eskimo, nootka) are "determinative" formations, each added element determining the form of the whole anew. it is so difficult in practice to apply these elusive, yet important, distinctions that an elementary study has no recourse but to ignore them.] there is another very useful set of distinctions that can be made, but these too must not be applied exclusively, or our classification will again be superficial. i refer to the notions of "analytic," "synthetic," and "polysynthetic." the terms explain themselves. an analytic language is one that either does not combine concepts into single words at all (chinese) or does so economically (english, french). in an analytic language the sentence is always of prime importance, the word is of minor interest. in a synthetic language (latin, arabic, finnish) the concepts cluster more thickly, the words are more richly chambered, but there is a tendency, on the whole, to keep the range of concrete significance in the single word down to a moderate compass. a polysynthetic language, as its name implies, is more than ordinarily synthetic. the elaboration of the word is extreme. concepts which we should never dream of treating in a subordinate fashion are symbolized by derivational affixes or "symbolic" changes in the radical element, while the more abstract notions, including the syntactic relations, may also be conveyed by the word. a polysynthetic language illustrates no principles that are not already exemplified in the more familiar synthetic languages. it is related to them very much as a synthetic language is related to our own analytic english.[ ] the three terms are purely quantitative--and relative, that is, a language may be "analytic" from one standpoint, "synthetic" from another. i believe the terms are more useful in defining certain drifts than as absolute counters. it is often illuminating to point out that a language has been becoming more and more analytic in the course of its history or that it shows signs of having crystallized from a simple analytic base into a highly synthetic form.[ ] [footnote : english, however, is only analytic in tendency. relatively to french, it is still fairly synthetic, at least in certain aspects.] [footnote : the former process is demonstrable for english, french, danish, tibetan, chinese, and a host of other languages. the latter tendency may be proven, i believe, for a number of american indian languages, e.g., chinook, navaho. underneath their present moderately polysynthetic form is discernible an analytic base that in the one case may be roughly described as english-like, in the other, tibetan-like.] we now come to the difference between an "inflective" and an "agglutinative" language. as i have already remarked, the distinction is a useful, even a necessary, one, but it has been generally obscured by a number of irrelevancies and by the unavailing effort to make the terms cover all languages that are not, like chinese, of a definitely isolating cast. the meaning that we had best assign to the term "inflective" can be gained by considering very briefly what are some of the basic features of latin and greek that have been looked upon as peculiar to the inflective languages. first of all, they are synthetic rather than analytic. this does not help us much. relatively to many another language that resembles them in broad structural respects, latin and greek are not notably synthetic; on the other hand, their modern descendants, italian and modern greek, while far more analytic[ ] than they, have not departed so widely in structural outlines as to warrant their being put in a distinct major group. an inflective language, we must insist, may be analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic. [footnote : this applies more particularly to the romance group: italian, spanish, portuguese, french, roumanian. modern greek is not so clearly analytic.] latin and greek are mainly affixing in their method, with the emphasis heavily on suffixing. the agglutinative languages are just as typically affixing as they, some among them favoring prefixes, others running to the use of suffixes. affixing alone does not define inflection. possibly everything depends on just what kind of affixing we have to deal with. if we compare our english words _farmer_ and _goodness_ with such words as _height_ and _depth_, we cannot fail to be struck by a notable difference in the affixing technique of the two sets. the _-er_ and _-ness_ are affixed quite mechanically to radical elements which are at the same time independent words (_farm_, _good_). they are in no sense independently significant elements, but they convey their meaning (agentive, abstract quality) with unfailing directness. their use is simple and regular and we should have no difficulty in appending them to any verb or to any adjective, however recent in origin. from a verb _to camouflage_ we may form the noun _camouflager_ "one who camouflages," from an adjective _jazzy_ proceeds with perfect ease the noun _jazziness_. it is different with _height_ and _depth_. functionally they are related to _high_ and _deep_ precisely as is _goodness_ to _good_, but the degree of coalescence between radical element and affix is greater. radical element and affix, while measurably distinct, cannot be torn apart quite so readily as could the _good_ and _-ness_ of _goodness_. the _-t_ of _height_ is not the typical form of the affix (compare _strength_, _length_, _filth_, _breadth_, _youth_), while _dep-_ is not identical with _deep_. we may designate the two types of affixing as "fusing" and "juxtaposing." the juxtaposing technique we may call an "agglutinative" one, if we like. is the fusing technique thereby set off as the essence of inflection? i am afraid that we have not yet reached our goal. if our language were crammed full of coalescences of the type of _depth_, but if, on the other hand, it used the plural independently of verb concord (e.g., _the books falls_ like _the book falls_, or _the book fall_ like _the books fall_), the personal endings independently of tense (e.g., _the book fells_ like _the book falls_, or _the book fall_ like _the book fell_), and the pronouns independently of case (e.g., _i see he_ like _he sees me_, or _him see the man_ like _the man sees him_), we should hesitate to describe it as inflective. the mere fact of fusion does not seem to satisfy us as a clear indication of the inflective process. there are, indeed, a large number of languages that fuse radical element and affix in as complete and intricate a fashion as one could hope to find anywhere without thereby giving signs of that particular kind of formalism that marks off such languages as latin and greek as inflective. what is true of fusion is equally true of the "symbolic" processes.[ ] there are linguists that speak of alternations like _drink_ and _drank_ as though they represented the high-water mark of inflection, a kind of spiritualized essence of pure inflective form. in such greek forms, nevertheless, as _pepomph-a_ "i have sent," as contrasted with _pemp-o_ "i send," with its trebly symbolic change of the radical element (reduplicating _pe-_, change of _e_ to _o_, change of _p_ to _ph_), it is rather the peculiar alternation of the first person singular _-a_ of the perfect with the _-o_ of the present that gives them their inflective cast. nothing could be more erroneous than to imagine that symbolic changes of the radical element, even for the expression of such abstract concepts as those of number and tense, is always associated with the syntactic peculiarities of an inflective language. if by an "agglutinative" language we mean one that affixes according to the juxtaposing technique, then we can only say that there are hundreds of fusing and symbolic languages--non-agglutinative by definition--that are, for all that, quite alien in spirit to the inflective type of latin and greek. we can call such languages inflective, if we like, but we must then be prepared to revise radically our notion of inflective form. [footnote : see pages , .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] it is necessary to understand that fusion of the radical element and the affix may be taken in a broader psychological sense than i have yet indicated. if every noun plural in english were of the type of _book_: _books_, if there were not such conflicting patterns as _deer_: _deer_, _ox_: _oxen_, _goose_: _geese_ to complicate the general form picture of plurality, there is little doubt that the fusion of the elements _book_ and _-s_ into the unified word _books_ would be felt as a little less complete than it actually is. one reasons, or feels, unconsciously about the matter somewhat as follows:--if the form pattern represented by the word _books_ is identical, as far as use is concerned, with that of the word _oxen_, the pluralizing elements _-s_ and _-en_ cannot have quite so definite, quite so autonomous, a value as we might at first be inclined to suppose. they are plural elements only in so far as plurality is predicated of certain selected concepts. the words _books_ and _oxen_ are therefore a little other than mechanical combinations of the symbol of a thing (_book_, _ox_) and a clear symbol of plurality. there is a slight psychological uncertainty or haze about the juncture in _book-s_ and _ox-en_. a little of the force of _-s_ and _-en_ is anticipated by, or appropriated by, the words _book_ and _ox_ themselves, just as the conceptual force of _-th_ in _dep-th_ is appreciably weaker than that of _-ness_ in _good-ness_ in spite of the functional parallelism between _depth_ and _goodness_. where there is uncertainty about the juncture, where the affixed element cannot rightly claim to possess its full share of significance, the unity of the complete word is more strongly emphasized. the mind must rest on something. if it cannot linger on the constituent elements, it hastens all the more eagerly to the acceptance of the word as a whole. a word like _goodness_ illustrates "agglutination," _books_ "regular fusion," _depth_ "irregular fusion," _geese_ "symbolic fusion" or "symbolism."[ ] [footnote : the following formulae may prove useful to those that are mathematically inclined. agglutination: c = a + b; regular fusion: c = a + (b - x) + x; irregular fusion: c = (a - x) + (b - y) + (x + y); symbolism: c = (a - x) + x. i do not wish to imply that there is any mystic value in the process of fusion. it is quite likely to have developed as a purely mechanical product of phonetic forces that brought about irregularities of various sorts.] the psychological distinctness of the affixed elements in an agglutinative term may be even more marked than in the _-ness_ of _goodness_. to be strictly accurate, the significance of the _-ness_ is not quite as inherently determined, as autonomous, as it might be. it is at the mercy of the preceding radical element to this extent, that it requires to be preceded by a particular type of such element, an adjective. its own power is thus, in a manner, checked in advance. the fusion here, however, is so vague and elementary, so much a matter of course in the great majority of all cases of affixing, that it is natural to overlook its reality and to emphasize rather the juxtaposing or agglutinative nature of the affixing process. if the _-ness_ could be affixed as an abstractive element to each and every type of radical element, if we could say _fightness_ ("the act or quality of fighting") or _waterness_ ("the quality or state of water") or _awayness_ ("the state of being away") as we can say _goodness_ ("the state of being good"), we should have moved appreciably nearer the agglutinative pole. a language that runs to synthesis of this loose-jointed sort may be looked upon as an example of the ideal agglutinative type, particularly if the concepts expressed by the agglutinated elements are relational or, at the least, belong to the abstracter class of derivational ideas. instructive forms may be cited from nootka. we shall return to our "fire in the house."[ ] the nootka word _inikw-ihl_ "fire in the house" is not as definitely formalized a word as its translation, suggests. the radical element _inikw-_ "fire" is really as much of a verbal as of a nominal term; it may be rendered now by "fire," now by "burn," according to the syntactic exigencies of the sentence. the derivational element _-ihl_ "in the house" does not mitigate this vagueness or generality; _inikw-ihl_ is still "fire in the house" or "burn in the house." it may be definitely nominalized or verbalized by the affixing of elements that are exclusively nominal or verbal in force. for example, _inikw-ihl-'i_, with its suffixed article, is a clear-cut nominal form: "the burning in the house, the fire in the house"; _inikw-ihl-ma_, with its indicative suffix, is just as clearly verbal: "it burns in the house." how weak must be the degree of fusion between "fire in the house" and the nominalizing or verbalizing suffix is apparent from the fact that the formally indifferent _inikwihl_ is not an abstraction gained by analysis but a full-fledged word, ready for use in the sentence. the nominalizing _-'i_ and the indicative _-ma_ are not fused form-affixes, they are simply additions of formal import. but we can continue to hold the verbal or nominal nature of _inikwihl_ in abeyance long before we reach the _-'i_ or _-ma_. we can pluralize it: _inikw-ihl-'minih_; it is still either "fires in the house" or "burn plurally in the house." we can diminutivize this plural: _inikw-ihl-'minih-'is_, "little fires in the house" or "burn plurally and slightly in the house." what if we add the preterit tense suffix _-it_? is not _inikw-ihl-'minih-'is-it_ necessarily a verb: "several small fires were burning in the house"? it is not. it may still be nominalized; _inikwihl'minih'isit-'i_ means "the former small fires in the house, the little fires that were once burning in the house." it is not an unambiguous verb until it is given a form that excludes every other possibility, as in the indicative _inikwihl-minih'isit-a_ "several small fires were burning in the house." we recognize at once that the elements _-ihl_, _-'minih_, _-'is_, and _-it_, quite aside from the relatively concrete or abstract nature of their content and aside, further, from the degree of their outer (phonetic) cohesion with the elements that precede them, have a psychological independence that our own affixes never have. they are typically agglutinated elements, though they have no greater external independence, are no more capable of living apart from the radical element to which they are suffixed, than the _-ness_ and _goodness_ or the _-s_ of _books_. it does not follow that an agglutinative language may not make use of the principle of fusion, both external and psychological, or even of symbolism to a considerable extent. it is a question of tendency. is the formative slant clearly towards the agglutinative method? then the language is "agglutinative." as such, it may be prefixing or suffixing, analytic, synthetic, or polysynthetic. [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] to return to inflection. an inflective language like latin or greek uses the method of fusion, and this fusion has an inner psychological as well as an outer phonetic meaning. but it is not enough that the fusion operate merely in the sphere of derivational concepts (group ii),[ ] it must involve the syntactic relations, which may either be expressed in unalloyed form (group iv) or, as in latin and greek, as "concrete relational concepts" (group iii).[ ] as far as latin and greek are concerned, their inflection consists essentially of the fusing of elements that express logically impure relational concepts with radical elements and with elements expressing derivational concepts. both fusion as a general method and the expression of relational concepts in the word are necessary to the notion of "inflection." [footnote : see chapter v.] [footnote : if we deny the application of the term "inflective" to fusing languages that express the syntactic relations in pure form, that is, without the admixture of such concepts as number, gender, and tense, merely because such admixture is familiar to us in latin and greek, we make of "inflection" an even more arbitrary concept than it need be. at the same time it is true that the method of fusion itself tends to break down the wall between our conceptual groups ii and iv, to create group iii. yet the possibility of such "inflective" languages should not be denied. in modern tibetan, for instance, in which concepts of group ii are but weakly expressed, if at all, and in which the relational concepts (e.g., the genitive, the agentive or instrumental) are expressed without alloy of the material, we get many interesting examples of fusion, even of symbolism. _mi di_, e.g., "man this, the man" is an absolutive form which may be used as the subject of an intransitive verb. when the verb is transitive (really passive), the (logical) subject has to take the agentive form. _mi di_ then becomes _mi di_ "by the man," the vowel of the demonstrative pronoun (or article) being merely lengthened. (there is probably also a change in the tone of the syllable.) this, of course, is of the very essence of inflection. it is an amusing commentary on the insufficiency of our current linguistic classification, which considers "inflective" and "isolating" as worlds asunder, that modern tibetan may be not inaptly described as an isolating language, aside from such examples of fusion and symbolism as the foregoing.] but to have thus defined inflection is to doubt the value of the term as descriptive of a major class. why emphasize both a technique and a particular content at one and the same time? surely we should be clear in our minds as to whether we set more store by one or the other. "fusional" and "symbolic" contrast with "agglutinative," which is not on a par with "inflective" at all. what are we to do with the fusional and symbolic languages that do not express relational concepts in the word but leave them to the sentence? and are we not to distinguish between agglutinative languages that express these same concepts in the word--in so far inflective-like--and those that do not? we dismissed the scale: analytic, synthetic, polysynthetic, as too merely quantitative for our purpose. isolating, affixing, symbolic--this also seemed insufficient for the reason that it laid too much stress on technical externals. isolating, agglutinative, fusional, and symbolic is a preferable scheme, but still skirts the external. we shall do best, it seems to me, to hold to "inflective" as a valuable suggestion for a broader and more consistently developed scheme, as a hint for a classification based on the nature of the concepts expressed by the language. the other two classifications, the first based on degree of synthesis, the second on degree of fusion, may be retained as intercrossing schemes that give us the opportunity to subdivide our main conceptual types. it is well to recall that all languages must needs express radical concepts (group i) and relational ideas (group iv). of the two other large groups of concepts--derivational (group ii) and mixed relational (group iii)--both may be absent, both present, or only one present. this gives us at once a simple, incisive, and absolutely inclusive method of classifying all known languages. they are: a. such as express only concepts of groups i and iv; in other words, languages that keep the syntactic relations pure and that do not possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes.[ ] we may call these _pure-relational non-deriving languages_ or, more tersely, _simple pure-relational languages_. these are the languages that cut most to the bone of linguistic expression. b. such as express concepts of groups i, ii, and iv; in other words, languages that keep the syntactic relations pure and that also possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes. these are the _pure-relational deriving languages_ or _complex pure-relational languages_. c. such as express concepts of groups i and iii;[ ] in other words, languages in which the syntactic relations are expressed in necessary connection with concepts that are not utterly devoid of concrete significance but that do not, apart from such mixture, possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes.[ ] these are the _mixed-relational non-deriving languages_ or _simple mixed-relational languages_. d. such as express concepts of groups i, ii, and iii; in other words, languages in which the syntactic relations are expressed in mixed form, as in c, and that also possess the power to modify the significance of their radical elements by means of affixes or internal changes. these are the _mixed-relational deriving languages_ or _complex mixed-relational languages_. here belong the "inflective" languages that we are most familiar with as well as a great many "agglutinative" languages, some "polysynthetic," others merely synthetic. [footnote : i am eliminating entirely the possibility of compounding two or more radical elements into single words or word-like phrases (see pages - ). to expressly consider compounding in the present survey of types would be to complicate our problem unduly. most languages that possess no derivational affixes of any sort may nevertheless freely compound radical elements (independent words). such compounds often have a fixity that simulates the unity of single words.] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the three paragraphs beginning on line .] [footnote : we may assume that in these languages and in those of type d all or most of the relational concepts are expressed in "mixed" form, that such a concept as that of subjectivity, for instance, cannot be expressed without simultaneously involving number or gender or that an active verb form must be possessed of a definite tense. hence group iii will be understood to include, or rather absorb, group iv. theoretically, of course, certain relational concepts may be expressed pure, others mixed, but in practice it will not be found easy to make the distinction.] [footnote : the line between types c and d cannot be very sharply drawn. it is a matter largely of degree. a language of markedly mixed-relational type, but of little power of derivation pure and simple, such as bantu or french, may be conveniently put into type c, even though it is not devoid of a number of derivational affixes. roughly speaking, languages of type c may be considered as highly analytic ("purified") forms of type d.] this conceptual classification of languages, i must repeat, does not attempt to take account of the technical externals of language. it answers, in effect, two fundamental questions concerning the translation of concepts into linguistic symbols. does the language, in the first place, keep its radical concepts pure or does it build up its concrete ideas by an aggregation of inseparable elements (types a and c _versus_ types b and d)? and, in the second place, does it keep the basic relational concepts, such as are absolutely unavoidable in the ordering of a proposition, free of an admixture of the concrete or not (types a and b _versus_ types c and d)? the second question, it seems to me, is the more fundamental of the two. we can therefore simplify our classification and present it in the following form: _ i. pure-relational _/ a. simple languages \_ b. complex _ ii. mixed-relational _/ c. simple languages \_ d. complex the classification is too sweeping and too broad for an easy, descriptive survey of the many varieties of human speech. it needs to be amplified. each of the types a, b, c, d may be subdivided into an agglutinative, a fusional, and a symbolic sub-type, according to the prevailing method of modification of the radical element. in type a we distinguish in addition an isolating sub-type, characterized by the absence of all affixes and modifications of the radical element. in the isolating languages the syntactic relations are expressed by the position of the words in the sentence. this is also true of many languages of type b, the terms "agglutinative," "fusional," and "symbolic" applying in their case merely to the treatment of the derivational, not the relational, concepts. such languages could be termed "agglutinative-isolating," "fusional-isolating" and "symbolic-isolating." this brings up the important general consideration that the method of handling one group of concepts need not in the least be identical with that used for another. compound terms could be used to indicate this difference, if desired, the first element of the compound referring to the treatment of the concepts of group ii, the second to that of the concepts of groups iii and iv. an "agglutinative" language would normally be taken to mean one that agglutinates all of its affixed elements or that does so to a preponderating extent. in an "agglutinative-fusional" language the derivational elements are agglutinated, perhaps in the form of prefixes, while the relational elements (pure or mixed) are fused with the radical element, possibly as another set of prefixes following the first set or in the form of suffixes or as part prefixes and part suffixes. by a "fusional-agglutinative" language we would understand one that fuses its derivational elements but allows a greater independence to those that indicate relations. all these and similar distinctions are not merely theoretical possibilities, they can be abundantly illustrated from the descriptive facts of linguistic morphology. further, should it prove desirable to insist on the degree of elaboration of the word, the terms "analytic," "synthetic," and "polysynthetic" can be added as descriptive terms. it goes without saying that languages of type a are necessarily analytic and that languages of type c also are prevailingly analytic and are not likely to develop beyond the synthetic stage. but we must not make too much of terminology. much depends on the relative emphasis laid on this or that feature or point of view. the method of classifying languages here developed has this great advantage, that it can be refined or simplified according to the needs of a particular discussion. the degree of synthesis may be entirely ignored; "fusion" and "symbolism" may often be combined with advantage under the head of "fusion"; even the difference between agglutination and fusion may, if desired, be set aside as either too difficult to draw or as irrelevant to the issue. languages, after all, are exceedingly complex historical structures. it is of less importance to put each language in a neat pigeon-hole than to have evolved a flexible method which enables us to place it, from two or three independent standpoints, relatively to another language. all this is not to deny that certain linguistic types are more stable and frequently represented than others that are just as possible from a theoretical standpoint. but we are too ill-informed as yet of the structural spirit of great numbers of languages to have the right to frame a classification that is other than flexible and experimental. the reader will gain a somewhat livelier idea of the possibilities of linguistic morphology by glancing down the subjoined analytical table of selected types. the columns ii, iii, iv refer to the groups of concepts so numbered in the preceding chapter. the letters _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_ refer respectively to the processes of isolation (position in the sentence), agglutination, fusion, and symbolism. where more than one technique is employed, they are put in the order of their importance.[ ] [footnote : in defining the type to which a language belongs one must be careful not to be misled by structural features which are mere survivals of an older stage, which have no productive life and do not enter into the unconscious patterning of the language. all languages are littered with such petrified bodies. the english _-ster_ of _spinster_ and _webster_ is an old agentive suffix, but, as far as the feeling of the present english-speaking generation is concerned, it cannot be said to really exist at all; _spinster_ and _webster_ have been completely disconnected from the etymological group of _spin_ and of _weave (web)_. similarly, there are hosts of related words in chinese which differ in the initial consonant, the vowel, the tone, or in the presence or absence of a final consonant. even where the chinaman feels the etymological relationship, as in certain cases he can hardly help doing, he can assign no particular function to the phonetic variation as such. hence it forms no live feature of the language-mechanism and must be ignored in defining the general form of the language. the caution is all the more necessary, as it is precisely the foreigner, who approaches a new language with a certain prying inquisitiveness, that is most apt to see life in vestigial features which the native is either completely unaware of or feels merely as dead form.] note.--parentheses indicate a weak development of the process in question. +----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+ |fundamental type"ii |iii |iv |technique "synthesis "examples | +----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+ | a " | | | " " | |(simple pure- "-- |-- |a |isolating "analytic "chinese; | | relational) " | | | " "annamite | | " | | | " " | | "(d)|-- |a,b|isolating "analytic "ewe | | " | | |(weakly " "(guinea coast)| | " | | |agglutinative)" " | | " | | | " " | | "(b)|-- |a, |agglutinative "analytic "modern tibetan| | " | |b,c|(mildly " " | | " | | |agglutinative-" " | | " | | |fusional) " " | | " | | | " " | | b " | | | " " | |(complex pure- "b, |-- |a |agglutinative-"analytic "polynesian | | relational) "(d)| | |isolating " " | | " | | | " " | | "b |-- |a, |agglutinative-"polysyn- "haida | | " | |(b)|isolating "thetic " | | " | | | " " | | "c |-- |a |fusional- "analytic "cambodgian | | " | | |isolating " " | | " | | | " " | | "b |-- |b |agglutinative "synthetic "turkish | | " | | | " " | | "b,d|(b) |b |agglutinative "polysyn- "yana (n. | | " | | |(symbolic "thetic "california) | | " | | |tinge) " " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |-- |a,b|fusional- "synthetic "classical | | "d, | | |agglutinative "(mildly) "tibetan | | "(b)| | |(symbolic " " | | " | | |tinge) " " | | " | | | " " | | "b |-- |c |agglutinative-"synthetic "sioux | | " | | |fusional "(mildly " | | " | | | "polysyn- " | | " | | | "thetic) " | | " | | | " " | | "c |-- |c |fusional "synthetic "salinan (s.w. | | " | | | " "california) | | " | | | " " | | "d,c|(d) |d, |symbolic "analytic "shilluk | | " | |c,a| " "(upper nile) | | " | | | " " | | c " | | | " " | |(simple mixed- "(b)|b |-- |agglutinative "synthetic "bantu | | relational) " | | | " " | | "(c)|c, |a |fusional "analytic "french[ ] | | " |(d) | | "(mildly " | | " | | | "synthetic)" | | " | | | " " | | d " | | | " " | |(complex mixed- "b, |b |b |agglutinative "polysyn- "nootka | | relational) "c,d| | | "thetic "(vancouver | | " | | | "(symbolic "island)[ ] | | " | | | "tinge) " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |b |-- |fusional- "polysyn- "chinook (lower| | "(d)| | |agglutinative "thetic "columbia r.) | | " | | | "(mildly) " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |c, |-- |fusional "polysyn- "algonkin | | "(d)|(d),| | "thetic " | | " |(b) | | " " | | " | | | " " | | "c |c,d |a |fusional "analytic "english | | " | | | " " | | "c,d|c,d |-- |fusional "synthetic "latin, greek, | | " | | |(symbolic " "sanskrit | | " | | |tinge) " " | | " | | | " " | | "c, |c,d |(a)|fusional "synthetic "takelma | | "b,d| | |(strongly " "(s.w. oregon) | | " | | |symbolic) " " | | " | | | " " | | "d,c|c,d |(a)|symbolic- "synthetic "semitic | | " | | |fusional " "(arabic, | | " | | | " "hebrew) | +----------------+---+----+---+--------------+----------+--------------+ [footnote : might nearly as well have come under d.] [footnote : very nearly complex pure-relational.] i need hardly point out that these examples are far from exhausting the possibilities of linguistic structure. nor that the fact that two languages are similarly classified does not necessarily mean that they present a great similarity on the surface. we are here concerned with the most fundamental and generalized features of the spirit, the technique, and the degree of elaboration of a given language. nevertheless, in numerous instances we may observe this highly suggestive and remarkable fact, that languages that fall into the same class have a way of paralleling each other in many details or in structural features not envisaged by the scheme of classification. thus, a most interesting parallel could be drawn on structural lines between takelma and greek,[ ] languages that are as geographically remote from each other and as unconnected in a historical sense as two languages selected at random can well be. their similarity goes beyond the generalized facts registered in the table. it would almost seem that linguistic features that are easily thinkable apart from each other, that seem to have no necessary connection in theory, have nevertheless a tendency to cluster or to follow together in the wake of some deep, controlling impulse to form that dominates their drift. if, therefore, we can only be sure of the intuitive similarity of two given languages, of their possession of the same submerged form-feeling, we need not be too much surprised to find that they seek and avoid certain linguistic developments in common. we are at present very far from able to define just what these fundamental form intuitions are. we can only feel them rather vaguely at best and must content ourselves for the most part with noting their symptoms. these symptoms are being garnered in our descriptive and historical grammars of diverse languages. some day, it may be, we shall be able to read from them the great underlying ground-plans. [footnote : not greek specifically, of course, but as a typical representative of indo-european.] such a purely technical classification of languages as the current one into "isolating," "agglutinative," and "inflective" (read "fusional") cannot claim to have great value as an entering wedge into the discovery of the intuitional forms of language. i do not know whether the suggested classification into four conceptual groups is likely to drive deeper or not. my own feeling is that it does, but classifications, neat constructions of the speculative mind, are slippery things. they have to be tested at every possible opportunity before they have the right to cry for acceptance. meanwhile we may take some encouragement from the application of a rather curious, yet simple, historical test. languages are in constant process of change, but it is only reasonable to suppose that they tend to preserve longest what is most fundamental in their structure. now if we take great groups of genetically related languages,[ ] we find that as we pass from one to another or trace the course of their development we frequently encounter a gradual change of morphological type. this is not surprising, for there is no reason why a language should remain permanently true to its original form. it is interesting, however, to note that of the three intercrossing classifications represented in our table (conceptual type, technique, and degree of synthesis), it is the degree of synthesis that seems to change most readily, that the technique is modifiable but far less readily so, and that the conceptual type tends to persist the longest of all. [footnote : such, in other words, as can be shown by documentary or comparative evidence to have been derived from a common source. see chapter vii.] the illustrative material gathered in the table is far too scanty to serve as a real basis of proof, but it is highly suggestive as far as it goes. the only changes of conceptual type within groups of related languages that are to be gleaned from the table are of b to a (shilluk as contrasted with ewe;[ ] classical tibetan as contrasted with modern tibetan and chinese) and of d to c (french as contrasted with latin[ ]). but types a : b and c : d are respectively related to each other as a simple and a complex form of a still more fundamental type (pure-relational, mixed-relational). of a passage from a pure-relational to a mixed-relational type or _vice versa_ i can give no convincing examples. [footnote : these are far-eastern and far-western representatives of the "soudan" group recently proposed by d. westermann. the genetic relationship between ewe and shilluk is exceedingly remote at best.] [footnote : this case is doubtful at that. i have put french in c rather than in d with considerable misgivings. everything depends on how one evaluates elements like _-al_ in _national_, _-té_ in _bonté_, or _re-_ in _retourner_. they are common enough, but are they as alive, as little petrified or bookish, as our english _-ness_ and _-ful_ and _un-_?] the table shows clearly enough how little relative permanence there is in the technical features of language. that highly synthetic languages (latin; sanskrit) have frequently broken down into analytic forms (french; bengali) or that agglutinative languages (finnish) have in many instances gradually taken on "inflective" features are well-known facts, but the natural inference does not seem to have been often drawn that possibly the contrast between synthetic and analytic or agglutinative and "inflective" (fusional) is not so fundamental after all. turning to the indo-chinese languages, we find that chinese is as near to being a perfectly isolating language as any example we are likely to find, while classical tibetan has not only fusional but strong symbolic features (e.g., _g-tong-ba_ "to give," past _b-tang_, future _gtang_, imperative _thong_); but both are pure-relational languages. ewe is either isolating or only barely agglutinative, while shilluk, though soberly analytic, is one of the most definitely symbolic languages i know; both of these soudanese languages are pure-relational. the relationship between polynesian and cambodgian is remote, though practically certain; while the latter has more markedly fusional features than the former,[ ] both conform to the complex pure-relational type. yana and salinan are superficially very dissimilar languages. yana is highly polysynthetic and quite typically agglutinative, salinan is no more synthetic than and as irregularly and compactly fusional ("inflective") as latin; both are pure-relational, chinook and takelma, remotely related languages of oregon, have diverged very far from each other, not only as regards technique and synthesis in general but in almost all the details of their structure; both are complex mixed-relational languages, though in very different ways. facts such as these seem to lend color to the suspicion that in the contrast of pure-relational and mixed-relational (or concrete-relational) we are confronted by something deeper, more far-reaching, than the contrast of isolating, agglutinative, and fusional.[ ] [footnote : in spite of its more isolating cast.] [footnote : in a book of this sort it is naturally impossible to give an adequate idea of linguistic structure in its varying forms. only a few schematic indications are possible. a separate volume would be needed to breathe life into the scheme. such a volume would point out the salient structural characteristics of a number of languages, so selected as to give the reader an insight into the formal economy of strikingly divergent types.] vii language as a historical product: drift every one knows that language is variable. two individuals of the same generation and locality, speaking precisely the same dialect and moving in the same social circles, are never absolutely at one in their speech habits. a minute investigation of the speech of each individual would reveal countless differences of detail--in choice of words, in sentence structure, in the relative frequency with which particular forms or combinations of words are used, in the pronunciation of particular vowels and consonants and of combinations of vowels and consonants, in all those features, such as speed, stress, and tone, that give life to spoken language. in a sense they speak slightly divergent dialects of the same language rather than identically the same language. there is an important difference, however, between individual and dialectic variations. if we take two closely related dialects, say english as spoken by the "middle classes" of london and english as spoken by the average new yorker, we observe that, however much the individual speakers in each city differ from each other, the body of londoners forms a compact, relatively unified group in contrast to the body of new yorkers. the individual variations are swamped in or absorbed by certain major agreements--say of pronunciation and vocabulary--which stand out very strongly when the language of the group as a whole is contrasted with that of the other group. this means that there is something like an ideal linguistic entity dominating the speech habits of the members of each group, that the sense of almost unlimited freedom which each individual feels in the use of his language is held in leash by a tacitly directing norm. one individual plays on the norm in a way peculiar to himself, the next individual is nearer the dead average in that particular respect in which the first speaker most characteristically departs from it but in turn diverges from the average in a way peculiar to himself, and so on. what keeps the individual's variations from rising to dialectic importance is not merely the fact that they are in any event of small moment--there are well-marked dialectic variations that are of no greater magnitude than individual variations within a dialect--it is chiefly that they are silently "corrected" or canceled by the consensus of usage. if all the speakers of a given dialect were arranged in order in accordance with the degree of their conformity to average usage, there is little doubt that they would constitute a very finely intergrading series clustered about a well-defined center or norm. the differences between any two neighboring speakers of the series[ ] would be negligible for any but the most microscopic linguistic research. the differences between the outer-most members of the series are sure to be considerable, in all likelihood considerable enough to measure up to a true dialectic variation. what prevents us from saying that these untypical individuals speak distinct dialects is that their peculiarities, as a unified whole, are not referable to another norm than the norm of their own series. [footnote : in so far as they do not fall out of the normal speech group by reason of a marked speech defect or because they are isolated foreigners that have acquired the language late in life.] if the speech of any member of the series could actually be made to fit into another dialect series,[ ] we should have no true barriers between dialects (and languages) at all. we should merely have a continuous series of individual variations extending over the whole range of a historically unified linguistic area, and the cutting up of this large area (in some cases embracing parts of several continents) into distinct dialects and languages would be an essentially arbitrary proceeding with no warrant save that of practical convenience. but such a conception of the nature of dialectic variation does not correspond to the facts as we know them. isolated individuals may be found who speak a compromise between two dialects of a language, and if their number and importance increases they may even end by creating a new dialectic norm of their own, a dialect in which the extreme peculiarities of the parent dialects are ironed out. in course of time the compromise dialect may absorb the parents, though more frequently these will tend to linger indefinitely as marginal forms of the enlarged dialect area. but such phenomena--and they are common enough in the history of language--are evidently quite secondary. they are closely linked with such social developments as the rise of nationality, the formation of literatures that aim to have more than a local appeal, the movement of rural populations into the cities, and all those other tendencies that break up the intense localism that unsophisticated man has always found natural. [footnote : observe that we are speaking of an individual's speech as a whole. it is not a question of isolating some particular peculiarity of pronunciation or usage and noting its resemblance to or identity with a feature in another dialect.] the explanation of primary dialectic differences is still to seek. it is evidently not enough to say that if a dialect or language is spoken in two distinct localities or by two distinct social strata it naturally takes on distinctive forms, which in time come to be divergent enough to deserve the name of dialects. this is certainly true as far as it goes. dialects do belong, in the first instance, to very definitely circumscribed social groups, homogeneous enough to secure the common feeling and purpose needed to create a norm. but the embarrassing question immediately arises, if all the individual variations within a dialect are being constantly leveled out to the dialectic norm, if there is no appreciable tendency for the individual's peculiarities to initiate a dialectic schism, why should we have dialectic variations at all? ought not the norm, wherever and whenever threatened, automatically to reassert itself? ought not the individual variations of each locality, even in the absence of intercourse between them, to cancel out to the same accepted speech average? if individual variations "on a flat" were the only kind of variability in language, i believe we should be at a loss to explain why and how dialects arise, why it is that a linguistic prototype gradually breaks up into a number of mutually unintelligible languages. but language is not merely something that is spread out in space, as it were--a series of reflections in individual minds of one and the same timeless picture. language moves down time in a current of its own making. it has a drift. if there were no breaking up of a language into dialects, if each language continued as a firm, self-contained unity, it would still be constantly moving away from any assignable norm, developing new features unceasingly and gradually transforming itself into a language so different from its starting point as to be in effect a new language. now dialects arise not because of the mere fact of individual variation but because two or more groups of individuals have become sufficiently disconnected to drift apart, or independently, instead of together. so long as they keep strictly together, no amount of individual variation would lead to the formation of dialects. in practice, of course, no language can be spread over a vast territory or even over a considerable area without showing dialectic variations, for it is impossible to keep a large population from segregating itself into local groups, the language of each of which tends to drift independently. under cultural conditions such as apparently prevail to-day, conditions that fight localism at every turn, the tendency to dialectic cleavage is being constantly counteracted and in part "corrected" by the uniformizing factors already referred to. yet even in so young a country as america the dialectic differences are not inconsiderable. under primitive conditions the political groups are small, the tendency to localism exceedingly strong. it is natural, therefore, that the languages of primitive folk or of non-urban populations in general are differentiated into a great number of dialects. there are parts of the globe where almost every village has its own dialect. the life of the geographically limited community is narrow and intense; its speech is correspondingly peculiar to itself. it is exceedingly doubtful if a language will ever be spoken over a wide area without multiplying itself dialectically. no sooner are the old dialects ironed out by compromises or ousted by the spread and influence of the one dialect which is culturally predominant when a new crop of dialects arises to undo the leveling work of the past. this is precisely what happened in greece, for instance. in classical antiquity there were spoken a large number of local dialects, several of which are represented in the literature. as the cultural supremacy of athens grew, its dialect, the attic, spread at the expense of the rest, until, in the so-called hellenistic period following the macedonian conquest, the attic dialect, in the vulgarized form known as the "koine," became the standard speech of all greece. but this linguistic uniformity[ ] did not long continue. during the two millennia that separate the greek of to-day from its classical prototype the koine gradually split up into a number of dialects. now greece is as richly diversified in speech as in the time of homer, though the present local dialects, aside from those of attica itself, are not the lineal descendants of the old dialects of pre-alexandrian days.[ ] the experience of greece is not exceptional. old dialects are being continually wiped out only to make room for new ones. languages can change at so many points of phonetics, morphology, and vocabulary that it is not surprising that once the linguistic community is broken it should slip off in different directions. it would be too much to expect a locally diversified language to develop along strictly parallel lines. if once the speech of a locality has begun to drift on its own account, it is practically certain to move further and further away from its linguistic fellows. failing the retarding effect of dialectic interinfluences, which i have already touched upon, a group of dialects is bound to diverge on the whole, each from all of the others. [footnote : it is doubtful if we have the right to speak of linguistic uniformity even during the predominance of the koine. it is hardly conceivable that when the various groups of non-attic greeks took on the koine they did not at once tinge it with dialectic peculiarities induced by their previous speech habits.] [footnote : the zaconic dialect of lacedaemon is the sole exception. it is not derived from the koine, but stems directly from the doric dialect of sparta.] in course of time each dialect itself splits up into sub-dialects, which gradually take on the dignity of dialects proper while the primary dialects develop into mutually unintelligible languages. and so the budding process continues, until the divergences become so great that none but a linguistic student, armed with his documentary evidence and with his comparative or reconstructive method, would infer that the languages in question were genealogically related, represented independent lines of development, in other words, from a remote and common starting point. yet it is as certain as any historical fact can be that languages so little resembling each other as modern irish, english, italian, greek, russian, armenian, persian, and bengali are but end-points in the present of drifts that converge to a meeting-point in the dim past. there is naturally no reason to believe that this earliest "indo-european" (or "aryan") prototype which we can in part reconstruct, in part but dimly guess at, is itself other than a single "dialect" of a group that has either become largely extinct or is now further represented by languages too divergent for us, with our limited means, to recognize as clear kin.[ ] [footnote : though indications are not lacking of what these remoter kin of the indo-european languages may be. this is disputed ground, however, and hardly fit subject for a purely general study of speech.] all languages that are known to be genetically related, i.e., to be divergent forms of a single prototype, may be considered as constituting a "linguistic stock." there is nothing final about a linguistic stock. when we set it up, we merely say, in effect, that thus far we can go and no farther. at any point in the progress of our researches an unexpected ray of light may reveal the "stock" as but a "dialect" of a larger group. the terms dialect, language, branch, stock--it goes without saying--are purely relative terms. they are convertible as our perspective widens or contracts.[ ] it would be vain to speculate as to whether or not we shall ever be able to demonstrate that all languages stem from a common source. of late years linguists have been able to make larger historical syntheses than were at one time deemed feasible, just as students of culture have been able to show historical connections between culture areas or institutions that were at one time believed to be totally isolated from each other. the human world is contracting not only prospectively but to the backward-probing eye of culture-history. nevertheless we are as yet far from able to reduce the riot of spoken languages to a small number of "stocks." we must still operate with a quite considerable number of these stocks. some of them, like indo-european or indo-chinese, are spoken over tremendous reaches; others, like basque,[ ] have a curiously restricted range and are in all likelihood but dwindling remnants of groups that were at one time more widely distributed. as for the single or multiple origin of speech, it is likely enough that language as a human institution (or, if one prefers, as a human "faculty") developed but once in the history of the race, that all the complex history of language is a unique cultural event. such a theory constructed "on general principles" is of no real interest, however, to linguistic science. what lies beyond the demonstrable must be left to the philosopher or the romancer. [footnote : "dialect" in contrast to an accepted literary norm is a use of the term that we are not considering.] [footnote : spoken in france and spain in the region of the pyrenees.] we must return to the conception of "drift" in language. if the historical changes that take place in a language, if the vast accumulation of minute modifications which in time results in the complete remodeling of the language, are not in essence identical with the individual variations that we note on every hand about us, if these variations are born only to die without a trace, while the equally minute, or even minuter, changes that make up the drift are forever imprinted on the history of the language, are we not imputing to this history a certain mystical quality? are we not giving language a power to change of its own accord over and above the involuntary tendency of individuals to vary the norm? and if this drift of language is not merely the familiar set of individual variations seen in vertical perspective, that is historically, instead of horizontally, that is in daily experience, what is it? language exists only in so far as it is actually used--spoken and heard, written and read. what significant changes take place in it must exist, to begin with, as individual variations. this is perfectly true, and yet it by no means follows that the general drift of language can be understood[ ] from an exhaustive descriptive study of these variations alone. they themselves are random phenomena,[ ] like the waves of the sea, moving backward and forward in purposeless flux. the linguistic drift has direction. in other words, only those individual variations embody it or carry it which move in a certain direction, just as only certain wave movements in the bay outline the tide. the drift of a language is constituted by the unconscious selection on the part of its speakers of those individual variations that are cumulative in some special direction. this direction may be inferred, in the main, from the past history of the language. in the long run any new feature of the drift becomes part and parcel of the common, accepted speech, but for a long time it may exist as a mere tendency in the speech of a few, perhaps of a despised few. as we look about us and observe current usage, it is not likely to occur to us that our language has a "slope," that the changes of the next few centuries are in a sense prefigured in certain obscure tendencies of the present and that these changes, when consummated, will be seen to be but continuations of changes that have been already effected. we feel rather that our language is practically a fixed system and that what slight changes are destined to take place in it are as likely to move in one direction as another. the feeling is fallacious. our very uncertainty as to the impending details of change makes the eventual consistency of their direction all the more impressive. [footnote : or rather apprehended, for we do not, in sober fact, entirely understand it as yet.] [footnote : not ultimately random, of course, only relatively so.] sometimes we can feel where the drift is taking us even while we struggle against it. probably the majority of those who read these words feel that it is quite "incorrect" to say "who did you see?" we readers of many books are still very careful to say "whom did you see?" but we feel a little uncomfortable (uncomfortably proud, it may be) in the process. we are likely to avoid the locution altogether and to say "who was it you saw?" conserving literary tradition (the "whom") with the dignity of silence.[ ] the folk makes no apology. "whom did you see?" might do for an epitaph, but "who did you see?" is the natural form for an eager inquiry. it is of course the uncontrolled speech of the folk to which we must look for advance information as to the general linguistic movement. it is safe to prophesy that within a couple of hundred years from to-day not even the most learned jurist will be saying "whom did you see?" by that time the "whom" will be as delightfully archaic as the elizabethan "his" for "its."[ ] no logical or historical argument will avail to save this hapless "whom." the demonstration "i: me = he: him = who: whom" will be convincing in theory and will go unheeded in practice. [footnote : in relative clauses too we tend to avoid the objective form of "who." instead of "the man whom i saw" we are likely to say "the man that i saw" or "the man i saw."] [footnote : "its" was at one time as impertinent a departure as the "who" of "who did you see?" it forced itself into english because the old cleavage between masculine, feminine, and neuter was being slowly and powerfully supplemented by a new one between thing-class and animate-class. the latter classification proved too vital to allow usage to couple males and things ("his") as against females ("her"). the form "its" had to be created on the analogy of words like "man's," to satisfy the growing form feeling. the drift was strong enough to sanction a grammatical blunder.] even now we may go so far as to say that the majority of us are secretly wishing they could say "who did you see?" it would be a weight off their unconscious minds if some divine authority, overruling the lifted finger of the pedagogue, gave them _carte blanche_. but we cannot too frankly anticipate the drift and maintain caste. we must affect ignorance of whither we are going and rest content with our mental conflict--uncomfortable conscious acceptance of the "whom," unconscious desire for the "who."[ ] meanwhile we indulge our sneaking desire for the forbidden locution by the use of the "who" in certain twilight cases in which we can cover up our fault by a bit of unconscious special pleading. imagine that some one drops the remark when you are not listening attentively, "john smith is coming to-night." you have not caught the name and ask, not "whom did you say?" but "who did you say?" there is likely to be a little hesitation in the choice of the form, but the precedent of usages like "whom did you see?" will probably not seem quite strong enough to induce a "whom did you say?" not quite relevant enough, the grammarian may remark, for a sentence like "who did you say?" is not strictly analogous to "whom did you see?" or "whom did you mean?" it is rather an abbreviated form of some such sentence as "who, did you say, is coming to-night?" this is the special pleading that i have referred to, and it has a certain logic on its side. yet the case is more hollow than the grammarian thinks it to be, for in reply to such a query as "you're a good hand at bridge, john, aren't you?" john, a little taken aback, might mutter "did you say me?" hardly "did you say i?" yet the logic for the latter ("did you say i was a good hand at bridge?") is evident. the real point is that there is not enough vitality in the "whom" to carry it over such little difficulties as a "me" can compass without a thought. the proportion "i : me = he : him = who : whom" is logically and historically sound, but psychologically shaky. "whom did you see?" is correct, but there is something false about its correctness. [footnote : psychoanalysts will recognize the mechanism. the mechanisms of "repression of impulse" and of its symptomatic symbolization can be illustrated in the most unexpected corners of individual and group psychology. a more general psychology than freud's will eventually prove them to be as applicable to the groping for abstract form, the logical or esthetic ordering of experience, as to the life of the fundamental instincts.] it is worth looking into the reason for our curious reluctance to use locutions involving the word "whom" particularly in its interrogative sense. the only distinctively objective forms which we still possess in english are _me_, _him_, _her_ (a little blurred because of its identity with the possessive _her_), _us_, _them_, and _whom_. in all other cases the objective has come to be identical with the subjective--that is, in outer form, for we are not now taking account of position in the sentence. we observe immediately in looking through the list of objective forms that _whom_ is psychologically isolated. _me_, _him_, _her_, _us_, and _them_ form a solid, well-integrated group of objective personal pronouns parallel to the subjective series _i_, _he_, _she_, _we_, _they_. the forms _who_ and _whom_ are technically "pronouns" but they are not felt to be in the same box as the personal pronouns. _whom_ has clearly a weak position, an exposed flank, for words of a feather tend to flock together, and if one strays behind, it is likely to incur danger of life. now the other interrogative and relative pronouns (_which_, _what_, _that_), with which _whom_ should properly flock, do not distinguish the subjective and objective forms. it is psychologically unsound to draw the line of form cleavage between _whom_ and the personal pronouns on the one side, the remaining interrogative and relative pronouns on the other. the form groups should be symmetrically related to, if not identical with, the function groups. had _which_, _what_, and _that_ objective forms parallel to _whom_, the position of this last would be more secure. as it is, there is something unesthetic about the word. it suggests a form pattern which is not filled out by its fellows. the only way to remedy the irregularity of form distribution is to abandon the _whom_ altogether for we have lost the power to create new objective forms and cannot remodel our _which_-_what_-_that_ group so as to make it parallel with the smaller group _who-whom_. once this is done, _who_ joins its flock and our unconscious desire for form symmetry is satisfied. we do not secretly chafe at "whom did you see?" without reason.[ ] [footnote : note that it is different with _whose_. this has not the support of analogous possessive forms in its own functional group, but the analogical power of the great body of possessives of nouns (_man's_, _boy's_) as well as of certain personal pronouns (_his_, _its_; as predicated possessive also _hers_, _yours_, _theirs_) is sufficient to give it vitality.] but the drift away from _whom_ has still other determinants. the words _who_ and _whom_ in their interrogative sense are psychologically related not merely to the pronouns _which_ and _what_, but to a group of interrogative adverbs--_where_, _when_, _how_--all of which are invariable and generally emphatic. i believe it is safe to infer that there is a rather strong feeling in english that the interrogative pronoun or adverb, typically an emphatic element in the sentence, should be invariable. the inflective _-m_ of _whom_ is felt as a drag upon the rhetorical effectiveness of the word. it needs to be eliminated if the interrogative pronoun is to receive all its latent power. there is still a third, and a very powerful, reason for the avoidance of _whom_. the contrast between the subjective and objective series of personal pronouns (_i_, _he_, _she_, _we_, _they_: _me_, _him_, _her_, _us_, _them_) is in english associated with a difference of position. we say _i see the man_ but _the man sees me_; _he told him_, never _him he told_ or _him told he_. such usages as the last two are distinctly poetic and archaic; they are opposed to the present drift of the language. even in the interrogative one does not say _him did you see?_ it is only in sentences of the type _whom did you see?_ that an inflected objective before the verb is now used at all. on the other hand, the order in _whom did you see?_ is imperative because of its interrogative form; the interrogative pronoun or adverb normally comes first in the sentence (_what are you doing?_ _when did he go?_ _where are you from?_). in the "whom" of _whom did you see?_ there is concealed, therefore, a conflict between the order proper to a sentence containing an inflected objective and the order natural to a sentence with an interrogative pronoun or adverb. the solution _did you see whom?_ or _you saw whom?_[ ] is too contrary to the idiomatic drift of our language to receive acceptance. the more radical solution _who did you see?_ is the one the language is gradually making for. [footnote : aside from certain idiomatic usages, as when _you saw whom?_ is equivalent to _you saw so and so and that so and so is who?_ in such sentences _whom_ is pronounced high and lingeringly to emphasize the fact that the person just referred to by the listener is not known or recognized.] these three conflicts--on the score of form grouping, of rhetorical emphasis, and of order--are supplemented by a fourth difficulty. the emphatic _whom_, with its heavy build (half-long vowel followed by labial consonant), should contrast with a lightly tripping syllable immediately following. in _whom did_, however, we have an involuntary retardation that makes the locution sound "clumsy." this clumsiness is a phonetic verdict, quite apart from the dissatisfaction due to the grammatical factors which we have analyzed. the same prosodic objection does not apply to such parallel locutions as _what did_ and _when did_. the vowels of _what_ and _when_ are shorter and their final consonants melt easily into the following _d_, which is pronounced in the same tongue position as _t_ and _n_. our instinct for appropriate rhythms makes it as difficult for us to feel content with _whom did_ as for a poet to use words like _dreamed_ and _hummed_ in a rapid line. neither common feeling nor the poet's choice need be at all conscious. it may be that not all are equally sensitive to the rhythmic flow of speech, but it is probable that rhythm is an unconscious linguistic determinant even with those who set little store by its artistic use. in any event the poet's rhythms can only be a more sensitive and stylicized application of rhythmic tendencies that are characteristic of the daily speech of his people. we have discovered no less than four factors which enter into our subtle disinclination to say "whom did you see?" the uneducated folk that says "who did you see?" with no twinge of conscience has a more acute flair for the genuine drift of the language than its students. naturally the four restraining factors do not operate independently. their separate energies, if we may make bold to use a mechanical concept, are "canalized" into a single force. this force or minute embodiment of the general drift of the language is psychologically registered as a slight hesitation in using the word _whom_. the hesitation is likely to be quite unconscious, though it may be readily acknowledged when attention is called to it. the analysis is certain to be unconscious, or rather unknown, to the normal speaker.[ ] how, then, can we be certain in such an analysis as we have undertaken that all of the assigned determinants are really operative and not merely some one of them? certainly they are not equally powerful in all cases. their values are variable, rising and falling according to the individual and the locution.[ ] but that they really exist, each in its own right, may sometimes be tested by the method of elimination. if one or other of the factors is missing and we observe a slight diminution in the corresponding psychological reaction ("hesitation" in our case), we may conclude that the factor is in other uses genuinely positive. the second of our four factors applies only to the interrogative use of _whom_, the fourth factor applies with more force to the interrogative than to the relative. we can therefore understand why a sentence like _is he the man whom you referred to?_ though not as idiomatic as _is he the man (that) you referred to?_ (remember that it sins against counts one and three), is still not as difficult to reconcile with our innate feeling for english expression as _whom did you see?_ if we eliminate the fourth factor from the interrogative usage,[ ] say in _whom are you looking at?_ where the vowel following _whom_ relieves this word of its phonetic weight, we can observe, if i am not mistaken, a lesser reluctance to use the _whom_. _who are you looking at?_ might even sound slightly offensive to ears that welcome _who did you see?_ [footnote : students of language cannot be entirely normal in their attitude towards their own speech. perhaps it would be better to say "naïve" than "normal."] [footnote : it is probably this _variability of value_ in the significant compounds of a general linguistic drift that is responsible for the rise of dialectic variations. each dialect continues the general drift of the common parent, but has not been able to hold fast to constant values for each component of the drift. deviations as to the drift itself, at first slight, later cumulative, are therefore unavoidable.] [footnote : most sentences beginning with interrogative _whom_ are likely to be followed by _did_ or _does_, _do_. yet not all.] we may set up a scale of "hesitation values" somewhat after this fashion: value : factors , . "the man whom i referred to." value : factors , , . "the man whom they referred to." value : factors , , . "whom are you looking at?" value : factors , , , . "whom did you see?" we may venture to surmise that while _whom_ will ultimately disappear from english speech, locutions of the type _whom did you see?_ will be obsolete when phrases like _the man whom i referred to_ are still in lingering use. it is impossible to be certain, however, for we can never tell if we have isolated all the determinants of a drift. in our particular case we have ignored what may well prove to be a controlling factor in the history of _who_ and _whom_ in the relative sense. this is the unconscious desire to leave these words to their interrogative function and to concentrate on _that_ or mere word order as expressions of the relative (e.g., _the man that i referred to_ or _the man i referred to_). this drift, which does not directly concern the use of _whom_ as such (merely of _whom_ as a form of _who_), may have made the relative _who_ obsolete before the other factors affecting relative _whom_ have run their course. a consideration like this is instructive because it indicates that knowledge of the general drift of a language is insufficient to enable us to see clearly what the drift is heading for. we need to know something of the relative potencies and speeds of the components of the drift. it is hardly necessary to say that the particular drifts involved in the use of _whom_ are of interest to us not for their own sake but as symptoms of larger tendencies at work in the language. at least three drifts of major importance are discernible. each of these has operated for centuries, each is at work in other parts of our linguistic mechanism, each is almost certain to continue for centuries, possibly millennia. the first is the familiar tendency to level the distinction between the subjective and the objective, itself but a late chapter in the steady reduction of the old indo-european system of syntactic cases. this system, which is at present best preserved in lithuanian,[ ] was already considerably reduced in the old germanic language of which english, dutch, german, danish, and swedish are modern dialectic forms. the seven indo-european cases (nominative genitive, dative, accusative, ablative, locative, instrumental) had been already reduced to four (nominative genitive, dative, accusative). we know this from a careful comparison of and reconstruction based on the oldest germanic dialects of which we still have records (gothic, old icelandic, old high german, anglo-saxon). in the group of west germanic dialects, for the study of which old high german, anglo-saxon, old frisian, and old saxon are our oldest and most valuable sources, we still have these four cases, but the phonetic form of the case syllables is already greatly reduced and in certain paradigms particular cases have coalesced. the case system is practically intact but it is evidently moving towards further disintegration. within the anglo-saxon and early middle english period there took place further changes in the same direction. the phonetic form of the case syllables became still further reduced and the distinction between the accusative and the dative finally disappeared. the new "objective" is really an amalgam of old accusative and dative forms; thus, _him_, the old dative (we still say _i give him the book_, not "abbreviated" from _i give to him_; compare gothic _imma_, modern german _ihm_), took over the functions of the old accusative (anglo-saxon _hine_; compare gothic _ina_, modern german _ihn_) and dative. the distinction between the nominative and accusative was nibbled away by phonetic processes and morphological levelings until only certain pronouns retained distinctive subjective and objective forms. [footnote : better, indeed, than in our oldest latin and greek records. the old indo-iranian languages alone (sanskrit, avestan) show an equally or more archaic status of the indo-european parent tongue as regards case forms.] in later medieval and in modern times there have been comparatively few apparent changes in our case system apart from the gradual replacement of _thou_--_thee_ (singular) and subjective _ye_--objective _you_ (plural) by a single undifferentiated form _you_. all the while, however, the case system, such as it is (subjective-objective, really absolutive, and possessive in nouns; subjective, objective, and possessive in certain pronouns) has been steadily weakening in psychological respects. at present it is more seriously undermined than most of us realize. the possessive has little vitality except in the pronoun and in animate nouns. theoretically we can still say _the moon's phases_ or _a newspaper's vogue_; practically we limit ourselves pretty much to analytic locutions like _the phases of the moon_ and _the vogue of a newspaper_. the drift is clearly toward the limitation, of possessive forms to animate nouns. all the possessive pronominal forms except _its_ and, in part, _their_ and _theirs_, are also animate. it is significant that _theirs_ is hardly ever used in reference to inanimate nouns, that there is some reluctance to so use _their_, and that _its_ also is beginning to give way to _of it_. _the appearance of it_ or _the looks of it_ is more in the current of the language than _its appearance_. it is curiously significant that _its young_ (referring to an animal's cubs) is idiomatically preferable to _the young of it_. the form is only ostensibly neuter, in feeling it is animate; psychologically it belongs with _his children_, not with _the pieces of it_. can it be that so common a word as _its_ is actually beginning to be difficult? is it too doomed to disappear? it would be rash to say that it shows signs of approaching obsolescence, but that it is steadily weakening is fairly clear.[ ] in any event, it is not too much to say that there is a strong drift towards the restriction of the inflected possessive forms to animate nouns and pronouns. [footnote : should _its_ eventually drop out, it will have had a curious history. it will have played the rôle of a stop-gap between _his_ in its non-personal use (see footnote , page ) and the later analytic of _it_.] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to footnote , beginning on line .] how is it with the alternation of subjective and objective in the pronoun? granted that _whom_ is a weak sister, that the two cases have been leveled in _you_ (in _it_, _that_, and _what_ they were never distinct, so far as we can tell[ ]), and that _her_ as an objective is a trifle weak because of its formal identity with the possessive _her_, is there any reason to doubt the vitality of such alternations as _i see the man_ and _the man sees me_? surely the distinction between subjective _i_ and objective _me_, between subjective _he_ and objective _him_, and correspondingly for other personal pronouns, belongs to the very core of the language. we can throw _whom_ to the dogs, somehow make shift to do without an _its_, but to level _i_ and _me_ to a single case--would that not be to un-english our language beyond recognition? there is no drift toward such horrors as _me see him_ or _i see he_. true, the phonetic disparity between _i_ and _me_, _he_ and _him_, _we_ and _us_, has been too great for any serious possibility of form leveling. it does not follow that the case distinction as such is still vital. one of the most insidious peculiarities of a linguistic drift is that where it cannot destroy what lies in its way it renders it innocuous by washing the old significance out of it. it turns its very enemies to its own uses. this brings us to the second of the major drifts, the tendency to fixed position in the sentence, determined by the syntactic relation of the word. [footnote : except in so far as _that_ has absorbed other functions than such as originally belonged to it. it was only a nominative-accusative neuter to begin with.] we need not go into the history of this all-important drift. it is enough to know that as the inflected forms of english became scantier, as the syntactic relations were more and more inadequately expressed by the forms of the words themselves, position in the sentence gradually took over functions originally foreign to it. _the man_ in _the man sees the dog_ is subjective; in _the dog sees the man_, objective. strictly parallel to these sentences are _he sees the dog_ and _the dog sees him_. are the subjective value of _he_ and the objective value of _him_ entirely, or even mainly, dependent on the difference of form? i doubt it. we could hold to such a view if it were possible to say _the dog sees he_ or _him sees the dog_. it was once possible to say such things, but we have lost the power. in other words, at least part of the case feeling in _he_ and _him_ is to be credited to their position before or after the verb. may it not be, then, that _he_ and _him_, _we_ and _us_, are not so much subjective and objective forms as pre-verbal and post-verbal[ ] forms, very much as _my_ and _mine_ are now pre-nominal and post-nominal forms of the possessive (_my father_ but _father mine_; _it is my book_ but _the book is mine_)? that this interpretation corresponds to the actual drift of the english language is again indicated by the language of the folk. the folk says _it is me_, not _it is i_, which is "correct" but just as falsely so as the _whom did you see_? that we have analyzed. _i'm the one_, _it's me_; _we're the ones_, _it's us that will win out_--such are the live parallelisms in english to-day. there is little doubt that _it is i_ will one day be as impossible in english as _c'est je_, for _c'est moi_, is now in french. [footnote : aside from the interrogative: _am i?_ _is he?_ emphasis counts for something. there is a strong tendency for the old "objective" forms to bear a stronger stress than the "subjective" forms. this is why the stress in locutions like _he didn't go, did he?_ and _isn't he?_ is thrown back on the verb; it is not a matter of logical emphasis.] how differently our _i_: _me_ feels than in chaucer's day is shown by the chaucerian _it am i_. here the distinctively subjective aspect of the _i_ was enough to influence the form of the preceding verb in spite of the introductory _it_; chaucer's locution clearly felt more like a latin _sum ego_ than a modern _it is i_ or colloquial _it is me_. we have a curious bit of further evidence to prove that the english personal pronouns have lost some share of their original syntactic force. were _he_ and _she_ subjective forms pure and simple, were they not striving, so to speak, to become caseless absolutives, like _man_ or any other noun, we should not have been able to coin such compounds as _he-goat_ and _she-goat_, words that are psychologically analogous to _bull-moose_ and _mother-bear_. again, in inquiring about a new-born baby, we ask _is it a he or a she?_ quite as though _he_ and _she_ were the equivalents of _male_ and _female_ or _boy_ and _girl_. all in all, we may conclude that our english case system is weaker than it looks and that, in one way or another, it is destined to get itself reduced to an absolutive (caseless) form for all nouns and pronouns but those that are animate. animate nouns and pronouns are sure to have distinctive possessive forms for an indefinitely long period. meanwhile observe that the old alignment of case forms is being invaded by two new categories--a positional category (pre-verbal, post-verbal) and a classificatory category (animate, inanimate). the facts that in the possessive animate nouns and pronouns are destined to be more and more sharply distinguished from inanimate nouns and pronouns (_the man's_, but _of the house_; _his_, but _of it_) and that, on the whole, it is only animate pronouns that distinguish pre-verbal and post-verbal forms[ ] are of the greatest theoretical interest. they show that, however the language strive for a more and more analytic form, it is by no means manifesting a drift toward the expression of "pure" relational concepts in the indo-chinese manner.[ ] the insistence on the concreteness of the relational concepts is clearly stronger than the destructive power of the most sweeping and persistent drifts that we know of in the history and prehistory of our language. [footnote : _they_: _them_ as an inanimate group may be looked upon as a kind of borrowing from the animate, to which, in feeling, it more properly belongs.] [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] the drift toward the abolition of most case distinctions and the correlative drift toward position as an all-important grammatical method are accompanied, in a sense dominated, by the last of the three major drifts that i have referred to. this is the drift toward the invariable word. in analyzing the "whom" sentence i pointed out that the rhetorical emphasis natural to an interrogative pronoun lost something by its form variability (_who_, _whose_, _whom_). this striving for a simple, unnuanced correspondence between idea and word, as invariable as may be, is very strong in english. it accounts for a number of tendencies which at first sight seem unconnected. certain well-established forms, like the present third person singular _-s_ of _works_ or the plural _-s_ of _books_, have resisted the drift to invariable words, possibly because they symbolize certain stronger form cravings that we do not yet fully understand. it is interesting to note that derivations that get away sufficiently from the concrete notion of the radical word to exist as independent conceptual centers are not affected by this elusive drift. as soon as the derivation runs danger of being felt as a mere nuancing of, a finicky play on, the primary concept, it tends to be absorbed by the radical word, to disappear as such. english words crave spaces between them, they do not like to huddle in clusters of slightly divergent centers of meaning, each edging a little away from the rest. _goodness_, a noun of quality, almost a noun of relation, that takes its cue from the concrete idea of "good" without necessarily predicating that quality (e.g., _i do not think much of his goodness_) is sufficiently spaced from _good_ itself not to need fear absorption. similarly, _unable_ can hold its own against _able_ because it destroys the latter's sphere of influence; _unable_ is psychologically as distinct from _able_ as is _blundering_ or _stupid_. it is different with adverbs in _-ly_. these lean too heavily on their adjectives to have the kind of vitality that english demands of its words. _do it quickly!_ drags psychologically. the nuance expressed by _quickly_ is too close to that of _quick_, their circles of concreteness are too nearly the same, for the two words to feel comfortable together. the adverbs in _-ly_ are likely to go to the wall in the not too distant future for this very reason and in face of their obvious usefulness. another instance of the sacrifice of highly useful forms to this impatience of nuancing is the group _whence_, _whither_, _hence_, _hither_, _thence_, _thither_. they could not persist in live usage because they impinged too solidly upon the circles of meaning represented by the words _where_, _here_ and _there_. in saying _whither_ we feel too keenly that we repeat all of _where_. that we add to _where_ an important nuance of direction irritates rather than satisfies. we prefer to merge the static and the directive (_where do you live?_ like _where are you going?_) or, if need be, to overdo a little the concept of direction (_where are you running to?_). now it is highly symptomatic of the nature of the drift away from word clusters that we do not object to nuances as such, we object to having the nuances formally earmarked for us. as a matter of fact our vocabulary is rich in near-synonyms and in groups of words that are psychologically near relatives, but these near-synonyms and these groups do not hang together by reason of etymology. we are satisfied with _believe_ and _credible_ just because they keep aloof from each other. _good_ and _well_ go better together than _quick_ and _quickly_. the english vocabulary is a rich medley because each english word wants its own castle. has english long been peculiarly receptive to foreign words because it craves the staking out of as many word areas as possible, or, conversely, has the mechanical imposition of a flood of french and latin loan-words, unrooted in our earlier tradition, so dulled our feeling for the possibilities of our native resources that we are allowing these to shrink by default? i suspect that both propositions are true. each feeds on the other. i do not think it likely, however, that the borrowings in english have been as mechanical and external a process as they are generally represented to have been. there was something about the english drift as early as the period following the norman conquest that welcomed the new words. they were a compensation for something that was weakening within. viii language as a historical product: phonetic law i have preferred to take up in some detail the analysis of our hesitation in using a locution like "whom did you see?" and to point to some of the english drifts, particular and general, that are implied by this hesitation than to discuss linguistic change in the abstract. what is true of the particular idiom that we started with is true of everything else in language. nothing is perfectly static. every word, every grammatical element, every locution, every sound and accent is a slowly changing configuration, molded by the invisible and impersonal drift that is the life of language. the evidence is overwhelming that this drift has a certain consistent direction. its speed varies enormously according to circumstances that it is not always easy to define. we have already seen that lithuanian is to-day nearer its indo-european prototype than was the hypothetical germanic mother-tongue five hundred or a thousand years before christ. german has moved more slowly than english; in some respects it stands roughly midway between english and anglo-saxon, in others it has of course diverged from the anglo-saxon line. when i pointed out in the preceding chapter that dialects formed because a language broken up into local segments could not move along the same drift in all of these segments, i meant of course that it could not move along identically the same drift. the general drift of a language has its depths. at the surface the current is relatively fast. in certain features dialects drift apart rapidly. by that very fact these features betray themselves as less fundamental to the genius of the language than the more slowly modifiable features in which the dialects keep together long after they have grown to be mutually alien forms of speech. but this is not all. the momentum of the more fundamental, the pre-dialectic, drift is often such that languages long disconnected will pass through the same or strikingly similar phases. in many such cases it is perfectly clear that there could have been no dialectic interinfluencing. these parallelisms in drift may operate in the phonetic as well as in the morphological sphere, or they may affect both at the same time. here is an interesting example. the english type of plural represented by _foot_: _feet_, _mouse_: _mice_ is strictly parallel to the german _fuss_: _füsse_, _maus_: _mäuse_. one would be inclined to surmise that these dialectic forms go back to old germanic or west-germanic alternations of the same type. but the documentary evidence shows conclusively that there could have been no plurals of this type in primitive germanic. there is no trace of such vocalic mutation ("umlaut") in gothic, our most archaic germanic language. more significant still is the fact that it does not appear in our oldest old high german texts and begins to develop only at the very end of the old high german period (circa a.d.). in the middle high german period the mutation was carried through in all dialects. the typical old high german forms are singular _fuoss_, plural _fuossi_;[ ] singular _mus_, plural _musi_. the corresponding middle high german forms are _fuoss_, _füesse_; _mus_, _müse_. modern german _fuss_: _füsse_, _maus_: _mäuse_ are the regular developments of these medieval forms. turning to anglo-saxon, we find that our modern english forms correspond to _fot_, _fet_; _mus_, _mys_.[ ] these forms are already in use in the earliest english monuments that we possess, dating from the eighth century, and thus antedate the middle high german forms by three hundred years or more. in other words, on this particular point it took german at least three hundred years to catch up with a phonetic-morphological drift[ ] that had long been under way in english. the mere fact that the affected vowels of related words (old high german _uo_, anglo-saxon _o_) are not always the same shows that the affection took place at different periods in german and english.[ ] there was evidently some general tendency or group of tendencies at work in early germanic, long before english and german had developed as such, that eventually drove both of these dialects along closely parallel paths. [footnote : i have changed the old and middle high german orthography slightly in order to bring it into accord with modern usage. these purely orthographical changes are immaterial. the _u_ of _mus_ is a long vowel, very nearly like the _oo_ of english _moose_.] [footnote : the vowels of these four words are long; _o_ as in _rode_, _e_ like _a_ of _fade_, _u_ like _oo_ of _brood_, _y_ like german _ü_.] [footnote : or rather stage in a drift.] [footnote : anglo-saxon _fet_ is "unrounded" from an older _föt_, which is phonetically related to _fot_ precisely as is _mys_ (i.e., _müs_) to _mus_. middle high german _ue_ (modern german _u_) did not develop from an "umlauted" prototype of old high german _uo_ and anglo-saxon _o_, but was based directly on the dialectic _uo_. the unaffected prototype was long _o_. had this been affected in the earliest germanic or west-germanic period, we should have had a pre-german alternation _fot_: _föti_; this older _ö_ could not well have resulted in _ue_. fortunately we do not need inferential evidence in this case, yet inferential comparative methods, if handled with care, may be exceedingly useful. they are indeed indispensable to the historian of language.] how did such strikingly individual alternations as _fot_: _fet_, _fuoss_: _füesse_ develop? we have now reached what is probably the most central problem in linguistic history, gradual phonetic change. "phonetic laws" make up a large and fundamental share of the subject-matter of linguistics. their influence reaches far beyond the proper sphere of phonetics and invades that of morphology, as we shall see. a drift that begins as a slight phonetic readjustment or unsettlement may in the course of millennia bring about the most profound structural changes. the mere fact, for instance, that there is a growing tendency to throw the stress automatically on the first syllable of a word may eventually change the fundamental type of the language, reducing its final syllables to zero and driving it to the use of more and more analytical or symbolic[ ] methods. the english phonetic laws involved in the rise of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_ and _mice_ from their early west-germanic prototypes _fot_, _foti_, _mus_, _musi_[ ] may be briefly summarized as follows: [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] [footnote : primitive germanic _fot(s)_, _fotiz_, _mus_, _musiz_; indo-european _pods_, _podes_, _mus_, _muses_. the vowels of the first syllables are all long.] . in _foti_ "feet" the long _o_ was colored by the following _i_ to long _ö_, that is, _o_ kept its lip-rounded quality and its middle height of tongue position but anticipated the front tongue position of the _i_; _ö_ is the resulting compromise. this assimilatory change was regular, i.e., every accented long _o_ followed by an _i_ in the following syllable automatically developed to long _ö_; hence _tothi_ "teeth" became _töthi_, _fodian_ "to feed" became _födian_. at first there is no doubt the alternation between _o_ and _ö_ was not felt as intrinsically significant. it could only have been an unconscious mechanical adjustment such as may be observed in the speech of many to-day who modify the "oo" sound of words like _you_ and _few_ in the direction of german _ü_ without, however, actually departing far enough from the "oo" vowel to prevent their acceptance of _who_ and _you_ as satisfactory rhyming words. later on the quality of the _ö_ vowel must have departed widely enough from that of _o_ to enable _ö_ to rise in consciousness[ ] as a neatly distinct vowel. as soon as this happened, the expression of plurality in _föti_, _töthi_, and analogous words became symbolic and fusional, not merely fusional. [footnote : or in that unconscious sound patterning which is ever on the point of becoming conscious. see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] . in _musi_ "mice" the long _u_ was colored by the following _i_ to long _ü_. this change also was regular; _lusi_ "lice" became _lüsi_, _kui_ "cows" became _küi_ (later simplified to _kü_; still preserved as _ki-_ in _kine_), _fulian_ "to make foul" became _fülian_ (still preserved as _-file_ in _defile_). the psychology of this phonetic law is entirely analogous to that of . . the old drift toward reducing final syllables, a rhythmic consequence of the strong germanic stress on the first syllable, now manifested itself. the final _-i_, originally an important functional element, had long lost a great share of its value, transferred as that was to the symbolic vowel change (_o_: _ö_). it had little power of resistance, therefore, to the drift. it became dulled to a colorless _-e_; _föti_ became _föte_. . the weak _-e_ finally disappeared. probably the forms _föte_ and _föt_ long coexisted as prosodic variants according to the rhythmic requirements of the sentence, very much as _füsse_ and _füss'_ now coexist in german. . the _ö_ of _föt_ became "unrounded" to long _e_ (our present _a_ of _fade_). the alternation of _fot_: _foti_, transitionally _fot_: _föti_, _föte_, _föt_, now appears as _fot_: _fet_. analogously, _töth_ appears as _teth_, _födian_ as _fedian_, later _fedan_. the new long _e_-vowel "fell together" with the older _e_-vowel already existent (e.g., _her_ "here," _he_ "he"). henceforward the two are merged and their later history is in common. thus our present _he_ has the same vowel as _feet_, _teeth_, and _feed_. in other words, the old sound pattern _o_, _e_, after an interim of _o_, _ö_, _e_, reappeared as _o_, _e_, except that now the _e_ had greater "weight" than before. . _fot_: _fet_, _mus_: _müs_ (written _mys_) are the typical forms of anglo-saxon literature. at the very end of the anglo-saxon period, say about to a.d., the _ü_, whether long or short, became unrounded to _i_. _mys_ was then pronounced _mis_ with long _i_ (rhyming with present _niece_). the change is analogous to , but takes place several centuries later. . in chaucer's day (circa - a.d.) the forms were still _fot_: _fet_ (written _foot_, _feet_) and _mus_: _mis_ (written very variably, but _mous_, _myse_ are typical). about all the long _i_-vowels, whether original (as in _write_, _ride_, _wine_) or unrounded from anglo-saxon _ü_ (as in _hide_, _bride_, _mice_, _defile_), became diphthongized to _ei_ (i.e., _e_ of _met_ + short _i_). shakespeare pronounced _mice_ as _meis_ (almost the same as the present cockney pronunciation of _mace_). . about the same time the long _u_-vowels were diphthongized to _ou_ (i.e., _o_ of present scotch _not_ + _u_ of _full_). the chaucerian _mus_: _mis_ now appears as the shakespearean _mous_: _meis_. this change may have manifested itself somewhat later than ; all english dialects have diphthongized old germanic long _i_,[ ] but the long undiphthongized _u_ is still preserved in lowland scotch, in which _house_ and _mouse_ rhyme with our _loose_. and are analogous developments, as were and ; apparently lags behind as , centuries earlier, lagged behind . [footnote : as have most dutch and german dialects.] . some time before the long _e_ of _fet_ (written _feet_) took the position that had been vacated by the old long _i_, now diphthongized (see ), i.e., _e_ took the higher tongue position of _i_. our (and shakespeare's) "long _e_" is, then, phonetically the same as the old long _i_. _feet_ now rhymed with the old _write_ and the present _beat_. . about the same time the long _o_ of _fot_ (written _foot_) took the position that had been vacated by the old long _u_, now diphthongized (see ), i.e., _o_ took the higher tongue position of _u_. our (and shakespeare's) "long _oo_" is phonetically the same as the old long _u_. _foot_ now rhymed with the old _out_ and the present _boot_. to summarize to , shakespeare pronounced _meis_, _mous_, _fit_, _fut_, of which _meis_ and _mous_ would affect our ears as a rather "mincing" rendering of our present _mice_ and _mouse_, _fit_ would sound practically identical with (but probably a bit more "drawled" than) our present _feet_, while _foot_, rhyming with _boot_, would now be set down as "broad scotch." . gradually the first vowel of the diphthong in _mice_ (see ) was retracted and lowered in position. the resulting diphthong now varies in different english dialects, but _ai_ (i.e., _a_ of _father_, but shorter, + short _i_) may be taken as a fairly accurate rendering of its average quality.[ ] what we now call the "long _i_" (of words like _ride, bite, mice_) is, of course, an _ai_-diphthong. _mice_ is now pronounced _mais_. [footnote : at least in america.] . analogously to , the first vowel of the diphthong in _mouse_ (see ) was unrounded and lowered in position. the resulting diphthong may be phonetically rendered _au_, though it too varies considerably according to dialect. _mouse_, then, is now pronounced _maus_. . the vowel of _foot_ (see ) became "open" in quality and shorter in quantity, i.e., it fell together with the old short _u_-vowel of words like _full_, _wolf_, _wool_. this change has taken place in a number of words with an originally long _u_ (chaucerian long close _o_), such as _forsook_, _hook_, _book_, _look_, _rook_, _shook_, all of which formerly had the vowel of _boot_. the older vowel, however, is still preserved in most words of this class, such as _fool_, _moon_, _spool_, _stoop_. it is highly significant of the nature of the slow spread of a "phonetic law" that there is local vacillation at present in several words. one hears _roof_, _soot_, and _hoop_, for instance, both with the "long" vowel of _boot_ and the "short" of _foot_. it is impossible now, in other words, to state in a definitive manner what is the "phonetic law" that regulated the change of the older _foot_ (rhyming with _boot_) to the present _foot_. we know that there is a strong drift towards the short, open vowel of _foot_, but whether or not all the old "long _oo_" words will eventually be affected we cannot presume to say. if they all, or practically all, are taken by the drift, phonetic law will be as "regular," as sweeping, as most of the twelve that have preceded it. if not, it may eventually be possible, if past experience is a safe guide, to show that the modified words form a natural phonetic group, that is, that the "law" will have operated under certain definable limiting conditions, e.g., that all words ending in a voiceless consonant (such as _p_, _t_, _k_, _f_) were affected (e.g., _hoof_, _foot_, _look_, _roof_), but that all words ending in the _oo_-vowel or in a voiced consonant remained unaffected (e.g., _do_, _food_, _move_, _fool_). whatever the upshot, we may be reasonably certain that when the "phonetic law" has run its course, the distribution of "long" and "short" vowels in the old _oo_-words will not seem quite as erratic as at the present transitional moment.[ ] we learn, incidentally, the fundamental fact that phonetic laws do not work with spontaneous automatism, that they are simply a formula for a consummated drift that sets in at a psychologically exposed point and gradually worms its way through a gamut of phonetically analogous forms. [footnote : it is possible that other than purely phonetic factors are also at work in the history of these vowels.] it will be instructive to set down a table of form sequences, a kind of gross history of the words _foot_, _feet_, _mouse_, _mice_ for the last years:[ ] [footnote : the orthography is roughly phonetic. pronounce all accented vowels long except where otherwise indicated, unaccented vowels short; give continental values to vowels, not present english ones.] i. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (west germanic) ii. _fot_: _föti_; _mus_: _müsi_ iii. _fot_: _föte_; _mus_: _müse_ iv. _fot_: _föt_; _mus_: _müs_ v. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _müs_ (anglo-saxon) vi. _fot_: _fet_; _mus_: _mis_(chaucer) vii. _fot_: _fet_; _mous_: _meis_ viii. _fut_ (rhymes with _boot_): _fit_; _mous_: _meis_ (shakespeare) ix. _fut_: _fit_; _maus_: _mais_ x. _fut_ (rhymes with _put_): _fit_; _maus_: _mais_ (english of ) it will not be necessary to list the phonetic laws that gradually differentiated the modern german equivalents of the original west germanic forms from their english cognates. the following table gives a rough idea of the form sequences in german:[ ] [footnote : after i. the numbers are not meant to correspond chronologically to those of the english table. the orthography is again roughly phonetic.] i. _fot_: _foti_; _mus_: _musi_ (west germanic) ii. _foss_:[ ] _fossi_; _mus_: _musi_ iii. _fuoss_: _fuossi_; _mus_: _musi_ (old high german) iv. _fuoss_: _füessi_; _mus_: _müsi_ v. _fuoss_: _füesse_; _mus_: _müse_ (middle high german) vi. _fuoss_: _füesse_; _mus_: _müze_[ ] vii. _fuos_: _füese_; _mus_: _müze_ viii. _fuos_: _füese_; _mous_: _möüze_ ix. _fus_: _füse_; _mous_: _möüze_ (luther) x. _fus_: _füse_; _maus_: _moize_ (german of ) [footnote : i use _ss_ to indicate a peculiar long, voiceless _s_-sound that was etymologically and phonetically distinct from the old germanic _s_. it always goes back to an old _t_. in the old sources it is generally written as a variant of _z_, though it is not to be confused with the modern german _z_ (= _ts_). it was probably a dental (lisped) _s_.] [footnote : _z_ is to be understood as french or english _z_, not in its german use. strictly speaking, this "z" (intervocalic _-s-_) was not voiced but was a soft voiceless sound, a sibilant intermediate between our _s_ and _z_. in modern north german it has become voiced to _z_. it is important not to confound this _s_--_z_ with the voiceless intervocalic _s_ that soon arose from the older lisped _ss_. in modern german (aside from certain dialects), old _s_ and _ss_ are not now differentiated when final (_maus_ and _fuss_ have identical sibilants), but can still be distinguished as voiced and voiceless _s_ between vowels (_mäuse_ and _füsse_).] we cannot even begin to ferret out and discuss all the psychological problems that are concealed behind these bland tables. their general parallelism is obvious. indeed we might say that to-day the english and german forms resemble each other more than does either set the west germanic prototypes from which each is independently derived. each table illustrates the tendency to reduction of unaccented syllables, the vocalic modification of the radical element under the influence of the following vowel, the rise in tongue position of the long middle vowels (english _o_ to _u_, _e_ to _i_; german _o_ to _uo_ to _u_, _üe_ to _ü_), the diphthongizing of the old high vowels (english _i_ to _ei_ to _ai_; english and german _u_ to _ou_ to _au_; german _ü_ to _öü_ to _oi_). these dialectic parallels cannot be accidental. they are rooted in a common, pre-dialectic drift. phonetic changes are "regular." all but one (english table, x.), and that as yet uncompleted, of the particular phonetic laws represented in our tables affect all examples of the sound in question or, if the phonetic change is conditional, all examples of the same sound that are analogously circumstanced.[ ] an example of the first type of change is the passage in english of all old long _i_-vowels to diphthongal _ai_ via _ei_. the passage could hardly have been sudden or automatic, but it was rapid enough to prevent an irregularity of development due to cross drifts. the second type of change is illustrated in the development of anglo-saxon long _o_ to long _e_, via _ö_, under the influence of a following _i_. in the first case we may say that _au_ mechanically replaced long _u_, in the second that the old long _o_ "split" into two sounds--long _o_, eventually _u_, and long _e_, eventually _i_. the former type of change did no violence to the old phonetic pattern, the formal distribution of sounds into groups; the latter type rearranged the pattern somewhat. if neither of the two sounds into which an old one "splits" is a new sound, it means that there has been a phonetic leveling, that two groups of words, each with a distinct sound or sound combination, have fallen together into one group. this kind of leveling is quite frequent in the history of language. in english, for instance, we have seen that all the old long _ü_-vowels, after they had become unrounded, were indistinguishable from the mass of long _i_-vowels. this meant that the long _i_-vowel became a more heavily weighted point of the phonetic pattern than before. it is curious to observe how often languages have striven to drive originally distinct sounds into certain favorite positions, regardless of resulting confusions.[ ] in modern greek, for instance, the vowel _i_ is the historical resultant of no less than ten etymologically distinct vowels (long and short) and diphthongs of the classical speech of athens. there is, then, good evidence to show that there are general phonetic drifts toward particular sounds. [footnote : in practice phonetic laws have their exceptions, but more intensive study almost invariably shows that these exceptions are more apparent than real. they are generally due to the disturbing influence of morphological groupings or to special psychological reasons which inhibit the normal progress of the phonetic drift. it is remarkable with how few exceptions one need operate in linguistic history, aside from "analogical leveling" (morphological replacement).] [footnote : these confusions are more theoretical than real, however. a language has countless methods of avoiding practical ambiguities.] more often the phonetic drift is of a more general character. it is not so much a movement toward a particular set of sounds as toward particular types of articulation. the vowels tend to become higher or lower, the diphthongs tend to coalesce into monophthongs, the voiceless consonants tend to become voiced, stops tend to become spirants. as a matter of fact, practically all the phonetic laws enumerated in the two tables are but specific instances of such far-reaching phonetic drifts. the raising of english long _o_ to _u_ and of long _e_ to _i_, for instance, was part of a general tendency to raise the position of the long vowels, just as the change of _t_ to _ss_ in old high german was part of a general tendency to make voiceless spirants of the old voiceless stopped consonants. a single sound change, even if there is no phonetic leveling, generally threatens to upset the old phonetic pattern because it brings about a disharmony in the grouping of sounds. to reëstablish the old pattern without going back on the drift the only possible method is to have the other sounds of the series shift in analogous fashion. if, for some reason or other, _p_ becomes shifted to its voiced correspondent _b_, the old series _p_, _t_, _k_ appears in the unsymmetrical form _b_, _t_, _k_. such a series is, in phonetic effect, not the equivalent of the old series, however it may answer to it in etymology. the general phonetic pattern is impaired to that extent. but if _t_ and _k_ are also shifted to their voiced correspondents _d_ and _g_, the old series is reëstablished in a new form: _b_, _d_, _g_. the pattern as such is preserved, or restored. _provided that_ the new series _b_, _d_, _g_ does not become confused with an old series _b_, _d_, _g_ of distinct historical antecedents. if there is no such older series, the creation of a _b_, _d_, _g_ series causes no difficulties. if there is, the old patterning of sounds can be kept intact only by shifting the old _b_, _d_, _g_ sounds in some way. they may become aspirated to _bh_, _dh_, _gh_ or spirantized or nasalized or they may develop any other peculiarity that keeps them intact as a series and serves to differentiate them from other series. and this sort of shifting about without loss of pattern, or with a minimum loss of it, is probably the most important tendency in the history of speech sounds. phonetic leveling and "splitting" counteract it to some extent but, on the whole, it remains the central unconscious regulator of the course and speed of sound changes. the desire to hold on to a pattern, the tendency to "correct" a disturbance by an elaborate chain of supplementary changes, often spread over centuries or even millennia--these psychic undercurrents of language are exceedingly difficult to understand in terms of individual psychology, though there can be no denial of their historical reality. what is the primary cause of the unsettling of a phonetic pattern and what is the cumulative force that selects these or those particular variations of the individual on which to float the pattern readjustments we hardly know. many linguistic students have made the fatal error of thinking of sound change as a quasi-physiological instead of as a strictly psychological phenomenon, or they have tried to dispose of the problem by bandying such catchwords as "the tendency to increased ease of articulation" or "the cumulative result of faulty perception" (on the part of children, say, in learning to speak). these easy explanations will not do. "ease of articulation" may enter in as a factor, but it is a rather subjective concept at best. indians find hopelessly difficult sounds and sound combinations that are simple to us; one language encourages a phonetic drift that another does everything to fight. "faulty perception" does not explain that impressive drift in speech sounds which i have insisted upon. it is much better to admit that we do not yet understand the primary cause or causes of the slow drift in phonetics, though we can frequently point to contributing factors. it is likely that we shall not advance seriously until we study the intuitional bases of speech. how can we understand the nature of the drift that frays and reforms phonetic patterns when we have never thought of studying sound patterning as such and the "weights" and psychic relations of the single elements (the individual sounds) in these patterns? every linguist knows that phonetic change is frequently followed by morphological rearrangements, but he is apt to assume that morphology exercises little or no influence on the course of phonetic history. i am inclined to believe that our present tendency to isolate phonetics and grammar as mutually irrelevant linguistic provinces is unfortunate. there are likely to be fundamental relations between them and their respective histories that we do not yet fully grasp. after all, if speech sounds exist merely because they are the symbolic carriers of significant concepts and groupings of concepts, why may not a strong drift or a permanent feature in the conceptual sphere exercise a furthering or retarding influence on the phonetic drift? i believe that such influences may be demonstrated and that they deserve far more careful study than they have received. this brings us back to our unanswered question: how is it that both english and german developed the curious alternation of unmodified vowel in the singular (_foot_, _fuss_) and modified vowel in the plural (_feet_, _füsse_)? was the pre-anglo-saxon alternation of _fot_ and _föti_ an absolutely mechanical matter, without other than incidental morphological interest? it is always so represented, and, indeed, all the external facts support such a view. the change from _o_ to _ö_, later _e_, is by no means peculiar to the plural. it is found also in the dative singular (_fet_), for it too goes back to an older _foti_. moreover, _fet_ of the plural applies only to the nominative and accusative; the genitive has _fota_, the dative _fotum_. only centuries later was the alternation of _o_ and _e_ reinterpreted as a means of distinguishing number; _o_ was generalized for the singular, _e_ for the plural. only when this reassortment of forms took place[ ] was the modern symbolic value of the _foot_: _feet_ alternation clearly established. again, we must not forget that _o_ was modified to _ö (e)_ in all manner of other grammatical and derivative formations. thus, a pre-anglo-saxon _hohan_ (later _hon_) "to hang" corresponded to a _höhith_, _hehith_ (later _hehth_) "hangs"; to _dom_ "doom," _blod_ "blood," and _fod_ "food" corresponded the verbal derivatives _dömian_ (later _deman_) "to deem," _blödian_ (later _bledan_) "to bleed," and _födian_ (later _fedan_) "to feed." all this seems to point to the purely mechanical nature of the modification of _o_ to _ö_ to _e_. so many unrelated functions were ultimately served by the vocalic change that we cannot believe that it was motivated by any one of them. [footnote : a type of adjustment generally referred to as "analogical leveling."] the german facts are entirely analogous. only later in the history of the language was the vocalic alternation made significant for number. and yet consider the following facts. the change of _foti_ to _föti_ antedated that of _föti_ to _föte_, _föt_. this may be looked upon as a "lucky accident," for if _foti_ had become _fote_, _fot_ before the _-i_ had had the chance to exert a retroactive influence on the _o_, there would have been no difference between the singular and the plural. this would have been anomalous in anglo-saxon for a masculine noun. but was the sequence of phonetic changes an "accident"? consider two further facts. all the germanic languages were familiar with vocalic change as possessed of functional significance. alternations like _sing_, _sang_, _sung_ (anglo-saxon _singan_, _sang_, _sungen_) were ingrained in the linguistic consciousness. further, the tendency toward the weakening of final syllables was very strong even then and had been manifesting itself in one way and another for centuries. i believe that these further facts help us to understand the actual sequence of phonetic changes. we may go so far as to say that the _o_ (and _u_) could afford to stay the change to _ö_ (and _ü_) until the destructive drift had advanced to the point where failure to modify the vowel would soon result in morphological embarrassment. at a certain moment the _-i_ ending of the plural (and analogous endings with _i_ in other formations) was felt to be too weak to quite bear its functional burden. the unconscious anglo-saxon mind, if i may be allowed a somewhat summary way of putting the complex facts, was glad of the opportunity afforded by certain individual variations, until then automatically canceled out, to have some share of the burden thrown on them. these particular variations won through because they so beautifully allowed the general phonetic drift to take its course without unsettling the morphological contours of the language. and the presence of symbolic variation (_sing_, _sang_, _sung_) acted as an attracting force on the rise of a new variation of similar character. all these factors were equally true of the german vocalic shift. owing to the fact that the destructive phonetic drift was proceeding at a slower rate in german than in english, the preservative change of _uo_ to _üe_ (_u_ to _ü_) did not need to set in until years or more after the analogous english change. nor did it. and this is to my mind a highly significant fact. phonetic changes may sometimes be unconsciously encouraged in order to keep intact the psychological spaces between words and word forms. the general drift seizes upon those individual sound variations that help to preserve the morphological balance or to lead to the new balance that the language is striving for. i would suggest, then, that phonetic change is compacted of at least three basic strands: ( ) a general drift in one direction, concerning the nature of which we know almost nothing but which may be suspected to be of prevailingly dynamic character (tendencies, e.g., to greater or less stress, greater or less voicing of elements); ( ) a readjusting tendency which aims to preserve or restore the fundamental phonetic pattern of the language; ( ) a preservative tendency which sets in when a too serious morphological unsettlement is threatened by the main drift. i do not imagine for a moment that it is always possible to separate these strands or that this purely schematic statement does justice to the complex forces that guide the phonetic drift. the phonetic pattern of a language is not invariable, but it changes far less readily than the sounds that compose it. every phonetic element that it possesses may change radically and yet the pattern remain unaffected. it would be absurd to claim that our present english pattern is identical with the old indo-european one, yet it is impressive to note that even at this late day the english series of initial consonants: _p_ _t_ _k_ _b_ _d_ _g_ _f_ _th_ _h_ corresponds point for point to the sanskrit series: _b_ _d_ _g_ _bh_ _dh_ _gh_ _p_ _t_ _k_ the relation between phonetic pattern and individual sound is roughly parallel to that which obtains between the morphologic type of a language and one of its specific morphological features. both phonetic pattern and fundamental type are exceedingly conservative, all superficial appearances to the contrary notwithstanding. which is more so we cannot say. i suspect that they hang together in a way that we cannot at present quite understand. if all the phonetic changes brought about by the phonetic drift were allowed to stand, it is probable that most languages would present such irregularities of morphological contour as to lose touch with their formal ground-plan. sound changes work mechanically. hence they are likely to affect a whole morphological group here--this does not matter--, only part of a morphological group there--and this may be disturbing. thus, the old anglo-saxon paradigm: sing. plur. n. ac. _fot_ _fet_ (older _foti_) g. _fotes_ _fota_ d. _fet_ (older _foti_) _fotum_ could not long stand unmodified. the _o_--_e_ alternation was welcome in so far as it roughly distinguished the singular from the plural. the dative singular _fet_, however, though justified historically, was soon felt to be an intrusive feature. the analogy of simpler and more numerously represented paradigms created the form _fote_ (compare, e.g., _fisc_ "fish," dative singular _fisce_). _fet_ as a dative becomes obsolete. the singular now had _o_ throughout. but this very fact made the genitive and dative _o_-forms of the plural seem out of place. the nominative and accusative _fet_ was naturally far more frequently in use than were the corresponding forms of the genitive and dative. these, in the end, could not but follow the analogy of _fet_. at the very beginning of the middle english period, therefore, we find that the old paradigm has yielded to a more regular one: sing. plur. n. ac. *_fot_ *_fet_ g. *_fotes_ _fete_ d. _fote_ _feten_ the starred forms are the old nucleus around which the new paradigm is built. the unstarred forms are not genealogical kin of their formal prototypes. they are analogical replacements. the history of the english language teems with such levelings or extensions. _elder_ and _eldest_ were at one time the only possible comparative and superlative forms of _old_ (compare german _alt_, _älter_, _der älteste_; the vowel following the _old-_, _alt-_ was originally an _i_, which modified the quality of the stem vowel). the general analogy of the vast majority of english adjectives, however, has caused the replacement of the forms _elder_ and _eldest_ by the forms with unmodified vowel, _older_ and _oldest_. _elder_ and _eldest_ survive only as somewhat archaic terms for the older and oldest brother or sister. this illustrates the tendency for words that are psychologically disconnected from their etymological or formal group to preserve traces of phonetic laws that have otherwise left no recognizable trace or to preserve a vestige of a morphological process that has long lost its vitality. a careful study of these survivals or atrophied forms is not without value for the reconstruction of the earlier history of a language or for suggestive hints as to its remoter affiliations. analogy may not only refashion forms within the confines of a related cluster of forms (a "paradigm") but may extend its influence far beyond. of a number of functionally equivalent elements, for instance, only one may survive, the rest yielding to its constantly widening influence. this is what happened with the english _-s_ plural. originally confined to a particular class of masculines, though an important class, the _-s_ plural was gradually generalized for all nouns but a mere handful that still illustrate plural types now all but extinct (_foot_: feet, _goose_: _geese_, _tooth_: _teeth_, _mouse_: _mice_, _louse_: _lice_; _ox_: _oxen_; _child_: _children_; _sheep_: _sheep_, _deer_: _deer_). thus analogy not only regularizes irregularities that have come in the wake of phonetic processes but introduces disturbances, generally in favor of greater simplicity or regularity, in a long established system of forms. these analogical adjustments are practically always symptoms of the general morphological drift of the language. a morphological feature that appears as the incidental consequence of a phonetic process, like the english plural with modified vowel, may spread by analogy no less readily than old features that owe their origin to other than phonetic causes. once the _e_-vowel of middle english _fet_ had become confined to the plural, there was no theoretical reason why alternations of the type _fot_: _fet_ and _mus_: _mis_ might not have become established as a productive type of number distinction in the noun. as a matter of fact, it did not so become established. the _fot_: _fet_ type of plural secured but a momentary foothold. it was swept into being by one of the surface drifts of the language, to be swept aside in the middle english period by the more powerful drift toward the use of simple distinctive forms. it was too late in the day for our language to be seriously interested in such pretty symbolisms as _foot_: _feet_. what examples of the type arose legitimately, in other words _via_ purely phonetic processes, were tolerated for a time, but the type as such never had a serious future. it was different in german. the whole series of phonetic changes comprised under the term "umlaut," of which _u_: _ü_ and _au_: _oi_ (written _äu_) are but specific examples, struck the german language at a time when the general drift to morphological simplification was not so strong but that the resulting formal types (e.g., _fuss_: _füsse_; _fallen_ "to fall": _fällen_ "to fell"; _horn_ "horn": _gehörne_ "group of horns"; _haus_ "house": _häuslein_ "little house") could keep themselves intact and even extend to forms that did not legitimately come within their sphere of influence. "umlaut" is still a very live symbolic process in german, possibly more alive to-day than in medieval times. such analogical plurals as _baum_ "tree": _bäume_ (contrast middle high german _boum_: _boume_) and derivatives as _lachen_ "to laugh": _gelächter_ "laughter" (contrast middle high german _gelach_) show that vocalic mutation has won through to the status of a productive morphologic process. some of the dialects have even gone further than standard german, at least in certain respects. in yiddish,[ ] for instance, "umlaut" plurals have been formed where there are no middle high german prototypes or modern literary parallels, e.g., _tog_ "day": _teg_ "days" (but german _tag_: _tage_) on the analogy of _gast_ "guest": _gest_ "guests" (german _gast_: _gäste_), _shuch_[ ] "shoe": _shich_ "shoes" (but german _schuh_: _schuhe_) on the analogy of _fus_ "foot": _fis_ "feet." it is possible that "umlaut" will run its course and cease to operate as a live functional process in german, but that time is still distant. meanwhile all consciousness of the merely phonetic nature of "umlaut" vanished centuries ago. it is now a strictly morphological process, not in the least a mechanical phonetic adjustment. we have in it a splendid example of how a simple phonetic law, meaningless in itself, may eventually color or transform large reaches of the morphology of a language. [footnote : isolated from other german dialects in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. it is therefore a good test for gauging the strength of the tendency to "umlaut," particularly as it has developed a strong drift towards analytic methods.] [footnote : _ch_ as in german _buch_.] ix how languages influence each other languages, like cultures, are rarely sufficient unto themselves. the necessities of intercourse bring the speakers of one language into direct or indirect contact with those of neighboring or culturally dominant languages. the intercourse may be friendly or hostile. it may move on the humdrum plane of business and trade relations or it may consist of a borrowing or interchange of spiritual goods--art, science, religion. it would be difficult to point to a completely isolated language or dialect, least of all among the primitive peoples. the tribe is often so small that intermarriages with alien tribes that speak other dialects or even totally unrelated languages are not uncommon. it may even be doubted whether intermarriage, intertribal trade, and general cultural interchanges are not of greater relative significance on primitive levels than on our own. whatever the degree or nature of contact between neighboring peoples, it is generally sufficient to lead to some kind of linguistic interinfluencing. frequently the influence runs heavily in one direction. the language of a people that is looked upon as a center of culture is naturally far more likely to exert an appreciable influence on other languages spoken in its vicinity than to be influenced by them. chinese has flooded the vocabularies of corean, japanese, and annamite for centuries, but has received nothing in return. in the western europe of medieval and modern times french has exercised a similar, though probably a less overwhelming, influence. english borrowed an immense number of words from the french of the norman invaders, later also from the court french of isle de france, appropriated a certain number of affixed elements of derivational value (e.g., _-ess_ of _princess_, _-ard_ of _drunkard_, _-ty_ of _royalty_), may have been somewhat stimulated in its general analytic drift by contact with french,[ ] and even allowed french to modify its phonetic pattern slightly (e.g., initial _v_ and _j_ in words like _veal_ and _judge_; in words of anglo-saxon origin _v_ and _j_ can only occur after vowels, e.g., _over_, _hedge_). but english has exerted practically no influence on french. [footnote : the earlier students of english, however, grossly exaggerated the general "disintegrating" effect of french on middle english. english was moving fast toward a more analytic structure long before the french influence set in.] the simplest kind of influence that one language may exert on another is the "borrowing" of words. when there is cultural borrowing there is always the likelihood that the associated words may be borrowed too. when the early germanic peoples of northern europe first learned of wine-culture and of paved streets from their commercial or warlike contact with the romans, it was only natural that they should adopt the latin words for the strange beverage (_vinum_, english _wine_, german _wein_) and the unfamiliar type of road (_strata [via]_, english _street_, german _strasse_). later, when christianity was introduced into england, a number of associated words, such as _bishop_ and _angel_, found their way into english. and so the process has continued uninterruptedly down to the present day, each cultural wave bringing to the language a new deposit of loan-words. the careful study of such loan-words constitutes an interesting commentary on the history of culture. one can almost estimate the rôle which various peoples have played in the development and spread of cultural ideas by taking note of the extent to which their vocabularies have filtered into those of other peoples. when we realize that an educated japanese can hardly frame a single literary sentence without the use of chinese resources, that to this day siamese and burmese and cambodgian bear the unmistakable imprint of the sanskrit and pali that came in with hindu buddhism centuries ago, or that whether we argue for or against the teaching of latin and greek our argument is sure to be studded with words that have come to us from rome and athens, we get some inkling of what early chinese culture and buddhism and classical mediterranean civilization have meant in the world's history. there are just five languages that have had an overwhelming significance as carriers of culture. they are classical chinese, sanskrit, arabic, greek, and latin. in comparison with these even such culturally important languages as hebrew and french sink into a secondary position. it is a little disappointing to learn that the general cultural influence of english has so far been all but negligible. the english language itself is spreading because the english have colonized immense territories. but there is nothing to show that it is anywhere entering into the lexical heart of other languages as french has colored the english complexion or as arabic has permeated persian and turkish. this fact alone is significant of the power of nationalism, cultural as well as political, during the last century. there are now psychological resistances to borrowing, or rather to new sources of borrowing,[ ] that were not greatly alive in the middle ages or during the renaissance. [footnote : for we still name our new scientific instruments and patent medicines from greek and latin.] are there resistances of a more intimate nature to the borrowing of words? it is generally assumed that the nature and extent of borrowing depend entirely on the historical facts of culture relation; that if german, for instance, has borrowed less copiously than english from latin and french it is only because germany has had less intimate relations than england with the culture spheres of classical rome and france. this is true to a considerable extent, but it is not the whole truth. we must not exaggerate the physical importance of the norman invasion nor underrate the significance of the fact that germany's central geographical position made it peculiarly sensitive to french influences all through the middle ages, to humanistic influences in the latter fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, and again to the powerful french influences of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. it seems very probable that the psychological attitude of the borrowing language itself towards linguistic material has much to do with its receptivity to foreign words. english has long been striving for the completely unified, unanalyzed word, regardless of whether it is monosyllabic or polysyllabic. such words as _credible_, _certitude_, _intangible_ are entirely welcome in english because each represents a unitary, well-nuanced idea and because their formal analysis (_cred-ible_, _cert-itude_, _in-tang-ible_) is not a necessary act of the unconscious mind (_cred-_, _cert-_, and _tang-_ have no real existence in english comparable to that of _good-_ in _goodness_). a word like _intangible_, once it is acclimated, is nearly as simple a psychological entity as any radical monosyllable (say _vague_, _thin_, _grasp_). in german, however, polysyllabic words strive to analyze themselves into significant elements. hence vast numbers of french and latin words, borrowed at the height of certain cultural influences, could not maintain themselves in the language. latin-german words like _kredibel_ "credible" and french-german words like _reussieren_ "to succeed" offered nothing that the unconscious mind could assimilate to its customary method of feeling and handling words. it is as though this unconscious mind said: "i am perfectly willing to accept _kredibel_ if you will just tell me what you mean by _kred-_." hence german has generally found it easier to create new words out of its own resources, as the necessity for them arose. the psychological contrast between english and german as regards the treatment of foreign material is a contrast that may be studied in all parts of the world. the athabaskan languages of america are spoken by peoples that have had astonishingly varied cultural contacts, yet nowhere do we find that an athabaskan dialect has borrowed at all freely[ ] from a neighboring language. these languages have always found it easier to create new words by compounding afresh elements ready to hand. they have for this reason been highly resistant to receiving the linguistic impress of the external cultural experiences of their speakers. cambodgian and tibetan offer a highly instructive contrast in their reaction to sanskrit influence. both are analytic languages, each totally different from the highly-wrought, inflective language of india. cambodgian is isolating, but, unlike chinese, it contains many polysyllabic words whose etymological analysis does not matter. like english, therefore, in its relation to french and latin, it welcomed immense numbers of sanskrit loan-words, many of which are in common use to-day. there was no psychological resistance to them. classical tibetan literature was a slavish adaptation of hindu buddhist literature and nowhere has buddhism implanted itself more firmly than in tibet, yet it is strange how few sanskrit words have found their way into the language. tibetan was highly resistant to the polysyllabic words of sanskrit because they could not automatically fall into significant syllables, as they should have in order to satisfy the tibetan feeling for form. tibetan was therefore driven to translating the great majority of these sanskrit words into native equivalents. the tibetan craving for form was satisfied, though the literally translated foreign terms must often have done violence to genuine tibetan idiom. even the proper names of the sanskrit originals were carefully translated, element for element, into tibetan; e.g., _suryagarbha_ "sun-bosomed" was carefully tibetanized into _nyi-mai snying-po_ "sun-of heart-the, the heart (or essence) of the sun." the study of how a language reacts to the presence of foreign words--rejecting them, translating them, or freely accepting them--may throw much valuable light on its innate formal tendencies. [footnote : one might all but say, "has borrowed at all."] the borrowing of foreign words always entails their phonetic modification. there are sure to be foreign sounds or accentual peculiarities that do not fit the native phonetic habits. they are then so changed as to do as little violence as possible to these habits. frequently we have phonetic compromises. such an english word as the recently introduced _camouflage_, as now ordinarily pronounced, corresponds to the typical phonetic usage of neither english nor french. the aspirated _k_, the obscure vowel of the second syllable, the precise quality of the _l_ and of the last _a_, and, above all, the strong accent on the first syllable, are all the results of unconscious assimilation to our english habits of pronunciation. they differentiate our _camouflage_ clearly from the same word as pronounced by the french. on the other hand, the long, heavy vowel in the third syllable and the final position of the "zh" sound (like _z_ in _azure_) are distinctly un-english, just as, in middle english, the initial _j_ and _v_[ ] must have been felt at first as not strictly in accord with english usage, though the strangeness has worn off by now. in all four of these cases--initial _j_, initial _v_, final "zh," and unaccented _a_ of _father_--english has not taken on a new sound but has merely extended the use of an old one. [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] occasionally a new sound is introduced, but it is likely to melt away before long. in chaucer's day the old anglo-saxon _ü_ (written _y_) had long become unrounded to _i_, but a new set of _ü_-vowels had come in from the french (in such words as _due_, _value_, _nature_). the new _ü_ did not long hold its own; it became diphthongized to _iu_ and was amalgamated with the native _iw_ of words like _new_ and _slew_. eventually this diphthong appears as _yu_, with change of stress--_dew_ (from anglo-saxon _deaw_) like _due_ (chaucerian _dü_). facts like these show how stubbornly a language resists radical tampering with its phonetic pattern. nevertheless, we know that languages do influence each other in phonetic respects, and that quite aside from the taking over of foreign sounds with borrowed words. one of the most curious facts that linguistics has to note is the occurrence of striking phonetic parallels in totally unrelated or very remotely related languages of a restricted geographical area. these parallels become especially impressive when they are seen contrastively from a wide phonetic perspective. here are a few examples. the germanic languages as a whole have not developed nasalized vowels. certain upper german (suabian) dialects, however, have now nasalized vowels in lieu of the older vowel + nasal consonant (_n_). is it only accidental that these dialects are spoken in proximity to french, which makes abundant use of nasalized vowels? again, there are certain general phonetic features that mark off dutch and flemish in contrast, say, to north german and scandinavian dialects. one of these is the presence of unaspirated voiceless stops (_p_, _t_, _k_), which have a precise, metallic quality reminiscent of the corresponding french sounds, but which contrast with the stronger, aspirated stops of english, north german, and danish. even if we assume that the unaspirated stops are more archaic, that they are the unmodified descendants of the old germanic consonants, is it not perhaps a significant historical fact that the dutch dialects, neighbors of french, were inhibited from modifying these consonants in accordance with what seems to have been a general germanic phonetic drift? even more striking than these instances is the peculiar resemblance, in certain special phonetic respects, of russian and other slavic languages to the unrelated ural-altaic languages[ ] of the volga region. the peculiar, dull vowel, for instance, known in russian as "yeri"[ ] has ural-altaic analogues, but is entirely wanting in germanic, greek, armenian, and indo-iranian, the nearest indo-european congeners of slavic. we may at least suspect that the slavic vowel is not historically unconnected with its ural-altaic parallels. one of the most puzzling cases of phonetic parallelism is afforded by a large number of american indian languages spoken west of the rockies. even at the most radical estimate there are at least four totally unrelated linguistic stocks represented in the region from southern alaska to central california. nevertheless all, or practically all, the languages of this immense area have some important phonetic features in common. chief of these is the presence of a "glottalized" series of stopped consonants of very distinctive formation and of quite unusual acoustic effect.[ ] in the northern part of the area all the languages, whether related or not, also possess various voiceless _l_-sounds and a series of "velar" (back-guttural) stopped consonants which are etymologically distinct from the ordinary _k_-series. it is difficult to believe that three such peculiar phonetic features as i have mentioned could have evolved independently in neighboring groups of languages. [footnote : ugro-finnic and turkish (tartar)] [footnote : probably, in sweet's terminology, high-back (or, better, between back and "mixed" positions)-narrow-unrounded. it generally corresponds to an indo-european long _u_.] [footnote : there seem to be analogous or partly analogous sounds in certain languages of the caucasus.] how are we to explain these and hundreds of similar phonetic convergences? in particular cases we may really be dealing with archaic similarities due to a genetic relationship that it is beyond our present power to demonstrate. but this interpretation will not get us far. it must be ruled entirely out of court, for instance, in two of the three european examples i have instanced; both nasalized vowels and the slavic "yeri" are demonstrably of secondary origin in indo-european. however we envisage the process in detail, we cannot avoid the inference that there is a tendency for speech sounds or certain distinctive manners of articulation to spread over a continuous area in somewhat the same way that elements of culture ray out from a geographical center. we may suppose that individual variations arising at linguistic borderlands--whether by the unconscious suggestive influence of foreign speech habits or by the actual transfer of foreign sounds into the speech of bilingual individuals--have gradually been incorporated into the phonetic drift of a language. so long as its main phonetic concern is the preservation of its sound patterning, not of its sounds as such, there is really no reason why a language may not unconsciously assimilate foreign sounds that have succeeded in worming their way into its gamut of individual variations, provided always that these new variations (or reinforced old variations) are in the direction of the native drift. a simple illustration will throw light on this conception. let us suppose that two neighboring and unrelated languages, a and b, each possess voiceless _l_-sounds (compare welsh _ll_). we surmise that this is not an accident. perhaps comparative study reveals the fact that in language a the voiceless _l_-sounds correspond to a sibilant series in other related languages, that an old alternation _s_: _sh_ has been shifted to the new alternation _l_ (voiceless): _s_.[ ] does it follow that the voiceless _l_ of language b has had the same history? not in the least. perhaps b has a strong tendency toward audible breath release at the end of a word, so that the final _l_, like a final vowel, was originally followed by a marked aspiration. individuals perhaps tended to anticipate a little the voiceless release and to "unvoice" the latter part of the final _l_-sound (very much as the _l_ of english words like _felt_ tends to be partly voiceless in anticipation of the voicelessness of the _t_). yet this final _l_ with its latent tendency to unvoicing might never have actually developed into a fully voiceless _l_ had not the presence of voiceless _l_-sounds in a acted as an unconscious stimulus or suggestive push toward a more radical change in the line of b's own drift. once the final voiceless _l_ emerged, its alternation in related words with medial voiced _l_ is very likely to have led to its analogical spread. the result would be that both a and b have an important phonetic trait in common. eventually their phonetic systems, judged as mere assemblages of sounds, might even become completely assimilated to each other, though this is an extreme case hardly ever realized in practice. the highly significant thing about such phonetic interinfluencings is the strong tendency of each language to keep its phonetic pattern intact. so long as the respective alignments of the similar sounds is different, so long as they have differing "values" and "weights" in the unrelated languages, these languages cannot be said to have diverged materially from the line of their inherent drift. in phonetics, as in vocabulary, we must be careful not to exaggerate the importance of interlinguistic influences. [footnote : this can actually be demonstrated for one of the athabaskan dialects of the yukon.] i have already pointed out in passing that english has taken over a certain number of morphological elements from french. english also uses a number of affixes that are derived from latin and greek. some of these foreign elements, like the _-ize_ of _materialize_ or the _-able_ of _breakable_, are even productive to-day. such examples as these are hardly true evidences of a morphological influence exerted by one language on another. setting aside the fact that they belong to the sphere of derivational concepts and do not touch the central morphological problem of the expression of relational ideas, they have added nothing to the structural peculiarities of our language. english was already prepared for the relation of _pity_ to _piteous_ by such a native pair as _luck_ and _lucky_; _material_ and _materialize_ merely swelled the ranks of a form pattern familiar from such instances as _wide_ and _widen_. in other words, the morphological influence exerted by foreign languages on english, if it is to be gauged by such examples as i have cited, is hardly different in kind from the mere borrowing of words. the introduction of the suffix _-ize_ made hardly more difference to the essential build of the language than did the mere fact that it incorporated a given number of words. had english evolved a new future on the model of the synthetic future in french or had it borrowed from latin and greek their employment of reduplication as a functional device (latin _tango_: _tetigi_; greek _leipo_: _leloipa_), we should have the right to speak of true morphological influence. but such far-reaching influences are not demonstrable. within the whole course of the history of the english language we can hardly point to one important morphological change that was not determined by the native drift, though here and there we may surmise that this drift was hastened a little by the suggestive influence of french forms.[ ] [footnote : in the sphere of syntax one may point to certain french and latin influences, but it is doubtful if they ever reached deeper than the written language. much of this type of influence belongs rather to literary style than to morphology proper.] it is important to realize the continuous, self-contained morphological development of english and the very modest extent to which its fundamental build has been affected by influences from without. the history of the english language has sometimes been represented as though it relapsed into a kind of chaos on the arrival of the normans, who proceeded to play nine-pins with the anglo-saxon tradition. students are more conservative today. that a far-reaching analytic development may take place without such external foreign influence as english was subjected to is clear from the history of danish, which has gone even further than english in certain leveling tendencies. english may be conveniently used as an _a fortiori_ test. it was flooded with french loan-words during the later middle ages, at a time when its drift toward the analytic type was especially strong. it was therefore changing rapidly both within and on the surface. the wonder, then, is not that it took on a number of external morphological features, mere accretions on its concrete inventory, but that, exposed as it was to remolding influences, it remained so true to its own type and historic drift. the experience gained from the study of the english language is strengthened by all that we know of documented linguistic history. nowhere do we find any but superficial morphological interinfluencings. we may infer one of several things from this:--that a really serious morphological influence is not, perhaps, impossible, but that its operation is so slow that it has hardly ever had the chance to incorporate itself in the relatively small portion of linguistic history that lies open to inspection; or that there are certain favorable conditions that make for profound morphological disturbances from without, say a peculiar instability of linguistic type or an unusual degree of cultural contact, conditions that do not happen to be realized in our documentary material; or, finally, that we have not the right to assume that a language may easily exert a remolding morphological influence on another. meanwhile we are confronted by the baffling fact that important traits of morphology are frequently found distributed among widely differing languages within a large area, so widely differing, indeed, that it is customary to consider them genetically unrelated. sometimes we may suspect that the resemblance is due to a mere convergence, that a similar morphological feature has grown up independently in unrelated languages. yet certain morphological distributions are too specific in character to be so lightly dismissed. there must be some historical factor to account for them. now it should be remembered that the concept of a "linguistic stock" is never definitive[ ] in an exclusive sense. we can only say, with reasonable certainty, that such and such languages are descended from a common source, but we cannot say that such and such other languages are not genetically related. all we can do is to say that the evidence for relationship is not cumulative enough to make the inference of common origin absolutely necessary. may it not be, then, that many instances of morphological similarity between divergent languages of a restricted area are merely the last vestiges of a community of type and phonetic substance that the destructive work of diverging drifts has now made unrecognizable? there is probably still enough lexical and morphological resemblance between modern english and irish to enable us to make out a fairly conclusive case for their genetic relationship on the basis of the present-day descriptive evidence alone. it is true that the case would seem weak in comparison to the case that we can actually make with the help of the historical and the comparative data that we possess. it would not be a bad case nevertheless. in another two or three millennia, however, the points of resemblance are likely to have become so obliterated that english and irish, in the absence of all but their own descriptive evidence, will have to be set down as "unrelated" languages. they will still have in common certain fundamental morphological features, but it will be difficult to know how to evaluate them. only in the light of the contrastive perspective afforded by still more divergent languages, such as basque and finnish, will these vestigial resemblances receive their true historic value. [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] i cannot but suspect that many of the more significant distributions of morphological similarities are to be explained as just such vestiges. the theory of "borrowing" seems totally inadequate to explain those fundamental features of structure, hidden away in the very core of the linguistic complex, that have been pointed out as common, say, to semitic and hamitic, to the various soudanese languages, to malayo-polynesian and mon-khmer[ ] and munda,[ ] to athabaskan and tlingit and haida. we must not allow ourselves to be frightened away by the timidity of the specialists, who are often notably lacking in the sense of what i have called "contrastive perspective." [footnote : a group of languages spoken in southeastern asia, of which khmer (cambodgian) is the best known representative.] [footnote : a group of languages spoken in northeastern india.] attempts have sometimes been made to explain the distribution of these fundamental structural features by the theory of diffusion. we know that myths, religious ideas, types of social organization, industrial devices, and other features of culture may spread from point to point, gradually making themselves at home in cultures to which they were at one time alien. we also know that words may be diffused no less freely than cultural elements, that sounds also may be "borrowed," and that even morphological elements may be taken over. we may go further and recognize that certain languages have, in all probability, taken on structural features owing to the suggestive influence of neighboring languages. an examination of such cases,[ ] however, almost invariably reveals the significant fact that they are but superficial additions on the morphological kernel of the language. so long as such direct historical testimony as we have gives us no really convincing examples of profound morphological influence by diffusion, we shall do well not to put too much reliance in diffusion theories. on the whole, therefore, we shall ascribe the major concordances and divergences in linguistic form--phonetic pattern and morphology--to the autonomous drift of language, not to the complicating effect of single, diffused features that cluster now this way, now that. language is probably the most self-contained, the most massively resistant of all social phenomena. it is easier to kill it off than to disintegrate its individual form. [footnote : i have in mind, e.g., the presence of postpositions in upper chinook, a feature that is clearly due to the influence of neighboring sahaptin languages; or the use by takelma of instrumental prefixes, which are likely to have been suggested by neighboring "hokan" languages (shasta, karok).] x language, race and culture language has a setting. the people that speak it belong to a race (or a number of races), that is, to a group which is set off by physical characteristics from other groups. again, language does not exist apart from culture, that is, from the socially inherited assemblage of practices and beliefs that determines the texture of our lives. anthropologists have been in the habit of studying man under the three rubrics of race, language, and culture. one of the first things they do with a natural area like africa or the south seas is to map it out from this threefold point of view. these maps answer the questions: what and where are the major divisions of the human animal, biologically considered (e.g., congo negro, egyptian white; australian black, polynesian)? what are the most inclusive linguistic groupings, the "linguistic stocks," and what is the distribution of each (e.g., the hamitic languages of northern africa, the bantu languages of the south; the malayo-polynesian languages of indonesia, melanesia, micronesia, and polynesia)? how do the peoples of the given area divide themselves as cultural beings? what are the outstanding "cultural areas" and what are the dominant ideas in each (e.g., the mohammedan north of africa; the primitive hunting, non-agricultural culture of the bushmen in the south; the culture of the australian natives, poor in physical respects but richly developed in ceremonialism; the more advanced and highly specialized culture of polynesia)? the man in the street does not stop to analyze his position in the general scheme of humanity. he feels that he is the representative of some strongly integrated portion of humanity--now thought of as a "nationality," now as a "race"--and that everything that pertains to him as a typical representative of this large group somehow belongs together. if he is an englishman, he feels himself to be a member of the "anglo-saxon" race, the "genius" of which race has fashioned the english language and the "anglo-saxon" culture of which the language is the expression. science is colder. it inquires if these three types of classification--racial, linguistic, and cultural--are congruent, if their association is an inherently necessary one or is merely a matter of external history. the answer to the inquiry is not encouraging to "race" sentimentalists. historians and anthropologists find that races, languages, and cultures are not distributed in parallel fashion, that their areas of distribution intercross in the most bewildering fashion, and that the history of each is apt to follow a distinctive course. races intermingle in a way that languages do not. on the other hand, languages may spread far beyond their original home, invading the territory of new races and of new culture spheres. a language may even die out in its primary area and live on among peoples violently hostile to the persons of its original speakers. further, the accidents of history are constantly rearranging the borders of culture areas without necessarily effacing the existing linguistic cleavages. if we can once thoroughly convince ourselves that race, in its only intelligible, that is biological, sense, is supremely indifferent to the history of languages and cultures, that these are no more directly explainable on the score of race than on that of the laws of physics and chemistry, we shall have gained a viewpoint that allows a certain interest to such mystic slogans as slavophilism, anglo-saxondom, teutonism, and the latin genius but that quite refuses to be taken in by any of them. a careful study of linguistic distributions and of the history of such distributions is one of the driest of commentaries on these sentimental creeds. that a group of languages need not in the least correspond to a racial group or a culture area is easily demonstrated. we may even show how a single language intercrosses with race and culture lines. the english language is not spoken by a unified race. in the united states there are several millions of negroes who know no other language. it is their mother-tongue, the formal vesture of their inmost thoughts and sentiments. it is as much their property, as inalienably "theirs," as the king of england's. nor do the english-speaking whites of america constitute a definite race except by way of contrast to the negroes. of the three fundamental white races in europe generally recognized by physical anthropologists--the baltic or north european, the alpine, and the mediterranean--each has numerous english-speaking representatives in america. but does not the historical core of english-speaking peoples, those relatively "unmixed" populations that still reside in england and its colonies, represent a race, pure and single? i cannot see that the evidence points that way. the english people are an amalgam of many distinct strains. besides the old "anglo-saxon," in other words north german, element which is conventionally represented as the basic strain, the english blood comprises norman french,[ ] scandinavian, "celtic,"[ ] and pre-celtic elements. if by "english" we mean also scotch and irish,[ ] then the term "celtic" is loosely used for at least two quite distinct racial elements--the short, dark-complexioned type of wales and the taller, lighter, often ruddy-haired type of the highlands and parts of ireland. even if we confine ourselves to the saxon element, which, needless to say, nowhere appears "pure," we are not at the end of our troubles. we may roughly identify this strain with the racial type now predominant in southern denmark and adjoining parts of northern germany. if so, we must content ourselves with the reflection that while the english language is historically most closely affiliated with frisian, in second degree with the other west germanic dialects (low saxon or "plattdeutsch," dutch, high german), only in third degree with scandinavian, the specific "saxon" racial type that overran england in the fifth and sixth centuries was largely the same as that now represented by the danes, who speak a scandinavian language, while the high german-speaking population of central and southern germany[ ] is markedly distinct. [footnote : itself an amalgam of north "french" and scandinavian elements.] [footnote : the "celtic" blood of what is now england and wales is by no means confined to the celtic-speaking regions--wales and, until recently, cornwall. there is every reason to believe that the invading germanic tribes (angles, saxons, jutes) did not exterminate the brythonic celts of england nor yet drive them altogether into wales and cornwall (there has been far too much "driving" of conquered peoples into mountain fastnesses and land's ends in our histories), but simply intermingled with them and imposed their rule and language upon them.] [footnote : in practice these three peoples can hardly be kept altogether distinct. the terms have rather a local-sentimental than a clearly racial value. intermarriage has gone on steadily for centuries and it is only in certain outlying regions that we get relatively pure types, e.g., the highland scotch of the hebrides. in america, english, scotch, and irish strands have become inextricably interwoven.] [footnote : the high german now spoken in northern germany is not of great age, but is due to the spread of standardized german, based on upper saxon, a high german dialect, at the expense of "plattdeutsch."] but what if we ignore these finer distinctions and simply assume that the "teutonic" or baltic or north european racial type coincided in its distribution with that of the germanic languages? are we not on safe ground then? no, we are now in hotter water than ever. first of all, the mass of the german-speaking population (central and southern germany, german switzerland, german austria) do not belong to the tall, blond-haired, long-headed[ ] "teutonic" race at all, but to the shorter, darker-complexioned, short-headed[ ] alpine race, of which the central population of france, the french swiss, and many of the western and northern slavs (e.g., bohemians and poles) are equally good representatives. the distribution of these "alpine" populations corresponds in part to that of the old continental "celts," whose language has everywhere given way to italic, germanic, and slavic pressure. we shall do well to avoid speaking of a "celtic race," but if we were driven to give the term a content, it would probably be more appropriate to apply it to, roughly, the western portion of the alpine peoples than to the two island types that i referred to before. these latter were certainly "celticized," in speech and, partly, in blood, precisely as, centuries later, most of england and part of scotland was "teutonized" by the angles and saxons. linguistically speaking, the "celts" of to-day (irish gaelic, manx, scotch gaelic, welsh, breton) are celtic and most of the germans of to-day are germanic precisely as the american negro, americanized jew, minnesota swede, and german-american are "english." but, secondly, the baltic race was, and is, by no means an exclusively germanic-speaking people. the northernmost "celts," such as the highland scotch, are in all probability a specialized offshoot of this race. what these people spoke before they were celticized nobody knows, but there is nothing whatever to indicate that they spoke a germanic language. their language may quite well have been as remote from any known indo-european idiom as are basque and turkish to-day. again, to the east of the scandinavians are non-germanic members of the race--the finns and related peoples, speaking languages that are not definitely known to be related to indo-european at all. [footnote : "dolichocephalic."] [footnote : "brachycephalic."] we cannot stop here. the geographical position of the germanic languages is such[ ] as to make it highly probable that they represent but an outlying transfer of an indo-european dialect (possibly a celto-italic prototype) to a baltic people speaking a language or a group of languages that was alien to indo-european.[ ] not only, then, is english not spoken by a unified race at present but its prototype, more likely than not, was originally a foreign language to the race with which english is more particularly associated. we need not seriously entertain the idea that english or the group of languages to which it belongs is in any intelligible sense the expression of race, that there are embedded in it qualities that reflect the temperament or "genius" of a particular breed of human beings. [footnote : by working back from such data as we possess we can make it probable that these languages were originally confined to a comparatively small area in northern germany and scandinavia. this area is clearly marginal to the total area of distribution of the indo-european-speaking peoples. their center of gravity, say b.c., seems to have lain in southern russia.] [footnote : while this is only a theory, the technical evidence for it is stronger than one might suppose. there are a surprising number of common and characteristic germanic words which cannot be connected with known indo-european radical elements and which may well be survivals of the hypothetical pre-germanic language; such are _house_, _stone_, _sea_, _wife_ (german _haus_, _stein_, _see_, _weib_).] many other, and more striking, examples of the lack of correspondence between race and language could be given if space permitted. one instance will do for many. the malayo-polynesian languages form a well-defined group that takes in the southern end of the malay peninsula and the tremendous island world to the south and east (except australia and the greater part of new guinea). in this vast region we find represented no less than three distinct races--the negro-like papuans of new guinea and melanesia, the malay race of indonesia, and the polynesians of the outer islands. the polynesians and malays all speak languages of the malayo-polynesian group, while the languages of the papuans belong partly to this group (melanesian), partly to the unrelated languages ("papuan") of new guinea.[ ] in spite of the fact that the greatest race cleavage in this region lies between the papuans and the polynesians, the major linguistic division is of malayan on the one side, melanesian and polynesian on the other. [footnote : only the easternmost part of this island is occupied by melanesian-speaking papuans.] as with race, so with culture. particularly in more primitive levels, where the secondarily unifying power of the "national"[ ] ideal does not arise to disturb the flow of what we might call natural distributions, is it easy to show that language and culture are not intrinsically associated. totally unrelated languages share in one culture, closely related languages--even a single language--belong to distinct culture spheres. there are many excellent examples in aboriginal america. the athabaskan languages form as clearly unified, as structurally specialized, a group as any that i know of.[ ] the speakers of these languages belong to four distinct culture areas--the simple hunting culture of western canada and the interior of alaska (loucheux, chipewyan), the buffalo culture of the plains (sarcee), the highly ritualized culture of the southwest (navaho), and the peculiarly specialized culture of northwestern california (hupa). the cultural adaptability of the athabaskan-speaking peoples is in the strangest contrast to the inaccessibility to foreign influences of the languages themselves.[ ] the hupa indians are very typical of the culture area to which they belong. culturally identical with them are the neighboring yurok and karok. there is the liveliest intertribal intercourse between the hupa, yurok, and karok, so much so that all three generally attend an important religious ceremony given by any one of them. it is difficult to say what elements in their combined culture belong in origin to this tribe or that, so much at one are they in communal action, feeling, and thought. but their languages are not merely alien to each other; they belong to three of the major american linguistic groups, each with an immense distribution on the northern continent. hupa, as we have seen, is athabaskan and, as such, is also distantly related to haida (queen charlotte islands) and tlingit (southern alaska); yurok is one of the two isolated californian languages of the algonkin stock, the center of gravity of which lies in the region of the great lakes; karok is the northernmost member of the hokan group, which stretches far to the south beyond the confines of california and has remoter relatives along the gulf of mexico. [footnote : a "nationality" is a major, sentimentally unified, group. the historical factors that lead to the feeling of national unity are various--political, cultural, linguistic, geographic, sometimes specifically religious. true racial factors also may enter in, though the accent on "race" has generally a psychological rather than a strictly biological value. in an area dominated by the national sentiment there is a tendency for language and culture to become uniform and specific, so that linguistic and cultural boundaries at least tend to coincide. even at best, however, the linguistic unification is never absolute, while the cultural unity is apt to be superficial, of a quasi-political nature, rather than deep and far-reaching.] [footnote : the semitic languages, idiosyncratic as they are, are no more definitely ear-marked.] [footnote : see page .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] returning to english, most of us would readily admit, i believe, that the community of language between great britain and the united states is far from arguing a like community of culture. it is customary to say that they possess a common "anglo-saxon" cultural heritage, but are not many significant differences in life and feeling obscured by the tendency of the "cultured" to take this common heritage too much for granted? in so far as america is still specifically "english," it is only colonially or vestigially so; its prevailing cultural drift is partly towards autonomous and distinctive developments, partly towards immersion in the larger european culture of which that of england is only a particular facet. we cannot deny that the possession of a common language is still and will long continue to be a smoother of the way to a mutual cultural understanding between england and america, but it is very clear that other factors, some of them rapidly cumulative, are working powerfully to counteract this leveling influence. a common language cannot indefinitely set the seal on a common culture when the geographical, political, and economic determinants of the culture are no longer the same throughout its area. language, race, and culture are not necessarily correlated. this does not mean that they never are. there is some tendency, as a matter of fact, for racial and cultural lines of cleavage to correspond to linguistic ones, though in any given case the latter may not be of the same degree of importance as the others. thus, there is a fairly definite line of cleavage between the polynesian languages, race, and culture on the one hand and those of the melanesians on the other, in spite of a considerable amount of overlapping.[ ] the racial and cultural division, however, particularly the former, are of major importance, while the linguistic division is of quite minor significance, the polynesian languages constituting hardly more than a special dialectic subdivision of the combined melanesian-polynesian group. still clearer-cut coincidences of cleavage may be found. the language, race, and culture of the eskimo are markedly distinct from those of their neighbors;[ ] in southern africa the language, race, and culture of the bushmen offer an even stronger contrast to those of their bantu neighbors. coincidences of this sort are of the greatest significance, of course, but this significance is not one of inherent psychological relation between the three factors of race, language, and culture. the coincidences of cleavage point merely to a readily intelligible historical association. if the bantu and bushmen are so sharply differentiated in all respects, the reason is simply that the former are relatively recent arrivals in southern africa. the two peoples developed in complete isolation from each other; their present propinquity is too recent for the slow process of cultural and racial assimilation to have set in very powerfully. as we go back in time, we shall have to assume that relatively scanty populations occupied large territories for untold generations and that contact with other masses of population was not as insistent and prolonged as it later became. the geographical and historical isolation that brought about race differentiations was naturally favorable also to far-reaching variations in language and culture. the very fact that races and cultures which are brought into historical contact tend to assimilate in the long run, while neighboring languages assimilate each other only casually and in superficial respects[ ], indicates that there is no profound causal relation between the development of language and the specific development of race and of culture. [footnote : the fijians, for instance, while of papuan (negroid) race, are polynesian rather than melanesian in their cultural and linguistic affinities.] [footnote : though even here there is some significant overlapping. the southernmost eskimo of alaska were assimilated in culture to their tlingit neighbors. in northeastern siberia, too, there is no sharp cultural line between the eskimo and the chukchi.] [footnote : the supersession of one language by another is of course not truly a matter of linguistic assimilation.] but surely, the wary reader will object, there must be some relation between language and culture, and between language and at least that intangible aspect of race that we call "temperament". is it not inconceivable that the particular collective qualities of mind that have fashioned a culture are not precisely the same as were responsible for the growth of a particular linguistic morphology? this question takes us into the heart of the most difficult problems of social psychology. it is doubtful if any one has yet attained to sufficient clarity on the nature of the historical process and on the ultimate psychological factors involved in linguistic and cultural drifts to answer it intelligently. i can only very briefly set forth my own views, or rather my general attitude. it would be very difficult to prove that "temperament", the general emotional disposition of a people[ ], is basically responsible for the slant and drift of a culture, however much it may manifest itself in an individual's handling of the elements of that culture. but granted that temperament has a certain value for the shaping of culture, difficult though it be to say just how, it does not follow that it has the same value for the shaping of language. it is impossible to show that the form of a language has the slightest connection with national temperament. its line of variation, its drift, runs inexorably in the channel ordained for it by its historic antecedents; it is as regardless of the feelings and sentiments of its speakers as is the course of a river of the atmospheric humors of the landscape. i am convinced that it is futile to look in linguistic structure for differences corresponding to the temperamental variations which are supposed to be correlated with race. in this connection it is well to remember that the emotional aspect of our psychic life is but meagerly expressed in the build of language[ ]. [footnote : "temperament" is a difficult term to work with. a great deal of what is loosely charged to national "temperament" is really nothing but customary behavior, the effect of traditional ideals of conduct. in a culture, for instance, that does not look kindly upon demonstrativeness, the natural tendency to the display of emotion becomes more than normally inhibited. it would be quite misleading to argue from the customary inhibition, a cultural fact, to the native temperament. but ordinarily we can get at human conduct only as it is culturally modified. temperament in the raw is a highly elusive thing.] [footnote : see pages , .] [transcriber's note: footnote refers to the paragraph beginning on line .] language and our thought-grooves are inextricably interwoven, are, in a sense, one and the same. as there is nothing to show that there are significant racial differences in the fundamental conformation of thought, it follows that the infinite variability of linguistic form, another name for the infinite variability of the actual process of thought, cannot be an index of such significant racial differences. this is only apparently a paradox. the latent content of all languages is the same--the intuitive _science_ of experience. it is the manifest form that is never twice the same, for this form, which we call linguistic morphology, is nothing more nor less than a collective _art_ of thought, an art denuded of the irrelevancies of individual sentiment. at last analysis, then, language can no more flow from race as such than can the sonnet form. nor can i believe that culture and language are in any true sense causally related. culture may be defined as _what_ a society does and thinks. language is a particular _how_ of thought. it is difficult to see what particular causal relations may be expected to subsist between a selected inventory of experience (culture, a significant selection made by society) and the particular manner in which the society expresses all experience. the drift of culture, another way of saying history, is a complex series of changes in society's selected inventory--additions, losses, changes of emphasis and relation. the drift of language is not properly concerned with changes of content at all, merely with changes in formal expression. it is possible, in thought, to change every sound, word, and concrete concept of a language without changing its inner actuality in the least, just as one can pour into a fixed mold water or plaster or molten gold. if it can be shown that culture has an innate form, a series of contours, quite apart from subject-matter of any description whatsoever, we have a something in culture that may serve as a term of comparison with and possibly a means of relating it to language. but until such purely formal patterns of culture are discovered and laid bare, we shall do well to hold the drifts of language and of culture to be non-comparable and unrelated processes. from this it follows that all attempts to connect particular types of linguistic morphology with certain correlated stages of cultural development are vain. rightly understood, such correlations are rubbish. the merest _coup d'oeil_ verifies our theoretical argument on this point. both simple and complex types of language of an indefinite number of varieties may be found spoken at any desired level of cultural advance. when it comes to linguistic form, plato walks with the macedonian swineherd, confucius with the head-hunting savage of assam. it goes without saying that the mere content of language is intimately related to culture. a society that has no knowledge of theosophy need have no name for it; aborigines that had never seen or heard of a horse were compelled to invent or borrow a word for the animal when they made his acquaintance. in the sense that the vocabulary of a language more or less faithfully reflects the culture whose purposes it serves it is perfectly true that the history of language and the history of culture move along parallel lines. but this superficial and extraneous kind of parallelism is of no real interest to the linguist except in so far as the growth or borrowing of new words incidentally throws light on the formal trends of the language. the linguistic student should never make the mistake of identifying a language with its dictionary. if both this and the preceding chapter have been largely negative in their contentions, i believe that they have been healthily so. there is perhaps no better way to learn the essential nature of speech than to realize what it is not and what it does not do. its superficial connections with other historic processes are so close that it needs to be shaken free of them if we are to see it in its own right. everything that we have so far seen to be true of language points to the fact that it is the most significant and colossal work that the human spirit has evolved--nothing short of a finished form of expression for all communicable experience. this form may be endlessly varied by the individual without thereby losing its distinctive contours; and it is constantly reshaping itself as is all art. language is the most massive and inclusive art we know, a mountainous and anonymous work of unconscious generations. xi language and literature languages are more to us than systems of thought-transference. they are invisible garments that drape themselves about our spirit and give a predetermined form to all its symbolic expression. when the expression is of unusual significance, we call it literature.[ ] art is so personal an expression that we do not like to feel that it is bound to predetermined form of any sort. the possibilities of individual expression are infinite, language in particular is the most fluid of mediums. yet some limitation there must be to this freedom, some resistance of the medium. in great art there is the illusion of absolute freedom. the formal restraints imposed by the material--paint, black and white, marble, piano tones, or whatever it may be--are not perceived; it is as though there were a limitless margin of elbow-room between the artist's fullest utilization of form and the most that the material is innately capable of. the artist has intuitively surrendered to the inescapable tyranny of the material, made its brute nature fuse easily with his conception.[ ] the material "disappears" precisely because there is nothing in the artist's conception to indicate that any other material exists. for the time being, he, and we with him, move in the artistic medium as a fish moves in the water, oblivious of the existence of an alien atmosphere. no sooner, however, does the artist transgress the law of his medium than we realize with a start that there is a medium to obey. [footnote : i can hardly stop to define just what kind of expression is "significant" enough to be called art or literature. besides, i do not exactly know. we shall have to take literature for granted.] [footnote : this "intuitive surrender" has nothing to do with subservience to artistic convention. more than one revolt in modern art has been dominated by the desire to get out of the material just what it is really capable of. the impressionist wants light and color because paint can give him just these; "literature" in painting, the sentimental suggestion of a "story," is offensive to him because he does not want the virtue of his particular form to be dimmed by shadows from another medium. similarly, the poet, as never before, insists that words mean just what they really mean.] language is the medium of literature as marble or bronze or clay are the materials of the sculptor. since every language has its distinctive peculiarities, the innate formal limitations--and possibilities--of one literature are never quite the same as those of another. the literature fashioned out of the form and substance of a language has the color and the texture of its matrix. the literary artist may never be conscious of just how he is hindered or helped or otherwise guided by the matrix, but when it is a question of translating his work into another language, the nature of the original matrix manifests itself at once. all his effects have been calculated, or intuitively felt, with reference to the formal "genius" of his own language; they cannot be carried over without loss or modification. croce[ ] is therefore perfectly right in saying that a work of literary art can never be translated. nevertheless literature does get itself translated, sometimes with astonishing adequacy. this brings up the question whether in the art of literature there are not intertwined two distinct kinds or levels of art--a generalized, non-linguistic art, which can be transferred without loss into an alien linguistic medium, and a specifically linguistic art that is not transferable.[ ] i believe the distinction is entirely valid, though we never get the two levels pure in practice. literature moves in language as a medium, but that medium comprises two layers, the latent content of language--our intuitive record of experience--and the particular conformation of a given language--the specific how of our record of experience. literature that draws its sustenance mainly--never entirely--from the lower level, say a play of shakespeare's, is translatable without too great a loss of character. if it moves in the upper rather than in the lower level--a fair example is a lyric of swinburne's--it is as good as untranslatable. both types of literary expression may be great or mediocre. [footnote : see benedetto croce, "aesthetic."] [footnote : the question of the transferability of art productions seems to me to be of genuine theoretic interest. for all that we speak of the sacrosanct uniqueness of a given art work, we know very well, though we do not always admit it, that not all productions are equally intractable to transference. a chopin étude is inviolate; it moves altogether in the world of piano tone. a bach fugue is transferable into another set of musical timbres without serious loss of esthetic significance. chopin plays with the language of the piano as though no other language existed (the medium "disappears"); bach speaks the language of the piano as a handy means of giving outward expression to a conception wrought in the generalized language of tone.] there is really no mystery in the distinction. it can be clarified a little by comparing literature with science. a scientific truth is impersonal, in its essence it is untinctured by the particular linguistic medium in which it finds expression. it can as readily deliver its message in chinese[ ] as in english. nevertheless it must have some expression, and that expression must needs be a linguistic one. indeed the apprehension of the scientific truth is itself a linguistic process, for thought is nothing but language denuded of its outward garb. the proper medium of scientific expression is therefore a generalized language that may be defined as a symbolic algebra of which all known languages are translations. one can adequately translate scientific literature because the original scientific expression is itself a translation. literary expression is personal and concrete, but this does not mean that its significance is altogether bound up with the accidental qualities of the medium. a truly deep symbolism, for instance, does not depend on the verbal associations of a particular language but rests securely on an intuitive basis that underlies all linguistic expression. the artist's "intuition," to use croce's term, is immediately fashioned out of a generalized human experience--thought and feeling--of which his own individual experience is a highly personalized selection. the thought relations in this deeper level have no specific linguistic vesture; the rhythms are free, not bound, in the first instance, to the traditional rhythms of the artist's language. certain artists whose spirit moves largely in the non-linguistic (better, in the generalized linguistic) layer even find a certain difficulty in getting themselves expressed in the rigidly set terms of their accepted idiom. one feels that they are unconsciously striving for a generalized art language, a literary algebra, that is related to the sum of all known languages as a perfect mathematical symbolism is related to all the roundabout reports of mathematical relations that normal speech is capable of conveying. their art expression is frequently strained, it sounds at times like a translation from an unknown original--which, indeed, is precisely what it is. these artists--whitmans and brownings--impress us rather by the greatness of their spirit than the felicity of their art. their relative failure is of the greatest diagnostic value as an index of the pervasive presence in literature of a larger, more intuitive linguistic medium than any particular language. [footnote : provided, of course, chinese is careful to provide itself with the necessary scientific vocabulary. like any other language, it can do so without serious difficulty if the need arises.] nevertheless, human expression being what it is, the greatest--or shall we say the most satisfying--literary artists, the shakespeares and heines, are those who have known subconsciously to fit or trim the deeper intuition to the provincial accents of their daily speech. in them there is no effect of strain. their personal "intuition" appears as a completed synthesis of the absolute art of intuition and the innate, specialized art of the linguistic medium. with heine, for instance, one is under the illusion that the universe speaks german. the material "disappears." every language is itself a collective art of expression. there is concealed in it a particular set of esthetic factors--phonetic, rhythmic, symbolic, morphological--which it does not completely share with any other language. these factors may either merge their potencies with those of that unknown, absolute language to which i have referred--this is the method of shakespeare and heine--or they may weave a private, technical art fabric of their own, the innate art of the language intensified or sublimated. the latter type, the more technically "literary" art of swinburne and of hosts of delicate "minor" poets, is too fragile for endurance. it is built out of spiritualized material, not out of spirit. the successes of the swinburnes are as valuable for diagnostic purposes as the semi-failures of the brownings. they show to what extent literary art may lean on the collective art of the language itself. the more extreme technical practitioners may so over-individualize this collective art as to make it almost unendurable. one is not always thankful to have one's flesh and blood frozen to ivory. an artist must utilize the native esthetic resources of his speech. he may be thankful if the given palette of colors is rich, if the springboard is light. but he deserves no special credit for felicities that are the language's own. we must take for granted this language with all its qualities of flexibility or rigidity and see the artist's work in relation to it. a cathedral on the lowlands is higher than a stick on mont blanc. in other words, we must not commit the folly of admiring a french sonnet because the vowels are more sonorous than our own or of condemning nietzsche's prose because it harbors in its texture combinations of consonants that would affright on english soil. to so judge literature would be tantamount to loving "tristan und isolde" because one is fond of the timbre of horns. there are certain things that one language can do supremely well which it would be almost vain for another to attempt. generally there are compensations. the vocalism of english is an inherently drabber thing than the vowel scale of french, yet english compensates for this drawback by its greater rhythmical alertness. it is even doubtful if the innate sonority of a phonetic system counts for as much, as esthetic determinant, as the relations between the sounds, the total gamut of their similarities and contrasts. as long as the artist has the wherewithal to lay out his sequences and rhythms, it matters little what are the sensuous qualities of the elements of his material. the phonetic groundwork of a language, however, is only one of the features that give its literature a certain direction. far more important are its morphological peculiarities. it makes a great deal of difference for the development of style if the language can or cannot create compound words, if its structure is synthetic or analytic, if the words of its sentences have considerable freedom of position or are compelled to fall into a rigidly determined sequence. the major characteristics of style, in so far as style is a technical matter of the building and placing of words, are given by the language itself, quite as inescapably, indeed, as the general acoustic effect of verse is given by the sounds and natural accents of the language. these necessary fundamentals of style are hardly felt by the artist to constrain his individuality of expression. they rather point the way to those stylistic developments that most suit the natural bent of the language. it is not in the least likely that a truly great style can seriously oppose itself to the basic form patterns of the language. it not only incorporates them, it builds on them. the merit of such a style as w.h. hudson's or george moore's[ ] is that it does with ease and economy what the language is always trying to do. carlylese, though individual and vigorous, is yet not style; it is a teutonic mannerism. nor is the prose of milton and his contemporaries strictly english; it is semi-latin done into magnificent english words. [footnote : aside from individual peculiarities of diction, the selection and evaluation of particular words as such.] it is strange how long it has taken the european literatures to learn that style is not an absolute, a something that is to be imposed on the language from greek or latin models, but merely the language itself, running in its natural grooves, and with enough of an individual accent to allow the artist's personality to be felt as a presence, not as an acrobat. we understand more clearly now that what is effective and beautiful in one language is a vice in another. latin and eskimo, with their highly inflected forms, lend themselves to an elaborately periodic structure that would be boring in english. english allows, even demands, a looseness that would be insipid in chinese. and chinese, with its unmodified words and rigid sequences, has a compactness of phrase, a terse parallelism, and a silent suggestiveness that would be too tart, too mathematical, for the english genius. while we cannot assimilate the luxurious periods of latin nor the pointilliste style of the chinese classics, we can enter sympathetically into the spirit of these alien techniques. i believe that any english poet of to-day would be thankful for the concision that a chinese poetaster attains without effort. here is an example:[ ] [footnote : not by any means a great poem, merely a bit of occasional verse written by a young chinese friend of mine when he left shanghai for canada.] wu-river[ ] stream mouth evening sun sink, north look liao-tung,[ ] not see home. steam whistle several noise, sky-earth boundless, float float one reed out middle-kingdom. [footnote : the old name of the country about the mouth of the yangtsze.] [footnote : a province of manchuria.] these twenty-eight syllables may be clumsily interpreted: "at the mouth of the yangtsze river, as the sun is about to sink, i look north toward liao-tung but do not see my home. the steam-whistle shrills several times on the boundless expanse where meet sky and earth. the steamer, floating gently like a hollow reed, sails out of the middle kingdom."[ ] but we must not envy chinese its terseness unduly. our more sprawling mode of expression is capable of its own beauties, and the more compact luxuriance of latin style has its loveliness too. there are almost as many natural ideals of literary style as there are languages. most of these are merely potential, awaiting the hand of artists who will never come. and yet in the recorded texts of primitive tradition and song there are many passages of unique vigor and beauty. the structure of the language often forces an assemblage of concepts that impresses us as a stylistic discovery. single algonkin words are like tiny imagist poems. we must be careful not to exaggerate a freshness of content that is at least half due to our freshness of approach, but the possibility is indicated none the less of utterly alien literary styles, each distinctive with its disclosure of the search of the human spirit for beautiful form. [footnote : i.e., china.] probably nothing better illustrates the formal dependence of literature on language than the prosodic aspect of poetry. quantitative verse was entirely natural to the greeks, not merely because poetry grew up in connection with the chant and the dance,[ ] but because alternations of long and short syllables were keenly live facts in the daily economy of the language. the tonal accents, which were only secondarily stress phenomena, helped to give the syllable its quantitative individuality. when the greek meters were carried over into latin verse, there was comparatively little strain, for latin too was characterized by an acute awareness of quantitative distinctions. however, the latin accent was more markedly stressed than that of greek. probably, therefore, the purely quantitative meters modeled after the greek were felt as a shade more artificial than in the language of their origin. the attempt to cast english verse into latin and greek molds has never been successful. the dynamic basis of english is not quantity,[ ] but stress, the alternation of accented and unaccented syllables. this fact gives english verse an entirely different slant and has determined the development of its poetic forms, is still responsible for the evolution of new forms. neither stress nor syllabic weight is a very keen psychologic factor in the dynamics of french. the syllable has great inherent sonority and does not fluctuate significantly as to quantity and stress. quantitative or accentual metrics would be as artificial in french as stress metrics in classical greek or quantitative or purely syllabic metrics in english. french prosody was compelled to develop on the basis of unit syllable-groups. assonance, later rhyme, could not but prove a welcome, an all but necessary, means of articulating or sectioning the somewhat spineless flow of sonorous syllables. english was hospitable to the french suggestion of rhyme, but did not seriously need it in its rhythmic economy. hence rhyme has always been strictly subordinated to stress as a somewhat decorative feature and has been frequently dispensed with. it is no psychologic accident that rhyme came later into english than in french and is leaving it sooner.[ ] chinese verse has developed along very much the same lines as french verse. the syllable is an even more integral and sonorous unit than in french, while quantity and stress are too uncertain to form the basis of a metric system. syllable-groups--so and so many syllables per rhythmic unit--and rhyme are therefore two of the controlling factors in chinese prosody. the third factor, the alternation of syllables with level tone and syllables with inflected (rising or falling) tone, is peculiar to chinese. [footnote : poetry everywhere is inseparable in its origins from the singing voice and the measure of the dance. yet accentual and syllabic types of verse, rather than quantitative verse, seem to be the prevailing norms.] [footnote : quantitative distinctions exist as an objective fact. they have not the same inner, psychological value that they had in greek.] [footnote : verhaeren was no slave to the alexandrine, yet he remarked to symons, _à propos_ of the translation of _les aubes_, that while he approved of the use of rhymeless verse in the english version, he found it "meaningless" in french.] to summarize, latin and greek verse depends on the principle of contrasting weights; english verse, on the principle of contrasting stresses; french verse, on the principles of number and echo; chinese verse, on the principles of number, echo, and contrasting pitches. each of these rhythmic systems proceeds from the unconscious dynamic habit of the language, falling from the lips of the folk. study carefully the phonetic system of a language, above all its dynamic features, and you can tell what kind of a verse it has developed--or, if history has played pranks with its phychology, what kind of verse it should have developed and some day will. whatever be the sounds, accents, and forms of a language, however these lay hands on the shape of its literature, there is a subtle law of compensations that gives the artist space. if he is squeezed a bit here, he can swing a free arm there. and generally he has rope enough to hang himself with, if he must. it is not strange that this should be so. language is itself the collective art of expression, a summary of thousands upon thousands of individual intuitions. the individual goes lost in the collective creation, but his personal expression has left some trace in a certain give and flexibility that are inherent in all collective works of the human spirit. the language is ready, or can be quickly made ready, to define the artist's individuality. if no literary artist appears, it is not essentially because the language is too weak an instrument, it is because the culture of the people is not favorable to the growth of such personality as seeks a truly individual verbal expression. index _note_. italicized entries are names of languages or groups of languages. a abbreviation of stem, accent, stress, as grammatical process, importance of, metrical value of "accent," "adam's apple," adjective, affixation, affixing languages, african languages, pitch in, agglutination, agglutinative languages, agglutinative-fusional, agglutinative-isolating, _algonkin_ languages (n. amer.), alpine race, analogical leveling, analytic tendency, angles, _anglo-saxon_, anglo-saxon: culture, race, _annamite_ (s.e. asia), _apache_ (n. amer.), _arabic_, _armenian_, art, language as, transferability of, articulation: ease of, types of, drift toward, articulations: laryngeal, manner of consonantal, nasal, oral, place of consonantal, vocalic, _aryan_. see _indo-european_. aspect, association of concepts and speech elements, associations fundamental to speech, _athabaskan_ languages (n. amer.), athabaskans, cultures of, _attic_ dialect, attribution, auditory cycle in language, australian culture, _avestan_, b bach, baltic race, _bantu_ languages (africa), bantus, _basque_ (pyrenees), _bengali_ (india), _berber_. see _hamitic_. bohemians, _bontoc igorot_ (philippines), borrowing, morphological, borrowing, word, phonetic adaptation in, resistances to, _breton_, bronchial tubes, browning, buddhism, influence of, _burmese_, _bushman_ (s. africa), bushmen, c _cambodgian_ (s.e. asia), carlyle, _carrier_ (british columbia), case, see _attribution_; _object_; _personal relations_; _subject_. case-system, history of, caucasus, languages of, celtic. see _celts_. _celtic_ languages, celts, brythonic, "cerebral" articulations, chaucer, english of, _chimariko_ (n. california), _chinese_: absence of affixes, analytic character, attribution, compounds, grammatical concepts illustrated, influence, "inner form,", pitch accent, radical words, relational use of material words, sounds, stress, structure, style, survivals, morphological, symbolism, verse, word duplication, word order, _chinook_ (n. amer.), _chipewyan_ (n. amer.), c. indians, chopin, christianity, influence of, chukchi, classification: of concepts, rigid, of linguistic types, see _structure, linguistic_. "clicks," composition, absence of, in certain languages, types of, word order as related to, concepts, concepts, grammatical: analysis of, in sentence, classification of, concrete, concrete relational, concreteness in, varying degree of, derivational, derivational, abstract, essential, grouping of, non-logical, lack of expression of certain, pure relational, radical, redistribution of, relational, thinning-out of significance of, types of, typical categories of, see _structure, linguistic_. concord, concrete concepts. see _concepts_. conflict, consonantal change, consonants, combinations of, coördinate sentences, _corean_, croce, benedetto, culture, language and, language as aspect of, language, race and, reflection of history of, in language, culture areas, d _danish_, demonstrative ideas, dental articulations, derivational concepts. see _concepts_. determinative structure, dialects: causes of, compromise between, distinctness of, drifts in, diverging, drifts in, parallel, splitting up of, unity of, diffusion, morphological, diphthongs, drift, linguistic, components of, determinants of, in english, direction of, direction of, illustrated in english, examples of general, in english, parallelisms in, speed of, see _phonetic law_; _phonetic processes_. duplication of words, _dutch_, e elements of speech, emotion, expression of: involuntary, linguistic, _english_: agentive suffix, analogical leveling, analytic tendency, animate and inanimate, aspect, attribution, case, history of, compounds, concepts, grammatical, in sentence, concepts, passage of concrete into derivational, consonantal change, culture of speakers of, desire, expression of, diminutive suffix, drift, duplication, word, esthetic qualities, feeling-tone, form, word, french influence on, function and form, fusing and juxtaposing, gender, greek influence on, influence of, influence on, morphological, lack of deep, interrogative words, invariable words, tendency to, infixing, latin influence on, loan-words, modality, number, order, word, parts of speech, patterning, formal, personal relations, phonetic drifts, history of, phonetic leveling, phonetic pattern, plurality, race of speakers of, reference, definiteness of, relational words, relations, genetic, rhythm, sentence, analysis of, sentence, dependence of word on, sound-imitative words, sounds, stress and pitch, structure, survivals, morphological, symbolism, syntactic adhesions, syntactic values, transfer of, tense, verb, syntactic relations of, verse, vocalic change, word and element, analysis of, _english, middle_, english people, _eskimo_, eskimos, _ewe_ (guinea coast, africa), expiratory sounds, "explosives," f faucal position, feeling-tones of words, fijians, _finnish_, finns, _flemish_, "foot, feet" (english), history of, form, cultural, feeling of language for, "inner," form, linguistic: conservatism of, differences of, mechanical origin of, elaboration of, reasons for, function and, independence of, grammatical concepts embodied in, grammatical processes embodying, permanence of different aspects of, relative, twofold consideration of, see _structure, linguistic_. form-classes, see _gender_. formal units of speech, "formlessness, inner," _fox_ (n. amer.), _french_: analytical tendency, esthetic qualities, gender, influence, order, word, plurality, sounds, sounds as words, single, stress, structure, tense forms, verse, french, norman, french people, freud, fricatives, _frisian_, _ful_ (soudan), function, independence of form and, functional units of speech, fusion, fusional languages, see _fusion_. fusional-agglutinative, fusional-isolating, "fuss, füsse" (german), history of, g _gaelic_, gender, _german_: french influence on, grammatical concepts in sentence, latin influence on, phonetic drifts, history of, plurality, relations, sound-imitative words, sounds, tense forms, "umlaut," unanalyzable words, resistance to, _german, high_, _german, middle high_, _german, old high_, _germanic_ languages, _germanic, west_, germans, gesture languages, ginneken, jac van, glottal cords, action of, glottal stop, _gothic_, grammar, grammatical element, grammatical concepts. see _concepts, grammatical_. grammatical processes: classified by, languages, particular, development by each language of, types of, variety of, use in one language of, _greek_, dialectic history of, _greek, classical_: affixing, compounds, concord, infixing, influence, pitch accent, plurality, reduplicated perfects, stress, structure, synthetic character, verse, _greek, modern_, h _haida_ (british columbia), _hamitic_ languages (n. africa), _hausa_ (soudan), _hebrew_, heine, hesitation, history, linguistic, _hokan_ languages (n. amer.), _hottentot_ (s. africa), hudson, w.h., humming, _hupa_ (n. california), hupa indians, i _icelandic, old_, india, languages of, indians, american, languages of, see also _algonkin_; _athabaskan_; _chimariko_; _chinook_; _eskimo_; _fox_; _haida_; _hokan_; _hupa_; _iroquois_; _karok_; _kwakiutl_; _nahuatl_; _nass_; _navaho_; _nootka_; _ojibwa_; _paiute_; _sahaptin_; _salinan_; _shasta_; _siouan_; _sioux_; _takelma_; _tlingit_; _tsimshian_; _washo_; _yana_; _yokuts_; _yurok_. _indo-chinese_ languages, _indo-european_, _indo-iranian_ languages, infixes, inflection. see _inflective languages_. inflective languages, influence: cultural, reflected in language, morphological, of alien language, phonetic, of alien language, inspiratory sounds, interjections, irish, _irish_, _iroquois_ (n. amer.), isolating languages, _italian_, "its," history of, j _japanese_, jutes, juxtaposing. see _agglutination_. k _karok_ (n. california), k. indians, _khmer_. see _cambodgian_. knowledge, source of, as grammatical category, _koine_, _kwakiutl_ (british columbia), l labial trills, language: associations in, associations underlying elements of, auditory cycle in, concepts expressed in, a cultural function, definition of, diversity of, elements of, emotion expressed in, feeling-tones in, grammatical concepts of, grammatical processes of, historical aspects of, imitations of sounds, not evolved from, influences on, exotic, interjections, not evolved from, literature and, modifications and transfers of typical form of, an "overlaid" function, psycho-physical basis of, race, culture and, simplification of experience in, sounds of, structure of, thought and, universality of, variability of, volition expressed in, larynx, lateral sounds, _latin_: attribution, concord, infixing, influence of, objective _-m_, order of words, plurality, prefixes and suffixes, reduplicated perfects, relational concepts expressed, sentence-word, sound as word in, single, structure, style, suffixing character, syntactic nature of sentence, synthetic character, verse, word and element in, analysis of, _lettish_, leveling, phonetic, see _analogical leveling_. lips, action of, literature: compensations in, formal, language and, levels in, linguistic, medium of, language as, science and, literature, determinants of: linguistic, metrical, morphological, phonetic, _lithuanian_, localism, localization of speech, _loucheux_ (n. amer.), l. indians, lungs, luther, german of, m _malay_, m. race, _malayan_, _malayo-polynesian_ languages, _manchu_, _manx_, "maus, mäuse" (german), history of, mediterranean race, _melanesian_ languages, meter. see _verse_. milton, mixed-relational languages, complex, simple, modality, _mon-khmer_ (s.e. asia), moore, george, morphological features, diffusion of, morphology. see _structure, linguistic_. "mouse, mice" (english), history of, _munda_ languages (e. india), murmuring, mutation, vocalic, n _nahuatl_ (mexico), nasal sounds, "nasal twang," nasalized stops, _nass_ (british columbia), nationality, _navaho_ (arizona, new mexico), n. indians, nietzsche, _nootka_ (vancouver id.), nose, action of, noun, nouns, classification of, number, see _plurality_. o object, see _personal relations_. _ojibwa_ (n, amer.), onomatopoetic theory of origin of speech, oral sounds, order, word, composition as related to, fixed, english tendency, sentence molded by, significance of, fundamental, organs of speech, action of, p _paiute_ (n. amer.), palate, action of soft, articulations of, _pali_ (india), _papuan_ languages, papuans, parts of speech, pattern: formal, phonetic, _persian_, person, personal relations, phonetic adaptation, phonetic diffusion, phonetic law: basis of, direction of, examples of, influence of, on morphology, influence of morphology on, regularity of, significance of, spread of, slow, see _leveling, phonetic_; _pattern, phonetic_. phonetic processes, form caused by, differences of, parallel drifts in, pitch, grammatical use of, metrical use of, production of, significant differences in, plains indians, gesture language of, "plattdeutsch," plurality: classification of concept of, variable, a concrete relational category, a derivational or radical concept, expression of, multiple, see _number_. poles, _polynesian_, polynesians, polysynthetic languages, _portuguese_, predicate, prefixes, prefixing languages, preposition, psycho-physical aspect of speech, pure-relational languages, complex, simple, q qualifying concepts. see _concepts, derivational_. quality: of speech sounds, of individual's voice, quantity of speech sounds, r race, language and, lack of correspondence between, language and, theoretical relation between, language as correlated with, english, language, culture and, correspondence between, language, culture and, independence of, radical concepts. see _concepts_. radical element, radical word, "reading from the lips," reduplication, reference, definite and indefinite, repetition of stem, see _reduplication_. repression of impulse, rhyme, rolled consonants, _romance_ languages, root, _roumanian_, rounded vowels, _russian_, s _sahaptin_ languages (n. amer.), _salinan_ (s.w. california), _sanskrit_ (india), sarcee indians, _saxon_: _low_, _old_, _upper_, saxons, _scandinavian_, see _danish_; _icelandic_; _swedish_. scandinavians, scotch, _scotch, lowland_, _semitic languages_, sentence, binding words into, methods of, stress in, influence of, word-order in, sequence. see _order of words_. shakespeare: art of, english of, _shasta_ (n. california), _shilh_ (morocco), _shilluk_ (nile headwaters), _siamese_, singing, _siouan_ languages (n. amer.), _sioux_ (dakota), _slavic_ languages, slavs, _somali_ (e. africa), _soudanese_ languages, sound-imitative words, sounds of speech, adjustments involved in, muscular, adjustments involved in certain, inhibition of, basic importance of, classification of, combinations of, conditioned appearance of, dynamics of, illusory feelings in regard to, "inner" or "ideal" system of, place in phonetic pattern of, production of, values of, psychological, variability of, _spanish_, speech. see _language_. spirants, splitting of sounds, stem, stock, linguistic, stopped consonants (_or_ stops), stress. see _accent_. structure, linguistic, conservatism of, differences of, intuitional forms of, structure, linguistic, types of: classification of, by character of concepts, by degree of fusion, by degree of synthesis, by formal processes, from threefold standpoint, into "formal" and "formless," classifying, difficulties in, examples of, mixed, reality of, validity of conceptual, historical test of, style, subject, see _personal relations_. subject of discourse, suffixes, suffixing, suffixing languages, survivals, morphological, _swedish_, swinburne, swiss, french, syllabifying, symbolic languages, symbolic processes, symbolic-fusional, symbolic-isolating, symons, syntactic adhesions, syntactic relations: primary methods of expressing, transfer of values in, see _concepts, relational_; _concord_; _order, word_; _personal relations_; _sentence_. synthetic tendency, t _takelma_ (s.w. oregon), teeth, articulations of, telegraph code, temperament, tense, teutonic race. see _baltic race_. thinking, types of, thought, relation of language to, throat, articulations of, _tibetan_, time. see _tense_. _tlingit_ (s. alaska), t. indians, tongue, action of, transfer, types of linguistic, trills, _tsimshian_ (british columbia), see _nass_. _turkish_, types, linguistic, change of, see _structure, linguistic_. u _ugro-finnic_, "umlaut." see _mutation, vocalic_. united states: culture in, race in, _ural-altaic_ languages, uvula, v values: "hesitation," morphologic, phonetic, variability in, of components of drift, variations, linguistic: dialect, historical, individual, verb, syntactic relations expressed in, verhaeren, verse: accentual, linguistic determinants of, quantitative, syllabic, vocalic change, see _mutation, vocalic_. voice, production of, voiced sounds, voiceless: laterals, nasals, sounds, trills, vowels, "voicelessness," production of, volition expressed in speech, vowels, w walking, a biological function, _washo_ (nevada), _welsh_, westermann, d., whisper, whitman, "whom," use and drift of, word, definition of, syntactic origin of complex, "twilight" type of, types of, formal, written language, y _yana_ (n. california), _yiddish_, _yokuts_ (s. california), _yurok_ (n.w. california), y. indians, z _zaconic_ dialect of greek, none none from images provided by the million book project, [illustration: _hippolyte adolphe taine from the etching by asher b. durand_] the harvard classics edited by charles w. eliot ll.d. prefaces and prologues to famous books with introductions, notes and illustrations [illustration] "dr. eliot's five-foot shelf of books" p.f. collier & son new york by little brown & company by p.f. collier & son contents title, prologue and epilogues to the recuyell of the histories of troy william caxton epilogue to dictes and sayings of the philosophers william caxton prologue to golden legend william caxton prologue to caton william caxton epilogue to aesop william caxton proem to chaucer's canterbury tales william caxton prologue to malory's king arthur william caxton prologue to virgil's eneydos william caxton dedication of the institutes of the christian religion john calvin translated by john allen dedication of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies nicolaus copernicus preface to the history of the reformation in scotland john knox prefatory letter to sir walter raleigh on the faerie queene edmund spenser preface to the history of the world sir walter raleigh prooemium, epistle dedicatory, preface, and plan of the instauratio magna, etc. francis bacon translation edited by j. spedding preface to the novum organum francis bacon preface to the first folio edition of shakespeare's plays heminge and condell preface to the philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica sir isaac newton translated by andrew motte preface to fables, ancient and modern john dryden preface to joseph andrews henry fielding preface to the english dictionary samuel johnson preface to shakespeare samuel johnson introduction to the propylÄen j.w. von goethe prefaces to various volumes of poems william wordsworth appendix to lyrical ballads william wordsworth essay supplementary to preface william wordsworth preface to cromwell victor hugo preface to leaves of grass walt whitman introduction to the history of english literature h.a. taine _introductory note_ _no part of a book is so intimate as the preface. here, after the long labor of the work is over, the author descends from his platform, and speaks with his reader as man to man, disclosing his hopes and fears, seeking sympathy for his difficulties, offering defence or defiance, according to his temper, against the criticisms which he anticipates. it thus happens that a personality which has been veiled by a formal method throughout many chapters, is suddenly seen face to face in the preface; and this alone, if there were no other reason, would justify a volume of prefaces. but there are other reasons why a preface may be presented apart from its parent work, and may, indeed, be expected sometimes to survive it. the prologues and epilogues of caxton were chiefly prefixed to translations which have long been superseded; but the comments of this frank and enthusiastic pioneer of the art of printing in england not only tell us of his personal tastes, but are in a high degree illuminative of the literary habits and standards of western europe in the fifteenth century. again, modern research has long ago put raleigh's "history of the world" out of date; but his eloquent preface still gives us a rare picture of the attitude of an intelligent elizabethan, of the generation which colonised america, toward the past, the present, and the future worlds. bacon's "great restoration" is no longer a guide to scientific method; but his prefatory statements as to his objects and hopes still offer a lofty inspiration. and so with the documents here drawn from the folios of copernicus and calvin, with the criticism of dryden and wordsworth and hugo, with dr. johnson's preface to his great dictionary, with the astounding manifesto of a new poetry from walt whitman's "leaves of grass"--each of them has a value and significance independent now of the work which it originally introduced, and each of them presents to us a man._ prefaces and epilogues by william caxton[a] the recuyell of the histories of troy title and prologue to book i here beginneth the volume entitled and named the recuyell of the histories of troy, composed and drawn out of divers books of latin into french by the right venerable person and worshipful man, raoul le feure, priest and chaplain unto the right noble, glorious, and mighty prince in his time, philip, duke of burgundy, of brabant, etc. in the year of the incarnation of our lord god a thousand four hundred sixty and four, and translated and drawn out of french into english by william caxton, mercer, of the city of london, at the commandment of the right high, mighty, and virtuous princess, his redoubted lady, margaret, by the grace of god duchess of burgundy, of lotrylk, of brabant, etc.; which said translation and work was begun in bruges in the county of flanders, the first day of march, the year of the incarnation of our said lord god a thousand four hundred sixty and eight, and ended and finished in the holy city of cologne the th day of september, the year of our said lord god a thousand four hundred sixty and eleven, etc. and on that other side of this leaf followeth the prologue. when i remember that every man is bounden by the commandment and counsel of the wise man to eschew sloth and idleness, which is mother and nourisher of vices, and ought to put myself unto virtuous occupation and business, then i, having no great charge of occupation, following the said counsel took a french book, and read therein many strange and marvellous histories, wherein i had great pleasure and delight, as well for the novelty of the same as for the fair language of french, which was in prose so well and compendiously set and written, which methought i understood the sentence and substance of every matter. and for so much as this book was new and late made and drawn into french, and never had seen it in our english tongue, i thought in myself it should be a good business to translate it into our english, to the end that it might be had as well in the royaume of england as in other lands, and also for to pass therewith the time, and thus concluded in myself to begin this said work. and forthwith took pen and ink, and began boldly to run forth as blind bayard in this present work, which is named "the recuyell of the trojan histories." and afterward when i remembered myself of my simpleness and unperfectness that i had in both languages, that is to wit in french and in english, for in france was i never, and was born and learned my english in kent, in the weald, where i doubt not is spoken as broad and rude english as in any place of england; and have continued by the space of years for the most part in the countries of brabant, flanders, holland, and zealand. and thus when all these things came before me, after that i had made and written five or six quires i fell in despair of this work, and purposed no more to have continued therein, and those quires laid apart, and in two years after laboured no more in this work, and was fully in will to have left it, till on a time it fortuned that the right high, excellent, and right virtuous princess, my right redoubted lady, my lady margaret, by the grace of god sister unto the king of england and of france, my sovereign lord, duchess of burgundy, of lotryk, of brabant, of limburg, and of luxembourg, countess of flanders, of artois, and of burgundy, palatine of hainault, of holland, of zealand and of namur, marquesse of the holy empire, lady of frisia, of salins and of mechlin, sent for me to speak with her good grace of divers matters, among the which i let her highness have knowledge of the foresaid beginning of this work, which anon commanded me to show the said five or six quires to her said grace; and when she had seen them anon she found a default in my english, which she commanded me to amend, and moreover commanded me straitly to continue and make an end of the residue then not translated; whose dreadful commandment i durst in no wise disobey, because i am a servant unto her said grace and receive of her yearly fee and other many good and great benefits, (and also hope many more to receive of her highness), but forthwith went and laboured in the said translation after my simple and poor cunning, also nigh as i can following my author, meekly beseeching the bounteous highness of my said lady that of her benevolence list to accept and take in gree this simple and rude work here following; and if there be anything written or said to her pleasure, i shall think my labour well employed, and whereas there is default that she arette it to the simpleness of my cunning which is full small in this behalf; and require and pray all them that shall read this said work to correct it, and to hold me excused of the rude and simple translation. and thus i end my prologue. [footnote a: william caxton ( ?- ), merchant and translator, learned the art of printing on the continent, probably at bruges or cologne. he translated "the recuyell of the histories of troy" between and , and, on account of the great demand for copies, was led to have it printed--the first english book to be reproduced by this means. the date was about ; the place, probably bruges. in , caxton came back to england, and set up a press of his own at westminster. in , he issued the first book known to have been printed in england, "the dictes and sayings of the philosophers." the following prefaces and epilogues from caxton's own pen show his attitude towards some of the more important of the works that issued from his press.] epilogue to book ii thus endeth the second book of the recule of the histories of troy. which bookes were late translated into french out of latin by the labour of the venerable person raoul le feure, priest, as afore is said; and by me indigne and unworthy, translated into this rude english by the commandment of my said redoubted lady, duchess of burgundy. and for as much as i suppose the said two books be not had before this time in our english language, therefore i had the better will to accomplish this said work; which work was begun in bruges and continued in ghent and finished in cologne, in the time of the troublous world, and of the great divisions being and reigning, as well in the royaumes of england and france as in all other places universally through the world; that is to wit the year of our lord a thousand four hundred seventy one. and as for the third book, which treateth of the general and last destruction of troy, it needeth not to translate it into english, for as much as that worshipful and religious man, dan john lidgate, monk of bury, did translate it but late; after whose work i fear to take upon me, that am not worthy to bear his penner and ink-horn after him, to meddle me in that work. but yet for as much as i am bound to contemplate my said lady's good grace, and also that his work is in rhyme and as far as i know it is not had in prose in our tongue, and also, peradventure, he translated after some other author than this is; and yet for as much as divers men be of divers desires, some to read in rhyme and metre and some in prose; and also because that i have now good leisure, being in cologne, and have none other thing to do at this time; in eschewing of idleness, mother of all vices, i have delibered in myself for the contemplation of my said redoubted lady to take this labour in hand, by the sufferance and help of almighty god; whom i meekly supplye to give me grace to accomplish it to the pleasure of her that is causer thereof, and that she receive it in gree of me, her faithful, true, and most humble servant etc. epilogue to book iii thus end i this book, which i have translated after mine author as nigh as god hath given me cunning, to whom be given the laud and praising. and for as much as in the writing of the same my pen is worn, my hand weary and not steadfast, mine eyne dimmed with overmuch looking on the white paper, and my courage not so prone and ready to labour as it hath been, and that age creepeth on me daily and feebleth all the body, and also because i have promised to divers gentlemen and to my friends to address to them as hastily as i might this said book, therefore i have practised and learned at my great charge and dispense to ordain this said book in print, after the manner and form as ye may here see, and is not written with pen and ink as other books be, to the end that every man may have them at once. for all the books of this story, named "the recule of the histories of troy" thus imprinted as ye here see, were begun in one day and also finished in one day, which book i have presented to my said redoubted lady, as afore is said. and she hath well accepted it, and largely rewarded me, wherefore i beseech almighty god to reward her everlasting bliss after this life, praying her said grace and all them that shall read this book not to disdain the simple and rude work, neither to reply against the saying of the matters touched in this book, though it accord not unto the translation of others which have written it. for divers men have made divers books which in all points accord not, as dictes, dares, and homer. for dictes and homer, as greeks, say and write favorably for the greeks, and give to them more worship than to the trojans; and dares writeth otherwise than they do. and also as for the proper names, it is no wonder that they accord not, for some one name in these days have divers equivocations after the countries that they dwell in; but all accord in conclusion the general destruction of that noble city of troy, and the death of so many noble princes, as kings, dukes, earls, barons, knights, and common people, and the ruin irreparable of that city that never since was re-edified; which may be example to all men during the world how dreadful and jeopardous it is to begin a war and what harms, losses, and death followeth. therefore the apostle saith: "all that is written is written to our doctrine," which doctrine for the common weal i beseech god may be taken in such place and time as shall be most needful in increasing of peace, love, and charity; which grant us he that suffered for the same to be crucified on the rood tree. and say we all amen for charity! dictes and sayings of the philosophers first edition ( ). epilogue here endeth the book named _the dictes or sayings of the philosophers_, imprinted by me, william caxton, at westminster, the year of our lord . which book is late translated out of french into english by the noble and puissant lord lord antony, earl of rivers, lord of scales and of the isle of wight, defender and director of the siege apostolic for our holy father the pope in this royaume of england, and governor of my lord prince of wales. and it is so that at such time as he had accomplished this said work, it liked him to send it to me in certain quires to oversee, which forthwith i saw, and found therein many great, notable, and wise sayings of the philosophers, according unto the books made in french which i had often before read; but certainly i had seen none in english until that time. and so afterward i came unto my said lord, and told him how i had read and seen his book, and that he had done a meritorious deed in the labour of the translation thereof into our english tongue, wherein he had deserved a singular laud and thanks, &c. then my said lord desired me to oversee it, and where i should find fault to correct it; whereon i answered unto his lordship that i could not amend it, but if i should so presume i might apaire it, for it was right well and cunningly made and translated into right good and fair english. notwithstanding, he willed me to oversee it, and shewed me divers things, which, as seemed to him, might be left out, as divers letters, missives sent from alexander to darius and aristotle, and each to other, which letters were little appertinent unto dictes and sayings aforesaid, forasmuch as they specify of other matters. and also desired me, that done, to put the said book in imprint. and thus obeying his request and commandment, i have put me in devoir to oversee this his said book, and behold as nigh as i could how it accordeth with the original, being in french. and i find nothing discordant therein, save only in the dictes and sayings of socrates, wherein i find that my said lord hath left out certain and divers conclusions touching women. whereof i marvel that my lord hath not written them, ne what hath moved him so to do, ne what cause he had at that time; but i suppose that some fair lady hath desired him to leave it out of his book; or else he was amorous on some noble lady, for whose love he would not set it in his book; or else for the very affection, love, and good will that he hath unto all ladies and gentlewomen, he thought that socrates spared the sooth and wrote of women more than truth; which i cannot think that so true a man and so noble a philosopher as socrates was should write otherwise than truth. for if he had made fault in writing of women, he ought not, ne should not, be believed in his other dictes and sayings. but i perceive that my said lord knoweth verily that such defaults be not had ne found in the women born and dwelling in these parts ne regions of the world. socrates was a greek, born in a far country from hence, which country is all of other conditions than this is, and men and women of other nature than they be here in this country. for i wot well, of whatsoever condition women be in greece, the women of this country be right good, wise, pleasant, humble, discreet, sober, chaste, obedient to their husbands, true, secret, steadfast, ever busy, and never idle, attemperate in speaking, and virtuous in all their works--or at least should be so. for which causes so evident my said lord, as i suppose, thought it was not of necessity to set in his book the sayings of his author socrates touching women. but forasmuch as i had commandment of my said lord to correct and amend where i should find fault, and other find i none save that he hath left out these dictes and sayings of the women of greece, therefore in accomplishing his commandment--forasmuch as i am not certain whether it was in my lord's copy or not, or else, peradventure, that the wind had blown over the leaf at the time of translation of his book--i purpose to write those same sayings of that greek socrates, which wrote of the women of greece and nothing of them of this royaume, whom, i suppose, he never knew; for if he had, i dare plainly say that he would have reserved them specially in his said dictes. always not presuming to put and set them in my said lord's book but in the end apart in the rehearsal of the works, humbly requiring all them that shall read this little rehearsal, that if they find any fault to arette it to socrates, and not to me, which writeth as hereafter followeth. socrates said that women be the apparels to catch men, but they take none but them that will be poor or else them that know them not. and he said that there is none so great empechement unto a man as ignorance and women. and he saw a woman that bare fire, of whom he said that the hotter bore the colder. and he saw a woman sick, of whom he said that the evil resteth and dwelleth with the evil. and he saw a woman brought to the justice, and many other women followed her weeping, of whom he said the evil be sorry and angry because the evil shall perish. and he saw a young maid that learned to write, of whom he said that men multiplied evil upon evil. and he said that the ignorance of a man is known in three things, that is to wit, when he hath no thought to use reason; when he cannot refrain his covetise; and when he is governed by the counsel of women, in that he knoweth that they know not. and he said unto his disciples: "will ye that i enseign and teach you how ye shall now escape from all evil?" and they answered, "yea." and then he said to them, "for whatsoever thing that it be, keep you and be well ware that ye obey not women." who answered to him again, "and what sayest thou by our good mothers, and of our sisters?" he said to them, "suffice you with that i have said to you, for all be semblable in malice." and he said, "whosoever will acquire and get science, let him never put him in the governance of a woman." and he saw a woman that made her fresh and gay, to whom he said, "thou resemblest the fire; for the more wood is laid to the fire the more will it burn, and the greater is the heat." and on a time one asked him what him semed of women; he answered that the women resemble a tree called edelfla, which is the fairest tree to behold and see that may be, but within it is full of venom. and they said to him and demanded wherefore he blamed so women? and that he himself had not come into this world, ne none other men also, without them. he answered, "the woman is like unto a tree named chassoygnet, on which tree there be many things sharp and pricking, which hurt and prick them that approach unto it; and yet, nevertheless, that same tree bringeth forth good dates and sweet." and they demanded him why he fled from the women? and he answered, "forasmuch as i see them flee and eschew the good and commonly do evil." and a woman said to him, "wilt thou have any other woman than me?" and he answered to her, "art not ashamed to offer thyself to him that demandeth nor desireth thee not?" so, these be the dictes and sayings of the philosopher socrates, which he wrote in his book; and certainly he wrote no worse than afore is rehearsed. and forasmuch as it is accordant that his dictes and sayings should be had as well as others', therefore i have set it in the end of this book. and also some persons, peradventure, that have read this book in french would have arette a great default in me that i had not done my devoir in visiting and overseeing of my lord's book according to his desire. and some other also, haply, might have supposed that socrates had written much more ill of women than here afore is specified, wherefore in satisfying of all parties, and also for excuse of the said socrates, i have set these said dictes and sayings apart in the end of this book, to the intent that if my said lord or any other person, whatsoever he or she be that shall read or hear it, that if they be not well pleased withal, that they with a pen race it out, or else rend the leaf out of the book. humbly requiring and beseeching my said lord to take no displeasure on me so presuming, but to pardon whereas he shall find fault; and that it please him to take the labour of the imprinting in gree and thanks, which gladly have done my diligence in the accomplishing of his desire and commandment; in which i am bounden so to do for the good reward that i have received of his said lordship; whom i beseech almighty god to increase and to continue in his virtuous disposition in this world, and after this life to live everlastingly in heaven. amen. golden legend. first edition ( ). prologue the holy and blessed doctor saint jerome saith this authority, "do always some good work to the end that the devil find thee not idle." and the holy doctor saint austin saith in the book of the labour of monks, that no man strong or mighty to labour ought to be idle; for which cause when i had performed and accomplished divers works and histories translated out of french into english at the request of certain lords, ladies, and gentlemen, as the recuyel of the history of troy, the book of the chess, the history of jason, the history of the mirror of the world, the books of metamorphoses in which be contained the fables of ovid, and the history of godfrey of boulogne in the conquest of jerusalem, with other divers works and books, i ne wist what work to begin and put forth after the said works to-fore made. and forasmuch as idleness is so much blamed, as saith saint bernard, the mellifluous doctor, that she is mother of lies and step-dame of virtues, and it is she that overthroweth strong men into sin, quencheth virtue, nourisheth pride, and maketh the way ready to go to hell; and john cassiodorus saith that the thought of him that is idle thinketh on none other thing but on licorous meats and viands for his belly; and the holy saint bernard aforesaid saith in an epistle, when the time shall come that it shall behove us to render and give accounts of our idle time, what reason may we render or what answer shall we give when in idleness is none excuse; and prosper saith that whosoever liveth in idleness liveth in manner of a dumb beast. and because i have seen the authorities that blame and despise so much idleness, and also know well that it is one of the capital and deadly sins much hateful unto god, therefore i have concluded and firmly purposed in myself no more to be idle, but will apply myself to labour and such occupation as i have been accustomed to do. and forasmuch as saint austin aforesaid saith upon a psalm that good work ought not to be done for fear of pain, but for the love of righteousness, and that it be of very and sovereign franchise, and because me-seemeth to be a sovereign weal to incite and exhort men and women to keep them from sloth and idleness, and to let to be understood to such people as be not lettered the nativities, the lives, the passions, the miracles, and the death of the holy saints, and also some other notorious deeds and acts of times past, i have submised myself to translate into english the legend of saints, which is called _legenda aurea_ in latin, that is to say, the _golden legend_; for in like wise as gold is most noble above all other metals, in like wise is this legend holden most noble above all other works. against me here might some persons say that this legend hath been translated before, and truth it is; but forasmuch as i had by me a legend in french, another in latin, and the third in english, which varied in many and divers places, and also many histories were comprised in the two other books which were not in the english books; and therefore i have written one out of the said three books, which i have ordered otherwise than the said english legend is, which was so to-fore made, beseeching all them that shall see or hear it read to pardon me where i have erred or made fault, which, if any be, is of ignorance and against my will; and submit it wholly of such as can and may, to correct it, humbly beseeching them so to do, and in so doing they shall deserve a singular laud and merit; and i shall pray for them unto almighty god that he of his benign grace reward them, etc., and that it profit to all them that shall read or hear it read, and may increase in them virtue, and expel vice and sin, that by the example of the holy saints amend their living here in this short life, that by their merits they and i may come to everlasting life and bliss in heaven. amen. caton ( ) prologue here beginneth the prologue of proem of the book called _caton_, which book hath been translated into english by master benet burgh, late archdeacon of cochester, and high canon of st. stephen's at westminster, which ful craftily hath made it in ballad royal for the erudition of my lord bousher, son and heir at that time to my lord the earl of essex. and because of late came to my hand a book of the said cato in french, which rehearseth many a fair learning and notable examples, i have translated it out of french into english, as all along hereafter shall appear, which i present unto the city of london. unto the noble, ancient, and renowned city, the city of london, in england, i, william caxton, citizen and conjury of the same, and of the fraternity and fellowship of the mercery, owe of right my service and good will, and of very duty am bounden naturally to assist, aid, and counsel, as far forth as i can to my power, as to my mother of whom i have received my nurture and living, and shall pray for the good prosperity and policy of the same during my life. for, as me seemeth, it is of great need, because i have known it in my young age much more wealthy, prosperous, and richer, than it is at this day. and the cause is that there is almost none that intendeth to the common weal, but only every man for his singular profit oh! when i remember the noble romans, that for the common weal of the city of rome they spent not only their moveable goods but they put their bodies and lives in jeopardy and to the death, as by many a noble example we may see in the acts of romans, as of the two noble scipios, african and asian, actilius, and many others. and among all others the noble cato, author and maker of this book, which he hath left for to remain ever to all the people for to learn in it and to know how every man ought to rule and govern him in this life, as well for the life temporal as for the life spiritual. and as in my judgement it is the best book for to be taught to young children in school, and also to people of every age, it is full convenient if it be well understood and because i see that the children that be born within the said city increase, and profit not like their fathers and elders, but for the most part after that they be come to their perfect years of discretion and ripeness of age, how well that their fathers have left to them great quantity of goods yet scarcely among ten two thrive, [whereas] i have seen and know in other lands in divers cities that of one name and lineage successively have endured prosperously many heirs, yea, a five or six hundred years, and some a thousand; and in this noble city of london it can unneth continue unto the third heir or scarcely to the second,--o blessed lord, when i remember this i am all abashed; i cannot judge the cause, but fairer ne wiser ne better spoken children in their youth be nowhere than there be in london, but at their full ripening there is no kernel ne good corn found, but chaff for the most part. i wot well there be many noble and wise, and prove well and be better and richer than ever were their fathers. and to the end that many might come to honour and worship, i intend to translate this said book of cato, in which i doubt not, and if they will read it and understand they shall much the better con rule themselves thereby; for among all other books this is a singular book, and may well be called the regiment or governance of the body and soul. there was a noble clerk named pogius of florence, and was secretary to pope eugene and also to pope nicholas, which had in the city of florence a noble and well-stuffed library which all noble strangers coming to florence desired to see; and therein they found many noble and rare books. and when they had asked of him which was the best book of them all, and that he reputed for best, he said that he held cato glosed for the best book of his library. then since that he that was so noble a clerk held this book for the best, doubtless it must follow that this is a noble book and a virtuous, and such one that a man may eschew all vices and ensue virtue. then to the end that this said book may profit unto the hearers of it, i beseech almighty god that i may achieve and accomplish it unto his laud and glory, and to the erudition and learning of them that be ignorant, that they may thereby profit and be the better. and i require and beseech all such that find fault or error, that of their charity they correct and amend it, and i shall heartily pray for them to almighty god, that he reward them. aesop. ( ) epilogue now then i will finish all these fables with this tale that followeth, which a worshipful priest and a parson told me lately. he said that there were dwelling in oxford two priests, both masters of art, of whom that one was quick and could put himself forth, and that other was a good simple priest. and so it happened that the master that was pert and quick, was anon promoted to a benefice or twain, and after to prebends and for to be a dean of a great prince's chapel, supposing and weening that his fellow the simple priest should never have been promoted, but be alway an annual, or at the most a parish priest. so after long time that this worshipful man, this dean, came riding into a good parish with a ten or twelve horses, like a prelate, and came into the church of the said parish, and found there this good simple man sometime his fellow, which came and welcomed him lowly; and that other bade him "good morrow, master john," and took him slightly by the hand, and asked him where he dwelt. and the good man said, "in this parish." "how," said he, "are ye here a soul priest or a parish priest?" "nay, sir," said he, "for lack of a better, though i be not able ne worthy, i am parson and curate of this parish." and then that other availed his bonnet and said, "master parson, i pray you to be not displeased; i had supposed ye had not been beneficed; but master," said he, "i pray you what is this benefice worth to you a year?" "forsooth," said the good simple man, "i wot never, for i make never accounts thereof how well i have had it four or five years." "and know ye not," said he, "what it is worth? it should seem a good benefice." "no, forsooth," said he, "but i wot well what it shall be worth to me." "why," said he, "what shall it be worth?" "forsooth," said he, "if i do my true diligence in the cure of my parishioners in preaching and teaching, and do my part longing to my cure, i shall have heaven therefore; and if their souls be lost, or any of them by my default, i shall be punished therefore, and hereof am i sure." and with that word the rich dean was abashed, and thought he should do the better and take more heed to his cures and benefices than he had done. this was a good answer of a good priest and an honest. and herewith i finished this book, translated and printed by me, william caxton, at westminster in the abbey, and finished the th day of march, the year of our lord , and the first year of the reign of king richard the third. chaucer's canterbury tales second edition. ( ) proem great thanks, laud, and honour ought to be given unto the clerks, poets, and historiographs that have written many noble books of wisedom of the lives, passions, and miracles of holy saints, of histories of noble and famous acts and faites, and of the chronicles since the beginning of the creation of the world unto this present time, by which we be daily informed and have knowledge of many things of whom we should not have known if they had not left to us their monuments written. among whom and in especial before all others, we ought to give a singular laud unto that noble and great philosopher geoffrey chaucer, the which for his ornate writing in our tongue may well have the name of a laureate poet. for to-fore that he by labour embellished, ornated, and made fair our english, in this realm was had rude speech and incongruous, as yet it appeareth by old books, which at this day ought not to have place ne be compared among, ne to, his beauteous volumes and ornate writings, of whom he made many books and treatises of many a noble history, as well in metre as in rhyme and prose; and them so craftily made that he comprehended his matters in short, quick, and high sentences, eschewing prolixity, casting away the chaff of superfluity, and shewing the picked grain of sentence uttered by crafty and sugared eloquence; of whom among all others of his books i purpose to print, by the grace of god, the book of the tales of canterbury, in which i find many a noble history of every state and degree; first rehearsing the conditions and the array of each of them as properly as possible is to be said. and after their tales which be of nobleness, wisdom, gentleness, mirth and also of very holiness and virtue, wherein he finisheth this said book, which book i have diligently overseen and duly examined, to that end it be made according unto his own making. for i find many of the said books which writers have abridged it, and many things left out; and in some place have set certain verses that he never made ne set in his book; of which books so incorrect was one brought to me, years past, which i supposed had been very true and correct; and according to the same i did so imprint a certain number of them, which anon were sold to many and divers gentlemen, of whom one gentleman came to me and said that this book was not according in many place unto the book that geoffrey chaucer had made. to whom i answered that i had made it according to my copy, and by me was nothing added ne minished. then he said he knew a book which his father had and much loved, that was very true and according unto his own first book by him made; and said more, if i would imprint it again he would get me the same book for a copy, howbeit he wist well that his father would not gladly depart from it. to whom i said, in case that he could get me such a book, true and correct, yet i would once endeavour me to imprint it again for to satisfy the author, whereas before by ignorance i erred in hurting and defaming his book in divers places, in setting in some things that he never said ne made, and leaving out many things that he made which be requisite to be set in it. and thus we fell at accord, and he full gently got of his father the said book and delivered it to me, by which i have corrected my book, as hereafter, all along by the aid of almighty god, shall follow; whom i humbly beseech to give me grace and aid to achieve and accomplish to his laud, honour, and glory; and that all ye that shall in this book read or hear, will of your charity among your deeds of mercy remember the soul of the said geoffrey chaucer, first author and maker of this book. and also that all we that shall see and read therein may so take and understand the good and virtuous tales, that it may so profit unto the health of our souls that after this short and transitory life we may come to everlasting life in heaven. amen. by william caxton malory's king arthur. ( ) prologue after that i had accomplished and finished divers histories, as well of contemplation as of other historical and worldly acts of great conquerors and princes, and also certain books of ensamples and doctrine, many noble and divers gentlemen of this realm of england came and demanded me many and oft times wherefore that i have not done made and printed the noble history of the saint graal, and of the most renowned christian king, first and chief of the three best christian and worthy, arthur, which ought most to be remembered among us englishmen before all other christian kings. for it is notoyrly known through the universal world that there be nine worthy and the best that ever were; that is to wit three paynims, three jews, and three christian men. as for the paynims, they were to-fore the incarnation of christ, which were named--the first, hector of troy, of whom the history is come both in ballad and in prose--the second, alexander the great; and the third, julius cæsar, emperor of rome, of whom the histories be well known and had. and as for the three jews, which also were before the incarnation of our lord of whom the first was duke joshua, which brought the children of israel into the land of behest; the second, david, king of jerusalem; and the third judas maccabaeus; of these three the bible rehearseth all their noble histories and acts. and since the said incarnation have been three noble christian men, installed and admitted through the universal world into the number of the nine best and worthy, of whom was first the noble arthur, whose noble acts i purpose to write in this present book here following. the second was charlemagne, or charles the great, of whom the history is had in many places both in french and english; and the third and last was godfrey of boulogne, of whose acts and life i made a book unto the excellent prince and king of noble memory, king edward the fourth. the said noble gentlemen instantly required me to print the history of the said noble king and conqueror, king arthur, and of his knights, with the history of the saint graal, and of the death and ending of the said arthur, affirming that i ought rather to print his acts and noble feats than of godfrey of boulogne or any of the other eight, considering that he was a man born within this realm, and king and emperor of the same; and that there be in french divers and many noble volumes of his acts, and also of his knights. to whom i answered that divers men hold opinion that there was no such arthur, and that all such books as be made of him be but feigned and fables, because that some chronicles make of him no mention, ne remember him nothing ne of his knights; whereto they answered, and one in special said, that in him that should say or think that there was never such a king called arthur, might well be aretted great folly and blindness; for he said that there were many evidences of the contrary. first ye may see his sepulchre in the monastery of glastonbury; and also in 'polychronicon,' in the fifth book, the sixth chapter, and in the seventh book, the twenty-third chapter, where his body was buried, and after found and translated into the said monastery. ye shall see also in the history of boccaccio, in his book 'de casu principum,' part of his noble acts and also of his fall. also galfridus in his british book recounteth his life, and in divers places of england many remembrances be yet of him, and shall remain perpetually, and also of his knights. first in the abbey of westminster at saint edward's shrine remaineth the print of his seal in red wax closed in beryl, in which is written 'patricius arthurus, britanniae galliae germaniae daciae imperator.' item, in the castle of dover ye may see gawain's skull and caradoc's mantle; at winchester the round table; in other places lancelot's sword, and many other things. then all these things considered, there can no man reasonably gainsay but here was a king of this land named arthur; for in all places, christian and heathen, he is reputed and taken for one of the nine worthy, and the first of the three christian men. and also he is more spoken of beyond the sea; more books made of his noble acts than there be in england, as well in dutch, italian, spanish, and greek as in french; and yet of record remain in witness of him in wales in the town of camelot the great stones and marvellous works of iron lying under the ground, and royal vaults, which divers now living hath seen. wherefore it is a marvel why he is no more renowned in his own country, save only it accordeth to the word of god, which saith that no man is accepted for a prophet in his own country. then all these things aforesaid alleged, i could not well deny but that there was such a noble king named arthur, and reputed one of the nine worthy, and first and chief of the christian men; and many noble volumes be made of him and of his noble knights in french, which i have seen and read beyond the sea, which be not had in our maternal tongue, but in welsh be many, and also in french, and some in english, but nowhere nigh all. wherefore such as have lately been drawn out briefly into english, i have, after the simple cunning that god hath sent to me, under the favour and correction of all noble lords and gentlemen, emprised to imprint a book of the noble histories of the said king arthur and of certain of his knights, after a copy unto me delivered, which copy sir thomas mallory did take out of certain books of french and reduced it into english. and i according to my copy have down set it in print, to the intent that noble men may see and learn the noble acts of chivalry, the gentle and virtuous deeds that some knights used in those days, by which they came to honour, and how they that were vicious were punished and oft put to shame and rebuke; humbly beseeching all noble lords and ladies and all other estates, of what estate or degree they be of, that shall see and read in this said book and work, that they take the good and honest acts in their remembrance and to follow the same, wherein they shall find many joyous and pleasant histories and noble and renowned acts of humanity, gentleness, and chivalry. for herein may be seen noble chivalry, courtesy, humanity, friendliness, hardyhood, love, friendship, cowardice, murder, hate, virtue and sin. do after the good and leave the evil, and it shall bring you to good fame and renown. and for to pass the time this book shall be pleasant to read in; but for to give faith and believe that all is true that is contained herein, ye be at your liberty. but all is written for our doctrine, and for to beware that we fall not to vice ne sin, but to exercise and follow virtue, by which we may come and attain to good fame and renown in this life, and after this short and transitory life to come unto everlasting bliss in heaven; the which he grant us that reigneth in heaven, the blessed trinity. amen. then to proceed forth in this said book which i direct unto all noble princes, lords and ladies, gentlemen or gentlewomen, that desire to read or hear read of the noble and joyous history of the great conqueror and excellent king, king arthur, sometime king of this noble realm then called britain, i, william caxton, simple person, present this book following which i have emprised to imprint. and treateth of the noble acts, feats of arms, of chivalry, prowess, hardihood, humanity, love, courtesy, and very gentleness, with many wonderful histories and adventures. and for to understand briefly the contents of this volume, i have divided it into books, and every book chaptered, as hereafter shall by god's grace follow. the first book shall treat how uther pendragon begat the noble conqueror, king arthur, and containeth chapters. the second book treateth of balyn the noble knight, and containeth chapters. the third book treateth of the marriage of king arthur to queen guinevere, with other matters, and containeth chapters. the fourth book how merlin was assotted, and of war made to king arthur, and containeth chapters. the fifth book treateth of the conquest of lucius the emperor, and containeth chapters. the sixth book treateth of sir lancelot and sir lionel, and marvellous adventures, and containeth chapters. the seventh book treateth of a noble knight called sir gareth, and named by sir kay 'beaumains,' and containeth chapters. the eighth book treateth of the birth of sir tristram the noble knight, and of his acts, and containeth chapters. the ninth book treateth of a knight named by sir kay, 'le cote mal tailié,' and also of sir tristram, and containeth chapters. the tenth book treateth of sir tristram, and other marvellous adventures, and containeth chapters. the eleventh book treateth of sir lancelot and sir galahad, and containeth chapters. the twelfth book treateth of sir lancelot and his madness, and containeth chapters. the thirteenth book treateth how galahad came first to king arthur's court, and the quest how the sangreal was begun, and containeth chapters. the fourteenth book treateth of the quest of the sangreal, and containeth chapters. the fifteenth book treateth of sir lancelot, and containeth chapters. the sixteenth book treateth of sir boris and sir lionel his brother, and containeth chapters. the seventeenth book treateth of the sangreal, and containeth chapters. the eighteenth book treateth of sir lancelot and the queen, and containeth chapters. the nineteenth book treateth of queen guinevere, and lancelot, and containeth chapters. the twentieth book treateth of the piteous death of arthur, and containeth chapters. the twenty-first book treateth of his last departing, and how sir lancelot came to revenge his death, and containeth chapters. the sum is books, which contain the sum of five hundred and seven chapters, as more plainly shall follow hereafter. eneydos ( ) prologue after divers work made, translated, and achieved, having no work in hand, i sitting in my study whereas lay many divers pamphlets and books, happened that to my hand came a little book in french, which lately was translated out of latin by some noble clerk of france, which book is named _aeneidos_, made in latin by that noble poet and great clerk, virgil which book i saw over, and read therein how, after the general destruction of the great troy, aeneas departed, bearing his old father anchises upon his shoulders, his little son iulus on his hand, his wife with much other people following, and how he shipped and departed, with all the history of his adventures that he had ere he came to the achievement of his conquest of italy, as all along shall be shewed in his present book. in which book i had great pleasure because of the fair and honest terms and words in french; which i never saw before like, ne none so pleasant ne so well ordered; which book as seemed to me should be much requisite to noble men to see, as well for the eloquence as the histories. how well that many hundred years past was the said book of _aeneidos_, with other works, made and learned daily in schools, especially in italy and other places; which history the said virgil made in metre. and when i had advised me in this said book, i delibered and concluded to translate it into english; and forthwith took a pen and ink and wrote a leaf or twain, which i oversaw again to correct it. and when i saw the fair and strange terms therein, i doubted that it should not please some gentlemen which late blamed me, saying that in my translations i had over curious terms, which could not be understood of common people, and desired me to use old and homely terms in my translations. and fain would i satisfy every man, and so to do took an old book and read therein, and certainly the english was so rude and broad that i could not well understood it. and also my lord abbot of westminster did do show to me lately certain evidences written in old english, for to reduce it into our english now used. and certainly it was written in such wise that it was more like to dutch than english, i could not reduce ne bring it to be understood. and certainly our language now used varieth far from that which was used and spoken when i was born. for we englishmen be born under the domination of the moon, which is never steadfast but ever wavering, waxing one season and waneth and decreaseth another season. and that common english that is spoken in one shire varieth from another, insomuch that in my days happened that certain merchants were in a ship in thames for to have sailed over the sea into zealand, and for lack of wind they tarried at foreland, and went to land for to refresh them. and one of them named sheffield, a mercer, came into a house and asked for meat, and especially he asked after eggs; and the good wife answered that she could speak no french, and the merchant was angry, for he also could speak no french, but would have had eggs, and she understood him not. and then at last another said, that he would have "eyren"; then the goodwife said that she understood him well. lo, what should a man in these days now write, eggs or eyren? certainly it is hard to please every man because of diversity and change of language. for in these days every man that is in any reputation in his country will utter his communication and matters in such manners and terms that few men shall understand them. and some honest and great clerks have been with me and desired me to write the most curious terms that i could find; and thus between plain, rude and curious i stand abashed. but in my judgment the common terms that be daily used be lighter to be understood than the old and ancient english. and forasmuch as this present book is not for a rude uplandish man to labour therein ne read it, but only for a clerk and a noble gentleman that feeleth and understandeth in feats of arms, in love and in noble chivalry. therefore in a mean between both i have reduced and translated this said book into our english, not over-rude ne curious; but in such terms as shall be understood, by god's grace, according to my copy. and if any man will intermit in reading of it, and findeth such terms that he cannot understand, let him go read and learn virgil of the pistles of ovid, and there he shall see and understand lightly all, if he have a good reader and informer. for this book is not for every rude and uncunning man to see, but to clerks and very gentlemen that understand gentleness and science. then i pray all them that shall read in this little treatise to hold me for excused for the translating of it, for i acknowledge myself ignorant of cunning to emprise on me so high and noble a work. but i pray master john skelton, late created poet laureate in the university of oxenford, to oversee and correct this said book, and to address and expound, wherever shall be found fault, to them that shall require it. for him i know for sufficient to expound and english every difficulty that is therein; for he hath lately translated the epistles of tully, and the book of diodorus siculus, and divers other works out of latin into english, not in rude and old language, but in polished and ornate terms craftily, as he that hath read virgil, ovid, tully, and all the other noble poets and orators to me unknown. and also he hath read the nine muses, and understands their musical sciences, and to whom of them each, science is appropred. i suppose he hath drunken of helicon's well. then i pray him and such others to correct, add, or minish whereas he or they shall find fault; for i have but followed my copy in french as nigh as to me is possible. and if any word be said therein well, i am glad; and if otherwise, i submit my said book to their correction. which book i present unto the high born, my to-coming natural and sovereign lord arthur, by the grace of god prince of wales, duke of cornwall and earl of chester, first-begotten son and heir unto our most dread natural and sovereign lord and most christian king, henry the vii., by the grace of god king of england and of france, and lord of ireland; beseeching his noble grace to receive it in thank of me his most humble subject and servant. and i shall pray unto almighty god for his prosperous increasing in virtue, wisedom, and humanity, that he may be equal with the most renowned of all his noble progenitors; and so to live in this present life that after this transitory life he and we all may come to everlasting life in heaven. amen. dedication of the institutes of the christian religion by john calvin ( )[a] to his most christian majesty, francis, king of the french, and his sovereign, john calvin wisheth peace and salvation in christ. when i began this work, sire, nothing was further from my thoughts than writing a book which would afterwards be presented to your majesty. my intention was only to lay down some elementary principles, by which inquirers on the subject of religion might be instructed in the nature of true piety. and this labour i undertook chiefly for my countrymen, the french, of whom i apprehended multitudes to be hungering and thirsting after christ, but saw very few possessing any real knowledge of him. that this was my design, the book itself proves by its simple method and unadorned composition. but when i perceived that the fury of certain wicked men in your kingdom had grown to such a height, as to leave no room in the land for sound doctrine, i thought i should be usefully employed, if in the same work i delivered my instructions to them, and exhibited my confession to you, that you may know the nature of that doctrine, which is the object of such unbounded rage to those madmen who are now disturbing the country with fire and sword. for i shall not be afraid to acknowledge, that this treatise contains a summary of that very doctrine, which, according to their clamours, deserves to be punished with imprisonment, banishment, proscription, and flames, and to be exterminated from the face of the earth. i well know with what atrocious insinuations your ears have been filled by them, in order to render our cause most odious in your esteem; but your clemency should lead you to consider that, if accusation be accounted a sufficient evidence of guilt, there will be an end of all innocence in words and actions. if any one, indeed, with a view to bring odium upon the doctrine which i am endeavouring to defend, should allege that it has long ago been condemned by the general consent, and suppressed by many judicial decisions, this will be only equivalent to saying, that it has been sometimes violently rejected through the influence and power of its adversaries, and sometimes insidiously and fraudulently oppressed by falsehoods, artifices, and calumnies. violence is displayed, when sanguinary sentences are passed against it without the cause being heard; and fraud, when it is unjustly accused of sedition and mischief. lest any one should suppose that these our complaints are unfounded, you yourself, sire, can bear witness of the false calumnies with which you hear it daily traduced; that its only tendency is to wrest the sceptres of kings out of their hands, to overturn all the tribunals and judicial proceedings, to subvert all order and governments, to disturb the peace and tranquillity of the people, to abrogate all laws, to scatter all properties and possessions, and, in a word, to involve every thing in total confusion. and yet you hear the smallest portion of what is alleged against it; for such horrible things are circulated amongst the vulgar, that, if they were true, the whole world would justly pronounce it and its abettors worthy of a thousand fires and gibbets. who, then, will wonder at its becoming the object of public odium, where credit is given to such most iniquitous accusations? this is the cause of the general consent and conspiracy to condemn us and our doctrine. hurried away with this impulse, those who sit in judgment pronounce for sentences the prejudices they brought from home with them; and think their duty fully discharged if they condemn none to be punished but such as are convicted by their own confession, or by sufficient proofs. convicted of what crime? of this condemned doctrine, they say. but with what justice is it condemned? now, the ground of defence was not to abjure the doctrine itself, but to maintain its truth. on this subject, however, not a word is allowed to be uttered. wherefore i beseech you, sire,--and surely it is not an unreasonable request,--to take upon yourself the entire cognizance of this cause, which has hitherto been confusedly and carelessly agitated, without any order of law, and with outrageous passion rather than judicial gravity. think not that i am now meditating my own individual defence, in order to effect a safe return to my native country; for, though i feel the affection which every man ought to feel for it, yet, under the existing circumstances, i regret not my removal from it. but i plead the cause of all the godly, and consequently of christ himself, which, having been in these times persecuted and trampled on in all ways in your kingdom, now lies in a most deplorable state; and this indeed rather through the tyranny of certain pharisees, than with your knowledge. how this comes to pass is foreign to my present purpose to say; but it certainly lies in a most afflicted state. for the ungodly have gone to such lengths, that the truth of christ, if not vanquished, dissipated, and entirely destroyed, is buried, as it were, in ignoble obscurity, while the poor, despised church is either destroyed by cruel massacres, or driven away into banishment, or menaced and terrified into total silence. and still they continue their wonted madness and ferocity, pushing violently against the wall already bent, and finishing the ruin they have begun. in the meantime, no one comes forward to plead the cause against such furies. if there be any persons desirous of appearing most favourable to the truth, they only venture an opinion, that forgiveness should be extended to the error and imprudence of ignorant people. for this is the language of these moderate men, calling that error and imprudence which they know to be the certain truth of god, and those ignorant people, whose understanding they perceive not to have been so despicable to christ, but that he has favoured them with the mysteries of his heavenly wisdom. thus all are ashamed of the gospel. but it shall be yours, sire, not to turn away your ears or thoughts from so just a defence, especially in a cause of such importance as the maintenance of god's glory unimpaired in the world, the preservation of the honor of divine truth, and the continuance of the kingdom of christ uninjured among us. this is a cause worthy of your attention, worthy of your cognizance, worthy of your throne. this consideration constitutes true royalty, to acknowledge yourself in the government of your kingdom to be the minister of god. for where the glory of god is not made the end of the government, it is not a legitimate sovereignty, but a usurpation. and he is deceived who expects lasting prosperity in that kingdom which is not ruled by the sceptre of god, that is, his holy word; for that heavenly oracle cannot fail, which declares that "where there is no vision, the people perish,"[ ] nor should you be seduced from this pursuit by a contempt of our meanness. we are fully conscious to ourselves how very mean and abject we are, being miserable sinners before god, and accounted most despicable by men; being, (if you please) the refuse of the world, deserving of the vilest appellations that can be found; so that nothing remains for us to glory in before god, but his mercy alone, by which, without any merit of ours, we have been admitted to the hope of eternal salvation, and before men nothing but our weakness, the slightest confession of which is esteemed by them as the greatest disgrace. but our doctrine must stand, exalted above all the glory, and invincible by all the power of the world; because it is not ours, but the doctrine of the living god, and of his christ, whom the father hath constituted king, that he may have dominion from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth, and that he may rule in such a manner, that the whole earth, with its strength of iron and with its splendour of gold and silver, smitten by the rod of his mouth, may be broken to pieces like a potter's vessel;[ ] for thus do the prophets foretell the magnificence of his kingdom. our adversaries reply, that our pleading the word of god is a false pretence, and that we are nefarious corrupters of it. but that this is not only a malicious calumny, but egregious impudence, by reading our confession, you will, in your wisdom, be able to judge. yet something further is necessary to be said, to excite your attention, or at least to prepare your mind for this perusal. paul's direction, that every prophecy be framed "according to the analogy of faith,"[ ] has fixed an invariable standard by which all interpretation of scripture ought to be tried. if our principles be examined by this rule of faith, the victory is ours. for what is more consistent with faith than to acknowledge ourselves naked of all virtue, that we may be clothed by god; empty of all good, that we may be filled by him; slaves to sin, that we may be liberated by him; blind, that we may be enlightened by him; lame, that we may be guided; weak, that we may be supported by him; to divest ourselves of all ground of glorying, that he alone may be eminently glorious, and that we may glory in him? when we advance these and similar sentiments, they interrupt us with complaints that this is the way to overturn, i know not what blind light of nature, pretended preparations, free will, and works meritorious of eternal salvation, together with all their supererogations; because they cannot bear that the praise and glory of all goodness, strength, righteousness, and wisdom, should remain entirely with god. but we read of none being reproved for having drawn too freely from the fountain of living waters; on the contrary, they are severely upbraided who have "hewed them out cisterns, broken cisterns, that can hold no water."[ ] again, what is more consistent with faith, than to assure ourselves of god being a propitious father, where christ is acknowledged as a brother and mediator? than securely to expect all prosperity and happiness from him, whose unspeakable love towards us went so far, that "he spared not his own son, but delivered him up for us?"[ ] than to rest in the certain expectation of salvation and eternal life, when we reflect upon the father's gift of christ, in whom such treasures are hidden? here they oppose us, and complain that this certainty of confidence is chargeable with arrogance and presumption. but as we ought to presume nothing of ourselves, so we should presume every thing of god; nor are we divested of vain glory for any other reason than that we may learn to glory in the lord. what shall i say more? review, sire, all the parts of our cause, and consider us worse than the most abandoned of mankind, unless you clearly discover that we thus "both labor and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living god,"[ ] because we believe that "this is life eternal, to know the only true god, and jesus christ whom he hath sent."[ ] for this hope some of us are bound in chains, others are lashed with scourges, others are carried about as laughing-stocks, others are outlawed, others are cruelly tortured, others escape by flight; but we are all reduced to extreme perplexities, execrated with dreadful curses, cruelly slandered and treated with the greatest indignities. now, look at our adversaries, (i speak of the order of priests, at whose will and directions others carry on these hostilities against us,) and consider a little with me by what principles they are actuated. the true religion, which is taught in the scriptures, and ought to be universally maintained, they readily permit both themselves and others to be ignorant of, and to treat with neglect and contempt. they think it unimportant what any one holds or denies concerning god and christ, provided he submits his mind with an implicit faith (as they call it) to the judgment of the church. nor are they much affected, if the glory of god happens to be violated with open blasphemies, provided no one lift a finger against the primacy of the apostolic see, and the authority of their holy mother church. why, therefore, do they contend with such extreme bitterness and cruelty for the mass, purgatory, pilgrimages, and similar trifles, and deny that any piety can be maintained without a most explicit faith, so to speak, in these things; whereas they prove none of them from the word of god? why, but because their belly is their god, their kitchen is their religion; deprived of which they consider themselves no longer as christians, or even as men. for though some feast themselves in splendour, and others subsist on slender fare, yet all live on the same pot, which, without this fuel, would not only cool, but completely freeze. every one of them, therefore, who is most solicitous for his belly, is found to be a most strenuous champion for their faith. indeed, they universally exert themselves for the preservation of their kingdom, and the repletion of their bellies; but not one of them discovers the least indication of sincere zeal. nor do their attacks on our doctrine cease here; they urge every topic of accusation and abuse to render it an object of hatred or suspicion. they call it novel, and of recent origin,--they cavil at it as doubtful and uncertain,--they inquire by what miracles it is confirmed,--they ask whether it is right for it to be received contrary to the consent of so many holy fathers, and the custom of the highest antiquity,--they urge us to confess that it is schismatical in stirring up opposition against the church, or that the church was wholly extinct for many ages, during which no such thing was known.--lastly, they say all arguments are unnecessary; for that its nature may be determined by its fruits, since it has produced such a multitude of sects, so many factious tumults, and such great licentiousness of vices. it is indeed very easy for them to insult a deserted cause with the credulous and ignorant multitude; but, if we had also the liberty of speaking in our turn, this acrimony, which they now discover in violently foaming against us with equal licentiousness and impunity, would presently cool. in the first place, their calling it novel is highly injurious to god, whose holy word deserves not to be accused of novelty. i have no doubt of its being new to them, to whom jesus christ and the gospel are equally new. but those who know the antiquity of this preaching of paul, "that jesus christ died for our sins, and rose again for our justification,"[ ] will find no novelty among us. that it has long been concealed, buried, and unknown, is the crime of human impiety. now that the goodness of god has restored it to us, it ought at least to be allowed its just claim of antiquity. from the same source of ignorance springs the notion of its being doubtful and uncertain. this is the very thing which the lord complains of by his prophet; that "the ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib,"[ ] but that his people know not him. but however they may laugh at its uncertainty, if they were called to seal their own doctrine with their blood and lives, it would appear how much they value it. very different is our confidence, which dreads neither the terrors of death, nor even the tribunal of god. their requiring miracles of us is altogether unreasonable; for we forge no new gospel, but retain the very same whose truth was confirmed by all the miracles ever wrought by christ and the apostles. but they have this peculiar advantage above us, that they can confirm their faith by continual miracles even to this day. but the truth is, they allege miracles which are calculated to unsettle a mind otherwise well established, they are so frivolous and ridiculous, or vain and false. nor, if they were ever so preternatural, ought they to have any weight in opposition to the truth of god, since the name of god ought to be sanctified in all places and at all times, whether by miraculous events, or by the common order of nature. this fallacy might perhaps be more specious, if the scripture did not apprize us of the legitimate end and use of miracles. for mark informs us, that the miracles which followed the preaching of the apostles were wrought in confirmation[ ] of it, and luke tells us, that[ ] "the lord gave testimony to the word of his grace," when "signs and wonders" were "done by the hands" of the apostles. very similar to which is the assertion of the apostle, that "salvation was confirmed" by the preaching of the gospel, "god also bearing witness with signs, and wonders, and divers miracles."[ ] but those things which we are told were seals of the gospel, shall we pervert to undermine the faith of the gospel? those things which were designed to be testimonials of the truth, shall we accommodate to the confirmation of falsehood? it is right, therefore, that the doctrine, which, according to the evangelist, claims the first attention, be examined and tried in the first place; and if it be approved, then it ought to derive confirmation from miracles. but it is the characteristic of sound doctrine, given by christ, that it tends to promote, not the glory of men, but the glory of god.[ ] christ having laid down this proof of a doctrine, it is wrong to esteem those as miracles which are directed to any other end than the glorification of the name of god alone. and we should remember that satan has his wonders, which, though they are juggling tricks rather than real miracles, are such as delude the ignorant and inexperienced. magicians and enchanters have always been famous for miracles; idolatry has been supported by astonishing miracles; and yet we admit them not as proofs of the superstition of magicians or idolaters. with this engine also the simplicity of the vulgar was anciently assailed by the donatists, who abounded in miracles. we therefore give the same answer now to our adversaries as augustine[ ] gave to the donatists, that our lord hath cautioned us against these miracle-mongers by his prediction, that there should arise false prophets, who, by various signs and lying wonders, "should deceive (if possible) the very elect."[ ] and paul has told us, that the kingdom of antichrist would be "with all power, and signs, and lying wonders."[ ] but these miracles (they say) are wrought, not by idols, or sorcerers, or false prophets, but by saints; as if we were ignorant, that it is a stratagem of satan to "transform" himself "into an angel of light."[ ] at the tomb of jeremiah,[ ] who was buried in egypt, the egyptians formerly offered sacrifices and other divine honours. was not this abusing god's holy prophet to the purposes of idolatry? yet they supposed this veneration of his sepulchre to be rewarded with a cure for the bite of serpents. what shall we say, but that it has been, and ever will be, the most righteous vengeance of god to "send those who receive not the love of the truth strong delusions, that they should believe a lie?"[ ] we are by no means without miracles, and such as are certain, and not liable to cavils. but those under which they shelter themselves are mere illusions of satan, seducing the people from the true worship of god to vanity. another calumny is their charging us with opposition to the fathers,--i mean the writers of the earlier and purer ages,--as if those writers were abettors of their impiety; whereas, if the contest were to be terminated by this authority, the victory in most parts of the controversy--to speak in the most modest terms--would be on our side. but though the writings of those fathers contain many wise and excellent things, yet in some respects they have suffered the common fate of mankind; these very dutiful children reverence only their errors and mistakes, but their excellences they either overlook, or conceal, or corrupt; so that it may truly be said to be their only study to collect dross from the midst of gold. then they overwhelm us with senseless clamours, as despisers and enemies of the fathers. but we do not hold them in such contempt, but that, if it were consistent with my present design, i could easily support by their suffrages most of the sentiments that we now maintain. but while we make use of their writings, we always remember that "all things are ours," to serve us, not to have dominion over us, and that "we are christ's"[ ] alone, and owe him universal obedience. he who neglects this distinction will have nothing decided in religion; since those holy men were ignorant of many things, frequently at variance with each other, and sometimes even inconsistent with themselves. there is great reason, they say, for the admonition of solomon, "not to transgress or remove the ancient landmarks, which our fathers have set."[ ] but the same rule is not applicable to the bounding of fields, and to the obedience of faith, which ought to be ready to "forget her own people and her father's house."[ ] but if they are so fond of allegorizing, why do they not explain the apostles, rather than any others, to be those fathers, whose appointed landmarks it is so unlawful to remove? for this is the interpretation of jerome, whose works they have received into their canons. but if they insist on preserving the landmarks of those whom they understand to be intended, why do they at pleasure so freely transgress them themselves? there were two fathers,[ ] of whom one said, that our god neither eats nor drinks, and therefore needs neither cups nor dishes; the other, that sacred things require no gold, and that gold is no recommendation of that which is not purchased with gold. this landmark therefore is transgressed by those who in sacred things are so much delighted with gold, silver, ivory, marble, jewels, and silks, and suppose that god is not rightly worshipped, unless all things abound in exquisite splendour, or rather extravagant profusion. there was a father[ ] who said he freely partook of flesh on a day when others abstained from it, because he was a christian. they transgress the landmarks therefore when they curse the soul that tastes flesh in lent. there were two fathers,[ ] of whom one said, that a monk who labors not with his hands is on a level with a cheat or a robber; and the other, that it is unlawful for monks to live on what is not their own, notwithstanding their assiduity in contemplations, studies, and prayers; and they have transgressed this landmark by placing the idle and distended carcasses of monks in cells and brothels, to be pampered on the substance of others. there was a father[ ] who said, that to see a painted image of christ, or of any other saint, in the temples of christians, is a dreadful abomination. nor was this merely the sentence of an individual; it was also decreed by an ecclesiastical council, that the object of worship should not be painted on the walls. they are far from confining themselves within these landmarks, for every corner is filled with images. another father[ ] has advised that, after having discharged the office of humanity towards the dead by the rites of sepulture, we should leave them to their repose. they break through these landmarks by inculcating a constant solicitude for the dead. there was one of the fathers[ ] who asserted that the substance of bread and wine in the eucharist ceases not, but remains, just as the substance of the human nature remains in the lord christ united with the divine. they transgress this landmark therefore by pretending that, on the words of the lord being recited, the substance of bread and wine ceases, and is transubstantiated into his body and blood. there were fathers[ ] who, while they exhibited to the universal church only one eucharist, and forbade all scandalous and immoral persons to approach it, at the same time severely censured all who, when present, did not partake of it. how far have they removed these landmarks, when they fill not only the churches, but even private houses, with their masses, admit all who choose to be spectators of them, and every one the more readily in proportion to the magnitude of his contribution, however chargeable with impurity and wickedness! they invite none to faith in christ and a faithful participation of the sacraments; but rather for purposes of gain bring forward their own work instead of the grace and merit of christ. there were two fathers,[ ] of whom one contended that the use of christ's sacred supper should be wholly forbidden to those who, content with partaking of one kind, abstained from the other; the other strenuously maintained that christian people ought not to be refused the blood of their lord, for the confession of whom they are required to shed their own. these landmarks also they have removed, in appointing, by an inviolable law, that very thing which the former punished with excommunication, and the latter gave a powerful reason for disapproving. there was a father[ ] who asserted the temerity of deciding on either side of an obscure subject, without clear and evident testimonies of scripture. this landmark they forgot when they made so many constitutions, canons, and judicial determinations, without any authority from the word of god. there was a father[ ] who upbraided montanus with having, among other heresies, been the first imposer of laws for the observance of fasts. they have gone far beyond this landmark also, in establishing fasts by the strictest laws. there was a father[ ] who denied that marriage ought to be forbidden to the ministers of the church, and pronounced cohabitation with a wife to be real chastity; and there were fathers who assented to his judgment. they have transgressed these landmarks by enjoining on their priests the strictest celibacy. there was a father who thought that attention should be paid to christ only, of whom it is said, "hear ye him," and that no regard should be had to what others before us have either said or done, only to what has been commanded by christ, who is preeminent over all. this landmark they neither prescribe to themselves, nor permit to be observed by others, when they set up over themselves and others any masters rather than christ. there was a father[ ] who contended that the church ought not to take precedence of christ, because his judgment is always according to truth; but ecclesiastical judges, like other men, may generally be deceived. breaking down this landmark also, they scruple not to assert, that all the authority of the scripture depends on the decision of the church. all the fathers, with one heart and voice, have declared it execrable and detestable for the holy word of god to be contaminated with the subtleties of sophists, and perplexed by the wrangles of logicians. do they confine themselves within these landmarks, when the whole business of their lives is to involve the simplicity of the scripture in endless controversies, and worse than sophistical wrangles? so that if the fathers were now restored to life, and heard this art of wrangling, which they call speculative divinity, they would not suspect the dispute to have the least reference to god. but if i would enumerate all the instances in which the authority of the fathers is insolently rejected by those who would be thought their dutiful children, my address would exceed all reasonable bounds. months and years would be insufficient for me. and yet such is their consummate and incorrigible impudence, they dare to censure us for presuming to transgress the ancient landmarks. nor can they gain any advantage against us by their argument from custom; for, if we were compelled to submit to custom, we should have to complain of the greatest injustice. indeed, if the judgments of men were correct, custom should be sought among the good. but the fact is often very different. what appears to be practiced by many soon obtains the force of a custom. and human affairs have scarcely ever been in so good a state as for the majority to be pleased with things of real excellence. from the private vices of multitudes, therefore, has arisen public error, or rather a common agreement of vices, which these good men would now have to be received as law. it is evident to all who can see, that the world is inundated with more than an ocean of evils, that it is overrun with numerous destructive pests, that every thing is fast verging to ruin, so that we must altogether despair of human affairs, or vigorously and even violently oppose such immense evils. and the remedy is rejected for no other reason, but because we have been accustomed to the evils so long. but let public error be tolerated in human society; in the kingdom of god nothing but his eternal truth should he heard and regarded, which no succession of years, no custom, no confederacy, can circumscribe. thus isaiah once taught the chosen people of god: "say ye not, a confederacy, to all to whom this people shall say, a confederacy:" that is, that they should not unite in the wicked consent of the people; "nor fear their fear, nor be afraid," but rather "sanctify the lord of hosts," that he might "be their fear and their dread."[ ] now, therefore, let them, if they please, object against us past ages and present examples; if we "sanctify the lord of hosts," we shall not be much afraid. for, whether many ages agree in similar impiety, he is mighty to take vengeance on the third and fourth generation; or whether the whole world combine in the same iniquity, he has given an example of the fatal end of those who sin with a multitude, by destroying all men with a deluge, and preserving noah and his small family, in order that his individual faith might condemn the whole world. lastly, a corrupt custom is nothing but an epidemical pestilence, which is equally fatal to its objects, though they fall with a multitude. besides, they ought to consider a remark, somewhere made by cyprian,[ ] that persons who sin through ignorance, though they cannot be wholly exculpated, may yet be considered in some degree excusable; but those who obstinately reject the truth offered by the divine goodness, are without any excuse at all. nor are we so embarrassed by their dilemma as to be obliged to confess, either that the church was for some time extinct, or that we have now a controversy with the church. the church of christ has lived, and will continue to live, as long as christ shall reign at the right hand of the father, by whose hand she is sustained, by whose protection she is defended, by whose power she is preserved in safety. for he will undoubtedly perform what he once promised, to be with his people "even to the end of the world."[ ] we have no quarrel against the church, for with one consent we unite with all the company of the faithful in worshipping and adoring the one god and christ the lord, as he has been adored by all the pious in all ages. but our opponents deviate widely from the truth when they acknowledge no church but what is visible to the corporeal eye, and endeavour to circumscribe it by those limits within which it is far from being included. our controversy turns on the two following points:--first, they contend that the form of the church is always apparent and visible; secondly, they place that form in the see of the roman church and her order of prelates. we assert, on the contrary, first, that the church may exist without any visible form; secondly, that its form is not contained in that external splendour which they foolishly admire, but is distinguished by a very different criterion, _viz_, the pure preaching of god's word, and the legitimate administration of the sacraments. they are not satisfied unless the church can always be pointed out with the finger. but how often among the jewish people was it so disorganized, as to have no visible form left? what splendid form do we suppose could be seen, when elias deplored his being left alone?[ ] how long, after the coming of christ, did it remain without any external form? how often, since that time, have wars, seditions, and heresies, oppressed and totally obscured it? if they had lived at that period, would they have believed that any church existed? yet elias was informed that there were "left seven thousand" who had "not bowed the knee to baal." nor should we entertain any doubt of christ's having always reigned on earth ever since his ascension to heaven. but if the pious at such periods had sought for any form evident to their senses, must not their hearts have been quite discouraged? indeed it was already considered by hilary in his day as a grievous error, that people were absorbed in foolish admiration of the episcopal dignity, and did not perceive the dreadful mischiefs concealed under that disguise. for this is his language:[ ] "one thing i advise you--beware of antichrist, for you have an improper attachment to walls; your veneration for the church of god is misplaced on houses and buildings; you wrongly introduce under them the name of peace. is there any doubt that they will be seats of antichrist? i think mountains, woods, and lakes, prisons and whirlpools, less dangerous; for these were the scenes of retirement or banishment in which the prophets prophesied." but what excites the veneration of the multitude in the present day for their horned bishops, but the supposition that those are the holy prelates of religion whom they see presiding over great cities? away, then, with such stupid admiration. let us rather leave it to the lord, since he alone "knoweth them that are his,"[ ] sometimes to remove from human observation all external knowledge of his church. i admit this to be a dreadful judgment of god on the earth; but if it be deserved by the impiety of men, why do we attempt to resist the righteous vengeance of god? thus the lord punished the ingratitude of men in former ages; for, in consequence of their resistance to his truth, and extinction of the light he had given them, he permitted them to be blinded by sense, deluded by absurd falsehoods, and immerged in profound darkness, so that there was no appearance of the true church left; yet, at the same time, in the midst of darkness and errors, he preserved his scattered and concealed people from total destruction. nor is this to be wondered at; for he knew how to save in all the confusion of babylon, and the flame of the fiery furnace. but how dangerous it is to estimate the form of the church by i know not what vain pomp, which they contend for; i shall rather briefly suggest than state at large, lest i should protract this discourse to an excessive length. the pope, they say, who holds the apostolic see, and the bishops anointed and consecrated by him, provided they are equipped with mitres and crosiers, represent the church, and ought to be considered as the church. therefore they cannot err. how is this?--because they are pastors of the church, and consecrated to the lord. and did not the pastoral character belong to aaron, and the other rulers of israel? yet aaron and his sons, after their designation to the priesthood, fell into error when they made the golden calf.[ ] according to this mode of reasoning, why should not the four hundred prophets, who lied to ahab, have represented the church?[ ] but the church remained on the side of micaiah, solitary and despised as he was, and out of his mouth proceeded the truth. did not those prophets exhibit both the name and appearance of the church, who with united violence rose up against jeremiah, and threatened and boasted, "the law shall not perish from the priest, nor counsel from the wise, nor the word from the prophet?"[ ] jeremiah is sent singly against the whole multitude of prophets, with a denunciation from the lord, that the "law shall perish from the priest, counsel from the wise, and the word from the prophet."[ ] and was there not the like external respectability in the council convened by the chief priests, scribes, and pharisees, to consult about putting christ to death?[ ] now, let them go and adhere to the external appearance, and thereby make christ and all the prophets schismatics, and, on the other hand, make the ministers of satan instruments of the holy spirit. but if they speak their real sentiments, let them answer me sincerely, what nation or place they consider as the seat of the church, from the time when, by a decree of the council of basil, eugenius was deposed and degraded from the pontificate, and amadeus substituted in his place. they cannot deny that the council, as far as relates to external forms, was a lawful one, and summoned not only by one pope, but by two. there eugenius was pronounced guilty of schism, rebellion, and obstinacy, together with all the host of cardinals and bishops who had joined him in attempting a dissolution of the council. yet afterwards, assisted by the favour of princes, he regained the quiet possession of his former dignity. that election of amadeus, though formally made by the authority of a general and holy synod, vanished into smoke; and he was appeased with a cardinal's hat, like a barking dog with a morsel. from the bosom of those heretics and rebels have proceeded all the popes, cardinals, bishops, abbots, and priests ever since. here they must stop. for to which party will they give the title of the church? will they deny that this was a general council, which wanted nothing to complete its external majesty, being solemnly convened by two papal bulls, consecrated by a presiding legate of the roman see, and well regulated in every point of order, and invariably preserving the same dignity to the last? will they acknowledge eugenius to be a schismatic, with all his adherents, by whom they have all been consecrated? either, therefore, let them give a different definition of the form of the church, or, whatever be their number, we shall account them all schismatics, as having been knowingly and voluntarily ordained by heretics. but if it had never been ascertained before, that the church is not confined to external pomps they would themselves afford us abundant proof of it, who have so long superciliously exhibited themselves to the world under the title of the church, though they were at the same time the deadly plagues of it. i speak not of their morals, and those tragical exploits with which all their lives abound, since they profess themselves to be pharisees, who are to be heard and not imitated. i refer to the very doctrine itself, on which they found their claim to be considered as the church. if you devote a portion of your leisure, sire, to the perusal of our writings, you will clearly discover that doctrine to be a fatal pestilence of souls, the firebrand, ruin, and destruction of the church. finally, they betray great want of candour, by invidiously repeating what great commotions, tumults, and contentions, have attended the preaching of our doctrine, and what effects it produces in many persons. for it is unfair to charge it with those evils which ought to be attributed to the malice of satan. it is the native property of the divine word, never to make its appearance without disturbing satan, and rousing his opposition. this is a most certain and unequivocal criterion by which it is distinguished from false doctrines, which are easily broached when they are heard with general attention, and received with applauses by the world. thus, in some ages, when all things were immerged in profound darkness, the prince of this world amused and diverted himself with the generality of mankind, and, like another sardanapalus, gave himself up to his ease and pleasures in perfect peace; for what would he do but amuse and divert himself, in the quiet and undisturbed possession of his kingdom? but when the light shining from above dissipated a portion of his darkness--when that mighty one alarmed and assaulted his kingdom--then he began to shake off his wonted torpor, and to hurry on his armour. first, indeed, he stirred up the power of men to suppress the truth by violence at its first appearance; and when this proved ineffectual, he had recourse to subtlety. he made the catabaptists, and other infamous characters, the instruments of exciting dissensions and doctrinal controversies, with a view to obscure and finally to extinguish it. and now he continues to attack it both ways; for he endeavours to root up this genuine seed by means of human force, and at the same time tries every effort to choke it with his tares, that it may not grow and produce fruit. but all his attempts will be vain, if we attend to the admonitions of the lord, who hath long ago made us acquainted with his devices, that we might not be caught by him unawares, and has armed us with sufficient means of defence against all his assaults. but to charge the word of god with the odium of seditions, excited against it by wicked and rebellious men, or of sects raised by imposters,--is not this extreme malignity? yet it is not without example in former times. elias was asked whether it was not he "that troubled israel."[ ] christ was represented by the jews as guilty of sedition.[ ] the apostles were accused of stirring up popular commotions.[ ] wherein does this differ from the conduct of those who, at the present day, impute to us all the disturbances, tumults, and contentions, that break out against us? but the proper answer to such accusations has been taught us by elias, that the dissemination of errors and the raising of tumults is not chargeable on us, but on those who are resisting the power of god. but as this one reply is sufficient to repress their temerity, so, on the other hand, we must meet the weakness of some persons, who are frequently disturbed with such offences, and become unsettled and wavering in their minds. now, that they may not stumble and fall amidst this agitation and perplexity, let them know that the apostles in their day experienced the same things that now befall us. there were "unlearned and unstable" men, peter says, who "wrested" the inspired writings of paul "to their own destruction."[ ] there were despisers of god, who, when they heard that "where sin abounded grace did much more abound," immediately concluded, let us "continue in sin, that grace may abound." when they heard that the faithful were "not under the law," they immediately croaked, "we will sin, because we are not under the law, but under grace."[ ] there were some who accused him as an encourager of sin. many false apostles crept in, to destroy the churches he had raised. "some preached" the gospel "of envy and strife, not in sincerity," maliciously "supposing to add affliction to his bonds."[ ] in some places the gospel was attended with little benefit. "all were seeking their own, not the things of jesus christ."[ ] others returned "like dogs to their vomit, and like swine to their wallowing in the mire."[ ] many perverted the liberty of the spirit into the licentiousness of the flesh. many insinuated themselves as brethren, who afterwards brought the pious into dangers. various contentions were excited among the brethren themselves. what was to be done by the apostles in such circumstances? should they not have dissembled for a time, or rather have rejected and deserted that gospel which appeared to be the nursery of so many disputes, the cause of so many dangers, the occasion of so many offences? but in such difficulties as these, their minds were relieved by this reflection that christ is the "stone of stumbling and rock of offence,"[ ] "set for the fall and rising again of many, and for a sign which shall be spoken against;"[ ] and armed with this confidence, they proceeded boldly through all the dangers of tumults and offences. the same consideration should support us, since paul declares it to be the perpetual character of the gospel, that it is a "savour of death unto death in them that perish,"[ ] although it was rather given us to be the "savour of life unto life," and "the power of god to" the "salvation" of the faithful;[ ] which we also should certainly experience it to be, if we did not corrupt this eminent gift of god by our ingratitude, and prevert to our destruction what ought to be a principal instrument of our salvation. but i return to you, sire. let not your majesty be at all moved by those groundless accusations with which our adversaries endeavour to terrify you; as that the sole tendency and design of this new gospel--for so they call it--is to furnish a pretext for seditions, and to gain impunity for all crimes. "for god is not the author of confusion, but of peace;"[ ] nor is "the son of god," who came to "destroy the works of the devil, the minister of sin."[ ] and it is unjust to charge us with such motives and designs, of which we have never given cause for the least suspicion. is it probable that we are meditating the subversion of kingdoms?--we, who were never heard to utter a factious word, whose lives were ever known to be peaceable and honest while we lived under your government, and who, even now in our exile, cease not to pray for all prosperity to attend yourself and your kingdom! is it probable that we are seeking an unlimited license to commit crimes with impunity? in whose conduct, though many things may be blamed, yet there is nothing worthy of such severe reproach! nor have we, by divine grace, profited so little in the gospel, but that our life may be an example to our detractors of chastity, liberality, mercy, temperance, patience, modesty, and every other virtue. it is an undeniable fact, that we sincerely fear and worship god, whose name we desire to be sanctified both by our life and by our death; and envy itself is constrained to bear testimony to the innocence and civil integrity of some of us, who have suffered the punishment of death for that very thing which ought to be accounted their highest praise. but if the gospel be made a pretext for tumults, which has not yet happened in your kingdom; if any persons make the liberty of divine grace an excuse for the licentiousness of their vices, of whom i have known many,--there are laws and legal penalties, by which they may be punished according to their deserts; only let not the gospel of god be reproached for the crimes of wicked men. you have now, sire, the virulent iniquity of our calumniators laid before you in a sufficient number of instances, that you may not receive their accusations with too credulous an ear.--i fear i have gone too much into the detail, as this preface already approaches the size of a full apology; whereas i intended it not to contain our defence, but only to prepare your mind to attend to the pleading of our cause; for, though you are now averse and alienated from us, and even inflamed against us, we despair not of regaining your favour, if you will only once read with calmness and composure this our confession, which we intend as our defence before your majesty. but, on the contrary, if your ears are so preoccupied with the whispers of the malevolent, as to leave no opportunity for the accused to speak for themselves, and if those outrageous furies, with your connivance, continue to persecute with imprisonments, scourges, tortures, confiscations, and flames, we shall indeed, like sheep destined to the slaughter, be reduced to the greatest extremities. yet shall we in patience possess our souls, and wait for the mighty hand of the lord, which undoubtedly will in time appear, and show itself armed for the deliverance of the poor from their affliction, and for the punishment of their despisers, who now exult in such perfect security. may the lord, the king of kings, establish your throne with righteousness, and your kingdom with equity. _basil, st august, ._ [footnote a: john calvin was born at noyon, picardy, france, in , and died at geneva in . he joined the reformation about , and, having been banished from paris, took refuge in switzerland. the "institutes," published at basle in , contain a comprehensive statement of the beliefs of that school of protestant theology which bears calvin's name; and in this "dedication" we have calvin's own summing up of the essentials of his creed.] [footnote : prov. xxix. .] [footnote : daniel ii. . isaiah xi. . psalm ii. .] [footnote rom. xii. .] [footnote : jer. ii. .] [footnote : rom. viii. .] [footnote : i tim. iv. .] [footnote : john xvii, .] [footnote : rom, iv. . i cor. xv. , .] [footnote : isaiah i. .] [footnote : mark xvi. .] [footnote : acts xiv. .] [footnote : heb. ii. - .] [footnote : john vii. , viii. .] [footnote : in joan, tract. .] [footnote : matt. xxiv. .] [footnote : thess. ii. .] [footnote : cor. xi. .] [footnote : hierom. in praef. jerem.] [footnote : thess. ii. , .] [footnote : i cor. iii. , ] [footnote : prov xxii. .] [footnote : psalm xlv. .] [footnote : acat. in lib. ii, cap. . trip. hist. amb. lib. , de off. c. .] [footnote : spiridion. trip. hist. lib. , c. .] [footnote : trip. hist. lib. , c. . august. de opere mon. c. .] [footnote : epiph. epist. ab hier. vers. con. eliber. c. .] [footnote : amb de abra. lib , c. .] [footnote : gelas. pap in conc. rom.] [footnote : chrys. in cap. ephes. calix. papa de cons. dist. .] [footnote : gelas. can. comperimus de cons. dist. . cypr. epist. , lib. , de laps.] [footnote : august. lib. , de pec. mer. cap. ult.] [footnote : apollon de quo eccl. hist. lib. , cap. , .] [footnote : paphnut. trip. hist. lib. , c. . cypr. epist. , lib. .] [footnote : aug. cap. , contr. cresc. grammatic.] [footnote : isaiah viii. , .] [footnote : epist. , lib. , et in epist. ad. julian, de haeret. baptiz.] [footnote : matt, xxvlii. .] [footnote : i kings xix. , .] [footnote : contr. auxent.] [footnote : tim. ii. .] [footnote : exod. xxxii. .] [footnote : i kings xxii. , - .] [footnote : jer. xviii. .] [footnote : jer. iv. .] [footnote : matt. xxvi. , .] [footnote : kings xviii. .] [footnote : luke xxiii. , .] [footnote : acts xvii. , xxiv. .] [footnote : pet. iii. .] [footnote : rom. v. , vi. , , .] [footnote : phil. i. , .] [footnote : phil. ii. .] [footnote : pet. ii. .] [footnote : pet. ii. .] [footnote : luke ii. .] [footnote : cor. ii. , .] [footnote : rom. i. .] [footnote : cor. xiv. .] [footnote : john iii. . gal. ii. .] general syllabus the design of the author in these christian institutes is twofold, relating, first to the knowledge of god, as the way to attain a blessed immortality; and, in connection with and subservience to this, secondly, to the knowledge of ourselves. in the prosecution of this design, he strictly follows the method of the apostles' creed, as being most familiar to all christians. for as the creed consists of four parts, the first relating to god the father, the second to the son, the third to the holy spirit, the fourth to the church; so the author distributes the whole of this work into four books, corresponding respectively to the four parts of the creed; as will clearly appear from the following detail:-- i. the first article of the creed relates to god the father, and to the creation, conservation, and government of all things, which are included in his omnipotence. so the first book is on the knowledge of god, considered as the creator, preserver, and governor of the universe at large, and every thing contained in it. it shows both the nature and tendency of the true knowledge of the creator--that this is not learned in the schools, but that every man from his birth is self-taught it--yet that the depravity of men is so great as to corrupt and extinguish this knowledge, partly by ignorance, partly by wickedness; so that it neither leads him to glorify god as he ought, nor conducts him to the attainment of happiness--and though this internal knowledge is assisted by all the creatures around, which serve as a mirror to display the divine perfections, yet that man does not profit by it--therefore, that to those, whom it is god's will to bring to an intimate and saving knowledge of himself, he gives his written word; which introduces observations on the sacred scripture--that he has therein revealed himself; that not the father only, but the father, son, and holy spirit, united, is the creator of heaven and earth; whom neither the knowledge innate by nature, nor the very beautiful mirror displayed to us in the world, can, in consequence of our depravity, teach us to know so as to glorify him. this gives occasion for treating of the revelation of god in the scripture, of the unity of the divine essence, and the trinity of persons.--to prevent man from attributing to god the blame of his own voluntary blindness, the author shows the state of man at his creation, and treats of the image of god, freewill, and the primative integrity of nature.--having finished the subject of creation, he proceeds to the conservation and government of all things, concluding the first book with a full discussion of the doctrine of divine providence. ii. but since man is fallen by sin from the state in which he was created, it is necessary to come to christ. therefore it follows in the creed, "and in jesus christ, his only son our lord," &c. so in the second book of the institutes our author treats of the knowledge of god as the redeemer in christ; and having shown the fall of man, leads him to christ the mediator. here he states the doctrine of original sin--that man possesses no inherent strength to enable him to deliver himself from sin and the impending curse, but that, on the contrary, nothing can proceed from him, antecedently to reconciliation and renovation, but what is deserving of condemnation--therefore, that, man being utterly lost in himself, and incapable of conceiving even a good thought by which he may restore himself, or perform actions acceptable to god, he must seek redemption out of himself, in christ--that the law was given for this purpose, not to confine its observers to itself, but to conduct them to christ; which gives occasion to introduce an exposition of the moral law--that he was known, as the author of salvation, to the jews under the law, but more fully under the gospel, in which he is manifested to the world.--hence follows the doctrine of the similarity and difference of the old and new testament, of the law and gospel.--it is next stated, that, in order to the complete accomplishment of salvation, it was necessary for the eternal son of god to become man, and that he actually assumed a real human nature:--it is also shown how these two natures constitute one person--that the office of christ, appointed for the acquisition and application of complete salvation by his merit and efficacy, is sacerdotal, regal, and prophetical--next follows the manner in which christ executed his office, or actually performed the part of a mediator, being an exposition of the articles respecting his death, resurrection, and ascension to heaven.--lastly, the author shows the truth and propriety of affirming that christ merited the grace of god and salvation for us. iii. as long as christ is separate from us, he profits us nothing. hence the necessity of our being ingrafted into him, as branches into a vine. therefore the doctrine concerning christ is followed, in the third part of the creed, by this clause, "i believe in the holy spirit," as being the bond of union between us and christ. so in the third book our author treats of the holy spirit, who unites us to christ--and consequently of faith, by which we embrace christ, with his twofold benefit, free righteousness, which he imputes to us, and regeneration, which he commences within us, by bestowing repentance upon us.--and to show that we have not the least room to glory in such faith as is unconnected with the pursuit of repentance, before proceeding to the full discussion of justification, he treats at large of repentance and the continual exercise of it, which christ, apprehended by faith, produces in us by his spirit--he next fully discusses the first and chief benefit of christ when united to us by the holy spirit that is, justification--and then treats of prayer, which resembles the hand that actually receives those blessings to be enjoyed, which faith knows, from the word of promise, to be laid up with god for our use.--but as all men are not united to christ, the sole author of salvation, by the holy spirit, who creates and preserves faith in us, he treats of god's eternal election; which is the cause that we, in whom he foresaw no good but what he intended freely to bestow, have been favored with the gift of christ, and united to god by the effectual call of the gospel.--lastly, he treats of complete regeneration, and the fruition of happiness; that is, the final resurrection, towards which our eyes must be directed, since in this world the felicity of the pious, in respect of enjoyment, is only begun. iv. but as the holy spirit does not unite all men to christ, or make them partakers of faith, and on those to whom he imparts it he does not ordinarily bestow it without means, but employs for this purpose the preaching of the gospel and the use of the sacraments, with the administration of all discipline, therefore it follows in the creed, "i believe in the holy catholic church," whom, although involved in eternal death, yet, in pursuance of the gratuitous election, god has freely reconciled to himself in christ, and made partakers of the holy spirit, that, being ingrafted into christ, they may have communion with him as their head, whence flows a perpetual remission of sins, and a full restoration to eternal life. so in the fourth book our author treats of the church--then of the means used by the holy spirit in effectually calling from spiritual death, and preserving the church--the word and sacraments--baptism and the lord's supper--which are as it were christ's regal sceptre, by which he commences his spiritual reign in the church by the energy of his spirit, and carries it forwards from day to day during the present life, after the close of which he perfects it without those means. and as political institutions are the asylums of the church in this life, though civil government is distinct from the spiritual kingdom of christ, our author instructs us respecting it as a signal blessing of god, which the church ought to acknowledge with gratitude of heart, till we are called out of this transitory state to the heavenly inheritance, where god will be all in all. this is the plan of the institutes, which may be comprised in the following brief summary:-- man, created originally upright, being afterwards ruined, not partially, but totally, finds salvation out of himself, wholly in christ; to whom being united by the holy spirit, freely bestowed, without any regard of future works, he enjoys in him a twofold benefit, the perfect imputation of righteousness, which attends him to the grave, and the commencement of sanctification, which he daily increases, till at length he completes it at the day of regeneration or resurrection of the body, so that in eternal life and the heavenly inheritance his praises are celebrated for such stupendous mercy. dedication of the revolutions of the heavenly bodies by nicolaus copernicus ( )[a] to pope paul iii i can easily conceive, most holy father, that as soon as some people learn that in this book which i have written concerning the revolutions of the heavenly bodies, i ascribe certain motions to the earth, they will cry out at once that i and my theory should be rejected. for i am not so much in love with my conclusions as not to weigh what others will think about them, and although i know that the meditations of a philosopher are far removed from the judgment of the laity, because his endeavor is to seek out the truth in all things, so far as this is permitted by god to the human reason, i still believe that one must avoid theories altogether foreign to orthodoxy. accordingly, when i considered in my own mind how absurd a performance it must seem to those who know that the judgment of many centuries has approved the view that the earth remains fixed as center in the midst of the heavens, if i should, on the contrary, assert that the earth moves; i was for a long time at a loss to know whether i should publish the commentaries which i have written in proof of its motion, or whether it were not better to follow the example of the pythagoreans and of some others, who were accustomed to transmit the secrets of philosophy not in writing but orally, and only to their relatives and friends, as the letter from lysis to hipparchus bears witness. they did this, it seems to me, not as some think, because of a certain selfish reluctance to give their views to the world, but in order that the noblest truths, worked out by the careful study of great men, should not be despised by those who are vexed at the idea of taking great pains with any forms of literature except such as would be profitable, or by those who, if they are driven to the study of philosophy for its own sake by the admonitions and the example of others, nevertheless, on account of their stupidity, hold a place among philosophers similar to that of drones among bees. therefore, when i considered this carefully, the contempt which i had to fear because of the novelty and apparent absurdity of my view, nearly induced me to abandon utterly the work i had begun. my friends, however, in spite of long delay and even resistance on my part, withheld me from this decision. first among these was nicolaus schonberg, cardinal of capua, distinguished in all branches of learning. next to him comes my very dear friend, tidemann giese, bishop of culm, a most earnest student, as he is, of sacred and, indeed, of all good learning. the latter has often urged me, at times even spurring me on with reproaches, to publish and at last bring to the light the book which had lain in my study not nine years merely, but already going on four times nine. not a few other very eminent and scholarly men made the same request, urging that i should no longer through fear refuse to give out my work for the common benefit of students of mathematics. they said i should find that the more absurd most men now thought this theory of mine concerning the motion of the earth, the more admiration and gratitude it would command after they saw in the publication of my commentaries the mist of absurdity cleared away by most transparent proofs. so, influenced by these advisors and this hope, i have at length allowed my friends to publish the work, as they had long besought me to do. but perhaps your holiness will not so much wonder that i have ventured to publish these studies of mine, after having taken such pains in elaborating them that i have not hesitated to commit to writing my views of the motion of the earth, as you will be curious to hear how it occurred to me to venture, contrary to the accepted view of mathematicians, and well-nigh contrary to common sense, to form a conception of any terrestrial motion whatsoever. therefore i would not have it unknown to your holiness, that the only thing which induced me to look for another way of reckoning the movements of the heavenly bodies was that i knew that mathematicians by no means agree in their investigations thereof. for, in the first place, they are so much in doubt concerning the motion of the sun and the moon, that they can not even demonstrate and prove by observation the constant length of a complete year; and in the second place, in determining the motions both of these and of the five other planets, they fail to employ consistently one set of first principles and hypotheses, but use methods of proof based only upon the apparent revolutions and motions. for some employ concentric circles only; others, eccentric circles and epicycles; and even by these means they do not completely attain the desired end. for, although those who have depended upon concentric circles have shown that certain diverse motions can be deduced from these, yet they have not succeeded thereby in laying down any sure principle, corresponding indisputably to the phenomena. these, on the other hand, who have devised systems of eccentric circles, although they seem in great part to have solved the apparent movements by calculations which by these eccentrics are made to fit, have nevertheless introduced many things which seem to contradict the first principles of the uniformity of motion. nor have they been able to discover or calculate from these the main point, which is the shape of the world and the fixed symmetry of its parts; but their procedure has been as if someone were to collect hands, feet, a head, and other members from various places, all very fine in themselves, but not proportionate to one body, and no single one corresponding in its turn to the others, so that a monster rather than a man would be formed from them. thus in their process of demonstration which they term a "method," they are found to have omitted something essential, or to have included something foreign and not pertaining to the matter in hand. this certainly would never have happened to them if they had followed fixed principles; for if the hypotheses they assumed were not false, all that resulted therefrom would be verified indubitably. those things which i am saying now may be obscure, yet they will be made clearer in their proper place. therefore, having turned over in my mind for a long time this uncertainty of the traditional mathematical methods of calculating the motions of the celestial bodies, i began to grow disgusted that no more consistent scheme of the movements of the mechanism of the universe, set up for our benefit by that best and most law abiding architect of all things, was agreed upon by philosophers who otherwise investigate so carefully the most minute details of this world. wherefore i undertook the task of rereading the books of all the philosophers i could get access to, to see whether any one ever was of the opinion that the motions of the celestial bodies were other than those postulated by the men who taught mathematics in the schools. and i found first, indeed, in cicero, that niceta perceived that the earth moved; and afterward in plutarch i found that some others were of this opinion, whose words i have seen fit to quote here, that they may be accessible to all:-- "some maintain that the earth is stationary, but philolaus the pythagorean says that it revolves in a circle about the fire of the ecliptic, like the sun and moon. heraklides of pontus and ekphantus the pythagorean make the earth move, not changing its position, however, confined in its falling and rising around its own center in the manner of a wheel." taking this as a starting point, i began to consider the mobility of the earth; and although the idea seemed absurd, yet because i knew that the liberty had been granted to others before me to postulate all sorts of little circles for explaining the phenomena of the stars, i thought i also might easily be permitted to try whether by postulating some motion of the earth, more reliable conclusions could be reached regarding the revolution of the heavenly bodies, than those of my predecessors. and so, after postulating movements, which, farther on in the book, i ascribe to the earth, i have found by many and long observations that if the movements of the other planets are assumed for the circular motion of the earth and are substituted for the revolution of each star, not only do their phenomena follow logically therefrom, but the relative positions and magnitudes both of the stars and all their orbits, and of the heavens themselves, become so closely related that in none of its parts can anything be changed without causing confusion in the other parts and in the whole universe. therefore, in the course of the work i have followed this plan: i describe in the first book all the positions of the orbits together with the movements which i ascribe to the earth, in order that this book might contain, as it were, the general scheme of the universe. thereafter in the remaining books, i set forth the motions of the other stars and of all their orbits together with the movement of the earth, in order that one may see from this to what extent the movements and appearances of the other stars and their orbits can be saved, if they are transferred to the movement of the earth. nor do i doubt that ingenious and learned mathematicians will sustain me, if they are willing to recognize and weigh, not superficially, but with that thoroughness which philosophy demands above all things, those matters which have been adduced by me in this work to demonstrate these theories. in order, however, that both the learned and the unlearned equally may see that i do not avoid anyone's judgment, i have preferred to dedicate these lucubrations of mine to your holiness rather than to any other, because, even in this remote corner of the world where i live, you are considered to be the most eminent man in dignity of rank and in love of all learning and even of mathematics, so that by your authority and judgment you can easily suppress the bites of slanderers, albeit the proverb hath it that there is no remedy for the bite of a sycophant. if perchance there shall be idle talkers, who, though they are ignorant of all mathematical sciences, nevertheless assume the right to pass judgment on these things, and if they should dare to criticise and attack this theory of mine because of some passage of scripture which they have falsely distorted for their own purpose, i care not at all; i will even despise their judgment as foolish. for it is not unknown that lactantius, otherwise a famous writer but a poor mathematician, speaks most childishly of the shape of the earth when he makes fun of those who said that the earth has the form of a sphere. it should not seem strange then to zealous students, if some such people shall ridicule us also. mathematics are written for mathematicians, to whom, if my opinion does not deceive me, our labors will seem to contribute something to the ecclesiastical state whose chief office your holiness now occupies; for when not so very long ago, under leo x, in the lateran council the question of revising the ecclesiastical calendar was discussed, it then remained unsettled, simply because the length of the years and months, and the motions of the sun and moon were held to have been not yet sufficiently determined. since that time, i have given my attention to observing these more accurately, urged on by a very distinguished man, paul, bishop of fossombrone, who at that time had charge of the matter. but what i may have accomplished herein i leave to the judgment of your holiness in particular, and to that of all other learned mathematicians; and lest i seem to your holiness to promise more regarding the usefulness of the work than i can perform, i now pass to the work itself. [footnote a: nicolaus copernicus was born in at thorn in west prussia, of a polish father and a german mother. he attended the university of cracow and bologna, lectured on astronomy and mathematics at rome, and later studied medicine at padua and canon law at ferrara. he was appointed canon of the cathedral of frauenburg, and in this town he died in , having devoted the latter part of his life largely to astronomy. the book which was introduced by this dedication laid the foundations of modern astronomy. at the time when it was written, the earth was believed by all to be the fixed centre of the universe; and although many of the arguments used by copernicus were invalid and absurd, he was the first modern to put forth the heliocentric theory as "a better explanation." it remained for kepler, galileo, and newton, to establish the theory on firm grounds.] preface to the history of the reformation in scotland by john knox (c. )[a] to the gentill readar, grace and peace from god the father of our lord jesus christ, with the perpetuall encrease of the holy spreit. it is not unknowen, christeane reader, that the same clud of ignorance, that long hath darkened many realmes under this accurssed kingdome of that romane antichrist, hath also owercovered this poore realme; that idolatrie hath bein manteined, the bloode of innocentis hath bene sched, and christ jesus his eternall treuth hath bene abhorred, detested, and blasphemed. but that same god that caused light to schyne out of darknes, in the multitud of his mercyes, hath of long tyme opened the eis of some evin within this realme, to see the vanitie of that which then was universally embrased for trew religioun; and hes gevin unto them strenth to oppone[ ] thame selfis unto the same: and now, into these our last and moist[ ] corrupt dayis, hath maid his treuth so to triumphs amonges us, that, in despyte of sathan, hipochrisye is disclosed, and the trew wyrshipping of god is manifested to all the inhabitantis of this realme who eis sathan blyndis not, eyther by thair fylthy lustes, or ellis by ambitioun, and insatiable covetousness, which mack them repung to[ ] the power of god working by his worde. and becaus we ar not ignorant what diverse bruittis[ ] war dispersed of us, the professoures of jesus christ within this realme, in the begynnyng of our interprise, ordour was tackin, that all our proceidingis should be committed to register; as that thei war, by such as then paynfullie travailled boith by toung and pen; and so was collected a just volume, (as after will appeir,) conteanyng thingis done frome the fyftie-awght[ ] year of god, till the arrivall of the quenis majestic[ ] furth of france, with the which the collectour and writtar for that tyme was content, and never mynded[ ] further to have travailled in that kynd of writting. but, after invocatioun of the name of god, and after consultatioun with some faythfull, what was thought by thame expedient to advance goddis glorie, and to edifie this present generatioun, and the posteritie to come, it was concluded, that faythfull rehersall should be maid of such personages as god had maid instruments of his glorie, by opponyng of thame selfis to manifest abuses, superstitioun, and idolatrie; and albeit thare be no great nomber, yet ar thei mo then the collectour wold have looked for at the begynnyng, and thairfoir is the volume somewhat enlarged abuif his expectatioun: and yit, in the begynnyng, mon[ ] we crave of all the gentill readaris, not to look[ ] of us such ane history as shall expresse all thingis that have occurred within this realme, during the tyme of this terrible conflict that lies bene betuix the sanctes[ ] of god and these bloody wolves who clame to thame selves the titill of clargie, and to have authentic ower the saules of men; for, with the pollicey,[ ] mynd we to meddill no further then it hath religioun mixed with it. and thairfoir albeit that many thingis which wer don be omitted, yit, yf we invent no leys,[ ] we think our selves blamless in that behalf. of one other (thing) we mon[ ] foirwarne the discreat readaris, which is, that thei be not offended that the sempill treuth be spokin without partialitie; for seing that of men we neyther hunt for reward, nor yitt for vane glorie, we litill pass by the approbatioun of such as seldome judge weill of god and of his workis. lett not thairfoar the readir wonder, albeit that our style vary and speik diverslie of men, according as thei have declared thameselves sometymes ennemymes and sometymes freindis, sometymes fervent, sometymes cold, sometymes constant, and sometymes changeable in the cause of god and of his holy religioun: for, in this our simplicitie, we suppoise that the godlie shall espy our purpose, which is, that god may be praised for his mercy schawin,[ ] this present age may be admonished to be thankfull for goddis benefittis offerred, and the posteritie to cum may be instructed how wonderouslie hath the light of christ jesus prevailled against darkness in this last and most corrupted age. [footnote a: john knox ( - ), the leader of the scottish reformation and its historian, was educated at glasgow university; was pastor to english congregations at frankfort-on-maine and at geneva, where he met calvin; returned to scotland in ; and from that time till his death was active in the establishment of the presbyterian organization, through which his powerful personality has continued to influence the scottish national character to the present day. his preface, which is printed here in the original scottish spelling, gives some indication of the sternness, not to say virulence, of his temper towards the roman church.] [footnote : oppose] [footnote : most] [footnote : resist.] [footnote : rumors.] [footnote : i.e. .] [footnote : mary, queen of scots, arrived in scotland, aug. , .] [footnote : intended.] [footnote : must.] [footnote : expect.] [footnote : saints.] [footnote : civil or state politics.] [footnote : lies.] [footnote : shown.] prefatory letter to sir walter raleigh on the faerie queene by edmund spenser ( )[a] a letter of the authors expounding his whole intention in the course of this worke: which for that it giveth great light to the reader, for the better understanding is hereunto annexed to the right noble, and valorous, sir walter raleigh, knight, lord wardein of the stanneryes, and her majesties liefetenaunt of the county of cornewayll sir, knowing how doubtfully all allegories may be construed, and this booke of mine, which i have entituled the _faery queene_, being a continued allegory, or darke conceit, i have thought good, as well for avoyding of gealous opinions and misconstructions, as also for your better light in reading thereof, (being so by you commanded,) to discover unto you the general intention and meaning, which in the whole course thereof i have fashioned, without expressing of any particular purposes or by accidents therein occasioned. the generall end therefore of all the booke is to fashion a gentleman or noble person in vertuous and gentle discipline: which for that i conceived shoulde be most plausible and pleasing, being coloured with an historicall fiction, the which the most part of men delight to read, rather for variety of matter then for profile of the ensample, i chose the historye of king arthure, as most fitte for the excellency of his person, being made famous by many mens former workes, and also furthest from the daunger of envy, and suspition of present time. in which i have followed all the antique poets historicall: first homere, who in the persons of agamemnon and ulysses hath ensampled a good governour and a vertuous man, the one in his ilias, the other in his odysseis; then virgil, whose like intention was to doe in the person of Æneas; after him ariosto comprised them both in his orlando; and lately tasso dissevered them againe, and formed both parts in two persons, namely that part which they in philosophy call ethice, or vertues of a private man, coloured in his rinaldo; the other named politice in his godfredo. by ensample of which excellente poets, i labour to pourtraict in arthure, before he was king, the image of a brave knight, perfected in the twelve private morall vertues, as aristotle hath devised, the which is the purpose of these first twelve bookes: which if i finde to be well accepted, i may be perhaps encoraged to frame the other part of polliticke vertues in his person, after that hee came to be king. to some, i know, this methode will seeme displeasaunt, which had rather have good discipline delivered plainly in way of precepts, or sermoned at large, as they use, then thus clowdily enwrapped in allegoricall devises. but such, me seeme, should be satisfide with the use of these dayes, seeing all things accounted by their showes, and nothing esteemed of, that is not delightfull and pleasing to commune sence. for this cause is xenophon preferred before plato, for that the one, in the exquisite depth of his judgement, formed a commune welth such as it should be, but the other in the person of cyrus and the persians fashioned a governement, such as might best be: so much more profitable and gratious is doctrine by ensample, then by rule. so have i laboured to doe in the person of arthure: whome i conceive, after his long education by timon, to whom he was by merlin delivered to be brought up, so soone as he was borne of the lady igrayne, to have seene in a dream or vision the faery queen, with whose excellent beauty ravished, he awaking resolved to seeke her out, and so being by merlin armed, and by timon throughly instructed, he went to seeke her forth in faerye land. in that faery queene i meane glory in my generall intention, but in my particular i conceive the most excellent and glorious person of our soveraine the queene, and her kingdome in faery land. and yet, in some places els, i doe otherwise shadow her. for considering she beareth two persons, the one of a most royall queene or empresse, the other of a most vertuous and beautifull lady, this latter part in some places i doe expresse in belphoebe, fashioning her name according to your owne excellent conceipt of cynthia, (phæbe and cynthia being both names of diana.) so in the person of prince arthure i sette forth magnificence in particular, which vertue, for that (according to aristotle and the rest) it is the perfection of all the rest, and conteineth in it them all, therefore in the whole course i mention the deedes of arthure applyable to that vertue which i write of in that booke. but of the xii. other vertues i make xii. other knights the patrones, for the more variety of the history: of which these three bookes contayn three. the first of the knight of the redcrosse, in whome i expresse holynes: the seconde of sir guyon, in whome i sette forth temperaunce: the third of britomartis, a lady knight, in whome i picture chastity. but because the beginning of the whole worke seemeth abrupte and as depending upon other antecedents, it needs that ye know the occasion of these three knights severall adventures. for the methode of a poet historical is not such as of an historiographer. for an historiographer discourseth of affayres orderly as they were donne, accounting as well the times as the actions; but a poet thrusteth into the middest, even where it most concerneth him, and there recoursing to the thinges forepaste, and divining of thinges to come, maketh a pleasing analysis of all. the beginning therefore of my history, if it were to be told by an historiographer, should be the twelfth booke, which is the last; where i devise that the faery queene kept her annuall feaste xii. dayes, uppon which xii. severall dayes, the occasions of the xii. several adventures hapned, which being undertaken by xii. severall knights, are in these xii. books severally handled and discoursed. the first was this. in the beginning of the feast, there presented him selfe a tall clownish younge man, who, falling before the queen of faries, desired a boone (as the manner then was) which during that feast she might not refuse: which was that hee might have the atchievement of any adventure, which during that feaste should happen: that being graunted, he rested him on the floore, unfitte through his rusticity for a better place. soone after entred a faire ladye in mourning weedes, riding on a white asse, with a dwarfe behind her leading a warlike steed, that bore the armes of a knight, and his speare in the dwarfes hand. shee, falling before the queene of faeries, complayned that her father and mother, an ancient king and queene, had bene by an huge dragon many years shut up in a brasen castle, who thence suffred them not to yssew: and therefore besought the faery queene to assygne her some one of her knights to take on him that exployt. presently that clownish person, upstarting, desired that adventure: whereat the queene much wondering, and the lady much gainesaying, yet he earnestly importuned his desire. in the end the lady told him, that unlesse that armour which she brought would serve him (that is, the armour of a christian man specified by saint paul, vi. ephes.), that he could not succeed in that enterprise: which being forthwith put upon him with dewe furnitures thereunto, he seemed the goodliest man in al that company, and was well liked of the lady. and eftesoones taking on him knighthood, and mounting on that straunge courser, he went forth with her on that adventure: where beginneth the first booke vz. a gentle knight was pricking on the playne, &c. the second day ther came in a palmer bearing an infant with bloody hands, whose parents he complained to have bene slayn by an enchaunteresse called acrasia: and therfore craved of the faery queene, to appoint him some knight to performe that adventure; which being assigned to sir guyon, he presently went forth with that same palmer: which is the beginning of the second booke and the whole subject thereof. the third day there came in a groome, who complained before the faery queene, that a vile enchaunter, called busirane, had in hand a most faire lady, called amoretta, whom he kept in most grievous torment, because she would not yield him the pleasure of her body. whereupon sir scudamour, the lover of that lady, presently tooke on him that adventure. but being unable to performe it by reason of the hard enchauntments, after long sorrow, in the end met with britomartis, who succoured him, and reskewed his love. but by occasion hereof, many other adventures are intermedled, but rather as accidents then intendments: as the love of britomart, the overthrow of marinell, the misery of florimell, the vertuousnes of belphoebe, the lasciviousnes of hellenora, and many the like. thus much, sir, i have briefly overronne, to direct your understanding to the wel-head of the history, that from thence gathering the whole intention of the conceit, ye may, as in a handfull, gripe al the discourse, which otherwise may happily seeme tedious and confused. so humbly craving the continuance of your honourable favour towards me, and th' eternall establishment of your happines, i humbly take leave. . january, . yours most humbly affectionate, ed. spenser. [footnote a: edmund spenser was born in london about , and died there in . he was the greatest of the non-dramatic poets of the age of elizabeth; and the "faerie queene" is the longest and most famous of his works. the first three books were published in , the second three in ; of the remaining six which he had planned some fragments were issued after his death. the poem is a combination of allegory and romance; and in this prefatory letter to raleigh the poet himself explains the plan of the work and its main allegorical signification.] preface to the history of the world by sir walter raleigh ( )[a] how unfit and how unworthy a choice i have made of myself, to undertake a work of this mixture, mine own reason, though exceeding weak, hath sufficiently resolved me. for had it been begotten then with my first dawn of day, when the light of common knowledge began to open itself to my younger years, and before any wound received either from fortune or time, i might yet well have doubted that the darkness of age and death would have covered over both it and me, long before the performance. for, beginning with the creation, i have proceeded with the history of the world; and lastly purposed (some few sallies excepted) to confine my discourse with this our renowned island of great britain. i confess that it had better sorted with my disability, the better part of whose times are run out in other travails, to have set together (as i could) the unjointed and scattered frame of our english affairs, than of the universal in whom, had there been no other defect (who am all defect) than the time of the day, it were enough, the day of a tempestuous life, drawn on to the very evening ere i began. but those inmost and soul-piercing wounds, which are ever aching while uncured; with the desire to satisfy those few friends, which i have tried by the fire of adversity, the former enforcing, the latter persuading; have caused me to make my thoughts legible, and myself the subject of every opinion, wise or weak. to the world i present them, to which i am nothing indebted: neither have others that were, (fortune changing) sped much better in any age. for prosperity and adversity have evermore tied and untied vulgar affections. and as we see it in experience, that dogs do always bark at those they know not, and that it is their nature to accompany one another in those clamors: so it is with the inconsiderate multitude; who wanting that virtue which we call honesty in all men, and that especial gift of god which we call charity in christian men, condemn without hearing, and wound without offence given: led thereunto by uncertain report only; which his majesty truly acknowledged for the author of all lies. "blame no man," saith siracides, "before thou have inquired the matter: understand first, and then reform righteously. 'rumor, res sine teste, sine judice, maligna, fallax'; rumor is without witness, without judge, malicious and deceivable." this vanity of vulgar opinion it was, that gave st. augustine argument to affirm, that he feared the praise of good men, and detested that of the evil. and herein no man hath given a better rule, than this of seneca; "conscientiæ satisfaciamus: nihil in famam laboremus, sequatur vel mala, dum bene merearis." "let us satisfy our own consciences, and not trouble ourselves with fame: be it never so ill, it is to be despised so we deserve well." for myself, if i have in anything served my country, and prized it before my private, the general acceptation can yield me no other profit at this time, than doth a fair sunshine day to a sea-man after shipwreck; and the contrary no other harm, than an outrageous tempest after the port attained. i know that i lost the love of many, for my fidelity towards her,[ ] whom i must still honor in the dust; though further than the defence of her excellent person, i never persecuted any man. of those that did it, and by what device they did it, he that is the supreme judge of all the world, hath taken the account: so as for this kind of suffering, i must say with seneca, "mala opinio, bene parta, delectat."[ ] as for other men; if there be any that have made themselves fathers of that fame which hath been begotten for them, i can neither envy at such their purchased glory, nor much lament mine own mishap in that kind; but content myself to say with virgil, "sic vos non vobis,"[ ] in many particulars. to labor other satisfaction, were an effect of frenzy, not of hope, seeing it is not truth, but opinion, that can travel the world without a passport. for were it otherwise; and were there not as many internal forms of the mind, as there are external figures of men; there were then some possibility to persuade by the mouth of one advocate, even equity alone. but such is the multiplying and extensive virtue of dead earth, and of that breath-giving life which god hath cast upon time and dust, as that among those that were, of whom we read and hear; and among those that are, whom we see and converse with; everyone hath received a several picture of face, and everyone a diverse picture of mind; everyone a form apart, everyone a fancy and cogitation differing: there being nothing wherein nature so much triumpheth as in dissimilitude. from whence it cometh that there is found so great diversity of opinions; so strong a contrariety of inclinations; so many natural and unnatural; wise, foolish, manly, and childish affections and passions in mortal men. for it is not the visible fashion and shape of plants, and of reasonable creatures, that makes the difference of working in the one, and of condition in the other; but the form internal. and though it hath pleased god to reserve the art of reading men's thoughts to himself: yet, as the fruit tells the name of the tree; so do the outward works of men (so far as their cogitations are acted) give us whereof to guess at the rest. nay, it were not hard to express the one by the other, very near the life, did not craft in many, fear in the most, and the world's love in all, teach every capacity, according to the compass it hath, to qualify and make over their inward deformities for a time. though it be also true, "nemo potest diu personam ferre fictam: cito in naturam suam residunt, quibus veritas non subest": "no man can long continue masked in a counterfeit behavior: the things that are forced for pretences having no ground of truth, cannot long dissemble their own natures." neither can any man (saith plutarch) so change himself, but that his heart may be sometimes seen at his tongue's end. in this great discord and dissimilitude of reasonable creatures, if we direct ourselves to the multitude; "omnis honestæ rei malus judex est vulgus": "the common people are evil judges of honest things, and whose wisdom (saith ecclesiastes) is to be despised": if to the better sort, every understanding hath a peculiar judgment, by which it both censureth other men, and valueth itself. and therefore unto me it will not seem strange, though i find these my worthless papers torn with rats: seeing the slothful censurers of all ages have not spared to tax the reverend fathers of the church, with ambition; the severest men to themselves, with hypocrisy; the greatest lovers of justice, with popularity; and those of the truest valor and fortitude, with vain-glory. but of these natures which lee in wait to find fault, and to turn good into evil, seeing solomon complained long since: and that the very age of the world renders it every day after other more malicious; i must leave the professors to their easy ways of reprehension, than which there is nothing of more facility. to me it belongs in the first part of this preface, following the common and approved custom of those who have left the memories of time past to after ages, to give, as near as i can, the same right to history which they have done. yet seeing therein i should but borrow other men's words, i will not trouble the reader with the repetition. true it is that among many other benefits for which it hath been honored, in this one it triumpheth over all human knowledge, that it hath given us life in our understanding, since the world itself had life and beginning, even to this day: yea, it hath triumphed over time, which besides it nothing but eternity hath triumphed over: for it hath carried our knowledge over the vast and devouring space of many thousands of years, and given so fair and piercing eyes to our mind; that we plainly behold living now (as if we had lived then) that great world, "magni dei sapiens opus," "the wise work (saith hermes) of a great god," as it was then, when but new to itself. by it (i say) it is, that we live in the very time when it was created: we behold how it was governed: how it was covered with waters, and again repeopled: how kings and kingdoms have flourished and fallen, and for what virtue and piety god made prosperous; and for what vice and deformity he made wretched, both the one and the other. and it is not the least debt which we owe unto history, that it hath made us acquainted with our dead ancestors; and, out of the depth and darkness of the earth, delivered us their memory and fame. in a word, we may gather out of history a policy no less wise than eternal; by the comparison and application of other men's fore-passed miseries with our own like errors and ill deservings. but it is neither of examples the most lively instruction, nor the words of the wisest men, nor the terror of future torments, that hath yet so wrought in our blind and stupified minds, as to make us remember, that the infinite eye and wisdom of god doth pierce through all our pretences; as to make us remember, that the justice of god doth require none other accuser than our own consciences: which neither the false beauty of our apparent actions, nor all the formality, which (to pacify the opinions of men) we put on, can in any, or the least kind, cover from his knowledge. and so much did that heathen wisdom confess, no way as yet qualified by the knowledge of a true god. if any (saith euripides) "having in his life committed wickedness, thinks he can hide it from the everlasting gods, he thinks not well." to repeat god's judgments in particular, upon those of all degrees, which have played with his mercies would require a volume apart: for the sea of examples hath no bottom. the marks, set on private men, are with their bodies cast into the earth; and their fortunes, written only in the memories of those that lived with them: so as they who succeed, and have not seen the fall of others, do not fear their own faults. god's judgments upon the greater and greatest have been left to posterity; first, by those happy hands which the holy ghost hath guided; and secondly, by their virtue, who have gathered the acts and ends of men mighty and remarkable in the world. now to point far off, and to speak of the conversion of angels into devils; for ambition: or of the greatest and most glorious kings, who have gnawn the grass of the earth with beasts for pride and ingratitude towards god: or of that wise working of pharaoh, when he slew the infants of israel, ere they had recovered their cradles: or of the policy of jezebel, in covering the murder of naboth by a trial of the elders, according to the law, with many thousands of the like: what were it other, than to make an hopeless proof, that far-off examples would not be left to the same far-off respects, as heretofore? for who hath not observed, what labor, practice, peril, bloodshed, and cruelty, the kings and princes of the world have undergone, exercised, taken on them, and committed; to make themselves and their issues masters of the world? and yet hath babylon, persia, syria, macedon, carthage, rome, and the rest, no fruit, no flower, grass, nor leaf, springing upon the face of the earth, of those seeds: no, their very roots and ruins do hardly remain. "omnia quae manu hominum facta sunt, vel manu hominum evertuntur, vel stando et durando deficiunt": "all that the hand of man can make, is either overturned by the hand of man, or at length by standing and continuing consumed." the reasons of whose ruins, are diversely given by those that ground their opinions on second causes. all kingdoms and states have fallen (say the politicians) by outward and foreign force, or by inward negligence and dissension, or by a third cause arising from both. others observe, that the greatest have sunk down under their own weight; of which livy hath a touch: "eo crevit, ut magnitudine laboret sua":[ ] others, that the divine providence (which cratippus objected to pompey) hath set _down_ the date and period of every estate, before their first foundation and erection. but hereof i will give myself a day over to resolve. for seeing the first hooks of the following story, have undertaken the discourse of the first kings and kingdoms: and that it is impossible for the short life of a preface, to travel after, and overtake far-off antiquity, and to judge of it; i will, for the present, examine what profit hath been gathered by our own kings, and their neighbour princes: who having beheld, both in divine and human letters, the success of infidelity, injustice, and cruelty; have (notwithstanding) planted after the same pattern. true it is, that the judgments of all men are not agreeable; nor (which is more strange) the affection of any one man stirred up alike with examples of like nature: but every one is touched most, with that which most nearly seemeth to touch his own private, or otherwise best suiteth with his apprehension. but the judgments of god are forever unchangeable: neither is he wearied by the long process of time, and won to give his blessing in one age, to that which he hath cursed in another. wherefor those that are wise, or whose wisdom if it be not great, yet is true and well grounded, will be able to discern the bitter fruits of irreligious policy, as well among those examples that are found in ages removed far from the present, as in those of latter times. and that it may no less appear by evident proof, than by asseveration, that ill doing hath always been attended with ill success; i will here, by way of preface, run over some examples, which the work ensuing hath not reached. among our kings of the norman race, we have no sooner passed over the violence of the norman conquest, than we encounter with a singular and most remarkable example of god's justice, upon the children of henry the first. for that king, when both by force, craft, and cruelty, he had dispossessed, overreached, and lastly made blind and destroyed his elder brother robert duke of normandy, to make his own sons lords of this land: god cast them all, male and female, nephews and nieces (maud excepted) into the bottom of the sea, with above a hundred and fifty others that attended them; whereof a great many were noble and of the king dearly beloved. to pass over the rest, till we come to edward the second; it is certain, that after the murder of that king, the issue of blood then made, though it had some times of stay and stopping, did again break out, and that so often and in such abundance, as all our princes of the masculine race (very few excepted) died of the same disease. and although the young years of edward the third made his knowledge of that horrible fact no more than suspicious; yet in that he afterwards caused his own uncle, the earl of kent, to die, for no other offence than the desire of his brother's redemption, whom the earl as then supposed to be living; the king making that to be treated in his uncle, which was indeed treason in himself, (had his uncle's intelligence been true) this i say made it manifest, that he was not ignorant of what had past, nor greatly desirous to have had it otherwise, though he caused mortimer to die for the same. this cruelty the secret and unsearchable judgment of god revenged on the grandchild of edward the third: and so it fell out, even to the last of that line, that in the second or third descent they were all buried under the ruins of those buildings, of which the mortar had been tempered with innocent blood. for richard the second, who saw both his treasurers, his chancellor, and his steward, with divers others of his counsellors, some of them slaughtered by the people, others in his absence executed by his enemies, yet he always took himself for over-wise to be taught by examples. the earls of huntingdon and kent, montagu and spencer, who thought themselves as great politicians in those days as others have done in these: hoping to please the king, and to secure themselves, by the murder of gloucester; died soon after, with many other their adherents, by the like violent hands; and far more shamefully than did that duke. and as for the king himself (who in regard of many deeds, unworthy of his greatness, cannot be excused, as the disavowing himself by breach of faith, charters, pardons, and patents): he was in the prime of his youth deposed, and murdered by his cousin-german and vassal, henry of lancaster, afterwards henry the fourth. this king, whose title was weak, and his obtaining the crown traitorous; who brake faith with the lords at his landing, protesting to intend only the recovery of his proper inheritance, brake faith with richard himself; and brake faith with all the kingdom in parliament, to whom he swore that the deposed king should live. after that he had enjoyed this realm some few years, and in that time had been set upon all sides by his subjects, and never free from conspiracies and rebellions: he saw (if souls immortal see and discern anythings after the bodies' death) his grandchild henry the sixth, and his son the prince, suddenly and without mercy, murdered; the possession of the crown (for which he had caused so much blood to be poured out) transferred from his race, and by the issues of his enemies worn and enjoyed: enemies, whom by his own practice he supposed that he had left no less powerless, than the succession of the kingdom questionless; by entailing the same upon his own issues by parliament. and out of doubt, human reason could have judged no otherwise, but that these cautious provisions of the father, seconded by the valor and signal victories of his son henry the fifth, had buried the hopes of every competitor, under the despair of all reconquest and recovery. i say, that human reason might so have judged, were not this passage of casaubon also true; "dies, hora, momentum, evertendis dominationibus sufficit, quae adamantinis credebantur radicibus esse fundatae:" "a day, an hour, a moment, is enough to overturn the things, that seemed to have been founded and rooted in adamant." now for henry the sixth, upon whom the great storm of his grandfather's grievous faults fell, as it formerly had done upon richard the grandchild of edward: although he was generally esteemed for a gentle and innocent prince, yet as he refused the daughter of armagnac, of the house of navarre, the greatest of the princes of france, to whom he was affianced (by which match he might have defended his inheritance in france) and married the daughter of anjou, (by which he lost all that he had in france) so in condescending to the unworthy death of his uncle of gloucester, the main and strong pillar of the house of lancaster; he drew on himself and this kingdom the greatest joint-loss and dishonor, that ever it sustained since the norman conquest. of whom it may truly be said which a counsellor of his own spake of henry the third of france, "qu'il estait tme fort gentile prince; mais son reigne est advenu en une fort mauvais temps:" "he was a very gentle prince; but his reign happened in a very unfortunate season." it is true that buckingham and suffolk were the practicers and contrivers of the duke's death: buckingham and suffolk, because the duke gave instructions to their authority, which otherwise under the queen had been absolute; the queen in respect of her personal wound, "spretaeque injuria formae,"[ ] because gloucester dissuaded her marriage. but the fruit was answerable to the seed; the success to the counsel. for after the cutting down of gloucester, york grew up so fast, as he dared to dispute his right both by arguments and arms; in which quarrel, suffolk and buckingham, with the greatest number of their adherents, were dissolved. and although for his breach of oath by sacrament, it pleased god to strike down york: yet his son the earl of march, following the plain path which his father had trodden out, despoiled henry the father, and edward the son, both of their lives and kingdom. and what was the end now of that politic lady the queen, other than this, that she lived to behold the wretched ends of all her partakers: that she lived to look on, while her husband the king, and her only son the prince, were hewn in sunder; while the crown was set on his head that did it. she lived to see herself despoiled of her estate, and of her moveables: and lastly, her father, by rendering up to the crown of france the earldom of provence and other places, for the payment of fifty thousand crowns for her ransom, to become a stark beggar. and this was the end of that subtility, which siracides calleth "fine" but "unrighteous:" for other fruit hath it never yielded since the world was. and now it came to edward the fourth's turn (though after many difficulties) to triumph. for all the plants of lancaster were rooted up, one only earl of richmond excepted: whom also he had once bought of the duke of brittany, but could not hold him. and yet was not this of edward such a plantation, as could any way promise itself stability. for this edward the king (to omit more than many of his other cruelties) beheld and allowed the slaughter which gloucester, dorset, hastings, and others, made of edward the prince in his own presence; of which tragical actors, there was not one that escaped the judgment of god in the same kind and he, which (besides the execution of his brother clarence, for none other offence than he himself had formed in his own imagination) instructed gloucester to kill henry the sixth, his predecessor; taught him also by the same art to kill his own sons and successors, edward and richard. for those kings which have sold the blood of others at a low rate; have but made the market for their own enemies, to buy of theirs at the same price. to edward the fourth succeeded richard the third, the greatest master in mischief of all that fore-went him: who although, for the necessity of his tragedy, he had more parts to play, and more to perform in his own person, than all the rest; yet he so well fitted every affection that played with him, as if each of them had but acted his own interest. for he wrought so cunningly upon the affections of hastings and buckingham, enemies to the queen and to all her kindred, as he easily allured them to condescend, that rivers and grey, the king's maternal uncle and half brother, should (for the first) be severed from him: secondly, he wrought their consent to have them imprisoned: and lastly (for the avoiding of future inconvenience) to have their heads severed from their bodies. and having now brought those his chief instruments to exercise that common precept which the devil hath written on every post, namely, to depress those whom they had grieved, and destroy those whom they had depressed; he urged that argument so far and so forcibly, as nothing but the death of the young king himself, and of his brother, could fashion the conclusion. for he caused it to be hammered into buckingham's head, that, whensoever the king or his brother should have able years to exercise their power, they would take a most severe revenge of that cureless wrong, offered to their uncle and brother, rivers and grey. but this was not his manner of reasoning with hastings, whose fidelity to his master's sons was without suspect: and yet the devil, who never dissuades by impossibility, taught him to try him. and so he did. but when he found by catesby, who sounded him, that he was not fordable; he first resolved to kill him sitting in council: wherein having failed with his sword, he set the hangman upon him, with a weapon of more weight. and because nothing else could move his appetite, he caused his head to be stricken off, before he ate his dinner. a greater judgment of god than this upon hastings, i have never observed in any story. for the selfsame day that the earl rivers, grey, and others, were (without trial of law, of offence given) by hastings' advice executed at pomfret: i say hastings himself in the same day, and (as i take it) in the same hour, in the same lawless manner had his head stricken off in the tower of london. but buckingham lived a while longer; and with an eloquent oration persuaded the londoners to elect richard for their king. and having received the earldom of hereford for reward, besides the high hope of marrying his daughter to the king's only son; after many grievous vexations of mind, and unfortunate attempts, being in the end betrayed and delivered up by his trustiest servant; he had his head severed from his body at salisbury, without the trouble of any of his peers. and what success had richard himself after all these mischiefs and murders, policies, and counter-policies to christian religion: and after such time as with a most merciless hand he had pressed out the breath of his nephews and natural lords; other than the prosperity of so short a life, as it took end, ere himself could well look over and discern it? the great outcry of innocent blood, obtained at god's hands the effusion of his; who became a spectacle of shame and dishonor, both to his friends and enemies. this cruel king, henry the seventh cut off; and was therein (no doubt) the immediate instrument of god's justice. a politic prince he was if ever there were any, who by the engine of his wisdom, beat down and overturned as many strong oppositions both before and after he wore the crown, as ever king of england did: i say by his wisdom, because as he ever left the reins of his affections in the hands of his profit, so he always weighed his undertakings by his abilities, leaving nothing more to hazard than so much as cannot be denied it in all human actions. he had well observed the proceedings of louis the eleventh, whom he followed in all that was royal or royal-like, but he was far more just, and begun not their processes whom he hated or feared by the execution, as louis did. he could never endure any mediation in rewarding his servants, and therein exceeding wise; for whatsoever himself gave, he himself received back the thanks and the love, knowing it well that the affections of men (purchased by nothing so readily as by benefits) were trains that better became great kings, than great subjects. on the contrary, in whatsoever he grieved his subjects, he wisely put it off on those, that he found fit ministers for such actions. howsoever the taking off of stanley's head, who set the crown on his, and the death of the young earl of warwick, son to george, duke of clarence, shows, as the success also did, that he held somewhat of the errors of his ancestors; for his possession in the first line ended in his grandchildren, as that of edward the third and henry the fourth had done. now for king henry the eighth; if all the pictures and patterns of a merciless prince were lost in the world, they might all again be painted to the life, out of the story of this king. for how many servants did he advance in haste (but for what virtue no man could suspect) and with the change of his fancy ruined again; no man knowing for what offence? to how many others of more desert gave he abundant flowers from whence to gather honey, and in the end of harvest burnt them in the hive? how many wives did he cut off, and cast off, as his fancy and affection changed? how many princes of the blood (whereof some of them for age could hardly crawl towards the block) with a world of others of all degrees (of whom our common chronicles have kept the account) did he execute? yea, in his very death-bed, and when he was at the point to have given his account to god for the abundance of blood already spilt, he imprisoned the duke of norfolk the father; and executed the earl of surrey the son; the one, whose deservings he knew not how to value, having never omitted anything that concerned his own honor, and the king's service; the other never having committed anything worthy of his least displeasure: the one exceeding valiant and advised; the other no less valiant than learned, and of excellent hope. but besides the sorrows which he heaped upon the fatherless and widows at home: and besides the vain enterprises abroad, wherein it is thought that he consumed more treasure than all our victorious kings did in their several conquests; what causeless and cruel wars did he make upon his own nephew king james the first? what laws and wills did he devise to cut off, and cut down those branches, which sprang from the same root that himself did? and in the end (notwithstanding these his so many irreligious provisions) it pleased god to take away all his own, without increase; though, for themselves in their several kinds, all princes of eminent virtue. for these words of samuel to agag king of the amalekites, have been verified upon many others: "as thy sword hath made other women childless, so shall thy mother be childless among other women." and that blood which the same king henry affirmed, that the cold air of scotland had frozen up in the north, god hath diffused by the sunshine of his grace: from whence his majesty now living, and long to live, is descended. of whom i may say it truly, "that if all the malice of the world were infused into one eye: yet could it not discern in his life, even to this day, any one of these foul spots, by which the consciences of all the forenamed princes (in effect) have been defiled; nor any drop of that innocent blood on the sword of his justice, with which the most that fore-went him have stained both their hands and fame." and for this crown of england; it may truly he avowed: that he hath received it even from the hand of god, and hath stayed the time of putting it on, howsoever he were provoked to hasten it: that he never took revenge of any man, that sought to put him beside it: that he refused the assistance of her enemies, that wore it long, with as great glory as ever princess did: that his majesty entered not by a breach, nor by blood; but by the ordinary gate, which his own right set open; and into which, by a general love and obedience, he was received. and howsoever his majesty's preceding title to this kingdom was preferred by many princes (witness the treaty at cambray in the year ) yet he never pleased to dispute it, during the life of that renowned lady his predecessor; no, notwithstanding the injury of not being declared heir, in all the time of her long reign. neither ought we to forget, or neglect our thankfulness to god for the uniting of the northern parts of britain to the south, to wit, of scotland to england, which though they were severed but by small brooks and banks, yet by reason of the long continued war, and the cruelties exercised upon each other, in the affections of the nations, they were infinitely severed. this i say is not the least of god's blessings which his majesty hath brought with him unto this land: no, put all our petty grievances together, and heap them up to their height, they will appear but as a molehill compared with the mountain of this concord. and if all the historians since then have acknowledged the uniting of the red rose, and the white, for the greatest happiness (christian religion excepted), that ever this kingdom received from god, certainly the peace between the two lions of gold and gules, and the making them one, doth by many degrees exceed the former; for by it, besides the sparing of our british blood, heretofore and during the difference, so often and abundantly shed, the state of england is more assured, the kingdom more enabled to recover her ancient honor and rights, and by it made more invincible, than by all our former alliances, practises, policies, and conquests. it is true that hereof we do not yet find the effect. but had the duke of parma in the year , joined the army which he commanded, with that of spain, and landed it on the south coast; and had his majesty at the same time declared himself against us in the north: it is easy to divine what had become of the liberty of england, certainly we would then without murmur have bought this union at far greater price than it hath since cost us. it is true, that there was never any common weal or kingdom in the world, wherein no man had cause to lament. kings live in the world, and not above it. they are not infinite to examine every man's cause, or to relieve every man's wants. and yet in the latter (though to his own prejudice), his majesty hath had more comparison of other men's necessities, than of his own coffers. of whom it may he said, as of solomon,[ ] "dedit deus solomon! latitudinem cordis": which if other men do not understand with pineda, to be meant by liberality, but by "latitude of knowledge"; yet may it be better spoken of his majesty, than of any king that ever england had; who as well in divine, as human understanding, hath exceeded all that fore-went him, by many degrees. i could say much more of the king's majesty, without flattery: did i not fear the imputation of presumption, and withal suspect, that it might befall these papers of mine (though the loss were little) as it did the pictures of queen elizabeth, made by unskilful and common painters, which by her own commandment were knocked in pieces and cast into the fire. for ill artists, in setting out the beauty of the external; and weak writers, in describing the virtues of the internal; do often leave to posterity, of well formed faces a deformed memory; and of the most perfect and princely minds, a most defective representation. it may suffice, and there needs no other discourse; if the honest reader but compare the cruel and turbulent passages of our former kings, and of other their neighbor-princes (of whom for that purpose i have inserted this brief discourse) with his majesty's temperate, revengeless and liberal disposition: i say, that if the honest reader weigh them justly, and with an even hand; and withal but bestow every deformed child on his true parent; he shall find, that there is no man that hath so just cause to complain, as the king himself hath. now as we have told the success of the trumperies and cruelties of our own kings, and other great personages: so we find, that god is everywhere the same god. and as it pleased him to punish the usurpation, and unnatural cruelty of henry the first, and of our third edward, in their children for many generations: so dealt he with the sons of louis debonnaire, the son of charles the great, or charlemagne. for after such time as debonnaire of france, had torn out the eyes of bernard his nephew, the son of pepin the eldest son of charlemagne, and heir of the empire, and then caused him to die in prison, as did our henry to robert his eldest brother: there followed nothing but murders upon murders, poisoning, imprisonments, and civil war; till the whole race of that famous emperor was extinguished. and though debonnaire, after he had rid himself of his nephew by a violent death; and of his bastard brothers by a civil death (having inclosed them with sure guard, all the days of their lives, within a monastery) held himself secure from all opposition: yet god raised up against him (which he suspected not) his own sons, to vex him, to invade him, to take him prisoner, and to depose him; his own sons, with whom (to satisfy their ambition) he had shared his estate, and given them crowns to wear, and kingdoms to govern, during his own life. yea his eldest son, lothair (for he had four, three by his first wife, and one by his second; to wit, lothair, pepin, louis, and charles), made it the cause of his deposition, that he had used violence towards his brothers and kinsmen; and that he had suffered his nephew (whom he might have delivered) to be slain. "eo quod," saith the text,[ ] "fratribus, et propinquis violentiam intulerit, et nepotem suum, quern ipse liberate poterat, interfici permiserit": "because he used violence to his brothers and kinsmen, and suffered his nephew to be slain whom he might have delivered." yet did he that which few kings do; namely, repent him of his cruelty. for, among many other things which he performed in the general assembly of the states, it follows: "post haec autem palam se errasse confessus, et imitatus imperatoris theodosii exemplum, poenitentiam spontaneam suscepit, tarn de his, quam quae in bernardum proprium nepotem gesserat": "after this he did openly confess himself to have erred, and following the example of the emperor theodosius, he underwent voluntary penance, as well for his other offences, as for that which he had done against bernard his own nephew." this he did; and it was praise-worthy. but the blood that is unjustly spilt, is not again gathered up from the ground by repentance. these medicines, ministered to the dead, have but dead rewards. this king, as i have said, had four sons. to lothair his eldest he gave the kingdom of italy; as charlemagne, his father, had done to pepin, the father of bernard, who was to succeed him in the empire. to pepin the second son he gave the kingdom of aquitaine: to louis, the kingdom of bavaria: and to charles, whom he had by a second wife called judith, the remainder of the kingdom of france. but this second wife, being a mother-in-law[ ] to the rest, persuaded debonnaire to cast his son pepin out of aquitaine, thereby to greaten charles, which, after the death of his son pepin, he prosecuted to effect, against his grandchild bearing the same name. in the meanwhile, being invaded by his son louis of bavaria, he dies for grief. debonnaire dead, louis of bavaria, and charles afterwards called the bald, and their nephew pepin, of aquitaine, join in league against the emperor lothair their eldest brother. they fight near to auxerre the most bloody battle that ever was stroken in france: in which, the marvellous loss of nobility, and men of war, gave courage to the saracens to invade italy; to the huns to fall upon almaine; and the danes to enter upon normandy. charles the bald by treason seizeth upon his nephew pepin, kills him in a cloister: carloman rebels against his father charles the bald, the father burns out the eyes of his son carloman; bavaria invades the emperor lothair his brother, lothair quits the empire, he is assailed and wounded to the heart by his own conscience, for his rebellion against his father, and for his other cruelties, and dies in a monastery. charles the bald, the uncle, oppresseth his nephews the sons of lothair, he usurpeth the empire to the prejudice of louis of bavaria his elder brother; bavaria's armies and his son carloman are beaten, he dies of grief, and the usurper charles is poisoned by zedechias a jew, his physician, his son louis le bègue dies of the same drink. bègue had charles the simple and two bastards, louis and carloman; they rebel against their brother, but the eldest breaks his neck, the younger is slain by a wild boar; the son of bavaria had the same ill destiny, and brake his neck by a fall out of a window in sporting with his companions. charles the gross becomes lord of all that the sons of debonnaire held in germany; wherewith not contented, he invades charles the simple: but being-forsaken of his nobility, of his wife, and of his understanding, he dies a distracted beggar. charles the simple is held in wardship by eudes, mayor of the palace, then by robert the brother of eudes: and lastly, being taken by the earl of vermandois; he is forced to die in the prison of peron, louis the son of charles the simple breaks his neck in chasing a wolf, and of the two sons of this louis, the one dies of poison, the other dies in the prison of orleans; after whom hugh capet, of another race, and a stranger to the french, makes himself king. these miserable ends had the issues of debonnaire, who after he had once apparelled injustice with authority, his sons and successors took up the fashion, and wore that garment so long without other provision, as when the same was torn from their shoulders, every man despised them as miserable and naked beggars. the wretched success they had (saith a learned frenchman) shows, "que en ceste mort il y avait plus du fait des homines que de pieu, ou de la justice": "that in the death of that prince, to wit, of bernard the son of pepin, the true heir of charlemagne, men had more meddling than either god or justice had." but to come nearer home; it is certain that francis the first, one of the worthiest kings (except for that fact) that ever frenchmen had, did never enjoy himself, after he had commended the destruction of the protestants of mirandol and cabrieres, to the parliament of provence, which poor people were thereupon burnt and murdered; men, women, and children. it is true that the said king francis repented himself of the fact, and gave charge to henry his son, to do justice upon the murderers, threatening his son with god's judgments, if he neglected it. but this unseasonable care of his, god was not pleased to accept for payment. for after henry himself was slain in sport by montgomery, we all may remember what became of his four sons, francis, charles, henry, and hercules. of which although three of them became kings, and were married to beautiful and virtuous ladies: yet were they, one after another, cast out of the world, without stock or seed. and notwithstanding their subtility, and breach of faith; with all their massacres upon those of the religion,[ ] and great effusion of blood, the crown was set on his head, whom they all labored to dissolve; the protestants remain more in number than ever they were, and hold to this day more strong cities than ever they had. let us now see if god be not the same god in spain, as in england and france. towards whom we will look no further back than to don pedro of castile: in respect of which prince, all the tyrants of sicil, our richard the third, and the great ivan vasilowich of moscow, were but petty ones: this castilian, of all christian and heathen kings, having been the most merciless. for, besides those of his own blood and nobility, which he caused to be slain in his own court and chamber, as sancho ruis, the great master of calatrava, ruis gonsales, alphonso tello, and don john of arragon, whom he cut in pieces and cast into the streets, denying him christian burial: i say, besides these, and the slaughter of gomes mauriques, diego peres, alphonso gomes, and the great commander of castile; he made away the two infants of arragon his cousin germans, his brother don frederick, don john de la cerde, albuquergues, nugnes de guzman, cornel, cabrera, tenorio, mendes de toledo, guttiere his great treasurer and all his kindred; and a world of others. neither did he spare his two youngest brothers, innocent princes: whom after he had kept in close prison from their cradles, till one of them had lived sixteen years, and the other fourteen, he murdered them there. nay, he spared not his mother, nor his wife the lady blanche of bourbon. lastly, as he caused the archbishop of toledo, and the dean to be killed of purpose to enjoy their treasures; so did he put to death mahomet aben alhamar, king of barbary, with thirty-seven of his nobility, that came unto him for succor, with a great sum of money, to levy (by his favor) some companies of soldiers to return withal. yea, he would needs assist the hangman with his own hand, in the execution of the old king; in so much as pope urban declareth him an enemy both to god and man. but what was his end? having been formerly beaten out of his kingdom, and reestablished by the valor of the english nation, led by the famous duke of lancaster: he was stabbed to death by his younger brother the earl of astramara, who dispossessed all his children of their inheritance; which, but for the father's injustice and cruelty, had never been in danger of any such thing. if we can parallel any man with this king, it must be duke john of burgogne, who, after his traitorous murder of the duke of orleans, caused the constable of armagnac, the chancellor of france, the bishops of constance, bayeux, eureux, senlis, saintes, and other religious and reverend churchmen, the earl of gran pre, hector of chartres, and (in effect) all the officers of justice, of the chamber of accounts, treasury, and request, (with sixteen hundred others to accompany them) to be suddenly and violently slain. hereby, while he hoped to govern, and to have mastered france, he was soon after struck with an axe in the face, in the presence of the dauphin; and, without any leisure to repent his misdeeds, presently[ ] slain. _these were the lovers of other men's miseries: and misery found them out_. now for the kings of spain, which lived both with henry the seventh, henry the eighth, queen mary, and queen elizabeth; ferdinand of arragon was the first: and the first that laid the foundation of the present austrian greatness. for this king did not content himself to hold arragon by the usurpation of his ancestor; and to fasten thereunto the kingdom of castile and leon, which isabel his wife held by strong hand, and his assistance, from her own niece the daughter of the last henry: but most cruelly and craftily, without all color or pretence of right, he also cast his own niece out of the kingdom of navarre, and, contrary to faith, and the promise that he made to restore it, fortified the best places, and so wasted the rest, as there was no means left for any army to invade it. this king, i say, that betrayed also ferdinand and frederick, kings of naples, princes of his own blood, and by double alliance tied unto him; sold them to the french: and with the same army, sent for their succor under gonsalvo, cast them out; and shared their kingdom with the french, whom afterwards he most shamefully betrayed. this wise and politic king, who sold heaven and his own honor, to make his son, the prince of spain, the greatest monarch of the world; saw him die in the flower of his years; and his wife great with child, with her untimely birth, at once and together buried. his eldest daughter married unto don alphonso, prince of portugal, beheld her first husband break his neck in her presence; and being with child by her second, died with it. a just judgment of god upon the race of john, father to alphonso, now wholly extinguished; who had not only left many disconsolate mothers in portugal, by the slaughter of their children; but had formerly slain with his own hand, the son and only comfort of his aunt the lady beatrix, duchess of viseo. the second daughter of ferdinand, married to the arch-duke philip, turned fool, and died mad and deprived.[ ] his third daughter, bestowed on king henry the eighth, he saw cast off by the king: the mother of many troubles in england; and the mother of a daughter, that in her unhappy zeal shed a world of innocent blood; lost calais to the french; and died heartbroken without increase. to conclude, all those kingdoms of ferdinand have masters of a new name; and by a strange family are governed and possessed. charles the fifth, son to the arch-duke philip, in whose vain enterprises upon the french, upon the almains, and other princes and states, so many multitudes of christian soldiers, and renowned captains were consumed; who gave the while a most perilous entrance to the turks, and suffered rhodes, the key of christendom, to be taken; was in conclusion chased out of france, and in a sort out of germany; and left to the french, mentz, toule, and verdun, places belonging to the empire, stole away from inspurg; and scaled the alps by torchlight, pursued by duke maurice; having hoped to swallow up all those dominions wherein he concocted nothing save his own disgraces. and having, after the slaughter of so many millions of men, no one foot of ground in either: he crept into a cloister, and made himself a pensioner of an hundred thousand ducats by the year, to his son philip, from whom he very slowly received his mean and ordinary maintenance. his son again king philip the second, not satisfied to hold holland and zeeland, (wrested by his ancestors from jacqueline their lawful princess) and to possess in peace many other provinces of the netherlands: persuaded by that mischievous cardinal of granvile, and other romish tyrants; not only forgot the most remarkable services done to his father the emperor by the nobilities of those countries, not only forgot the present made him upon his entry, of forty millions of florins, called the "novaile aide"; nor only forgot that he had twice most solemnly sworn to the general states, to maintain and preserve their ancient rights, privileges, and customs, which they had enjoyed under their thirty and five earls before him, conditional princes of those provinces: but beginning first to constrain them, and enthrall them by the spanish inquisition, and then to impoverish them by many new devised and intolerable impositions; he lastly, by strong hand and main force, attempted to make himself not only an absolute monarch over them, like unto the kings and sovereigns of england and france; but turk-like to tread under his feet all their natural and fundamental laws, privileges, and ancient rights. to effect which, after he had easily obtained from the pope a dispensation of his former oaths (which dispensation was the true cause of the war and bloodshed since then;) and after he had tried what he could perform, by dividing of their own nobility, under the government of his base sister margaret of austria, and the cardinal granvile; he employed that most merciless spaniard don ferdinand alvarez of toledo, duke of alva, followed with a powerful army of strange nations: by whom he first slaughtered that renowned captain, the earl of egmont, prince of gavare: and philip montmorency, earl of horn: made away montigue, and the marquis of bergues, and cut off in those six years (that alva governed) of gentlemen and others, eighteen thousand and six hundred, by the hands of the hangman, besides all his other barbarous murders and massacres. by whose ministry when he could not yet bring his affairs to their wished ends, having it in his hope to work that by subtility, which he had failed to perform by force; he sent for governor his bastard brother don john of austria, a prince of great hope, and very gracious to those people. but he, using the same papal advantage that his predecessors had done, made no scruple to take oath upon the holy evangelists, to observe the treaty made with the general states; and to discharge the low countries of all spaniards, and other strangers therein garrisoned: towards whose pay and passport, the netherlands strained themselves to make payment of six hundred thousand pounds. which monies received, he suddenly surprised the citadels of antwerp and nemours: not doubting (being unsuspected by the states) to have possessed himself of all the mastering places of those provinces. for whatsoever he overtly pretended, he held in secret a contrary counsel with the secretary escovedo, rhodus, barlemont, and others, ministers of the spanish tyranny, formerly practised, and now again intended. but let us now see the effect and end of this perjury and of all other the duke's cruelties. first, for himself, after he had murdered so many of the nobility; executed (as aforesaid) eighteen thousand and six hundred in six years, and most cruelly slain man, woman, and child, in mechlin, zutphen, naerden, and other places: notwithstanding his spanish vaunt, that he would suffocate the hollanders in their own butter-barrels, and milk-tubs; he departed the country no otherwise accompanied, than with the curse and detestation of the whole nation; leaving his master's affairs in a tenfold worse estate, than he found them at his first arrival. for don john, whose haughty conceit of himself overcame the greatest difficulties; though his judgment were over-weak to manage the least: what wonders did his fearful breach of faith bring forth, other than the king his brother's jealousy and distrust, with the untimely death that seized him, even in the flower of his youth? and for escovedo his sharp-witted secretary, who in his own imagination had conquered for his master both england and the netherlands; being sent into spain upon some new project, he was at the first arrival, and before any access to the king, by certain ruffians appointed by anthony peres (though by better warrant than his) rudely murdered in his own lodging. lastly, if we consider the king of spain's carriage, his counsel and success in this business, there is nothing left to the memory of man more remarkable. for he hath paid above an hundred millions, and the lives of above four hundred thousand christians, for the loss of all those countries; which, for beauty, gave place to none; and for revenue, did equal his west indies: for the loss of a nation which most willingly obeyed him; and who at this day, after forty years war, are in despite of all his forces become a free estate, and far more rich and powerful than they were, when he first began to impoverish and oppress them. oh, by what plots, by what forswearings, betrayings, oppressions, imprisonments, tortures, poisonings, and under what reasons of state, and politic subtlety, have these fore-named kings, both strangers, and of our own nation, pulled the vengeance of god upon themselves, upon theirs, and upon their prudent ministers! and in the end have brought those things to pass for their enemies, and seen an effect so directly contrary to all their own counsels and cruelties; as the one could never have hoped for themselves; and the other never have succeeded; if no such opposition had ever been made. god hath said it and performed it ever: "perdam sapientiam sapientum"; "i will destroy the wisdom of the wise." but what of all this? and to what end do we lay before the eyes of the living, the fall and fortunes of the dead: seeing the world is the same that it hath been; and the children of the present time, will still obey their parents? it is in the present time that all the wits of the world are exercised. to hold the times we have, we hold all things lawful: and either we hope to hold them forever; or at least we hope that there is nothing after them to be hoped for. for as we are content to forget our own experience, and to counterfeit the ignorance of our own knowledge, in all things that concern ourselves; or persuade ourselves, that god hath given us letters patents to pursue all our irreligious affections, with a "non obstante"[ ] so we neither look behind us what hath been, nor before us what shall be. it is true, that the quantity which we have, is of the body: we are by it joined to the earth: we are compounded of earth; and we inhabit it. the heavens are high, far off, and unsearchable: we have sense and feeling of corporal things; and of eternal grace, but by revelation. no marvel then that our thoughts are also earthly: and it is less to be wondered at, that the words of worthless men can not cleanse them: seeing their doctrine and instruction, whose understanding the holy ghost vouchsafed to inhabit, have not performed it. for as the prophet isaiah cried out long ago, "lord, who hath believed our reports?" and out of doubt, as isaiah complained then for himself and others: so are they less believed, every day after other. for although religion, and the truth thereof be in every man's mouth, yea, in the discourse of every woman, who for the greatest number are but idols of vanity: what is it other than an universal dissimulation? we profess that we know god: but by works we deny him. for beatitude doth not consist in the knowledge of divine things, but in a divine life: for the devils know them better than men. "beatitudo non est divinorum cognitio, sed vita divina." and certainly there is nothing more to be admired, and more to be lamented, than the private contention, the passionate dispute, the personal hatred, and the perpetual war, massacres, and murders for religion among christians: the discourse whereof hath so occupied the world, as it hath well near driven the practice thereof out of the world. who would not soon resolve, that took knowledge but of the religious disputations among men, and not of their lives which dispute, that there were no other thing in their desires, than the purchase of heaven; and that the world itself were but used as it ought, and as an inn or place, wherein to repose ourselves in passing on towards our celestial habitation? when on the contrary, besides the discourse and outward profession, the soul hath nothing but hypocrisy. we are all (in effect) become comedians in religion: and while we act in gesture and voice, divine virtues, in all the course of our lives we renounce our persons, and the parts we play. for charity, justice, and truth have but their being _in terms_, like the philosopher's _materia prima_. neither is it that wisdom, which solomon defineth to be the "schoolmistress of the knowledge of god," that hath valuation in the world: it is enough that we give it our good word: but the same which is altogether exercised in the service of the world as the gathering of riches chiefly, by which we purchase and obtain honor, with the many respects which attend it. these indeed be the marks, which (when we have bent our consciences to the highest) we all shoot at. for the obtaining whereof it is true, that the care is our own; the care our own in this life, the peril our own in the future: and yet when we have gathered the greatest abundance, we ourselves enjoy no more thereof, than so much as belongs to one man. for the rest, he that had the greatest wisdom and the greatest ability that ever man had, hath told us that this is the use: "when goods increase (saith solomon) they also increase that eat them; and what good cometh to the owners, but the beholding thereof with their eyes?" as for those that devour the rest, and follow us in fair weather: they again forsake us in the first tempest of misfortune, and steer away before the sea and wind; leaving us to the malice of our destinies. of these, among a thousand examples, i will take but one out of master danner, and use his own words: "whilest the emperor charles the fifth, after the resignation of his estates, stayed at flushing for wind, to carry him his last journey into spain; he conferred on a time with seldius, his brother ferdinand's ambassador, till the deep of the night. and when seldius should depart, the emperor calling for some of his servants, and nobody answering him (for those that attended upon him, were some gone to their lodgings, and all the rest asleep), the emperor took up the candle himself, and went before seldius to light him down the stairs; and so did, notwithstanding all the resistance that seldius could make. and when he was come to the stair's foot, he said thus unto him: "seldius, remember this of charles the emperor, when he shall be dead and gone, that him, whom thou hast known in thy time environed with so many mighty armies and guards of soldiers, thou hast also seen alone, abandoned, and forsaken, yea even of his own domestical servants, &c. i acknowledge this change of fortune to proceed from the mighty hand of god, which i will by no means go about to withstand." but you will say, that there are some things else, and of greater regard than the former. the first is the reverend respect that is held of great men, and the honor done unto them by all sorts of people. and it is true indeed: provided, that an inward love for their justice and piety accompany the outward worship given to their places and power; without which what is the applause of the multitude, but as the outcry of an herd of animals, who without the knowledge of any true cause, please themselves with the noise they make? for seeing it is a thing exceeding rare, to distinguish virtue and fortune: the most impious (if prosperous) have ever been applauded; the most virtuous (if unprosperous) have ever been despised. for as fortune's man rides the horse, so fortune herself rides the man; who when he is descended and on foot, the man taken from his beast, and fortune from the man, a base groom beats the one, and a bitter contempt spurns at the other, with equal liberty. the second is the greatening of our posterity, and the contemplation of their glory whom we leave behind us. certainly, of those which conceive that their souls departed take any comfort therein, it may be truly said of them, which lactantius spake of certain heathen philosophers, "quod sapientes sunt in re stulta."[ ] for when our spirits immortal shall be once separate from our mortal bodies, and disposed by god; there remaineth in them no other joy of their posterity which succeed, than there doth of pride in that stone, which sleepeth in the wall of the king's palace; nor any other sorrow for their poverty, than there doth of shame in that, which beareth up a beggar's cottage. "nesciunt mortui, etiam sancti, quid agunt vivi, etiam eorum filii, quia animae mortuorum rebus viventium non intersunt": "the dead, though holy, know nothing of the living, no, not of their own children: for the souls of those departed, are not conversant with their affairs that remain."[ ] and if we doubt of st. augustine, we can not of job; who tells us, "that we know not if our sons shall be honorable: neither shall we understand concerning them, whether they shall be of low degree." which ecclesiastes also confirmeth: "man walketh in a shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain: he heapeth up riches, and can not tell who shall gather them. the living (saith he) know that they shall die, but the dead know nothing at all: for who can show unto man what shall be after him under the sun?" he therefore accounteth it among the rest of worldly vanities, to labor and travail in the world; not knowing after death whether a fool or a wise man should enjoy the fruits thereof: "which made me (saith he) endeavor even to abhor mine own labor." and what can other men hope, whose blessed or sorrowful estates after death god hath reserved? man's knowledge lying but in his hope, seeing the prophet isaiah confesseth of the elect, "that abraham is ignorant of us, and israel knows us not." but hereof we are assured, that the long and dark night of death (of whose following day we shall never behold the dawn till his return that hath triumphed over it), shall cover us over till the world be no more. after which, and when we shall again receive organs glorified and incorruptible, the seats of angelical affections, in so great admiration shall the souls of the blessed be exercised, as they can not admit the mixture of any second or less joy; nor any return of foregone and mortal affection towards friends, kindred, or children. of whom whether we shall retain any particular knowledge, or in any sort distinguish them, no man can assure us; and the wisest men doubt. but on the contrary, if a divine life retain any of those faculties which the soul exercised in a mortal body, we shall not at that time so divide the joys of heaven, as to cast any part thereof on the memory of their felicities which remain in the world. no, be their estates greater than ever the world gave, we shall (by the difference known unto us) even detest their consideration. and whatsoever comfort shall remain of all forepast, the same will consist in the charity which we exercised living; and in that piety, justice, and firm faith, for which it pleased the infinite mercy of god to accept of us, and receive us. shall we therefore value honor and riches at nothing? and neglect them, as unnecessary and vain? certainly no. for that infinite wisdom of god, which hath distinguished his angels by degrees; which hath given greater and less light and beauty to heavenly bodies; which hath made differences between beasts and birds; created the eagle and the fly, the cedar and the shrub; and among stones, given the fairest tincture to the ruby, and the quickest light to the diamond; hath also ordained kings, dukes, or leaders of the people, magistrates, judges, and other degrees among men. and as honor is left to posterity, for a mark and ensign of the virtue and understanding of their ancestors: so (seeing siracides preferreth death before beggary: and that titles, without proportionable estates, fall under the miserable succor of other men's pity) i account it foolishness to condemn such a care: provided, that worldly goods be well gotten, and that we raise not our own buildings out of other men's ruins. for, as plato doth first prefer the perfection of bodily health; secondly, the form and beauty; and thirdly, "divitias nulla fraude quaesitas":[ ] so jeremiah cries, "woe unto them that erect their houses by unrighteousness, and their chambers without equity": and isaiah the same, "woe to those that spoil and were not spoiled." and it was out of the true wisdom of solomon, that he commandeth us, "not to drink the wine of violence; not to lie in wait for blood, and not to swallow them up alive, whose riches we covet: for such are the ways (saith he) of everyone that is greedy of gain." and if we could afford ourselves but so much leisure as to consider, that he which hath most in the world, hath, in respect of the world, nothing in it: and that he which hath the longest time lent him to live in it, hath yet no proportion at all therein, setting it either by that which is past, when we were not, or by that time which is to come, in which we shall abide forever: i say, if both, to wit, our proportion in the world, and our time in the world, differ not much from that which is nothing; it is not out of any excellency of understanding, that we so much prize the one, which hath (in effect) no being: and so much neglect the other, which hath no ending: coveting those mortal things of the world, as if our souls were therein immortal; and neglecting those things which are immortal, as if ourselves after the world were but mortal. but let every man value his own wisdom, as he pleaseth. let the rich man think all fools, that cannot equal his abundance: the revenger esteem all negligent, that have not trodden down their opposites; the politician, all gross that cannot merchandise their faith: yet when we once come in sight of the port of death, to which all winds drive us, and when by letting fall that fatal anchor, which can never be weighed again, the navigation of this life takes end; then it is, i say, that our own cogitations (those sad and severe cogitations, formerly beaten from us by our health and felicity) return again, and pay us to the uttermost for all the pleasing passages of our lives past. it is then that we cry out to god for mercy; then when our selves can no longer exercise cruelty to others; and it is only then, that we are strucken through the soul with this terrible sentence, "that god will not be mocked." for if according to st. peter, "the righteous scarcely be saved: and that god spared not his angels"; where shall those appear, who, having served their appetites all their lives, presume to think, that the severe commandments of the all-powerful god were given but in sport; and that the short breath, which we draw when death presseth us, if we can but fashion it to the sound of mercy (without any kind of satisfaction or amends) is sufficient? "o quam multi," saith a reverend father, "cum hac spe ad aeternos labores et bella descendunt!"[ ] i confess that it is a great comfort to our friends, to have it said, that we ended well; for we all desire (as balaam did) "to die the death of the righteous." but what shall we call a disesteeming, an opposing, or (indeed) a mocking of god: if those men do not oppose him, disesteem him, and mock him, that think it enough for god, to ask him forgiveness at leisure, with the remainder and last drawing of a malicious breath? for what do they otherwise, that die this kind of well-dying, but say unto god as followeth? "we beseech thee, o god, that all the falsehoods, forswearings, and treacheries of our lives past, may be pleasing unto thee; that thou wilt for our sakes (that have had no leisure to do anything for thine) change thy nature (though impossible,) and forget to be a just god; that thou wilt love injuries and oppressions, call ambition wisdom, and charity foolishness. for i shall prejudice my son (which i am resolved not to do) if i make restitution; and confess myself to have been unjust (which i am too proud to do) if i deliver the oppressed." certainly, these wise worldlings have either found out a new god, or made one: and in all likelihood such a leaden one, as louis the eleventh wore in his cap; which when he had caused any that he feared, or hated, to be killed, he would take it from his head and kiss it: beseeching it to pardon him this one evil act more, and it should be the last; which (as at other times) he did, when by the practice of a cardinal and a falsified sacrament, he caused the earl of armagnac to be stabbed to death: mockeries indeed fit to be used towards a leaden, but not towards the ever-living god. but of this composition are all devout lovers of the world, that they fear all that is dureless[ ] and ridiculous: they fear the plots and practises of their opposites,[ ] and their very whisperings: they fear the opinions of men, which beat but upon shadows: they flatter and forsake the prosperous and unprosperous, be they friends or kings: yea they dive under water, like ducks, at every pebblestone, that is but thrown toward them by a powerful hand: and on the contrary, they show an obstinate and giant-like valor, against the terrible judgments of the all-powerful god, yea they show themselves gods against god, and slaves towards men; towards men whose bodies and consciences are alike rotten. now for the rest: if we truly examine the difference of both conditions; to wit, of the rich and mighty, whom we call fortunate; and of the poor and oppressed, whom we account wretched we shall find the happiness of the one, and the miserable estate of the other, so tied by god to the very instant, and both so subject to interchange (witness the sudden downfall of the greatest princes, and the speedy uprising of the meanest persons) as the one hath nothing so certain, whereof to boast; nor the other so uncertain, whereof to bewail itself. for there is no man so assured of his honor, of his riches, health, or life; but that he may be deprived of either, or all, the very next hour or day to come. "quid vesper vehat, incertum est," "what the evening will bring with it, it is uncertain." "and yet ye cannot tell (saith st. james) what shall be tomorrow. today he is set up, and tomorrow he shall not be found; for he is turned into dust, and his purpose perisheth." and although the air which compasseth adversity be very obscure; yet therein we better discern god, than in that shining light which environeth worldly glory; through which, for the clearness thereof, there is no vanity which escapeth our sight. and let adversity seem what it will; to happy men ridiculous, who make themselves merry at other men's misfortunes; and to those under the cross, grievous: yet this is true, that for all that is past, to the very instant, the portions remaining are equal to either. for be it that we have lived many years, "and (according to solomon) in them all we have rejoiced;" or be it that we have measured the same length of days and therein have evermore sorrowed: yet looking back from our present being, we find both the one and the other, to wit, the joy and the woe, sailed out of sight; and death, which doth pursue us and hold us in chase, from our infancy, hath gathered it. "quicquid aetatis retro est, mors tenet:" "whatsoever of our age is past, death holds it." so as whosoever he be, to whom fortune hath been a servant, and the time a friend; let him but take the account of his memory (for we have no other keeper of our pleasures past), and truly examine what it hath reserved either beauty and youth, or foregone delights; what it hath saved, that it might last, of his dearest affections, or of whatever else the amorous springtime gave his thoughts of contentment, then unvaluable; and he shall find that all the art which his elder years have, can draw no other vapor out of these dissolutions, than heavy, secret, and sad sighs. he shall find nothing remaining, but those sorrows, which grow up after our fast-springing youth; overtake it, when it is at a stand; and overtopped it utterly, when it begins to wither: in so much as looking back from the very instant time, and from our now being, the poor, diseased, and captive creature, hath as little sense of all his former miseries and pains, as he, that is most blessed in common opinions, hath of his fore-passed pleasure and delights. for whatsoever is cast behind us, is just nothing: and what is to come, deceitful hope hath it: "omnia quae eventura sunt, in incerto jacent."[ ] only those few black swans, i must except: who having had the grace to value worldly vanities at no more than their own price; do, by retaining the comfortable memory of a well acted life, behold death without dread, and the grave without fear; and embrace both, as necessary guides to endless glory. for myself, this is my consolation, and all that i can offer to others, that the sorrows of this life are but of two sorts: whereof the one hath respect to god, the other, to the world. in the first we complain to god against ourselves, for our offences against him; and confess, "et tu justus es in omnibus quae venerunt super nos." "and thou, o lord, are just in all that hath befallen us." in the second we complain to ourselves against god: as if he had done us wrong, either in not giving us worldly goods and honors, answering our appetites: or for taking them again from us having had them; forgetting that humble and just acknowledgment of job, "the lord hath given, and the lord hath taken." to the first of which st. paul hath promised blessedness; to the second, death. and out of doubt he is either a fool, or ungrateful to god, or both, that doth not acknowledge, how mean soever his estate be, that the same is yet far greater than that which god oweth him: or doth not acknowledge, how sharp soever his afflictions be, that the same are yet far less, than those which are due unto him. and if an heathen wise man call the adversities of the world but "tributa vivendi," "the tributes of living;" a wise christian man ought to know them, and bear them, but as the tributes of offending. he ought to bear them manlike, and resolvedly; and not as those whining soldiers do, "qui gementes sequuntur imperatorem."[ ] for seeing god, who is the author of all our tragedies, hath written out for us and appointed us all the parts we are to play: and hath not, in their distribution, been partial to the most mighty princes of the world: that gave unto darius the part of the greatest emperor, and the part of the most miserable beggar, a beggar begging water of an enemy, to quench the great drought of death: that appointed bajazet to play the grand signior of the turks in the morning, and in the same day the footstool of tamerlane (both which parts valerian had also played, being taken by sapores): that made belisarius play the most victorious captain, and lastly the part of a blind beggar: of which examples many thousands may be produced: why should other men, who are but as the least worms, complain of wrong? certainly there is no other account to be made of this ridiculous world, than to resolve, that the change of fortune on the great theatre, is but as the change of garments on the less. for when on the one and the other, every man wears but his own skin, the players are all alike. now, if any man out of weakness prize the passages of this world otherwise (for saith petrarch, "magni ingenii est revocare mentem a sensibus"[ ]) it is by reason of that unhappy phantasy of ours, which forgeth in the brains of man all the miseries (the corporal excepted) whereunto he is subject. therein it is, that misfortunes and adversity work all that they work. for seeing death, in the end of the play, takes from all whatsoever fortune or force takes from any one; it were a foolish madness in the shipwreck of worldly things, where all sinks but the sorrow, to save it. that were, as seneca saith, "fortunae succumbere, quod tristius est omni fato:" "to fall under fortune, of all other the most miserable destiny." but it is now time to sound a retreat; and to desire to be excused of this long pursuit: and withal, that the good intent, which hath moved me to draw the picture of time past (which we call history) in so large a table, may also be accepted in place of a better reason. the examples of divine providence, everywhere found (the first divine histories being nothing else but a continuation of such examples) have persuaded me to fetch my beginning from the beginning of all things: to wit, creation. for though these two glorious actions of the almighty be so near, and (as it were) linked together, that the one necessarily implieth the other: creation inferring providence (for what father forsaketh the child that he hath begotten?) and providence pre-supposing creation: yet many of those that have seemed to excel in worldly wisdom, have gone about to disjoin this coherence; the epicure denying both creation and providence, but granting the world had a beginning; the aristotelian granting providence, but denying both the creation and the beginning. now although this doctrine of faith, touching the creation in time (for by faith we understand, that the world was made by the word of god), be too weighty a work for aristotle's rotten ground to bear up, upon which he hath (notwithstanding) founded the defences and fortresses of all his verbal doctrine: yet that the necessity of infinite power, and the world's beginning, and the impossibility of the contrary even in the judgment of natural reason, wherein he believed, had not better informed him; it is greatly to be marvelled at. and it is no less strange, that those men which are desirous of knowledge (seeing aristotle hath failed in this main point; and taught little other than terms in the rest) have so retrenched their minds from the following and overtaking of truth, and so absolutely subjected themselves to the law of those philosophical principles; as all contrary kind of teaching, in the search of causes, they have condemned either for phantastical, or curious. both doth it follow, that the positions of heathen philosophers are undoubted grounds and principles indeed, because so called? or that _ipsi dixerunt_, doth make them to be such? certainly no. but this is true, that where natural reason hath built anything so strong against itself, as the same reason can hardly assail it, much less batter it down: the same in every question of nature, and infinite power, may be approved for a fundamental law of human knowledge. for saith charron in his book of wisdom, "toute proposition humaine a autant d'authorite quel'autre, si la raison n'on fait la difference;" "every human proposition hath equal authority, if reason make not the difference," the rest being but the fables of principles. but hereof how shall the upright and impartial judgment of man give a sentence, where opposition and examination are not admitted to give in evidence? and to this purpose it was well said of lactantius, "sapientiam sibi adimunt, qui sine ullo judicio inventa maiorum probant, et ab aliis pecudum more ducuntur:" "they neglect their own wisdom, who without any judgment approve the invention of those that forewent them; and suffer themselves after the manner of beasts, to be led by them;" by the advantage of which sloth and dullness, ignorance is now become so powerful a tyrant, as it hath set true philosophy, physics, and divinity in a pillory; and written over the first, "contra negantem principia;"[ ] over the second, "virtus specifica;"[ ] over the third, "ecclesta romana."[ ] but for myself, i shall never be persuaded, that god hath shut up all light of learning within the lanthorn of aristotle's brains: or that it was ever said unto him, as unto esdras, "_accendam in corde tuo lucernam intellectus_";[ ] that god hath given invention but to the heathen, and that they only invaded nature, and found the strength and bottom thereof; the same nature having consumed all her store, and left nothing of price to after-ages. that these and these be the causes of these and these effects, time hath taught us; and not reason: and so hath experience without art. the cheese-wife knoweth it as well as the philosopher, that sour rennet doth coagulate her milk into a curd. but if we ask a reason of this cause, why the sourness doth it? whereby it doth it? and the manner how? i think that there is nothing to be found in vulgar philosophy, to satisfy this and many other like vulgar questions. but man to cover his ignorance in the least things, who can not give a true reason for the grass under his feet, why it should be green rather than red, or of any other color; that could never yet discover the way and reason of nature's working, in those which are far less noble creatures than himself; who is far more noble than the heavens themselves: "man (saith solomon) that can hardly discern the things that are upon the earth, and with great labor find out the things that are before us"; that hath so short a time in the world, as he no sooner begins to learn, than to die; that hath in his memory but borrowed knowledge; in his understanding, nothing truly; that is ignorant of the essence of his own soul, and which the wisest of the naturalists (if aristotle be he) could never so much as define, but by the action and effect, telling us what it works (which all men knew as well as he) but not what it is, which neither he, nor any else, doth know, but god that created it; ("for though i were perfect, yet i know not my soul," saith job). man, i say, that is but an idiot in the next cause of his own life, and in the cause of all actions of his life, will (notwithstanding) examine the art of god in creating the world; of god, who (saith job) "is so excellent as we know him not"; and examine the beginning of the work, which had end before mankind had a beginning of being. he will disable god's power to make a world, without matter to make it of. he will rather give the motes of the air for a cause; cast the work on necessity or chance; bestow the honor thereof on nature; make two powers, the one to be the author of the matter, the other of the form; and lastly, for want of a workman, have it eternal: which latter opinion aristotle, to make himself the author of a new doctrine, brought into the world: and his sectators[ ] have maintained it; "parati ac conjurati, quos sequuntur, philosophorum animis invictis opiniones tueri."[ ] for hermes, who lived at once with, or soon after moses, zoroaster, musaeus, orpheus, linus, anaximenes, anaxagoras, empedocles, melissus, pherecydes, thales, cleanthes, pythagoras, plato, and many other (whose opinions are exquisitely gathered by steuchius eugubinus) found in the necessity of invincible reason, "one eternal and infinite being," to be the parent of the universal. "horum omnium sententia quamvis sit incerta, eodem tamen spectat, ut providentiam unam esse consentiant: sive enim natura, sive aether, sive ratio, sive mens, sive fatalis necessitas, sive divina lex; idem est quod a nobis dicitur deus": "all these men's opinions (saith lactantius) though uncertain, come to this; that they agree upon one providence; whether the same be nature, or light, or reason, or understanding, or destiny, or divine ordinance, that it is the same which we call god." certainly, as all the rivers in the world, though they have divers risings, and divers runnings; though they sometimes hide themselves for a while under ground, and seem to be lost in sea-like lakes; do at last find, and fall into the great ocean: so after all the searches that human capacity hath, and after all philosophical contemplation and curiosity; in the necessity of this infinite power, all the reason of man ends and dissolves itself. as for the others; the first touching those which conceive the matter of the world to have been eternal, and that god did not create the world "exnihilo,"[ ] but "ex materia praeexistente":[ ] the supposition is so weak, as is hardly worth the answering. for (saith eusebius) "mihi videntur qui hoc dicunt, fortunam quoque deo annectere," "they seem unto me, which affirm this, to give part of the work to god, and part to fortune"; insomuch as if god had not found this first matter by chance, he had neither been author nor father, nor creator, nor lord of the universal. for were the matter or chaos eternal, it then follows, that either this supposed matter did fit itself to god, or god accommodate himself to the matter. for the first, it is impossible, that things without sense could proportion themselves to the workman's will. for the second: it were horrible to conceive of god, that as an artificer he applied himself, according to the proportion of matter which he lighted upon. but let it be supposed, that this matter hath been made by any power, not omnipotent, and infinitely wise; i would gladly learn how it came to pass, that the same was proportionable to his intention, that was omnipotent and infinitely wise; and no more, nor no less, than served to receive the form of the universal. for, had it wanted anything of what was sufficient; then must it be granted, that god created out of nothing so much new matter, as served to finish the work of the world: or had there been more of this matter than sufficed, then god did dissolve and annihilate whatsoever remained and was superfluous. and this must every reasonable soul confess, that it is the same work of god alone, to create anything out of nothing, and by the same art and power, and by none other, can those things, or any part of that eternal matter, be again changed into nothing; by which those things, that once were nothing, obtained a beginning of being. again, to say that this matter was the cause of itself; this, of all other, were the greatest idiotism. for, if it were the cause of itself at any time; then there was also a time when itself was not: at which time of not being, it is easy enough to conceive, that it could neither procure itself, nor anything else. for to be, and not to be, at once, is impossible. "nihil autem seipsum praecedit, neque; seipsum componit corpus": "there is nothing that doth precede itself, neither do bodies compound themselves." for the rest, those that feign this matter to be eternal, must of necessity confess, that infinite cannot be separate from eternity. and then had infinite matter left no place for infinite form, but that the first matter was finite, the form which it received proves it. for conclusion of this part, whosoever will make choice, rather to believe in eternal deformity, or in eternal dead matter, than in eternal light and eternal life: let eternal death be his reward. for it is a madness of that kind, as wanteth terms to express it. for what reason of man (whom the curse of presumption hath not stupefied) hath doubted, that infinite power (of which we can comprehend but a kind of shadow, "quia comprehensio est intra terminos, qui infinito repugnant"[ ]) hath anything wanting in itself, either for matter of form; yea for as many worlds (if such had been god's will) as the sea hath sands? for where the power is without limitation, the work hath no other limitation, than the workman's will. yea reason itself finds it more easy for infinite power to deliver from itself a finite world, without the help of matter prepared; than for a finite man, a fool and dust, to change the form of matter made to his hands. they are dionysius his words, "deus in una existentia omnia praehabet"[ ] and again, "esse omnium est ipsa divinitas, omne quod vides, et quod non vides",[ ] to wit, "causaliter",[ ] or in better terms, "non tanquam forma, sed tanquam causa universalis"[ ] neither hath the world universal closed up all of god "for the most part of his works (saith siracides) are hid". neither can the depth of his wisdom be opened, by the glorious work of the world, which never brought to knowledge all it can, for then were his infinite power bounded and made finite. and hereof it comes, that we seldom entitle god the all-showing, or the all-willing, but the almighty, that is, infinitely able. but now for those, who from that ground, "that out of nothing, nothing is made," infer the world's eternity, and yet not so savage therein, as those are, which give an eternal being to dead matter, it is true if the word (nothing) be taken in the affirmative, and the making, imposed upon natural agents and finite power; that out of nothing, nothing is made. but seeing their great doctor aristotle himself confesseth, "quod omnes antiqui decreverunt quasi quodam return principium, ipsumque infinitum" "that all the ancient decree a kind of beginning, and the same to be infinite"; and a little after, more largely and plainly, "principium eius est nullum, sed ipsum omnium cernitur esse principium, ac omnia complecti ac regere",[ ] it is strange that this philosopher, with his followers, should rather make choice out of falsehood, to conclude falsely, than out of truth, to resolve truly. for if we compare the world universal, and all the unmeasureable orbs of heaven, and those marvellous bodies of the sun, moon, and stars, with "ipsum infinitum": it may truly be said of them all, which himself affirms of his imaginary "materia prima,"[ ] that they are neither "quid, quale," nor "quantum "; and therefore to bring finite (which hath no proportion with infinite) out of infinite ("qui destruit omnem proportionem"[ ]) is no wonder in god's power. and therefore anaximander, melissus, and empedocles, call the world universal, but "particulam universitatis" and "infinitatis," a parcel of that which is the universality and the infinity inself; and plato, but a shadow of god. but the other to prove the world's eternity, urgeth this maxim, "that, a sufficient and effectual cause being granted, an answerable effect thereof is also granted": inferring that god being forever a sufficient and effectual cause of the world, the effect of the cause should also have been forever; to wit, the world universal. but what a strange mockery is this in so great a master, to confess a sufficient and effectual cause of the world, (to wit, an almighty god) in his antecedent; and the same god to be a god restrained in his conclusion; to make god free in power, and bound in will; able to effect, unable to determine; able to make all things, and yet unable to make choice of the time when? for this were impiously to resolve of god, as of natural necessity; which hath neither choice, nor will, nor understanding; which cannot but work matter being present: as fire, to burn things combustible. again he thus disputeth, that every agent which can work, and doth not work, if it afterward work, it is either thereto moved by itself, or by somewhat else: and so it passeth from power to act. but god (saith he) is immovable, and is neither moved by himself, nor by any other: but being always the same, doth always work. whence he concludeth, if the world were caused by god, that he was forever the cause thereof: and therefore eternal. the answer to this is very easy, for that god's performing in due time that which he ever determined at length to perform, doth not argue any alteration or change, but rather constancy in him. for the same action of his will, which made the world forever, did also withhold the effect to the time ordained. to this answer, in itself sufficient, others add further, that the pattern or image of the world may be said to be eternal: which the platonics call "spiritualem mundum"[ ] and do in this sort distinguish the idea and creation in time. "spiritualis ille mundus, mundi huius exemplar, primumque dei opus, vita aequali est architecto, fuit semper cum illo, eritque semper. mundus autem corporalis, quod secundum opus est dei, decedit iam ab opifice ex parte una, quia non fuit semper: retinet alteram, quia sit semper futurus": "that representative, or the intentional world (say they) the sampler of this visible world, the first work of god, was equally ancient with the architect; for it was forever with him, and ever shall be. this material world, the second work or creature of god, doth differ from the worker in this, that it was not from everlasting, and in this it doth agree, that it shall be forever to come." the first point, that it was not forever, all christians confess: the other they understand no otherwise, than that after the consummation of this world, there shall be a new heaven and a new earth, without any new creation of matter. but of these things we need not here stand to argue; though such opinions be not unworthy the propounding, in this consideration, of an eternal and unchangeable cause, producing a changeable and temporal effect. touching which point proclus the platonist disputeth, that the compounded essence of the world (and because compounded, therefore dissipable) is continued, and knit to the divine being, by an individual and inseparable power, flowing from divine unity; and that the world's natural appetite of god showeth, that the same proceedeth from a good and understanding divine; and that this virtue, by which the world is continued and knit together, must be infinite, that it may infinitely and everlastingly continue and preserve the same. which infinite virtue, the finite world (saith he) is not capable of, but receiveth it from the divine infinite, according to the temporal nature it hath, successively every moment by little and little; even as the whole material world is not altogether: but the abolished parts are departed by small degrees, and the parts yet to come, do by the same small degrees succeed; as the shadow of a tree in a river seemeth to have continued the same a long time in the water, but it is perpetually renewed, in the continual ebbing and flowing thereof. but to return to them, which denying that ever the world had any beginning, withal deny that ever it shall have any end, and to this purpose affirm, that it was never heard, never read, never seen, no not by any reason perceived, that the heavens have ever suffered corruption; or that they appear any way the older by continuance; or in any sort otherwise than they were; which had they been subject to final corruption, some change would have been discerned in so long a time. to this it is answered, that the little change as yet perceived, doth rather prove their newness, and that they have not continued so long; than that they will continue forever as they are. and if conjectural arguments may receive answer by conjectures; it then seemeth that some alteration may be found. for either aristotle, pliny, strabo, beda, aquinas, and others, were grossly mistaken; or else those parts of the world lying within the burnt zone, were not in elder times habitable, by reason of the sun's heat, neither were the seas, under the equinoctial, navigable. but we know by experience, that those regions, so situate, are filled with people, and exceeding temperate; and the sea, over which we navigate, passable enough. we read also many histories of deluges: and how in the time of phaeton, divers places in the world were burnt up, by the sun's violent heat. but in a word, this observation is exceeding feeble. for we know it for certain, that stone walls, of matter mouldering and friable, have stood two, or three thousand years; that many things have been digged up out of the earth, of that depth, as supposed to have been buried by the general flood; without any alteration either of substance or figure: yea it is believed, and it is very probable, that the gold which is daily found in mines, and rocks, under ground, was created together with the earth. and if bodies elementary, and compounded, the eldest times have not invaded and corrupted: what great alteration should we look for in celestial and quint-essential bodies? and yet we have reason to think, that the sun, by whose help all creatures are generate, doth not in these latter ages assist nature, as heretofore. we have neither giants, such as the eldest world had; nor mighty men, such as the elder world had; but all things in general are reputed of less virtue which from the heavens receive virtue. whence, if the nature of a preface would permit a larger discourse, we might easily fetch store of proof; as that this world shall at length have end, as that once it had beginning. and i see no good answer that can be made to this objection: if the world were eternal, why not all things in the world eternal? if there were no first, no cause, no father, no creator, no incomprehensible wisdom, but that every nature had been alike eternal; and man more rational than every other nature: why had not the eternal reason of man provided for his eternal being in the world? for if all were equal why not equal conditions to all? why should heavenly bodies live forever; and the bodies of men rot and die? again, who was it that appointed the earth to keep the center, and gave order that it should hang in the air: that the sun should travel between the tropics, and never exceed those bounds, nor fail to perform that progress once in every year: the moon to live by borrowed light; the fixed stars (according to common opinion) to be fastened like nails in a cartwheel; and the planets to wander at their pleasure? or if none of these had power over other: was it out of charity and love, that the sun by his perpetual travel within these two circles, hath visited, given light unto, and relieved all parts of the earth, and the creatures therein, by turns and times? out of doubt, if the sun have of his own accord kept this course in all eternity, he may justly be called eternal charity and everlasting love. the same may be said of all the stars; who being all of them most large and clear fountains of virtue and operation, may also, be called eternal virtues: the earth may be called eternal patience; the moon, an eternal borrower and beggar; and man of all other the most miserable, eternally mortal. and what were this, but to believe again in the old play of the gods? yea in more gods by millions, than ever hesiodus dreamed of. but instead of this mad folly, we see it well enough with our feeble and mortal eyes; and the eyes of our reason discern it better; that the sun, moon, stars, and the earth, are limited bounded, and constrained: themselves they have not constrained nor could. "omne determinatum causam habet aliquam efficientem, quae illud determinaverit:" "everything bounded hath some efficient cause, by which it is bounded." now for nature; as by the ambiguity of this name, the school of aristotle hath both commended many errors unto us, and sought also thereby to obscure the glory of the high moderator of all things, shining in the creation, and in the governing of the world: so if the best definition be taken out of the second of aristotle's "physics," or "primo de coelo," or out of the fifth of his "metaphysics"; i say that the best is but nominal, and serving only to difference the beginning of natural motion from artificial: which yet the academics open better, when they call it "a seminary strength, infused into matter by the soul of the world": who give the first place to providence, the second to fate, and but the third to nature. "providentia" (by which they understand god) "dux et caput; fatum, medium ex providentia prodiens; natura postremum"[ ] but be it what he will, or be it any of these (god excepted) or participating of all: yet that it hath choice or understanding (both which are necessarily in the cause of all things) no man hath avowed. for this is unanswerable of lactantius, "is autem facit aliquid, qui aut voluntatem faciendi habet, aut scientiam:" "he only can be said to be the doer of a thing, that hath either will or knowledge in the doing it." but the will and science of nature, are in these words truly expressed by ficinus: "potest ubique natura, vel per diversa media, vel ex diversis materiis, diversa facere: sublata vero mediorum materiatumque diversitate, vel unicum, vel similimum operatur, neque potest quando adest materia non operari"; "it is the power of nature by the diversity of means, or out of diversity of matter, to produce divers things: but taking away the diversity of means, and the diversity of matter, it then works but one or the like work; neither can it but work, matter being present." now if nature made choice of diversity of matter, to work all these variable works of heaven and earth, it had then both understanding and will; it had counsel to begin; reason to dispose; virtue and knowledge to finish, and power to govern: without which all things had been but one and the same: all of the matter of heaven; or all of the matter of earth. and if we grant nature this will, and this understanding, this course, reason, and power: "cur natura potius quam deus nominetur?" "why should we then call such a cause rather nature, than god?" "god, of whom all men have notion, and give the first and highest place to divine power": "omnes homines notionem deorum habent, omnesque summun locum divino cuidam numini assignant." and this i say in short; that it is a true effect of true reason in man (were there no authority more binding than reason) to acknowledge and adore the first and most sublime power. "vera philosophia, est ascensus ab his quae fluunt, et oriuntur, et occidunt, ad ea quae vera sunt, et semper eadem": "true philosophy, is an ascending from the things which flow, and arise, and fall, to the things that are forever the same." for the rest; i do also account it not the meanest, but an impiety monstrous, to confound god and nature; be it but in terms. for it is god, that only disposeth of all things according to his own will, and maketh of one earth, vessels of honor and dishonor. it is nature that can dispose of nothing, but according to the will of the matter wherein it worketh. it is god that commandeth all: it is nature that is obedient to all: it is god that doth good unto all, knowing and loving the good he doth: it is nature, that secondarily doth also good, but it neither knoweth nor loveth the good it doth. it is god, that hath all things in himself: nature, nothing in itself. it is god, which is the father, and hath begotten all things: it is nature, which is begotten by all things, in which it liveth and laboreth; for by itself it existeth not. for shall we say, that it is out of affection to the earth, that heavy things fall towards it? shall we call it reason, which doth conduct every river into the salt sea? shall we term it knowledge in fire, that makes it to consume combustible matter? if it be affection, reason, and knowledge in these; by the same affection, reason, and knowledge it is, that nature worketh. and therefore seeing all things work as they do, (call it by form, or nature, or by what you please) yet because they work by an impulsion, which they cannot resist, or by a faculty, infused by the supremest power; we are neither to wonder at, nor to worship, the faculty that worketh, nor the creature wherein it worketh. but herein lies the wonder: and to him is the worship due, who hath created such a nature in things, and such a faculty, as neither knowing itself, the matter wherein it worketh, nor the virtue and power which it hath; do yet work all things to their last and uttermost perfection. and therefore every reasonable man, taking to himself for a ground that which is granted by all antiquity, and by all men truly learned that ever the world had; to wit; that there is a power infinite, and eternal (which also necessity doth prove unto us, without the help of faith, and reason; without the force of authority) all things do as easily follow which have been delivered by divine letters, as the waters of a running river do successfully pursue each other from the first fountains. this much i say it is, that reason itself hath taught us: and this is the beginning of knowledge. "sapientia praecedit, religio sequitur: quia prius est deum scire, consequens colere"; "sapience goes before, religion follows: because it is first to know god, and then to worship him." this sapience plato calleth "absoluti boni scientiam," "the science of the absolute good": and another "scientiam rerum primarum, sempiternarum, perpetuarum"[ ] for "faith (saith isidore) is not extorted by violence; but by reason and examples persuaded": "fides nequaquam vi extorquetur, sed ratione et exemplis suadetur." i confess it, that to inquire further, as to the essence of god, of his power, of his art, and by what means he created the world: or of his secret judgment, and the causes, is not an effect of reason. "sed cum ratione insaniunt," but "they grow mad with reason," that inquire after it. for as it is no shame, nor dishonor (saith a french author) "de faire arrest au but qu'on nasceu surpasser," "for a man to rest himself there where he finds it impossible to pass on further": so whatsoever is beyond, and out of the reach of true reason, it acknowledged it to be so; as understanding itself not to be infinite, but according to the name and nature it hath, to be a teacher, that best knows the end of his own art. for seeing both reason and necessity teach us (reason, which is "pars divini spiritus in corpus humanum mersi"[ ]) that the world was made by a power infinite; and yet how it was made, it cannot teach us: and seeing the same reason and necessity make us know, that the same infinite power is everywhere in the world; and yet how everywhere, it cannot inform us: our belief hereof is not weakened, but greatly strengthened, by our ignorance, because it is the same reason that tells us, that such a nature cannot be said to be god, that can be in all conceived by man. i have already been over-long, to make any large discourse either of the parts of the following story, or in mine own excuse: especially in the excuse of this or that passage; seeing the whole is exceeding weak and defective. among the grossest, the unsuitable division of the books, i could not know how to excuse, had i not been directed to enlarge the building after the foundation was laid, and the first part finished. all men know that there is no great art in the dividing evenly of these things, which are subject to number and measure. for the rest, it suits well enough with a great many books of this age, which speak too much, and yet say little; "ipsi nobis furto subducimur"; "we are stolen away from ourselves," setting a high price on all that is our own. but hereof, though a late good writer make complaint, yet shall it not lay hold on me, because i believe as he doth; that who so thinks himself the wisest man, is but a poor and miserable ignorant. those that are the best men of war against all the vanities and fooleries of the world, do always keep the strongest guards against themselves, to defend them from themselves; from self-love, self-estimation, and self-opinion. generally concerning the order of the work, i have only taken counsel from the argument. for of the assyrians, which after the downfall of babel take up the first part, and were the first great kings of the world, there came little to the view of posterity: some few enterprises, greater in fame than faith, of ninus and semiramis, excepted. it was the story of the hebrews, of all before the olympiads, that overcame the consuming disease of time, and preserved itself, from the very cradle and beginning to this day: and yet not so entire, but that the large discourses thereof (to which in many scriptures we are referred) are nowhere found. the fragments of other stories, with the actions of those kings and princes which shot up here and there in the same time, i am driven to relate by way of digression: of which we may say with virgil: "apparent rari nantes in gurgite vasto"; "they appear here and there floating in the great gulf of time." to the same first ages do belong the report of many inventions therein found, and from them derived to us; though most of the authors' names have perished in so long a navigation. for those ages had their laws; they had diversity of government; they had kingly rule; nobility; policy in war; navigation, and all, or the most of needful trades. to speak therefore of these (seeing in a general history we should have left a great deal of nakedness, by their omission) it cannot properly be called a digression. true it is, that i have made also many others: which if they shall be laid to my charge, i must cast the fault into the great heap of human error. for seeing we digress in all the ways of our lives: yea, seeing the life of man is nothing else but digression; i may the better be excused, in writing their lives and actions. i am not altogether ignorant in the laws of history and of the kinds. the same hath been taught by many, but no man better, and with greater brevity, than by that excellent learned gentleman, sir francis bacon. christian laws are also taught us by the prophets and apostles; and every day preached unto us. but we still make large digressions: yea, the teachers themselves do not (in all) keep the path which they point out to others. for the rest, after such time as the persians had wrested the empire from the chaldeans, and had raised a great monarchy, producing actions of more importance than were elsewhere to be found; it was agreeable to the order of the story, to attend this empire; whilst it so flourished, that the affairs of the nations adjoining had reference thereunto. the like observance was to be used towards the fortunes of greece, when they again began to get ground upon the persians; as also towards the affairs of rome, when the romans grew more mighty than the greeks. as for the medes, the macedonians, the sicilians, the carthaginians, and other nations who resisted the beginnings of the former empires, and afterwards became but parts of their composition and enlargement; it seemed best to remember what was known of them from their several beginnings, in such times and places as they in their flourishing estates opposed those monarchies, which in the end swallowed them up. and herein i have followed the best geographers: who seldom give names to those small brooks, whereof many, joined together, make great rivers: till such times as they become united, and run in main stream to the ocean sea. if the phrase be weak, and the style not everywhere like itself: the first shows their legitimation and true parent; the second will excuse itself upon the variety of matter. for virgil, who wrote his _eclogues_, "gracili avena,"[ ] used stronger pipes, when he sounded the wars of aeneas. it may also be laid to my charge, that i use divers hebrew words in my first book, and elsewhere: in which language others may think and i myself acknowledge it, that i am altogether ignorant: but it is true, that some of them i find in montanus, others in latin characters in s. senensis; and of the rest i have borrowed the interpretation of some of my friends. but say i had been beholding to neither, yet were it not to be wondered at, having had an eleven years' leisure, to attain the knowledge of that, or of any other tongue; howsoever, i know that it will be said by many, that i might have been more pleasing to the reader, if i had written the story of mine own times, having been permitted to draw water as near the well-head as another. to this i answer, that whosoever in writing a modern history, shall follow truth too near the heels, it may haply strike out his teeth. there is no mistress or guide, that hath led her followers and servants into greater miseries. he that goes after her too far off, loseth her sight, and loseth himself: and he that walks after her at a middle distance: i know not whether i should call that kind of course, temper,[ ] or baseness. it is true, that i never travelled after men's opinions, when i might have made the best use of them: and i have now too few days remaining, to imitate those, that either out of extreme ambition, or of extreme cowardice, or both, do yet (when death hath them on his shoulders) flatter the world, between the bed and the grave. it is enough for me (being in that state i am) to write of the eldest times: wherein also why may it not be said, that in speaking of the past, i point at the present, and tax the vices of those that are yet living, in their persons that are long since dead; and have it laid to my charge? but this i cannot help, though innocent. and certainly, if there be any, that finding themselves spotted like the tigers of old time, shall find fault with me for painting them over anew, they shall therein accuse themselves justly, and me falsely. for i protest before the majesty of god, that i malice no man under the sun. impossible i know it is to please all; seeing few or none are so pleased with themselves, or so assured of themselves, by reason of their subjection to their private passions, but that they seem divers persons in one and the same day. seneca hath said it, and so do i: "unus mihi pro populo erat";[ ] and to the same effect epicurus, "hoc ego non multis sed tibi";[ ] or (as it hath since lamentably fallen out) i may borrow the resolution of an ancient philosopher, "satis est unus, satis est nullus."[ ] for it was for the service of that inestimable prince henry, the successive hope, and one of the greatest of the christian world, that i undertook this work. it pleased him to peruse some part thereof, and to pardon what was amiss. it is now left to the world without a master: from which all that is presented, hath received both blows and thanks: "eadem probamus, eadem reprehendimus: hic exitus est omnis judicii, in quolis secundum plures datur."[ ] but these discourses are idle. i know that as the charitable will judge charitably: so against those, "qui gloriantur in malitia,"[ ] my present adversity hath disarmed me, i am on the ground already, and therefore have not far to fall: and for rising again, as in the natural privation there is no recession to habit; so it is seldom seen in the privation politic. i do therefore forbear to style my readers gentle, courteous, and friendly, thereby to beg their good opinions, or to promise a second and third volume (which i also intend) if the first receive grace and good acceptance. for that which is already done, may be thought enough, and too much: and it is certain, let us claw the reader with never so many courteous phrases, yet shall we evermore be thought fools, that write foolishly. for conclusion, all the hope i have lies in this, that i have already found more ungentle and uncourteous readers of my love towards them, and well-deserving of them, than ever i shall do again. for had it been otherwise, i should hardly have had this leisure, to have made myself a fool in print. [footnote a: a sketch of the life of raleigh will be found prefixed to his "discovery of guiana" in the volume of "voyages and travels". his "history of the world" was written during his imprisonment in the tower of london, which lasted from to . the preface is interesting not only as a fine piece of elizabethan prose but as exhibiting the attitude toward history, and the view of the relation of history to religion and philosophy, which characterized one who represented with exceptional vigor the typical elizabethan man of action and who was also a man of thought and imagination.] [footnote : queen elizabeth] [footnote : "an ill opinion, honorably acquired, is pleasing."] [footnote : "so you not to yourselves."] [footnote : "he increased, with the result that he is oppressed by his greatness."] [footnote : "the insult done in scorning her beauty."] [footnote : "god gave to solomon largeness of heart."-- kings iv. .] [footnote : step. pasquiere, recherches, lib. v. cap. i.] [footnote : step-mother.] [footnote : i.e., protestantism] [footnote : instantly.] [footnote : dispossessed.] [footnote : "nothing hindering."] [footnote : "that they are wise in a foolish matter."--lactantius, _de falsa sapientia_, , .] [footnote : augustine, _de cura pro morte_.] [footnote : "wealth acquired without fraud."] [footnote : "o how many go down with this hope to endless labors and wars."] [footnote : transient.] [footnote : opponents.] [footnote : "everything which is to come lies in uncertainty."] [footnote : "who follow their commander with groans."] [footnote : "it takes great genius to call back the mind from the senses."] [footnote : "against him who denies the principles."] [footnote : "specific virtue, or power."] [footnote : "the roman church."] [footnote : "i shall light a lamp of understanding in thine heart."--iv. esdras xiv. .] [footnote : followers.] [footnote : "prepared and sworn to protect with unconquered minds the opinions of the philosophers whom they follow."] [footnote : "out of nothing."] [footnote : "out of pre-existing matter."] [footnote : "because comprehension is between limits, which are opposed to infinity."] [footnote : "god exhibits all things in one existence"] [footnote : "the essence of all things, visible and invisible, is divinity itself"] [footnote : "causally."] [footnote : "not as form, but as universal cause"] [footnote : "it [i.e., the infinite] has no beginning, but itself is perceived to be the beginning of all things, and to embrace and govern all things."] [footnote : "primal matter."] [footnote : "which destroys all proportion."] [footnote : "the spiritual world."] [footnote : "providence, leader and head; fate, in the middle and proceeding from providence; nature, last."] [footnote : "the science of things first, eternal, perpetual."] [footnote : "part of the divine spirit immersed in the human body."] [footnote : "with delicate pipe."] [footnote : moderation] [footnote : "to me one man stood for the people."] [footnote : "i [have done] this not for many, but for thee."] [footnote : "one is enough, none is enough."] [footnote : "we approve the same things, we blame the same things--this is the result in every case in which the verdict is rendered according to the majority."] [footnote : "who glory in malice"] prooemium, epistle dedicatory, preface, and plan of the instauratio magna, etc. by francis bacon[a] francis of verulam reasoned thus with himself, and judged it to be for the interest of the present and future generations that they should be made acquainted with his thoughts being convinced that the human intellect makes its own difficulties, not using the true helps which are at man's disposal soberly and judiciously; whence follows manifold ignorance of things, and by reason of that ignorance mischiefs innumerable; he thought all trial should be made, whether that commerce between the mind of man and the nature of things, which is more precious than anything on earth, or at least than anything that is of the earth, might by any means be restored to its perfect and original condition, or if that may not be, yet reduced to a better condition than that in which it now is. now that the errors which have hitherto prevailed, and which will prevail forever, should (if the mind be left to go its own way), either by the natural force of the understanding or by help of the aids and instruments of logic, one by one correct themselves, was a thing not to be hoped for: because the primary notions of things which the mind readily and passively imbibes, stores up, and accumulates (and it is from them that all the rest flow) are false, confused, and overhastily abstracted from the facts; nor are the secondary and subsequent notions less arbitrary and inconstant; whence it follows that the entire fabric of human reason which we employ in the inquisition of nature, is badly put together and built up, and like some magnificent structure without any foundation. for while men are occupied in admiring and applauding the false powers of the mind, they pass by and throw away those true powers, which, if it be supplied with the proper aids and can itself be content to wait upon nature instead of vainly affecting to overrule her, are within its reach. there was but one course left, therefore,--to try the whole thing anew upon a better plan, and to commence a total reconstruction of sciences, arts, and all human knowledge, raised upon the proper foundations. and this, though in the project and undertaking it may seem a thing infinite and beyond the powers of man, yet when it comes to be dealt with it will be found sound and sober, more so than what has been done hitherto. for of this there is some issue; whereas in what is now done in the matter of science there is only a whirling round about, and perpetual agitation, ending where it began. and although he was well aware how solitary an enterprise it is, and how hard a thing to win faith and credit for, nevertheless he was resolved not to abandon either it or himself; nor to be deterred from trying and entering upon that one path which is alone open to the human mind. for better it is to make a beginning of that which may lead to something, than to engage in a perpetual struggle and pursuit in courses which have no exit. and certainly the two ways of contemplation are much like those two ways of action, so much celebrated, in this--that the one, arduous and difficult in the beginning, leads out at last into the open country; while the other, seeming at first sight easy and free from obstruction, leads to pathless and precipitous places. moreover, because he knew not how long it might be before these things would occur to any one else, judging especially from this, that he has found no man hitherto who has applied his mind to the like, he resolved to publish at once so much as he has been able to complete. the cause of which haste was not ambition for himself, but solicitude for the work; that in case of his death there might remain some outline and project of that which he had conceived, and some evidence likewise of his honest mind and inclination towards the benefit of the human race. certain it is that all other ambition whatsoever seemed poor in his eyes compared with the work which he had in hand; seeing that the matter at issue is either nothing, or a thing so great that it may well be content with its own merit, without seeking other recompence. [footnote a: a sketch of bacon's life will be found prefixed to his "essays" in another volume of the harvard classics. his "instauratio magna" or "great renewal," the great work by which he hoped to create a scientific revolution and deliver mankind from aristotelianism, was left far from complete; but the nature of his scheme and the scale on which it was planned are indicated in these prefaces, which are typical both of the man and of the age in which he lived.] epistle dedicatory to the instauratio magna to our most gracious and mighty prince and lord james by the grace of god of great britain, france and ireland king, defender of the faith, etc. _most gracious and mighty king_, your majesty may perhaps accuse me of larceny, having stolen from your affairs so much time as was required for this work. i know not what to say for myself. for of time there can be no restitution, unless it be that what has been abstracted from your business may perhaps go to the memory of your name and the honour of your age; if these things are indeed worth anything. certainly they are quite new; totally new in their very kind: and yet they are copied from a very ancient model; even the world itself and the nature of things and of the mind. and to say truth, i am wont for my own part to regard this work as a child of time rather than of wit; the only wonder being that the first notion of the thing, and such great suspicions concerning matters long established, should have come into any man's mind. all the rest follows readily enough. and no doubt there is something of accident (as we call it) and luck as well in what men think as in what they do or say. but for this accident which i speak of, i wish that if there be any good in what i have to offer, it may be ascribed to the infinite mercy and goodness of god, and to the felicity of your majesty's times; to which as i have been an honest and affectionate servant in my life, so after my death i may yet perhaps, through the kindling of this new light in the darkness of philosophy, be the means of making this age famous to posterity; and surely to the times of the wisest and most learned of kings belongs of right the regeneration and restoration of the sciences. lastly, i have a request to make--a request no way unworthy of your majesty, and which especially concerns the work in hand; namely, that you who resemble solomon in so many things--in the gravity of your judgments, in the peacefulness of your reign, in the largeness of your heart, in the noble variety of the books which you have composed--would further follow his example in taking order for the collecting and perfecting of a natural and experimental history, true and severe (unincumbered with literature and book-learning), such as philosophy may be built upon,--such, in fact, as i shall in its proper place describe: that so at length, after the lapse of so many ages, philosophy and the sciences may no longer float in air, but rest on the solid foundation of experience of every kind, and the same well examined and weighed. i have provided the machine, but the stuff must be gathered from the facts of nature. may god almighty long preserve your majesty! your majesty's most bounden and devoted servant, francis verulam, chancellor. preface to the instauratio magna _that the state of knowledge is not prosperous nor greatly advancing; and that a way must be opened for the human understanding entirely different from any hitherto known, and other helps provided, in order that the mind may exercise over the nature of things the authority which properly belongs to it._ it seems to me that men do not rightly understand either their store or their strength, but overrate the one and underrate the other. hence it follows, that either from an extravagant estimate of the value of the arts which they possess, they seek no further; or else from too mean an estimate of their own powers, they spend their strength in small matters and never put it fairly to the trial in those which go to the main. these are as the pillars of fate set in the path of knowledge; for men have neither desire nor hope to encourage them to penetrate further. and since opinion of store is one of the chief causes of want, and satisfaction with the present induces neglect of provision for the future, it becomes a thing not only useful, but absolutely necessary, that the excess of honour and admiration with which our existing stock of inventions is regarded be in the very entrance and threshold of the work, and that frankly and without circumlocution, stripped off, and men be duly warned not to exaggerate or make too much of them. for let a man look carefully into all that variety of books with which the arts and sciences abound, he will find everywhere endless repetitions of the same thing, varying in the method of treatment, but not new in substance, insomuch that the whole stock, numerous as it appears at first view, proves on examination to be but scanty. and for its value and utility it must be plainly avowed that that wisdom which we have derived principally from the greeks is but like the boyhood of knowledge, and has the characteristic property of boys; it can talk, but it cannot generate; for it is fruitful of controversies but barren of works. so that the state of learning as it now is appears to be represented to the life in the old fable of scylla, who had the head and face of a virgin, but her womb was hung round with barking monsters, from which she could not be delivered. for in like manner the sciences to which we are accustomed have certain general positions which are specious and flattering; but as soon as they come to particulars, which are as the parts of generation, when they should produce fruit and works, then arise contentions and barking disputations, which are the end of the matter and all the issue they can yield. observe also, that if sciences of this kind had any life in them, that could never have come to pass which has been the case now for many ages--that they stand almost at a stay, without receiving any augmentations worthy of the human race; insomuch that many times not only what was asserted once is asserted still, but what was a question once is a question still, and instead of being resolved by discussion is only fixed and fed; and all the tradition and succession of schools is still a succession of masters and scholars, not of inventors and those who bring to further perfection the things invented. in the mechanical arts we do not find it so; they, on the contrary, as having in them some breath of life, are continually growing and becoming more perfect. as originally invented they are commonly rude, clumsy, and shapeless; afterwards they acquire new powers and more commodious arrangements and constructions; in so far that men shall sooner leave the study and pursuit of them and turn to something else, than they arrive at the ultimate perfection of which they are capable. philosophy and the intellectual sciences, on the contrary, stand like statues, worshiped and celebrated, but not moved or advanced. nay, they sometimes flourish most in the hands of the first author, and afterwards degenerate. for when men have once made over their judgments to others' keeping, and (like those senators whom they called _pedarii_) have agreed to support some one person's opinion, from that time they make no enlargement of the sciences themselves, but fall to the servile office of embellishing certain individual authors and increasing their retinue. and let it not be said that the sciences have been growing gradually till they have at last reached their full stature, and so (their course being completed) have settled in the works of a few writers; and that there being now no room for the invention of better, all that remains is to embellish and cultivate those things which have been invented already. would it were so! but the truth is that this appropriating of the sciences has its origin in nothing better than the confidence of a few persons and the sloth and indolence of the rest. for after the sciences had been in several parts perhaps cultivated and handled diligently, there has risen up some man of bold disposition, and famous for methods and short ways which people like, who has in appearance reduced them to an art, while he has in fact only spoiled all that the others had done. and yet this is what posterity like, because it makes the work short and easy, and saves further inquiry, of which they are weary and impatient. and if any one take this general acquiescence and consent for an argument of weight, as being the judgment of time, let me tell him that the reasoning on which he relies is most fallacious and weak. for, first, we are far from knowing all that in the matter of sciences and arts has in various ages and places been brought to light and published; much less, all that has been by private persons secretly attempted and stirred, so neither the births nor the miscarriages of time are entered in our records. nor, secondly, is the consent itself and the time it has continued a consideration of much worth. for however various are the forms of civil politics, there is but one form of polity in the sciences; and that always has been and always will be popular. now the doctrines which find most favour with the populace are those which are either contentious and pugnacious, or specious and empty; such, i say, as either entangle assent or tickle it. and therefore no doubt the greatest wits in each successive age have been forced out of their own course, men of capacity and intellect above the vulgar having been fain, for reputation's sake, to bow to the judgment of the time and the multitude; and thus if any contemplations of a higher order took light anywhere, they were presently blown out by the winds of vulgar opinions. so that time is like a river, which has brought down to us things light and puffed up, while those which are weighty and solid have sunk. nay, those very authors who have usurped a kind of dictatorship in the sciences and taken upon them to lay down the law with such confidence, yet when from time to time they come to themselves again, they fall to complaints of the subtlety of nature, the hiding-places of truth, the obscurity of things, the entanglement of causes, the weakness of the human mind; wherein nevertheless they show themselves never the more modest, seeing that they will rather lay the blame upon the common condition of man and nature than upon themselves. and then whatever any art fails to attain, they ever set it down upon the authority of that art itself as impossible of attainment; and how can art be found guilty when it is judge in its own cause? so it is but a device for exempting ignorance from ignominy. now for those things which are delivered and received, this is their condition: barren of works, full of questions; in point of enlargement slow and languid; carrying a show of perfection in the whole, but in the parts ill filled up; in selection popular, and unsatisfactory even to those who propound them; and therefore fenced round and set forth with sundry artifices. and if there be any who have determined to make trial for themselves, and put their own strength to the work of advancing the boundaries of the sciences, yet have they not ventured to cast themselves completely loose from received opinions or to seek their knowledge at the fountain; but they think they have done some great thing if they do but add and introduce into the existing sum of science something of their own; prudently considering with themselves that by making the addition they can assert their liberty, while they retain the credit of modesty by assenting to the rest. but these mediocrities and middle ways so much praised, in deferring to opinions and customs, turn to the great detriment of the sciences. for it is hardly possible at once to admire an author and to go beyond him; knowledge being as water, which will not rise above the level from which it fell. men of this kind, therefore, amend some things, but advance little; and improve the condition of knowledge, but do not extend its range. some, indeed, there have been who have gone more boldly to work, and taking it all for an open matter and giving their genius full play, have made a passage for themselves and their own opinions by pulling down and demolishing former ones; and yet all their stir has but little advanced the matter; since their aim has been not to extend philosophy and the arts in substance and value, but only to change doctrines and transfer the kingdom of opinions to themselves; whereby little has indeed been gained, for though the error be the opposite of the other, the causes of erring are the same in both. and if there have been any who, not binding themselves either to other men's opinions or to their own, but loving liberty, have desired to engage others along with themselves in search, these, though honest in intention, have been weak in endeavour. for they have been content to follow probable reasons, and are carried round in a whirl of arguments, and in the promiscuous liberty of search have relaxed the severity of inquiry. there is none who has dwelt upon experience and the facts of nature as long as is necessary. some there are indeed who have committed themselves to the waves of experience, and almost turned mechanics; yet these again have in their very experiments pursued a kind of wandering inquiry, without any regular system of operations. and besides they have mostly proposed to themselves certain petty tasks, taking it for a great matter to work out some single discovery;--a course of proceeding at once poor in aim and unskilful in design. for no man can rightly and successfully investigate the nature of anything in the thing itself; let him vary his experiments as laboriously as he will, he never comes to a resting-place, but still finds something to seek beyond. and there is another thing to be remembered; namely, that all industry in experimenting has begun with proposing to itself certain definite works to be accomplished, and has pursued them with premature and unseasonable eagerness; it has sought, i say, experiments of fruit, not experiments of light; not imitating the divine procedure, which in its first day's work created light only and assigned to it one entire day; on which day it produced no material work, but proceeded to that on the days following. as for those who have given the first place to logic, supposing that the surest helps to the sciences were to be found in that, they have indeed most truly and excellently perceived that the human intellect left to its own course is not to be trusted; but then the remedy is altogether too weak for the disease; nor is it without evil in itself. for the logic which is received, though it be very properly applied to civil business and to those arts which rest in discourse and opinion, is not nearly subtle enough to deal with nature; and in offering at what it cannot master, has done more to establish and perpetuate error than to open the way to truth. upon the whole therefore, it seems that men have not been happy hitherto either in the trust which they have placed in others or in their own industry with regard to the sciences; especially as neither the demonstrations nor the experiments as yet known are much to be relied upon. but the universe to the eye of the human understanding is framed like a labyrinth; presenting as it does on every side so many ambiguities of way, such deceitful resemblances of objects and signs, natures so irregular in their lines, and so knotted and entangled. and then the way is still to be made by the uncertain light of the sense, sometimes shining out, sometimes clouded over, through the woods of experience and particulars; while those who offer themselves for guides are (as was said) themselves also puzzled, and increase the number of errors and wanderers. in circumstances so difficult neither the natural force of man's judgment nor even any accidental felicity offers any chance of success. no excellence of wit, no repetition of chance experiments, can overcome such difficulties as these. our steps must be guided by a clue, and the whole way from the very first perception of the senses must be laid out upon a sure plan. not that i would be understood to mean that nothing whatever has been done in so many ages by so great labours. we have no reason to be ashamed of the discoveries which have been made, and no doubt the ancients proved themselves in everything that turns on wit and abstract meditation, wonderful men. but as in former ages when men sailed only by observation of the stars, they could indeed coast along the shores of the old continent or cross a few small and mediterranean seas; but before the ocean could be traversed and the new world discovered, the use of the mariner's needle, as a more faithful and certain guide, had to be found out; in like manner the discoveries which have been hitherto made in the arts and sciences are such as might be made by practice, meditation, observation, argumentation,--for they lay near to the senses, and immediately beneath common notions; but before we can reach the remoter and more hidden parts of nature, it is necessary that a more perfect use and application of the human mind and intellect be introduced. for my own part at least, in obedience to the everlasting love of truth, i have committed myself to the uncertainties and difficulties and solitudes of the ways, and relying on the divine assistance have upheld my mind both against the shocks and embattled ranks of opinion, and against my own private and inward hesitations and scruples, and against the fogs and clouds of nature, and the phantoms flitting about on every side; in the hope of providing at last for the present and future generations guidance more faithful and secure. wherein if i have made any progress, the way has been opened to me by no other means than the true and legitimate humiliation of the human spirit. for all those who before me have applied themselves to the invention of arts have but cast a glance or two upon facts and examples and experience, and straightway proceeded, as if invention were nothing more than an exercise of thought, to invoke their own spirits to give them oracles. i, on the contrary, dwelling purely and constantly among the facts of nature, withdraw my intellect from them no further than may suffice to let the images and rays of natural objects meet in a point, as they do in the sense of vision; whence it follows that the strength and excellency of the wit has but little to do in the matter. and the same humility which i use in inventing i employ likewise in teaching. for i do not endeavour either by triumphs of confutation, or pleadings of antiquity, or assumption of authority, or even by the veil of obscurity, to invest these inventions of mine with any majesty; which might easily be done by one who sought to give lustre to his own name rather than light to other men's minds. i have not sought (i say) nor do i seek either to force or ensnare men's judgments, but i lead them to things themselves and the concordances of things, that they may see for themselves what they have, what they can dispute, what they can add and contribute to the common stock. and for myself, if in anything i have been either too credulous or too little awake and attentive, or if i have fallen off by the way and left the inquiry incomplete, nevertheless i so present these things naked and open, that my errors can be marked and set aside before the mass of knowledge be further infected by them; and it will be easy also for others to continue and carry on my labours. and by these means i suppose that i have established for ever a true and lawful marriage between the empirical and the rational faculty, the unkind and ill-starred divorce and separation of which has thrown into confusion all the affairs of the human family. wherefore, seeing that these things do not depend upon myself, at the outset of the work i most humbly and fervently pray to god the father, god the son, and god the holy ghost, that remembering the sorrows of mankind and the pilgrimage of this our life wherein we wear out days few and evil, they will vouchsafe through my hands to endow the human family with new mercies. this likewise i humbly pray, that things human may not interfere with things divine, and that from the opening of the ways of sense and the increase of natural light there may arise in our minds no incredulity or darkness with regard to the divine mysteries; but rather that the understanding being thereby purified and purged of fancies and vanity, and yet not the less subject and entirely submissive to the divine oracles, may give to faith that which is faith's. lastly, that knowledge being now discharged of that venom which the serpent infused into it, and which makes the mind of man to swell, we may not be wise above measure and sobriety, but cultivate truth in charity. and now having said my prayers i turn to men; to whom i have certain salutary admonitions to offer and certain fair requests to make. my first admonition (which was also my prayer) is that men confine the sense within the limits of duty in respect to things divine: for the sense is like the sun, which reveals the face of earth, but seals and shuts up the face of heaven. my next, that in flying from this evil they fall not into the opposite error, which they will surely do if they think that the inquisition of nature is in any part interdicted or forbidden. for it was not that pure and uncorrupted natural knowledge whereby adam gave names to the creatures according to their propriety, which gave occasion to the fall. it was the ambitious and proud desire of moral knowledge to judge of good and evil, to the end that man may revolt from god and give laws to himself, which was the form and manner of the temptation. whereas of the sciences which regard nature, the divine philosopher declares that "it is the glory of god to conceal a thing, but it is the glory of the king to find a thing out," even as though the divine nature took pleasure in the innocent and kindly sport of children playing at hide and seek, and vouchsafed of his kindness and goodness to admit the human spirit for his playfellow at that game. lastly, i would address one general admonition to all; that they consider what are the true ends of knowledge, and that they seek it not either for pleasure of the mind, or for contention, or for superiority to others, or for profit, or fame, or power, or any of these inferior things; but for the benefit and use of life; and that they perfect and govern it in charity. for it was from lust of power that the angels fell, from lust of knowledge that man fell; but of charity there can be no excess, neither did angel or man ever come in danger by it. the requests i have to make are these. of myself i say nothing; but in behalf of the business which is in hand i entreat men to believe that it is not an opinion to be held, but a work to be done; and to be well assured that i am labouring to lay the foundation, not of any sect or doctrine, but of human utility and power. next, i ask them to deal fairly by their own interests, and laying aside all emulations and prejudices in favour of this or that opinion, to join in consultation for the common good; and being now freed and guarded by the securities and helps which i offer from the errors and impediments of the way, to come forward themselves and take part in that which remains to be done moreover, to be of good hope, nor to imagine that this instauration of mine is a thing infinite and beyond the power of man, when it is in fact the true end and termination of infinite error, and seeing also that it is by no means forgetful of the conditions of mortality and humanity, (for it does not suppose that the work can be altogether completed within one generation, but provides for its being taken up by another), and finally that it seeks for the sciences not arrogantly in the little cells of human wit, but with reverence in the greater world. but it is the empty things that are vast things solid are most contracted and lie in little room. and now i have only one favour more to ask (else injustice to me may perhaps imperil the business itself)--that men will consider well how far, upon that which i must needs assert (if i am to be consistent with myself), they are entitled to judge and decide upon these doctrines of mine, inasmuch as all that premature human reasoning which anticipates inquiry, and is abstracted from the facts rashly and sooner than is fit, is by me rejected (so far as the inquisition of nature is concerned), as a thing uncertain, confused, and ill built up, and i cannot be fairly asked to abide by the decision of a tribunal which is itself on its trial. the plan of the instauratio magna the work is in six parts:-- . _the divisions of the sciences_. . _the new organon; or directions concerning the interpretation of nature_. . _the phenomena of the universe; or a natural and experimental history for the foundation of philosophy_. . _the ladder of the intellect_. . _the forerunners; or anticipations of the new philosophy_. . _the new philosophy; or active science_. _the arguments of the several parts_. it being part of my design to set everything forth, as far as may be, plainly and perspicuously (for nakedness of the mind is still, as nakedness of the body once was, the companion of innocence and simplicity), let me first explain the order and plan of the work. i distribute it into six parts. the first part exhibits a summary or general description of the knowledge which the human race at present possesses. for i thought it good to make some pause upon that which is received; that thereby the old may be more easily made perfect and the new more easily approached. and i hold the improvement of that which we have to be as much an object as the acquisition of more. besides which it will make me the better listened to; for "he that is ignorant (says the proverb) receives not the words of knowledge, unless thou first tell him that which is in his own heart." we will therefore make a coasting voyage along the shores of the arts and sciences received; not without importing into them some useful things by the way. in laying out the divisions of the sciences however, i take into account not only things already invented and known, but likewise things omitted which ought to be there. for there are found in the intellectual as in the terrestial globe waste regions as well as cultivated ones. it is no wonder therefore if i am sometimes obliged to depart from the ordinary divisions. for in adding to the total you necessarily alter the parts and sections; and the received divisions of the sciences are fitted only to the received sum of them as it stands now. with regard to those things which i shall mark down as omitted, i intend not merely to set down a simple title or a concise argument of that which is wanted. for as often as i have occasion to report anything as deficient, the nature of which is at all obscure, so that men may not perhaps easily understand what i mean or what the work is which i have in my head, i shall always (provided it be a matter of any worth) take care to subjoin either directions for the execution of such work, or else a portion of the work itself executed by myself as a sample of the whole: thus giving assistance in every case either by work or by counsel. for if it were for the sake of my reputation only and other men's interests were not concerned in it, i would not have any man think that in such cases merely some light and vague notion has crossed my mind, and that the things which i desire and offer at are no better than wishes; when they are in fact things which men may certainly command if they will, and of which i have formed in my own mind a clear and detailed conception. for i do not propose merely to survey these regions in my mind, like an augur taking auspices, but to enter them like a general who means to take possession.--so much for the first part of the work. * * * * * having thus coasted past the ancient arts, the next point is to equip the intellect for passing beyond. to the second part therefore belongs the doctrine concerning the better and more perfect use of human reason in the inquisition of things, and the true helps of the understanding: that thereby (as far as the condition of mortality and humanity allows) the intellect may be raised and exalted, and made capable of overcoming the difficulties and obscurities of nature. the art which i introduce with this view (which i call _interpretation of nature_) is a kind of logic; though the difference between it and the ordinary logic is great; indeed immense. for the ordinary logic professes to contrive and prepare helps and guards for the understanding, as mine does; and in this one point they agree. but mine differs from it in three points especially; viz. in the end aimed at; in the order of demonstration; and in the starting point of the inquiry. for the end which this science of mine proposes is the invention not of arguments but of arts; not of things in accordance with principles, but of principles themselves; not of probable reasons, but of designations and directions for works. and as the intention is different, so accordingly is the effect; the effect of the one being to overcome an opponent in argument, of the other to command nature in action. in accordance with this end is also the nature and order of the demonstrations. for in the ordinary logic almost all the work is spent about the syllogism. of induction the logicians seem hardly to have taken any serious thought, but they pass it by with a slight notice, and hasten on to the formulæ of disputation. i on the contrary reject demonstration by syllogism, as acting too confusedly, and letting nature slip out of its hands. for although no one can doubt that things which agree in a middle term agree with one another (which is a proposition of mathematical certainty), yet it leaves an opening for deception; which is this. the syllogism consists of propositions; propositions of words; and words are the tokens and signs of notions. now if the very notions of the mind (which are as the soul of words and the basis of the whole structure) be improperly and over-hastily abstracted from facts, vague not sufficiently definite, faulty in short in many ways, the whole edifice tumbles. i therefore reject the syllogism; and that not only as regards principles (for to principles the logicians themselves do not apply it) but also as regards middle propositions; which, though obtainable no doubt by the syllogism, are, when so obtained, barren of works, remote from practice, and altogether unavailable for the active department of the sciences. although therefore i leave to the syllogism and these famous and boasted modes of demonstration their jurisdiction over popular arts and such as are matter of opinion (in which department i leave all as it is), yet in dealing with the nature of things i use induction throughout, and that in the minor propositions as well as the major. for i consider induction to be that form of demonstration which upholds the sense, and closes with nature, and comes to the very brink of operation, if it does not actually deal with it. hence it follows that the order of demonstration is likewise inverted. for hitherto the proceeding has been to fly at once from the sense and particulars up to the most general propositions, as certain fixed poles for the argument to turn upon, and from these to derive the rest by middle terms a short way, no doubt, but precipitate, and one which will never lead to nature, though it offers an easy and ready way to disputation. now my plan is to proceed regularly and gradually from one axiom to another, so that the most general are not reached till the last but then when you do come to them you find them to be not empty notions, but well defined, and such as nature would really recognise as her first principles, and such as lie at the heart and marrow of things. but the greatest change i introduce is in the form itself of induction and the judgment made thereby. for the induction of which the logicians speak, which proceeds by simple enumeration, is a puerile thing, concludes at hazard, is always liable to be upset by a contradictory instance, takes into account only what is known and ordinary, and leads to no result. now what the sciences stand in need of is a form of induction which shall analyse experience and take it to pieces, and by a due process of exclusion and rejection lead to an inevitable conclusion. and if that ordinary mode of judgment practised by the logicians was so laborious, and found exercise for such great wits how much more labour must we be prepared to bestow upon this other, which is extracted not merely out of the depths of the mind, but out of the very bowels of nature. nor is this all. for i also sink the foundations of the sciences deeper and firmer; and i begin the inquiry nearer the source than men have done heretofore; submitting to examination those things which the common logic takes on trust. for first, the logicians borrow the principles of each science from the science itself; secondly, they hold in reverence the first notions of the mind; and lastly, they receive as conclusive the immediate informations of the sense, when well disposed. now upon the first point, i hold that true logic ought to enter the several provinces of science armed with a higher authority than belongs to the principles of those sciences themselves, and ought to call those putative principles to account until they are fully established. then with regard to the first notions of the intellect; there is not one of the impressions taken by the intellect when left to go its own way, but i hold it for suspected, and no way established, until it has submitted to a new trial and a fresh judgment has been thereupon pronounced. and lastly, the information of the sense itself i sift and examine in many ways. for certain it is that the senses deceive; but then at the same time they supply the means of discovering their own errors; only the errors are here, the means of discovery are to seek. the sense fails in two ways. sometimes it gives no information, sometimes it gives false information. for first, there are very many things which escape the sense, even when best disposed and no way obstructed; by reason either of the subtlety of the whole body, or the minuteness of the parts, or distance of place, or slowness or else swiftness of motion, or familiarity of the object, or other causes. and again when the sense does apprehend a thing its apprehension is not much to be relied upon. for the testimony and information of the sense has reference always to man, not to the universe; and it is a great error to assert that the sense is the measure of things. to meet these difficulties, i have sought on all sides diligently and faithfully to provide helps for the sense--substitutes to supply its failures, rectifications to correct its errors; and this i endeavour to accomplish not so much by instruments as by experiments. for the subtlety of experiments is far greater than that of the sense itself, even when assisted by exquisite instruments; such experiments, i mean, as are skilfully and artificially devised for the express purpose of determining the point in question. to the immediate and proper perception of the sense therefore i do not give much weight; but i contrive that the office of the sense shall be only to judge of the experiment, and that the experiment itself shall judge of the thing. and thus i conceive that i perform the office of a true priest of the sense (from which all knowledge in nature must be sought, unless men mean to go mad) and a not unskilful interpreter of its oracles; and that while others only profess to uphold and cultivate the sense, i do so in fact. such then are the provisions i make for finding the genuine light of nature and kindling and bringing it to bear. and they would be sufficient of themselves, if the human intellect were even, and like a fair sheet of paper with no writing on it. but since the minds of men are strangely possessed and beset, so that there is no true and even surface left to reflect the genuine rays of things, it is necessary to seek a remedy for this also. now the idols, or phantoms, by which the mind is occupied are either adventitious or innate. the adventitious come into the mind from without; namely, either from the doctrines and sects of philosophers, or from perverse rules of demonstration. but the innate are inherent in the very nature of the intellect, which is far more prone to error than the sense is. for let men please themselves as they will in admiring and almost adoring the human mind, this is certain: that as an uneven mirror distorts the rays of objects according to its own figure and section, so the mind, when it receives impressions of objects through the sense, cannot be trusted to report them truly, but in forming its notions mixes up its own nature with the nature of things. and as the first two kinds of idols are hard to eradicate, so idols of this last kind cannot be eradicated at all. all that can be done is to point them out, so that this insidious action of the mind may be marked and reproved (else as fast as old errors are destroyed new ones will spring up out of the ill complexion of the mind itself, and so we shall have but a change or errors, and not a clearance); and to lay it down once for all as a fixed and established maxim, that the intellect is not qualified to judge except by means of induction, and induction in its legitimate form. this doctrine then of the expurgation of the intellect to qualify it for dealing with truth, is comprised in three refutations: the refutation of the philosophies; the refutation of the demonstrations; and the refutation of the natural human reason. the explanation of which things, and of the true relation between the nature of things and the nature of the mind, is as the strewing and decoration of the bridal chamber of the mind and the universe, the divine goodness assisting; out of which marriage let us hope (and be this the prayer of the bridal song) there may spring helps to man, and a line and race of inventions that may in some degree subdue and overcome the necessities and miseries of humanity. this is the second part of the work. * * * * * but i design not only to indicate and mark out the ways, but also to enter them. and therefore the third part of the work embraces the phenomena of the universe; that is to say, experience of every kind, and such a natural history as may serve for a foundation to build philosophy upon. for a good method of demonstration or form of interpreting nature may keep the mind from going astray or stumbling, but it is not any excellence of method that can supply it with the material of knowledge. those however who aspire not to guess and divine, but to discover and know; who propose not to devise mimic and fabulous worlds of their own, but to examine and dissect the nature of this very world itself; must go to facts themselves for everything. nor can the place of this labour and search and worldwide perambulation be supplied by any genius or meditation or argumentation; no, not if all men's wits could meet in one. this therefore we must have, or the business must be for ever abandoned. but up to this day such has been the condition of men in this matter, that it is no wonder if nature will not give herself into their hands. for first, the information of the sense itself, sometimes failing, sometimes false; observation, careless, irregular, and led by chance; tradition, vain and fed on rumour; practice, slavishly bent upon its work; experiment, blind, stupid, vague, and prematurely broken off; lastly, natural history, trivial and poor;--all these have contributed to supply the understanding with very bad materials for philosophy and the sciences. then an attempt is made to mend the matter by a preposterous subtlety and winnowing of argument. but this comes too late, the case being already past remedy; and is far from setting the business right or sifting away the errors. the only hope therefore of any greater increase or progress lies in a reconstruction of the sciences. of this reconstruction the foundation must be laid in natural history, and that of a new kind and gathered on a new principle. for it is in vain that you polish the mirror if there are no images to be reflected; and it is as necessary that the intellect should be supplied with fit matter to work upon, as with safeguards to guide its working. but my history differs from that in use (as my logic does) in many things,--in end and office, in mass and composition, in subtlety, in selection also and setting forth, with a view to the operations which are to follow. for first, the object of a natural history which i propose is not so much to delight with variety of matter or to help with present use of experiments, as to give light to the discovery of causes and supply a suckling philosophy with its first food. for though it be true that i am principally in pursuit of works and the active department of the sciences, yet i wait for harvest-time, and do not attempt to mow the moss or to reap the green corn. for i well know that axioms once rightly discovered will carry whole troops of works along with them, and produce them, not here and there one, but in clusters. and that unseasonable and puerile hurry to snatch by way of earnest at the first works which come within reach, i utterly condemn and reject, as an atalanta's apple that hinders the race. such then is the office of this natural history of mine. next, with regard to the mass and composition of it: i mean it to be a history not only of nature free and at large (when she is left to her own course and does her work her own way)--such as that of the heavenly bodies, meteors, earth and sea, minerals, plants, animals,--but much more of nature under constraint and vexed; that is to say, when by art and the hand of man she is forced out of her natural state, and squeezed and moulded. therefore i set down at length all experiments of the mechanical arts, of the operative part of the liberal arts, of the many crafts which have not yet grown into arts properly so called, so far as i have been able to examine them and as they conduce to the end in view. nay (to say the plain truth) i do in fact (low and vulgar as men may think it) count more upon this part both for helps and safeguards than upon the other; seeing that the nature of things betrays itself more readily under the vexations of art than in its natural freedom. nor do i confine the history to bodies; but i have thought it my duty besides to make a separate history of such virtues as may be considered cardinal in nature. i mean those original passions or desires of matter which constitute the primary elements of nature; such as dense and rare, hot and cold, solid and fluid, heavy and light, and several others. then again, to speak of subtlety: i seek out and get together a kind of experiments much subtler and simpler than those which occur accidentally. for i drag into light many things which no one who was not proceeding by a regular and certain way to the discovery of causes would have thought of inquiring after; being indeed in themselves of no great use; which shows that they were not sought for on their own account; but having just the same relation to things and works which the letters of the alphabet have to speech and words--which, though in themselves useless, are the elements of which all discourse is made up. further, in the selection of the relation and experiments i conceive i have been a more cautious purveyor than those who have hitherto dealt with natural history. for i admit nothing but on the faith of eyes, or at least of careful and severe examination; so that nothing is exaggerated for wonder's sake, but what i state is sound and without mixture of fables or vanity. all received or current falsehoods also (which by strange negligence have been allowed for many ages to prevail and become established) i proscribe and brand by name; that the sciences may be no more troubled with them for it has been well observed that the fables and superstitions and follies which nurses instil into children do serious injury to their minds; and the same consideration makes me anxious, having the management of the childhood as it were of philosophy in its course of natural history, not to let it accustom itself in the beginning to any vanity. moreover, whenever i come to a new experiment of any subtlety (though it be in my own opinion certain and approved), i nevertheless subjoin a clear account of the manner in which i made it; that men knowing exactly how each point was made out, may see whether there be any error connected with it, and may arouse themselves to devise proofs more trustworthy and exquisite, if such can be found; and finally, i interpose everywhere admonitions and scruples and cautions, with a religious care to eject, repress, and as it were exorcise every kind of phantasm. lastly, knowing how much the sight of man's mind is distracted by experience and history, and how hard it is at the first (especially for minds either tender or preoccupied) to become familiar with nature, i not unfrequently subjoin observations of my own, being as the first offers, inclinations, and as it were glances of history towards philosophy; both by way of an assurance to men that they will be kept for ever tossing on the waves of experience, and also that when the time comes for the intellect to begin its work, it may find everything the more ready. by such a natural history then as i have described, i conceive that a safe and convenient approach may be made to nature, and matter supplied of good quality and well prepared for the understanding to work upon. * * * * * and now that we have surrounded the intellect with faithful helps and guards, and got together with most careful selection a regular army of divine works, it may seem that we have no more to do but to proceed to philosophy itself. and yet in a matter so difficult and doubtful there are still some things which it seems necessary to premise, partly for convenience of explanation, partly for present use. of these the first is to set forth examples of inquiry and invention according to my method, exhibited by anticipation in some particular subjects; choosing such subjects as are at once the most noble in themselves among those under inquiry, and most different one from another; that there may be an example in every kind. i do not speak of those examples which are joined to the several precepts and rules by way of illustration (for of these i have given plenty in the second part of the work); but i mean actual types and models, by which the entire process of the mind and the whole fabric and order of invention from the beginning to the end, in certain subjects, and those various and remarkable, should be set as it were before the eyes. for i remember that in the mathematics it is easy to follow the demonstration when you have a machine beside you; whereas without that help all appears involved and more subtle than it really is. to examples of this kind,--being in fact nothing more than an application of the second part in detail and at large,--the fourth part of the work is devoted. * * * * * the fifth part is for temporary use only, pending the completion of the rest; like interest payable from time to time until the principal be forthcoming. for i do not make so blindly for the end of my journey, as to neglect anything useful that may turn up by the way. and therefore i include in this fifth part such things as i have myself discovered, proved, or added,--not however according to the true rules and methods of interpretation, but by the ordinary use of the understanding in inquiring and discovering. for besides that i hope my speculations may in virtue of my continual conversancy with nature have a value beyond the pretensions of my wit, they will serve in the meantime for wayside inns in which the mind may rest and refresh itself on its journey to more certain conclusions. nevertheless i wish it to be understood in the meantime that they are conclusions by which (as not being discovered and proved by the true form of interpretation) i do not at all mean to bind myself. nor need any one be alarmed at such suspension of judgment, in one who maintains not simply that nothing can be known, but only that nothing can be known except in a certain course and way; and yet establishes provisionally certain degrees of assurance, for use and relief until the mind shall arrive at a knowledge of causes in which it can rest. for even those schools of philosophy which held the absolute impossibility of knowing anything were not inferior to those which took upon them to pronounce. but then they did not provide helps for the sense and understanding, as i have done, but simply took away all their authority: which is quite a different thing--almost the reverse. * * * * * the sixth part of my work (to which the rest is subservient and ministrant) discloses and sets forth that philosophy which by the legitimate, chaste, and severe course of inquiry which i have explained and provided is at length developed and established. the completion however of this last part is a thing both above my strength and beyond my hopes. i have made a beginning of the work--a beginning, as i hope, not unimportant:--the fortune of the human race will give the issue;--such an issue, it may be, as in the present condition of things and men's minds cannot easily be conceived or imagined. for the matter in hand is no mere felicity of speculation, but the real business and fortunes of the human race, and all power of operation. for man is but the servant and interpreter of nature: what he does and what he knows is only what he has observed of nature's order in fact or in thought; beyond this he knows nothing and can do nothing. for the chain of causes cannot by any force be loosed or broken, nor can nature be commanded except by being obeyed. and so those twin objects, human knowledge and human power, do really meet in one; and it is from ignorance of causes that operation fails. and all depends on keeping the eye steadily fixed upon the facts of nature and so receiving their images simply as they are. for god forbid that we should give out a dream of our own imagination for a pattern of the world; rather may he graciously grant to us to write an apocalypse or true vision of the footsteps of the creator imprinted on his creatures. therefore do thou, o father, who gavest the visible light as the first fruits of creation, and didst breathe into the face of man the intellectual light as the crown and consummation thereof, guard and protect this work, which coming from thy goodness returneth to thy glory. thou when thou turnedst to look upon the works which thy hands had made, sawest that all was very good, and didst rest from thy labours. but man, when he turned to look upon the work which his hands had made, saw that all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and could find no rest therein. wherefore if we labour in thy works with the sweat of our brows thou wilt make us partakers of thy vision and thy sabbath. humbly we pray that this mind may be steadfast in us, and that through these our hands, and the hands of others to whom thou shalt give the same spirit, thou wilt vouchsafe to endow the human family with new mercies. preface to the novum organum those who have taken upon them to lay down the law of nature as a thing already searched out and understood, whether they have spoken in simple assurance or professional affectation, have therein done philosophy and the sciences great injury. for as they have been successful in inducing belief, so they have been effective in quenching and stopping inquiry; and have done more harm by spoiling and putting an end to other men's efforts than good by their own. those on the other hand who have taken a contrary course, and asserted that absolutely nothing can be known,--whether it were from hatred of the ancient sophists, or from uncertainty and fluctuation of mind, or even from a kind of fulness of learning, that they fell upon this opinion,--have certainly advanced reasons for it that are not to be despised; but yet they have neither started from true principles nor rested in the just conclusion, zeal and affectation having carried them much too far. the more ancient of the greeks (whose writings are lost) took up with better judgment a position between these two extremes,--between the presumption of pronouncing on everything, and the despair of comprehending anything; and though frequently and bitterly complaining of the difficulty of inquiry and the obscurity of things, and like impatient horses champing the bit, they did not the less follow up their object and engage with nature; thinking (it seems) that this very question,--viz. whether or no anything can be known,--was to be settled not by arguing, but by trying. and yet they too, trusting entirely to the force of their understanding, applied no rule, but made everything turn upon hard thinking and perpetual working and exercise of the mind. now my method, though hard to practise, is easy to explain; and it is this. i propose to establish progressive stages of certainty. the evidence of the sense, helped and guarded by a certain process of correction, i retain. but the mental operation which follows the act of sense i for the most part reject; and instead of it i open and lay out a new and certain path for the mind to proceed in, starting directly from the simple sensuous perception. the necessity of this was felt no doubt by those who attributed so much importance to logic; showing thereby that they were in search of helps for the understanding, and had no confidence in the native and spontaneous process of the mind. but this remedy comes too late to do any good, when the mind is already, through the daily intercourse and conversation of life, occupied with unsound doctrines and beset on all sides by vain imaginations. and therefore that art of logic, coming (as i said) too late to the rescue, and no way able to set matters right again, has had the effect of fixing errors rather than disclosing truth. there remains but one course for the recovery of a sound and healthy condition,--namely, that the entire work of the understanding be commenced afresh, and the mind itself be from the very outset not left to take its own course, but guided at every step; and the business be done as if by machinery. certainly if in things mechanical men had set to work with their naked hands, without help or force of instruments, just as in things intellectual they have set to work with little else than the naked forces of the understanding, very small would the matters have been which, even with their best efforts applied in conjunction, they could have attempted or accomplished. now (to pause while upon this example and look in it as in a glass) let us suppose that some vast obelisk were (for the decoration of a triumph or some such magnificence) to be removed from its place, and that men should set to work upon it with their naked hands; would not any sober spectator think them mad? and if they should then send for more people, thinking that in that way they might manage it, would he not think them all the madder? and if they then proceeded to make a selection, putting away the weaker hands, and using only the strong and vigorous, would he not think them madder than ever? and if lastly, not content with this, they resolved to call in aid the art of athletics, and required all their men to come with hands, arms, and sinews well anointed and medicated according to the rules of art, would he not cry out that they were only taking pains to show a kind of method and discretion in their madness? yet just so it is that men proceed in matters intellectual,--with just the same kind of mad effort and useless combination of forces,--when they hope great things either from the number and cooperation or from the excellency and acuteness of individual wits; yea, and when they endeavour by logic (which may be considered as a kind of athletic art) to strengthen the sinews of the understanding; and yet with all this study and endeavour it is apparent to any true judgment that they are but applying the naked intellect all the time; whereas in every great work to be done by the hand of man it is manifestly impossible, without instruments or machinery, either for the strength of each to be exerted or the strength of all to be united. upon these premises two things occur to me of which, that they may not be overlooked, i would have men reminded. first it falls out fortunately as i think for the allaying of contradictions and heart-burnings, that the honour and reverence due to the ancients remains untouched and undiminished; while i may carry out my designs and at the same time reap the fruit of my modesty. for if i should profess that i, going the same road as the ancients, have something better to produce, there must needs have been some comparison or rivalry between us (not to be avoided by any art of words) in respect of excellency or ability of wit; and though in this there would be nothing unlawful or new (for if there be anything misapprehended by them, or falsely laid down, why may not i, using a liberty common to all, take exception to it?) yet the contest, however just and allowable, would have been an unequal one perhaps, in respect of the measure of my own powers. as it is however,--my object being to open a new way for the understanding, a way by them untried and unknown,--the case is altered; party zeal and emulation are at an end; and i appear merely as a guide to point out the road; an office of small authority, and depending more upon a kind of luck than upon any ability or excellency. and thus much relates to the persons only. the other point of which i would have men reminded relates to the matter itself. be it remembered then that i am far from wishing to interfere with the philosophy which now flourishes, or with any other philosophy more correct and complete than this which has been or may hereafter be propounded. for i do not object to the use of this received philosophy, or others like it, for supplying matter for disputations or ornaments for discourse,--for the professor's lecture and for the business of life. nay more, i declare openly that for these uses the philosophy which i bring forward will not be much available. it does not lie in the way. it cannot be caught up in passage. it does not flatter the understanding by conformity with preconceived notions. nor will it come down to the apprehension of the vulgar except by its utility and effects. let there be therefore (and may it be for the benefit of both) two streams and two dispensations of knowledge; and in like manner two tribes or kindreds of students in philosophy--tribes not hostile or alien to each other, but bound together by mutual services;--let there in short be one method for the cultivation, another for the invention, of knowledge. and for those who prefer the former, either from hurry or from considerations of business or for want of mental power to take in and embrace the other (which must needs be most men's case), i wish that they may succeed to their desire in what they are about, and obtain what they are pursuing. but if any man there be who, not content to rest in and use the knowledge which has already been discovered, aspires to penetrate further; to overcome, not an adversary in argument, but nature in action; to seek, not pretty and probable conjectures, but certain and demonstrable knowledge;--i invite all such to join themselves, as true sons of knowledge, with me, that passing by the outer courts of nature, which numbers have trodden, we may find a way at length into her inner chambers. and to make my meaning clearer and to familiarise the thing by giving it a name, i have chosen to call one of these methods or ways _anticipation of the mind_, the other _interpretation of nature_. moreover i have one request to make. i have on my own part made it my care and study that the things which i shall propound should not only be true, but should also be presented to men's minds, how strangely soever preoccupied and obstructed, in a manner not harsh or unpleasant. it is but reasonable however (especially in so great a restoration of learning and knowledge) that i should claim of men one favour in return; which is this; if any one would form an opinion or judgment either out of his own observation, or out of the crowd of authorities, or out of the forms of demonstration (which have now acquired a sanction like that of judicial laws), concerning these speculations of mine, let him not hope that he can do it in passage or by the by; but let him examine the thing thoroughly; let him make some little trial for himself of the way which i describe and lay out; let him familiarise his thoughts with that subtlety of nature to which experience bears witness; let him correct by seasonable patience and due delay the depraved and deep-rooted habits of his mind; and when all this is done and he has begun to be his own master, let him (if he will) use his own judgment. preface to the first folio edition of shakespeare's plays ( )[a] to the great variety of readers from the most able, to him that can but spell: there you are number'd. we had rather you were weighd. especially, when the fate of all bookes depends vpon your capacities: and not of your heads alone, but of your purses. well! it is now publique, & you wil stand for your priuiledges wee know: to read, and censure. do so, but buy it first. that doth best commend a booke, the stationer saies. then, how odde soeuer your braines be, or your wisedomes, make your licence the same, and spare not. iudge your sixe-pen'orth, your shillings worth, your fiue shillings worth at a time, or higher, so you rise to the iust rates, and welcome. but, what euer you do, buy. censure will not driue a trade, or make the iacke go. and though you be a magistrate of wit, and sit on the stage at _black-friers_, or the _cock-pit_, to arraigne playes dailie, know, these playes haue had their triall alreadie, and stood out all appeals; and do now come forth quitted rather by a decree of court, then any purchas'd letters of commendation. it had bene a thing, we confesse, worthie to haue bene wished, that the author himselfe had liu'd to haue set forth, and ouerseen his owne writings. but since it hath bin ordain'd otherwise, and he by death departed from that right, we pray you do not envie his friends, the office of their care, and paine to haue collected & publish'd them, and so to haue publish'd them, as where (before) you were abus'd with diuerse stolne, and surreptitious copies, maimed, and deformed by the frauds and stealthes of iniurious imposters, that expos'd them euen those, are now offer'd to your view cur'd, and perfect of their limbes, and all the rest, absolute in their numbers, as he conceiued them. who, as he was a happie imitator of nature, was a most gentle expresser of it. his mind and hand went together. and what he thought, he vttered with that easinesse, that wee haue scarse receiued from him a blot in his papers. but it is not our prouince, who onely gather his works, and giue them you, to praise him. it is yours that reade him. and there we hope, to your diuers capacities, you will finde enough, both to draw, and hold you for his wit can no more lie hid then it could be lost. reade him, therefore and againe and againe. and if then you doe not like him surely you are in some manifest danger, not to vnderstand him. and so we leaue you to other of his friends, whom if you need can bee your guides: if you neede them not, you can leade your selues, and others. and such readers we wish him. john heminge henrie condell. [footnote a: little more than half of shakespeare's plays were published during his lifetime; and in the publication of these there is no evidence that the author had any hand. seven years after his death, john heminge and henry condell, two of his fellow-actors, collected the unpublished plays, and, in , issued them along with the others in a single volume, usually known as the first folio. when one considers what would have been lost had it not been for the enterprise of these men, it seems safe to say that the volume they introduced by this quaint and not too accurate preface, is the most important single book in the imaginative literature of the world.] preface to the philosophiae naturalis principia mathematica by sir isaac newton. ( )[a] since the ancients (as we are told by pappus) made great account of the science of mechanics in the investigation of natural things; and the moderns, laying aside substantial forms and occult qualities, have endeavored to subject the phenomena of nature to the laws of mathematics, i have in this treatise cultivated mathematics so far as it regards philosophy. the ancients considered mechanics in a twofold respect; as rational, which proceeds accurately by demonstration, and practical. to practical mechanics all the manual arts belong, from which mechanics took its name. but as artificers do not work with perfect accuracy, it comes to pass that mechanics is so distinguished from geometry, that what is perfectly accurate is called geometrical; what is less so is called mechanical. but the errors are not in the art, but in the artificers. he that works with less accuracy is an imperfect mechanic: and if any could work with perfect accuracy, he would be the most perfect mechanic of all; for the description of right lines and circles, upon which geometry is founded, belongs to mechanics. geometry does not teach us to draw these lines, but requires them to be drawn; for it requires that the learner should first be taught to describe these accurately, before he enters upon geometry; then it shows how by these operations problems may be solved. to describe right lines and circles are problems, but not geometrical problems. the solution of these problems is required from mechanics; and by geometry the use of them, when so solved, is shown; and it is the glory of geometry that from those few principles, fetched from without, it is able to produce so many things. therefore geometry is founded in mechanical practice, and is nothing but that part of universal mechanics which accurately proposes and demonstrates the art of measuring. but since the manual arts are chiefly conversant in the moving of bodies, it comes to pass that geometry is commonly referred to their magnitudes, and mechanics to their motion. in this sense rational mechanics will be the science of motions resulting from any forces whatsoever, and of the forces required to produce any motions, accurately proposed and demonstrated. this part of mechanics was cultivated by the ancients in the five powers which relate to manual arts, who considered gravity (it not being a manual power) no otherwise than as it moved weights by those powers. our design, not respecting arts, but philosophy, and our subject, not manual, but natural powers, we consider chiefly those things which relate to gravity, levity, elastic force, the resistance of fluids, and the like forces, whether attractive or impulsive; and therefore we offer this work as mathematical principles of philosophy; for all the difficulty of philosophy seems to consist in this--from the phenomena of motions to investigate the forces of nature, and then from these forces to demonstrate the other phenomena; and to this end the general propositions in the first and second book are directed. in the third book we give an example of this in the explication of the system of the world; for by the propositions mathematically demonstrated in the first book, we there derive from the celestial phenomena the forces of gravity with which bodies tend to the sun and the several planets. then, from these forces, by other propositions which are also mathematical, we deduce the motions of the planets, the comets, the moon, and the sea. i wish we could derive the rest of the phenomena of nature by the same kind of reasoning from mechanical principles; for i am induced by many reasons to suspect that they may all depend upon certain forces by which the particles of bodies, by some causes hitherto unknown, are either mutually impelled towards each other, and cohere in regular figures, or are repelled and recede from each other; which forces being unknown, philosophers have hitherto attempted the search of nature in vain; but i hope the principles here laid down will afford some light either to that or some truer method of philosophy. in the publication of this work, the most acute and universally learned mr. edmund halley not only assisted me with his pains in correcting the press and taking care of the schemes, but it was to his solicitations that its becoming public is owing; for when he had obtained of me my demonstrations of the figure of the celestial orbits, he continually pressed me to communicate the same to the royal society, who afterwards, by their kind encouragement and entreaties, engaged me to think of publishing them. but after i had begun to consider the inequalities of the lunar motions, and had entered upon some other things relating to the laws and measures of gravity, and other forces; and the figures that would be described by bodies attracted according to given laws; and the motion of several bodies moving among themselves; the motion of bodies in resisting mediums; the forces, densities, and motions of mediums; the orbits of the comets, and such like; i put off that publication till i had made a search into those matters, and could put out the whole together. what relates to the lunar motions (being imperfect) i have put all together in the corollaries of proposition , to avoid being obliged to propose and distinctly demonstrate the several things there contained in a method more prolix than the subject deserved, and interrupt the series of the several propositions. some things, found out after the rest, i chose to insert in places less suitable, rather than change the number of the propositions and the citations. i heartily beg that what i have here done may be read with candor; and that the defects i have been guilty of upon this difficult subject may be not so much reprehended as kindly supplied, and investigated by new endeavors of my readers. cambridge, trinity college, isaac newton. may , [footnote a: sir isaac newton, the great english mathematician and physicist, was born at woolsthorpe in , and died at kensington in . he held a professorship at cambridge, represented the university in parliament, as master of the mint reformed the english coinage, and for twenty five years was president of the royal society. his theory of the law of universal gravitation, the most important of his many discoveries, is expounded in his "philosophiae naturalis principia mathematical," usually known merely as the "principia," from which, this preface is translated.] preface to fables, ancient and modern by john dryden. ( )[a] 'tis with a poet as with a man who designs to build, and is very exact, as he supposes, in casting up the cost beforehand, but, generally speaking, he is mistaken in his account, and reckons short of the expense he first intended. he alters his mind as the work proceeds, and will have this or that convenience more, of which he had not thought when he began. so has it happened to me; i have built a house, where i intended but a lodge; yet with better success than a certain nobleman,[ ] who, beginning with a dog kennel, never liv'd to finish the palace he had contriv'd. from translating the first of homer's _iliads_ (which i intended as an essay to the whole work) i proceeded to the translation of the twelfth book of ovid's _metamorphoses_, because it contains, among other things, the causes, the beginning, and ending, of the trojan war. here i ought in reason to have stopp'd; but the speeches of ajax and ulysses lying next in my way, i could not balk 'em. when i had compass'd them, i was so taken with the former part of the fifteenth book, (which is the masterpiece of the whole _metamorphoses_,) that i enjoin'd myself the pleasing task of rend'ring it into english. and now i found, by the number of my verses, that they began to swell into a little volume; which gave me an occasion of looking backward on some beauties of my author, in his former books. there occurred to me the _hunting of the boar, cinyras and myrrha_, the good-natur'd story of _baucis and philemon_, with the rest, which i hope i have translated closely enough, and given them the same turn of verse which they had in the original; and this, i may say without vanity, is not the talent of every poet. he who has arriv'd the nearest to it, is the ingenious and learned sandys, the best versifier of the former age; if i may properly call it by that name, which was the former part of this concluding century. for spenser and fairfax both flourish'd in the reign of queen elizabeth; great masters in our language, and who saw much farther into the beauties of our numbers than those who immediately followed them. milton was the poetical son of spenser, and mr. waller of fairfax, for we have our lineal descents and clans as well as other families. spenser more than once insinuates that the soul of chaucer was transfus'd into his body, and that he was begotten by him two hundred years after his decease. milton has acknowledg'd to me that spenser was his original, and many besides myself have heard our famous waller own that he deriv'd the harmony of his numbers from the _godfrey of bulloign_, which was turned into english by mr. fairfax. but to return. having done with ovid for this time, it came into my mind that our old english poet, chaucer, in many things resembled him, and that with no disadvantage on the side of the modern author, as i shall endeavor to prove when i compare them; and as i am, and always have been, studious to promote the honor of my native country, so i soon resolv'd to put their merits to the trial, by turning some of the _canterbury tales_ into our language, as it is now refin'd; for by this means, both the poets being set in the same light, and dress'd in the same english habit, story to be compar'd with story, a certain judgment may be made betwixt them by the reader, without obtruding my opinion on him. or, if i seem partial to my countryman and predecessor in the laurel, the friends of antiquity are not few; and besides many of the learn'd, ovid has almost all the beaux, and the whole fair sex, his declared patrons. perhaps i have assum'd somewhat more to myself than they allow me, because i have adventur'd to sum up the evidence; but the readers are the jury, and their privilege remains entire, to decide, according to the merits of the cause, or if they please, to bring it to another hearing before some other court. in the mean time, to follow the thrid of my discourse, (as thoughts, according to mr. hobbes, have always some connection,) so from chaucer i was led to think on boccace, who was not only his contemporary, but also pursued the same studies; wrote novels in prose, and many works in verse; particularly is said to have invented the octave rhyme,[ ] or stanza of eight lines, which ever since has been maintain'd by the practice of all italian writers, who are, or at least assume the title of, heroic poets. he and chaucer, among other things, had this in common, that they refin'd their mother tongues; but with this difference, that dante had begun to file their language, at least in verse, before the time of boccace, who likewise receiv'd no little help from his master petrarch. but the reformation of their prose was wholly owing to boccace himself, who is yet the standard of purity in the italian tongue; tho' many of his phrases are become obsolete, as in process of time it must needs happen. chaucer (as you have formerly been told by our learn'd mr. rymer) first adorn'd and amplified our barren tongue from the provençal,[ ] which was then the most polish'd of all the modern languages; but this subject has been copiously treated by that great critic, who deserves no little commendation from us his countrymen. for these reasons of time, and resemblance of genius in chaucer and boccace, i resolv'd to join them in my present work; to which i have added some original papers of my own; which, whether they are equal or inferior to my other poems, an author is the most improper judge, and therefore i leave them wholly to the mercy of the reader. i will hope the best, that they will not be condemn'd; but if they should, i have the excuse of an old gentleman, who mounting on horseback before some ladies, when i was present, got up somewhat heavily, but desir'd of the fair spectators that they would count fourscore and eight before they judg'd him. by the mercy of god, i am already come within twenty years of his number, a cripple in my limbs; but what decays are in my mind, the reader must determine. i think myself as vigorous as ever in the faculties of my soul, excepting only my memory, which is not impair'd to any great degree; and if i lose not more of it, i have no great reason to complain. what judgment i had, increases rather than diminishes; and thoughts, such as they are, come crowding in so fast upon me, that my only difficulty is to choose or to reject; to run them into verse, or to give them the other harmony of prose. i have so long studied and practic'd both, that they are grown into a habit, and become familiar to me. in short, tho' i may lawfully plead some part of the old gentleman's excuse, yet i will reserve it till i think i have greater need, and ask no grains of allowance for the faults of this my present work, but those which are given of course to human frailty. i will not trouble my reader with the shortness of time in which i writ it, or the several intervals of sickness. they who think too well of their own performances are apt to boast in their prefaces how little time their works have cost them, and what other business of more importance interfere'd; but the reader will be as apt to ask the question, why they allow'd not a longer time to make their works more perfect, and why they had so despicable an opinion of their judges as to thrust their indigested stuff upon them, as if they deser'd no better. with this account of my present undertaking, i conclude the first part of this discourse; in the second part, as at a second sitting, tho' i alter not the draught, i must touch the same features over again, and change the dead coloring[ ] of the whole. in general, i will only say that i have written nothing which savors of immorality or profaneness; at least, i am not conscious to myself of any such intention. if there happen to be found an irreverent expression, or a thought too wanton, they are crept into my verses thro' my inadvertency; if the searchers find any in the cargo, let them be stay'd or forfeited, like counterbanded goods; at least, let their authors be answerable for them, as being but imported merchandise, and not of my own manufacture. on the other side, i have endeavor'd to choose such fables, both ancient and modern, as contain in each of them some instructive moral; which i could prove by induction, but the way is tedious, and they leap foremost into sight, without the reader's trouble of looking after them. i wish i could affirm, with a safe conscience, that i had taken the same care in all my former writings; for it must be own'd, that supposing verses are never so beautiful or pleasing, yet if they contain anything which shocks religion, or good manners, they are at best what horace says of good numbers without good sense, _versus inopes rerum, nugaeque canorae_.[ ] thus far, i hope, i am right in court, without renouncing to my other right of self-defense, where i have been wrongfully accus'd, and my sense wiredrawn into blasphemy or bawdry, as it has often been by a religious lawyer,[ ] in a late pleading against the stage; in which he mixes truth with falsehood, and has not forgotten the old rule of calumniating strongly, that something may remain. i resume the thrid of my discourse with the first of my translations, which was the _first iliad_ of homer. if it shall please god to give me longer life, and moderate health, my intentions are to translate the whole _ilias_; provided still that i meet with those encouragements from the public which may enable me to proceed in my undertaking with some cheerfulness. and this i dare assure the world beforehand, that i have found by trial homer a more pleasing task than virgil, (tho' i say not the translation will be less laborious). for the grecian is more according to my genius than the latin poet. in the works of the two authors we may read their manners and natural inclinations, which are wholly different. virgil was of a quiet, sedate temper; homer was violent, impetuous, and full of fire. the chief talent of virgil was propriety of thoughts, and ornament of words; homer was rapid in his thoughts, and took all the liberties, both of numbers and of expressions, which his language, and the age in which he liv'd, allow'd him. homer's invention was more copious, virgil's more confin'd; so that if homer had not led the way, it was not in virgil to have begun heroic poetry; for nothing can be more evident than that the roman poem is but the second part of the _ilias_; a continuation of the same story, and the persons already form'd; the manners of Æneas are those of hector superadded to those which homer gave him. the adventures of ulysses in the _odysseis_ are imitated in the first six books of virgil's _aeneis_; and tho' the accidents are not the same, (which would have argued him of a servile, copying, and total barrenness of invention,) yet the seas were the same, in which both the heroes wander'd; and dido cannot be denied to be the poetical daughter of calypso. the six latter books of virgil's poem are the four and twenty _iliads_ contracted: a quarrel occasioned by a lady, a single combat, battles fought, and a town besieg'd. i say not this in derogation to virgil, neither do i contradict anything which i have formerly said in his just praise: for his episodes are almost wholly of his own invention; and the form which he has given to the telling makes the tale his own, even tho' the original story had been the same. but this proves, however, that homer taught virgil to design; and if invention be the first virtue of an epic poet, then the latin poem can only be allow'd the second place. mr. hobbes, in the preface to his own bald translation of the _ilias_ (studying poetry as he did mathematics, when it was too late)--mr. hobbes, i say, begins the praise of homer where he should have ended it. he tells us that the first beauty of an epic poem consists in diction, that is, in the choice of words, and harmony of numbers; now the words are the coloring of the work, which in the order of nature is last to be consider'd. the design, the disposition, the manners, and the thoughts, are all before it: where any of those are wanting or imperfect, so much wants or is imperfect in the imitation of human life; which is in the very definition of a poem. words, indeed, like glaring colors, are the first beauties that arise and strike the sight: but if the draught be false or lame, the figures ill disposed, the manners obscure or inconsistent, or the thoughts unnatural, then the finest colors are but daubing, and the piece is a beautiful monster at the best. neither virgil nor homer were deficient in any of the former beauties; but in this last, which is expression, the roman poet is at least equal to the grecian, as i have said elsewhere; supplying the poverty of his language by his musical ear, and by his diligence. but to return: our two great poets, being so different in their tempers, one choleric and sanguine, the other phlegmatic and melancholic; that which makes them excel in their several ways is that each of them has follow'd his own natural inclination, as well in forming the design as in the execution of it. the very heroes shew their authors: achilles is hot, impatient, revengeful, _impiger, iracundus, inexorabidis, acer_[ ] &c.; Æneas patient, considerate, careful of his people, and merciful to his enemies; ever submissive to the will of heaven--_quo fata trahunt retrahuntque seqitamur_.[ ] i could please myself with enlarging on this subject, but am forc'd to defer it to a fitter time. from all i have said i will only draw this inference, that the action of homer being more full of vigor than that of virgil, according to the temper of the writer, is of consequence more pleasing to the reader. one warms you by degrees: the other sets you on fire all at once, and never intermits his heat. 'tis the same difference which longinus makes betwixt the effects of eloquence in demosthenes and tully. one persuades; the other commands. you never cool while you read homer, even not in the second book (a graceful flattery to his countrymen); but he hastens from the ships, and concludes not that book till he has made you an amends by the violent playing of a new machine. from thence he hurries on his action with variety of events, and ends it in less compass than two months. this vehemence of his, i confess, is more suitable to my temper; and therefore i have translated his first book with greater pleasure than any part of virgil; but it was not a pleasure without pains. the continual agitations of the spirits must needs be a weakening of any constitution, especially in age; and many pauses are required for refreshment betwixt the heats; the _iliad_ of itself being a third part longer than all virgil's works together. this is what i thought needful in this place to say of homer. i proceed to ovid and chaucer, considering the former only in relation to the latter. with ovid ended the golden age of the roman tongue; from chaucer the purity of the english tongue began. the manners of the poets were not unlike: both of them were well bred, well natur'd, amorous, and libertine, at least in their writings, it may be also in their lives. their studies were the same, philosophy and philology. both of them were knowing in astronomy, of which ovid's books of the roman feasts, and chaucer's treatise of the astrolabe, are sufficient witnesses. but chaucer was likewise an astrologer, as were virgil, horace, persius, and manilius. both writ with wonderful facility and clearness: neither were great inventors; for ovid only copied the grecian fables; and most of chaucer's stones were taken from his italian contemporaries, or their predecessors.[ ] boccace his _decameron_ was first publish'd; and from thence our englishman has borrow'd many of his _canterbury tales_; yet that of _palamon and arcite_ was written in all probability by some italian wit in a former age, as i shall prove hereafter. the tale of grizild was the invention of petrarch; by him sent to boccace; from whom it came to chaucer. _troilus and cressida_ was also written by a lombard author; but much amplified by our english translator, as well as beautified; the genius of our countrymen, in general, being rather to improve an invention, than to invent themselves; as is evident not only in our poetry, but in many of our manufactures. i find i have anticipated already, and taken up from boccace before i come to him; but there is so much less behind; and i am of the temper of most kings, _who love to be in debt_, are all for present money, no matter how they pay it afterwards: besides, the nature of a preface is rambling; never wholly out of the way, nor in it. this i have learn'd from the practice of honest montaigne, and return at my pleasure to ovid and chaucer, of whom i have little more to say. both of them built on the inventions of other men; yet since chaucer had something of his own, as _the wife of bath's tale, the cock and the fox_,[ ] which i have translated, and some others, i may justly give our countryman the precedence in that part; since i can remember nothing of ovid which was wholly his. both of them understood the manners, under which name i comprehend the passions, and, in a larger sense, the descriptions of persons, and their very habits; for an example, i see baucis and philemon as perfectly before me, as if some ancient painter had drawn them; and all the pilgrims in the _canterbury tales_, their humors, their features, and the very dress, as distinctly as if i had supp'd with them at the tabard in southwark; yet even there too the figures of chaucer are much more lively, and set in a better light: which tho' i have not time to prove, yet i appeal to the reader, and am sure he will clear me from partiality. the thoughts and words remain to be consider'd in the comparison of the two poets; and i have sav'd myself one half of that labor, by owning that ovid liv'd when the roman tongue was in its meridian, chaucer in the dawning of our language; therefore that part of the comparison stands not on an equal foot, any more than the diction of ennius and ovid, or of chaucer and our present english. the words are given up as a post not to be defended in our poet, because he wanted the modern art of fortifying. the thoughts remain to be consider'd, and they are to be measured only by their propriety; that is, as they flow more or less naturally from the persons describ'd, on such and such occasions. the vulgar judges, which are nine parts in ten of all nations, who call conceits and jingles wit, who see ovid full of them, and chaucer altogether without them, will think me little less than mad, for preferring the englishman to the roman: yet, with their leave, i must presume to say that the things they admire are only glittering trifles, and so far from being witty, that in a serious poem they are nauseous, because they are unnatural. would any man who is ready to die for love describe his passion like narcissus? would he think of _inopem me copia fecit_,[ ] and a dozen more of such expressions, pour'd on the neck of one another, and signifying all the same thing? if this were wit, was this a time to be witty, when the poor wretch was in the agony of death? this is just john littlewit in _bartholomew fair_,[ ] who had a conceit (as he tells you) left him in his misery; a miserable conceit. on these occasions the poet should endeavor to raise pity; but instead of this, ovid is tickling you to laugh. virgil never made use of such machines, when he was moving you to commiserate the death of dido: he would not destroy what he was building. chaucer makes arcite violent in his love, and unjust in the pursuit of it; yet when he came to die, he made him think more reasonably: he repents not of his love, for that had alter'd his character; but acknowledges the injustice of his proceedings, and resigns emilia to palamon. what would ovid have done on this occasion? he would certainly have made arcite witty on his deathbed. he had complain'd he was farther off from possession by being so near, and a thousand such boyisms, which chaucer rejected as below the dignity of the subject. they who think otherwise would by the same reason prefer lucan and ovid to homer and virgil, and martial to all four of them. as for the turn of words, in which ovid particularly excels all poets, they are sometimes a fault, and sometimes a beauty, as they are us'd properly or improperly; but in strong passions always to be shunn'd, because passions are serious, and will admit no playing. the french have a high value for them; and i confess, they are often what they call delicate, when they are introduced with judgment; but chaucer writ with more simplicity, and followed nature more closely, than to use them. i have thus far, to the best of my knowledge, been an upright judge betwixt the parties in competition, not meddling with the design nor the disposition of it; because the design was not their own, and in the disposing of it they were equal. it remains that i say somewhat of chaucer in particular. in the first place, as he is the father of english poetry, so i hold him in the same degree of veneration as the grecians held homer or the romans virgil. he is a perpetual fountain of good sense, learn'd in all sciences, and therefore speaks properly on all subjects as he knew what to say, so he knows also when to leave off, a continence which is practic'd by few writers, and scarcely by any of the ancients, excepting virgil and horace. one of our late great poets[ ] is sunk in his reputation, because he could never forgive any conceit which came in his way, but swept like a dragnet, great and small. there was plenty enough, but the dishes were ill sorted, whole pyramids of sweetmeats for boys and women, but little of solid meat for men. all this proceeded not from any want of knowledge, but of judgment, neither did he want that in discerning the beauties and faults of other poets, but only indulg'd himself in the luxury of writing, and perhaps knew it was a fault, but hop'd the reader would not find it. for this reason, tho' he must always be thought a great poet he is no longer esteem'd a good writer, and for ten impressions, which his works have had in so many successive years, yet at present a hundred books are scarcely purchas'd once a twelvemonth for, as my last lord rochester said, tho' somewhat profanely, "not being of god, he could not stand." chaucer follow'd nature everywhere, but was never so bold to go beyond her, and there is a great difference of being _poeta_ and _aimis poeta_,[ ] if we may believe catullus, as much as betwixt a modest behavior and affectation. the verse of chaucer, i confess, is not harmonious to us, but 'tis like the eloquence of one whom tacitus commends it was _auribus istius temporis accommodata_[ ] they who liv'd with him, and some time after him, thought it musical and it continued so even in our judgment, if compar'd with the numbers of lydgate and gower, his contemporaries there is the rude sweetness of a scotch tune in it, which is natural and pleasing, tho' not perfect. 'tis true, i cannot go so far as he who published the last edition of him [ ] for he would make us believe the fault is in our ears, and that there were really ten syllables in a verse where we find but nine but this opinion is not worth confuting, 'tis so gross and obvious an error, that common sense (which is a rule in everything but matters of faith and revelation) must convince the reader that equality of numbers in every verse which we call heroic was either not known, or not always practic'd, in chaucer's age. it were an easy matter to produce some thousands of his verses, which are lame for want of half a foot, and sometimes a whole one, and which no pronunciation can make otherwise. we can only say, that he liv'd in the infancy of our poetry, and that nothing is brought to perfection at the first. we must be children before we grow men. there was an ennius, and in process of time a lucilius and a lucretius, before virgil and horace; even after chaucer there was a spenser, a harrington, a fairfax, before waller and denham were in being: and our numbers were in their nonage till these last appear'd. i need say little of his parentage, life, and fortunes;[ ] they are to be found at large in all the editions of his works. he was employ'd abroad and favor'd by edward the third, richard the second, and henry the fourth, and was poet, as i suppose, to all three of them. in richard's time, i doubt, he was a little dipp'd in the rebellion of the commons, and being brother-in-law to john of ghant, it was no wonder if he follow'd the fortunes of that family, and was well with henry the fourth when he had depos'd his predecessor. neither is it to be admir'd,[ ] that henry, who was a wise as well as a valiant prince, who claim'd by succession, and was sensible that his title was not sound, but was rightfully in mortimer, who had married the heir of york; it was not to be admir'd, i say, if that great politician should be pleas'd to have the greatest wit of those times in his interests, and to be the trumpet of his praises. augustus had given him the example, by the advice of mæcenas, who recommended virgil and horace to him; whose praises help'd to make him popular while he was alive, and after his death have made him precious to posterity. as for the religion of our poet, he seems to have some little bias towards the opinions of wycliffe, after john of ghant his patron; somewhat of which appears in the tale of piers plowman.[ ] yet i cannot blame him for inveighing so sharply against the vices of the clergy in his age; their pride, their ambition, their pomp, their avarice, their worldly interest, deserv'd the lashes which he gave them, both in that and in most of his _canterbury tales_: neither has his contemporary boccace spar'd them. yet both those poets liv'd in much esteem with good and holy men in orders; for the scandal which is given by particular priests reflects not on the sacred function. chaucer's monk, his canon, and his friar, took not from the character of his good parson. a satirical poet is the check of the laymen on bad priests. we are only to take care that we involve not the innocent with the guilty in the same condemnation. the good cannot be too much honor'd, nor the bad too coarsely us'd: for the corruption of the best becomes the worst. when a clergyman is whipp'd, his gown is first taken off, by which the dignity of his order is secur'd: if he be wrongfully accus'd, he has his action of slander; and 'tis at the poet's peril if he transgress the law. but they will tell us that all kind of satire, tho' never so well deserv'd by particular priests, yet brings the whole order into contempt. is then the peerage of england anything dishonored, when a peer suffers for his treason? if he be libel'd or any way defam'd, he has his _scandalum magnatum_[ ] to punish the offender. they who use this kind of argument seem to be conscious to themselves of somewhat which has deserv'd the poet's lash, and are less concern'd for their public capacity than for their private; at least there is pride at the bottom of their reasoning. if the faults of men in orders are only to be judg'd among themselves, they are all in some sort parties: for, since they say the honor of their order is concern'd in every member of it, how can we be sure that they will be impartial judges? how far i may be allow'd to speak my opinion in this case, i know not; but i am sure a dispute of this nature caus'd mischief in abundance betwixt a king of england and an archbishop of canterbury,[ ] one standing up for the laws of his land, and the other for the honor (as he call'd it) of god's church; which ended in the murther of the prelate, and in the whipping of his majesty from post to pillar for his penance. the learn'd and ingenious dr. drake[ ] has say'd me the labour of inquiring into the esteem and reverence which the priests have had of old, and i would rather extend than diminish any part of it: yet i must needs say, that when a priest provokes me without any occasion given him, i have no reason, unless it be the charity of a christian, to forgive him: _prior læsit_[ ] is justification sufficient in the civil law. if i answer him in his own language, self-defense, i am sure, must be allow'd me; and if i carry it farther, even to a sharp recrimination, somewhat may be indulg'd to human frailty. yet my resentment has not wrought so far, but that i have followed chaucer in his character of a holy man, and have enlarg'd on that subject with some pleasure, reserving to myself the right, if i shall think fit hereafter, to describe another sort of priests, such as are more easily to be found than the good parson; such as have given the last blow to christianity in this age, by a practice so contrary to their doctrine. but this will keep cold till another time. in the mean while i take up chaucer where i left him. he must have been a man of a most wonderful comprehensive nature, because, as it has been truly observed of him, he has taken into the compass of his _canterbury tales_ the various manners and humors (as we now call them) of the whole english nation, in his age. not a single character has escap'd him. all his pilgrims are severally distinguish'd from each other; and not only in their inclinations, but in their very physiognomies and persons. bapista porta[ ] could not have described their natures better, than by the marks which the poet gives them. the matter and manner of their tales, and of their telling, are so suited to their different educations, humors, and callings, that each of them would be improper in any other mouth. even the grave and serious characters are distinguished by their several sorts of gravity: their discourses are such as belong to their age, their calling, and their breeding; such as are becoming of them, and of them only. some of his persons are vicious, and some virtuous; some are unlearn'd, or (as chaucer calls them) lewd, and some are learn'd. even the ribaldry of the low characters is different: the reeve, the miller, and the cook are several men, and distinguished from each other, as much as the mincing lady prioress and the broad-speaking gap-tooth'd wife of bath. but enough of this: there is such a variety of game springing up before me, that i am distracted in my choice, and know not which to follow. 'tis sufficient to say, according to the proverb, that here is god's plenty. we have our forefathers and great-grandames all before us, as they were in chaucer's days; their general characters are still remaining in mankind, and even in england, tho' they are call'd by other names than those of monks and friars, and canons, and lady abbesses, and nuns: for mankind is ever the same, and nothing lost out of nature, tho' everything is alter'd. may i have leave to do myself the justice--since my enemies will do me none, and are so far from granting me to be a good poet, that they will not allow me so much as to be a christian, or a moral man--may i have leave, i say, to inform my reader that i have confin'd my choice to such tales of chaucer as savor nothing of immodesty. if i had desir'd more to please than to instruct, the reeve, the miller, the shipman, the merchant, the sumner, and, above all, the wife of bath, in the prologue to her tale, would have procured me as many friends and readers, as there are beaux and ladies of pleasure in the town. but i will no more offend against good manners: i am sensible, as i ought to be, of the scandal i have given by my loose writings; and make what reparation i am able, by this public acknowledgment. if anything of this nature, or of profaneness, be crept into these poems, i am so far from defending it, that i disown it. _totum hoc indictum volo._[ ] chaucer makes another manner of apology for his broad speaking, and boccace makes the like; but i will follow neither of them. our countryman, in the end of his characters, before the _canterbury tales_, thus excuses the ribaldry, which is very gross in many of his novels: but first, i pray you of your courtesy, that ye ne arrete[ ] it nought my villany, though that i plainly speak in this mattere to tellen you her[ ] words, and eke her chere: ne though i speak her words properly, for this ye knowen as well as i, who shall tellen a tale after a man, he mote rehearse as nye as ever he can: everich word of it been in his charge, _all speke he never so rudely ne large._ or else he mote tellen his tale untrue, or feine things, or find words new: he may not spare, altho he were his brother, he mote as well say o word as another. christ spake himself full broad in holy writ, and well i wote no villany is it. eke plato saith, who so can him rede, the words mote[ ] been cousin to the dede.[ ] yet if a man should have enquired of boccace or of chaucer, what need they had of introducing such characters, where obscene words were proper in their mouths, but very undecent to be heard; i know not what answer they could have made: for that reason such tales shall be left untold by me. you have here a specimen of chaucer's language, which is so obsolete that his sense is scarce to be understood; and you have likewise more than one example of his unequal numbers, which were mentioned before. yet many of his verses consist of ten syllables, and the words not much behind our present english: as for example, these two lines, in the description of the carpenter's young wife: wincing she was, as is a jolly colt, long as a mast, and upright as a bolt. i have almost done with chaucer, when i have answer'd some objections relating to my present work. i find some people are offended that i have turn'd these tales into modern english; because they think them unworthy of my pains, and look on chaucer as a dry, old-fashion'd wit, not worth reviving. i have often heard the late earl of leicester say that mr. cowley himself was of that opinion; who having read him over at my lord's request, declar'd he had no taste of him. i dare not advance my opinion against the judgment of so great an author; but i think it fair, however, to leave the decision to the public: mr. cowley was too modest to set up for a dictator; and being shock'd perhaps with his old style, never examin'd into the depth of his good sense. chaucer, i confess, is a rough diamond, and must first be polish'd, ere he shines. i deny not, likewise, that, living in our early days of poetry, he writes not always of a piece, but sometimes mingles trivial things with those of greater moment. sometimes also, tho' not often, he runs riot, like ovid, and knows not when he has said enough. but there are more great wits, beside chaucer, whose fault is their excess of conceits, and those ill sorted. an author is not to write all he can, but only all he ought. having observ'd this redundancy in chaucer, (as it is an easy matter for a man of ordinary parts to find a fault in one of greater,) i have not tied myself to a literal translation; but have often omitted what i judg'd unnecessary, or not of dignity enough to appear in the company of better thoughts. i have presumed farther, in some places, and added somewhat of my own where i thought my author was deficient, and had not given his thoughts their true luster, for want of words in the beginning of our language. and to this i was the more embolden'd, because (if i may be permitted to say it of myself) i found i had a soul congenial to his, and that i had been conversant in the same studies. another poet, in another age, may take the same liberty with my writings; if at least they live long enough to deserve correction. it was also necessary sometimes to restore the sense of chaucer, which was lost or mangled in the errors of the press. let this example suffice at present; in the story of _palawan and arcite_, where the temple of diana is describ'd, you find these verses, in all the editions of our author: there saw i danè turned unto a tree, i mean not the goddess diane, but venus daughter, which that hight danè; which after a little consideration i knew was to be reformed into this sense, that daphne, the daughter of peneus, was turn'd into a tree. i durst not make thus bold with ovid, lest some future milbourne should arise, and say i varied from my author, because i understood him not. but there are other judges, who think i ought not to have translated chaucer into english, out of a quite contrary notion: they suppose there is a certain veneration due to his old language; and that it is little less than profanation and sacrilege to alter it. they are farther of opinion that somewhat of his good sense will suffer in this transfusion, and much of the beauty of his thoughts will infallibly be lost, which appear with more grace in their old habit. of this opinion was that excellent person whom i mention'd, the late earl of leicester, who valued chaucer as much as mr. cowley despis'd him. my lord dissuaded me from this attempt, (for i was thinking of it some years before his death,) and his authority prevail'd so far with me as to defer my undertaking while he liv'd, in deference to him: yet my reason was not convinc'd with what he urg'd against it. if the first end of a writer be to be understood, then as his language grows obsolete, his thoughts must grow obscure: multa renascentur quæ nunc cecidere; cadentque, quæ nunc sunt in honore vocabula, si volet usus, quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi.[ ] when an ancient word for its sound and significance deserves to be reviv'd, i have that reasonable veneration for antiquity, to restore it. all beyond this is superstition. words are not like landmarks, so sacred as never to be remov'd; customs are chang'd, and even statutes are silently repeal'd, when the reason ceases for which they were enacted. as for the other part of the argument, that his thoughts will lose of their original beauty, by the innovation of words; in the first place, not only their beauty, but their being is lost, where they are no longer understood, which is the present case. i grant that something must be lost in all transfusion, that is, in all translations; but the sense will remain, which would otherwise be lost, or at least be maim'd, when it is scarce intelligible; and that but to a few. how few are there who can read chaucer so as to understand him perfectly! and if imperfectly, then with less profit and no pleasure. 'tis not for the use of some old saxon friends that i have taken these pains with him: let them neglect my version, because they have no need of it. i made it for their sakes who understand sense and poetry as well as they, when that poetry and sense is put into words which they understand. i will go farther, and dare to add, that what beauties i lose in some places, i give to others which had them not originally; but in this i may be partial to myself; let the reader judge, and i submit to his decision. yet i think i have just occasion to complain of them, who, because they understand chaucer, would deprive the greater part of their countrymen of the same advantage, and hoard him up, as misers do their grandam gold, only to look on it themselves and hinder others from making use of it. in sum, i seriously protest that no man ever had, or can have, a greater veneration for chaucer, than myself. i have translated some part of his works, only that i might perpetuate his memory, or at least refresh it, amongst my countrymen. if i have alter'd him anywhere for the better, i must at the same time acknowledge that i could have done nothing without him: _facile est inventis addere_,[ ] is no great commendation; and i am not so vain to think i have deserv'd a greater. i will conclude what i have to say of him singly, with this one remark: a lady of my acquaintance, who keeps a kind of correspondence with some authors of the fair sex in france, has been inform'd by them, that mademoiselle de scudéry, who is as old as sibyl, and inspir'd like her by the same god of poetry, is at this time translating chaucer into modern french. from which i gather that he has been formerly translated into the old provençal (for how she should come to understand old english i know not). but the matter of fact being true, it makes me think that there is something in it like fatality; that, after certain periods of time, the fame and memory of great wits should be renewed, as chaucer is both in france and england. if this be wholly chance, 't is extraordinary, and i dare not call it more, for fear of being tax'd with superstition. boccace comes last to be consider'd, who living in the same age with chaucer, had the same genius, and follow'd the same studies: both writ novels, and each of them cultivated his mother tongue. but the greatest resemblance of our two modern authors being in their familiar style, and pleasing way of relating comical adventures, i may pass it over, because i have translated nothing from boccace of that nature. in the serious part of poetry, the advantage is wholly on chaucer's side; for tho' the englishman has borrow'd many tales from the italian, yet it appears that those of boccace were not generally of his own making, but taken from authors of former ages, and by him only model'd; so that what there was of invention in either of them may be judg'd equal. but chaucer has refin'd on boccace, and has mended the stones which he has borrowed, in his way of telling; tho' prose allows more liberty of thought, and the expression is more easy when unconfin'd by numbers. our countryman carries weight, and yet wins the race at disadvantage. i desire not the reader should take my word, and therefore i will set two of their discourses on the same subject, in the same light, for every man to judge betwixt them. i translated chaucer first, and, amongst the rest, pitch'd on _the wife of bath's tale_; not daring, as i have said, to adventure on her prologue, because 't is too licentious: there chaucer introduces an old woman of mean parentage, whom a youthful knight of noble blood was forc'd to marry, and consequently loath'd her; the crone being in bed with him on the wedding night, and finding his aversion, endeavors to win his affection by reason, and speaks a good word for herself (as who could blame her?) in hope to mollify the sullen bridegroom. she takes her topics from the benefits of poverty, the advantages of old age and ugliness, the vanity of youth, and the silly pride of ancestry and titles without inherent virtue, which is the true nobility. when i had clos'd chaucer, i returned to ovid, and translated some more of his fables; and by this time had so far forgotten _the wife of bath's tale_, that, when i took up boccace, unawares i fell on the same argument of preferring virtue to nobility of blood, and titles, in the story of sigismonda; which i had certainly avoided for the resemblance of the two discourses, if my memory had not fail'd me. let the reader weigh them both; and if he thinks me partial to chaucer, 't is in him to right boccace. i prefer in our countryman, far above all his other stories, the noble poem of _palamon and arcite_, which is of the epic kind, and perhaps not much inferior to the _ilias_ or the _Æneis_: the story is more pleasing than either of them, the manners as perfect, the diction as poetical, the learning as deep and various, and the disposition full as artful; only it includes a greater length of time, as taking up seven years at least, but aristotle has left undecided the duration of the action; which yet is easily reduc'd into the compass of a year, by a narration of what preceded the return of palamon to athens. i had thought for the honor of our nation, and more particularly for his, whose laurel, tho' unworthy, i have worn after him, that this story was of english growth, and chaucer's own; but i was undeceiv'd by boccace; for, casually looking on the end of his seventh _giornata_, i found dionco (under which name he shadows himself) and fiametta (who represents his mistress, the natural daughter of robert, king of naples), of whom these words are spoken: _dionco e fiametta gran pezza cantarono insieme d'arcita, e di palamone_:[ ] by which it appears that this story was written before the time of boccace; but, the name of its author being wholly lost, chaucer is now become an original; and i question not but the poem has receiv'd many beauties by passing thro' his noble hands. besides this tale, there is another of his own invention, after the manner of the provençals, call'd _the flower and the leaf_,[ ] with which i was so particularly pleas'd, both for the invention and the moral, that i cannot hinder myself from recommending it to the reader. as a corollary to this preface, in which i have done justice to others, i owe somewhat to myself: not that i think it worth my time to enter the lists with one m----,[ ] or one b----,[ ] but barely to take notice, that such men there are who have written scurrilously against me, without any provocation. m----, who is in orders, pretends amongst the rest this quarrel to me, that i have fallen foul on priesthood: if i have, i am only to ask pardon of good priests, and am afraid his part of the reparation will come to little. let him to satisfied that he shall not be able to force himself upon me for an adversary. i contemn him too much to enter into competition with him. his own translations of virgil have answer'd his criticisms on mine. if (as they say he has declar'd in print) he prefers the version of ogleby to mine, the world has made him the same compliment: for 't is agreed on all hands, that he writes even below ogleby: that, you will say, is not easily to be done; but what cannot m---- bring about? i am satisfied, however, that while he and i live together, i shall not be thought the worst poet of the age. it looks as if i had desir'd him underhand to write so ill against me; but upon my honest word i have not brib'd him to do me this service, and am wholly guiltless of his pamphlet. 't is true, i should be glad if i could persuade him to continue his good offices, and write such another critique on anything of mine for i find by experience he has a great stroke with the reader, when he condemns any of my poems, to make the world have a better opinion of them. he has taken some pains with my poetry, but nobody will be persuaded to take the same with his. if i had taken to the church, (as he affirms, but which was never in my thoughts,) i should have had more sense, if not more grace, than to have turn'd myself out of my benefice by writing libels on my parishioners. but his account of my manners and my principles are of a piece with his cavils and his poetry; and so i have done with him for ever. as for the city bard, or knight physician, i hear his quarrel to me is that i was the author of _absalom and achitophel_, which, he thinks, is a little hard on his fanatic patrons in london. but i will deal the more civilly with his two poems, because nothing ill is to be spoken of the dead; and therefore peace be to the _manes_ of his _arthurs_. i will only say that it was not for this noble knight that i drew the plan of an epic poem on king arthur, in my preface to the translation of juvenal. the guardian angels of kingdoms were machines too ponderous for him to manage; and therefore he rejected them, as dares did the whirlbats of eryx, when they were thrown before him by entellus. yet from that preface he plainly took his hint: for he began immediately upon the story, tho' he had the baseness not to acknowledge his benefactor but, instead of it, to traduce me in a libel. i shall say the less of mr. collier, because in many things he has tax'd me justly; and i have pleaded guilty to all thoughts and expressions of mine which can be truly argued of obscenity, profaneness, of immorality; and retract them. if he be my enemy, let him triumph; if he be my friend, as i have given him no personal occasion to be otherwise, he will be glad of my repentance. it becomes me not to draw my pen in the defense of a bad cause, when i have so often drawn it for a good one. yet it were not difficult to prove that in many places he has perverted my meaning by his glosses, and interpreted my words into blasphemy and bawdry, of which they were not guilty. besides that, he is too much given to horseplay in his raillery, and comes to battle like a dictator from the plow. i will not say: "the zeal of god's house has eaten him up;" but i am sure it has devoured some part of his good manners and civility. it might also be doubted whether it were altogether zeal which prompted him to this rough manner of proceeding: perhaps it became not one of his function to rake into the rubbish of ancient and modern plays; a divine might have employ'd his pains to better purpose than in the nastiness of plautus and aristophanes; whose examples, as they excuse not me, so it might be possibly supposed that he read them not without some pleasure. they who have written commentaries on those poets, or on horace, juvenal, and martial, have explain'd some vices which, without their interpretation, had been unknown to modern times. neither has he judg'd impartially betwixt the former age and us. there is more bawdry in one play of fletcher's, call'd _the custom of the country_, than in all ours together. yet this has been often acted on the stage in my remembrance. are the times so much more reform'd now than they were five and twenty years ago? if they are, i congratulate the amendment of our morals. but i am not to prejudice the cause of my fellow poets, tho' i abandon my own defense: they have some of them answer'd for themselves, and neither they nor i can think mr. collier so formidable an enemy that we should shun him. he has lost ground at the latter end of the day, by pursuing his point too far, like the prince of condé at the battle of seneffe: from immoral plays to no plays, _ab abusu ad usum, non valet consequentia_[ ]. but being a party, i am not to erect myself into a judge. as for the rest of those who have written against me, they are such scoundrels that they deserve not the least notice to be taken of them, b---- and m---- are only distinguish'd from the crowd by being remember'd to their infamy: --demetri, teque tigelli[ ] discipulorum inter jubeo plorare cathedras. [footnote a: john dryden ( - ), the great dramatic and satirical poet of the later seventeenth century, whose translation of virgil's "Æneid" appears in another volume of the harvard classics, deserves hardly less distinction as a prose writer than as a poet. the present essay, prefixed to a volume of narrative poems, is largely concerned with chaucer, and in its genial and penetrating criticism, expressed with characteristic clearness and vigor, can be seen the ground for naming dryden the first of english literary critics, and the founder of modern prose style.] [footnote : scott suggests that the allusion is to the duke of buckingham, who was often satirized for the slow progress of his great mansion at chefden.] [footnote : boccaccio did not invent this stanza, which had been used in both french and italian before his day, but he did constitute it the italian form for heroic verse.] [footnote : rymer misled dryden. there is no trace of provençal influence on chaucer.] [footnote : the foundation layer of color in a painting.] [footnote : "verses without content, melodious trifles."--_ars poet_. .] [footnote : jeremy collier, in his _short view of the immortality and profaneness of the stage_, .] [footnote : "energetic, irascible, unyielding, vehement."--horace, _ars poet._ .] [footnote : "whithersoever the fates drag us to and fro, let us follow."--virgil, _Æneid_, v. .] [footnote : the statements that follow as to chaucer's sources are mostly not in accord with the results of modern scholarship.] [footnote : the plot of neither of these poems was original with chaucer.] [footnote : "plenty has made me poor."--_meta._ iii, .] [footnote : by ben jonson.] [footnote : cowley] [footnote : 'too much a poet'--martial iii (not catullus)] [footnote : suited to the ears of that time] [footnote : speght, whom modern scholarship has shown to be right in this matter.] [footnote : what follows on chaucer's life is full of errors.] [footnote : wondered at] [footnote : a spurious "plowman's tale" was included in the older editions of chaucer.] [footnote : a law term for slander of a man of high rank, involving more severe punishment than ordinary slander.] [footnote : henry ii. and thomas à becket.] [footnote : dr. james drake wrote a reply to jeremy collier's _short view_.] [footnote : "he did the first injury"] [footnote : a neapolitan physician who wrote on physiognomy.] [footnote : "i wish all this unsaid."] [footnote : reckon.] [footnote : their.] [footnote : must.] [footnote : the corrupt state of the text of this passage is enough to explain why dryden found chaucer rough.] [footnote : "many words which have now fallen out of use shall be born again; and others which are now in honor shall fall, if custom wills it, in the force of which lie the judgement and law and rules of speech."--horace _ars poet._ - .] [footnote : "it is easy to add to what is already invented."] [footnote : dionco and fiametta sang together a long time of arcite and palamon.] [footnote : not by chaucer.] [footnote : rev. luke milbourne, who had attacked dryden's virgil.] [footnote : sir richard blackmore, who had censured dryden for the indecency of his writings.] [footnote : "the argument from abuse to use is not valid."] [footnote : "you, demetrius and tigellius, i bid lament among the chairs of your scholars." blackmore had once been a schoolmaster.--noyes.] preface to joseph andrews by henry fielding ( )[a] the comic epic in prose as it is possible the mere english reader may have a different idea of romance with the author of these little volumes; and may consequently expect a kind of entertainment, not to be found, nor which was even intended, in the following pages; it may not be improper to premise a few words concerning this kind of writing, which i do not remember to have seen hitherto attempted in our language. the epic, as well as the drama, is divided into tragedy and comedy. homer, who was the father of this species of poetry, gave us the pattern of both these, tho' that of the latter kind is entirely lost; which aristotle tells us, bore the same relation to comedy which his iliad bears to tragedy. and perhaps, that we have no more instances of it among the writers of antiquity, is owing to the loss of this great pattern, which, had it survived, would have found its imitators equally with the other poems of this great original. and farther, as this poetry may be tragic or comic, i will not scruple to say it may be likewise either in verse or prose: for tho' it wants one particular, which the critic enumerates in the constituent parts of an epic poem, namely, metre; yet, when any kind of writing contains all its other parts, such as fable, action, characters, sentiments, and diction, and is deficient in metre only, it seems, i think, reasonable to refer it to the epic; at least, as no critic hath thought proper to range it under any other head, nor to assign it a particular name to itself. thus the telemachus of the archbishop of cambray appears to me of the epic kind, as well as the odyssey of homer, indeed, it is much fairer and more reasonable to give it a name common with that species from which it differs only in a single instance, than to confound it with those which it resembles in no other. such are those voluminous works, commonly called romances, namely clelia, cleopatra, astræa, cassandra, the grand cyrus, and innumerable others which contain, as i apprehend, very little instruction or entertainment. now, a comic romance is a comic epic-poem in prose; differing from comedy, as the serious epic from tragedy: its action being more extended and comprehensive; containing a much larger circle of incidents, and introducing a greater variety of characters. it differs from the serious romance in its fable and action, in this: that as in the one these are grave and solemn, so in the other they are light and ridiculous; it differs in its characters, by introducing persons of inferiour rank, and consequently of inferiour manners, whereas the grave romance sets the highest before us; lastly in its sentiments and diction; by preserving the ludicrous instead of the sublime. in the diction i think, burlesque itself may be sometimes admitted; of which many instances will occur in this work, as in the description of the battles, and some other places not necessary to be pointed out to the classical reader; for whose entertainment those parodies or burlesque imitations are chiefly calculated. but tho' we have sometimes admitted this in our diction, we have carefully excluded it from our sentiments and characters; for there it is never properly introduced, unless in writings of the burlesque kind, which this is not intended to be. indeed, no two species of writing can differ more widely than the comic and the burlesque: for as the latter is ever the exhibition of what is monstrous and unnatural, and where our delight, if we examine it, arises from the surprising absurdity, as in appropriating the manners of the highest to the lowest, or _è converso_; so in the former, we should ever confine ourselves strictly to nature, from the just imitation of which, will flow all the pleasure we can this way convey to a sensible reader. and perhaps, there is one reason, why a comic writer should of all others be the least excused for deviating from nature, since it may not be always so easy for a serious poet to meet with the great and the admirable; but life everywhere furnishes an accurate observer with the ridiculous. i have hinted this little, concerning burlesque; because i have often heard that name given to performances, which have been truly of the comic kind, from the author's having sometimes admitted it in his diction only; which as it is the dress of poetry, doth like the dress of men establish characters, (the one of the whole poem, and the other of the whole man), in vulgar opinion, beyond any of their greater excellences: but surely, a certain drollery in style, where characters and sentiments are perfectly natural, no more constitutes the burlesque, than an empty pomp and dignity of words, where everything else is mean and low, can entitle any performance to the appellation of the true sublime. and i apprehend, my lord shaftesbury's opinion of mere burlesque agrees with mine, when he asserts, "there is no such thing to be found in the writings of the antients." but perhaps i have less abhorrence than he professes for it: and that not because i have had some little success on the stage this way; but rather as it contributes more to exquisite mirth and laughter than any other; and these are probably more wholesome physic for the mind, and conduce better to purge away spleen, melancholy, and ill affections, than is generally imagined. nay, i will appeal to common observation, whether the same companies are not found more full of good-humour and benevolence, after they have been sweetened for two or three hours with entertainments of this kind, than soured by a tragedy or a grave lecture. but to illustrate all this by another science, in which, perhaps, we shall see the distinction more clearly and plainly: let us examine the works of a comic history-painter, with those performances which the italians call _caricatura_, where we shall find the greatest excellence of the former to consist in the exactest copy of nature, insomuch, that a judicious eye instantly rejects anything _outré_, any liberty which the painter hath taken with the features of that _alma mater_. whereas in the _caricatura_ we allow all licence. its aim is to exhibit monsters, not men, and all distortions and exaggerations whatever are within its proper province. now what caricatura is in painting burlesque is in writing, and in the same manner the comic writer and painter correlate to each other. and here i shall observe, that as in the former, the painter seems to have the advantage, so it is in the latter infinitely on the side of the writer, for the monstrous is much easier to paint than describe, and the ridiculous to describe than paint. and tho' perhaps this latter species doth not in either science so strongly affect and agitate the muscles as the other, yet it will be owned i believe, that a more rational and useful pleasure arises to us from it. he who should call the ingenious hogarth a burlesque painter, would, in my opinion, do him very little honour: for sure it is much easier, much less the subject of admiration, to paint a man with a nose, or any other feature of a preposterous size, or to expose him in some absurd or monstrous attitude, than to express the affections of men on canvas. it hath been thought a vast commendation of a painter to say his figures _seem to breathe_, but surely it is a much greater and nobler applause, _that they appear to think_. but to return the ridiculous only, as i have before said, falls within my province in the present work. nor will some explanation of this word be thought impertinent by the reader, if he considers how wonderfully it hath been mistaken, even by writers who have profess'd it; for to what but such a mistake, can we attribute the many attempts to ridicule the blackest villainies, and what is yet worse the most dreadful calamities? what could exceed the absurdity of an author, who should write the comedy of nero, with the merry incident of ripping up his mother's belly, or what would give a greater shock to humanity than an attempt to expose the miseries of poverty and distress to ridicule? and yet, the reader will not want much learning to suggest such instances to himself. besides, it may seem remarkable, that aristotle, who is so fond and free of definitions, hath not thought proper to define the ridiculous. indeed, where he tells us it is proper to comedy, he hath remarked that villainy is not its object: but that he hath not, as i remember, positively asserted what is. nor doth the abbé bellegarde, who hath written a treatise on this subject, tho' he shows us many species of it, once trace it to its fountain. the only source of the true ridiculous (as it appears to me) is affectation. but tho' it arises from one spring only, when we consider the infinite streams into which this one branches, we shall presently cease to admire at the copious field it affords to an observer. now affectation proceeds from one of these two causes; vanity, or hypocrisy: for as vanity puts us on affecting false characters, in order to purchase applause; so hypocrisy sets us on an endeavour to avoid censure by concealing our vices under an appearance of their opposite virtues. and tho' these two causes are often confounded, (for they require some distinguishing;) yet, as they proceed from very different motives, so they are as clearly distinct in their operations: for indeed, the affectation which arises from vanity is nearer to truth than the other; as it hath not that violent repugnancy of nature to struggle with, which that of the hypocrite hath. it may be likewise noted, that affectation doth not imply an absolute negation of those qualities which are affected: and therefore, tho', when it proceeds from hypocrisy, it be nearly allied to deceit; yet when it comes from vanity only, it partakes of the nature of ostentation: for instance, the affectation of liberality in a vain man, differs visibly from the same affectation in the avaricious; for tho' the vain man is not what he would appear, or hath not the virtue he affects, to the degree he would be thought to have it; yet it sits less awkwardly on him than on the avaricious man, who is the very reverse of what he would seem to be. from the discovery of this affectation arises the ridiculous--which always strikes the reader with surprize and pleasure; and that in a higher and stronger degree when the affectation arises from hypocrisy, than when from vanity: for to discover any one to be the exact reverse of what he affects, is more surprizing, and consequently more ridiculous, than to find him a little deficient in the quality he desires the reputation of. i might observe that our ben jonson, who of all men understood the ridiculous the best, hath chiefly used the hypocritical affectation. now from affectation only, the misfortunes and calamities of life, or the imperfections of nature, may become the objects of ridicule. surely he hath a very ill-framed mind, who can look on ugliness, infirmity, or poverty, as ridiculous in themselves: nor do i believe any man living who meets a dirty fellow riding through the streets in a cart, is struck with an idea of the ridiculous from it; but if he should see the same figure descend from his coach and six, or bolt from his chair with his hat under his arm, he would then begin to laugh, and with justice. in the same manner, were we to enter a poor house and behold a wretched family shivering with cold and languishing with hunger, it would not incline us to laughter, (at least we must have very diabolical natures, if it would): but should we discover there a grate, instead of coals, adorned with flowers, empty plate or china dishes on the side-board, or any other affectation of riches and finery either on their persons or in their furniture: we might then indeed be excused, for ridiculing so fantastical an appearance. much less are natural imperfections the object of derision: but when ugliness aims at the applause of beauty, or lameness endeavours to display agility; it is then that these unfortunate circumstances, which at first moved our compassion, tend only to raise our mirth. the poet carries this very far; none are for being what they are in fault, but for not being what they would be thought. where if the metre would suffer the word ridiculous to close the first line, the thought would be rather more proper. great vices are the proper objects of our detestation, smaller faults of our pity: but affectation appears to me the only true source of the ridiculous. but perhaps it may be objected to me, that i have against my own rules introduced vices, and of a very black kind into this work. to this i shall answer: first, that it is very difficult to pursue a series of human actions and keep clear from them. secondly, that the vices to be found here, are rather the accidental consequences of some human frailty, or foible, than causes habitually existing in the mind. thirdly, that they are never set forth as the objects of ridicule, but detestation. fourthly, that they are never the principal figure at that time on the scene; lastly, they never produce the intended evil. [footnote a: henry fielding, dramatist, novelist, and judge, was born near glastonbury, somersetshire, april , , and died at lisbon, october , . though seldom spoken of as an essayist, fielding scattered through his novels a large number of detached or detachable discussions which are essentially essays, of which the preface to "joseph andrews" on the "comic epic in prose," is a favorable specimen. the novel which it introduces was begun as a parody on richardson's "pamela," and the preface gives fielding's conception of this form of fiction.] preface to the english dictionary by samuel johnson ( )[a] it is the fate of those who toil at the lower employments of life, to be rather driven by the fear of evil, than attracted by the prospect of good; to be exposed to censure, without hope of praise; to be disgraced by miscarriage, or punished for neglect, where success would have been without applause; and diligence without reward. among these unhappy mortals is the writer of dictionaries; whom mankind have considered, not as the pupil, but the slave of science, the pioneer of literature, doomed only to remove rubbish and clear obstructions from the paths through which learning and genius press forward to conquest and glory, without bestowing a smile on the humble drudge that facilitates their progress. every other author may aspire to praise; the lexicographer can only hope to escape reproach, and even this negative recompense has been yet granted to very few. i have, notwithstanding this discouragement, attempted a dictionary of the english language, which, while it was employed in the cultivation of every species of literature, has itself been hitherto neglected; suffered to spread, under the direction of chance, into wild exuberance; resigned to the tyranny of time and fashion: and exposed to the corruptions of ignorance, and caprices of innovation. when i took the first survey of my undertaking, i found our speech copious without order, and energetic without rule: wherever i turned my view, there was perplexity to be disentangled and confusion to be regulated; choice was to be made out of boundless variety, without any established principle of selection; adulterations were to be detected, without a settled test of purity; and modes of expression to be rejected or received, without the suffrages of any writers of classical reputation or acknowledged authority. having therefore no assistance but from general grammar, i applied myself to the perusal of our writers; and noting whatever might be of use to ascertain or illustrate any word or phrase, accumulated in time the materials of a dictionary, which, by degrees, i reduced to method, establishing to myself, in the progress of the work, such as experience and analogy suggested to me; experience, which practice and observation were continually increasing; and analogy, which, though in some words obscure, was evident in others. in adjusting the orthography, which has been to this time unsettled and fortuitous, i found it necessary to distinguish those irregularities that are inherent in our tongue, and perhaps coeval with it, from others which the ignorance or negligence of later writers has produced. every language has its anomalies, which though inconvenient, and in themselves once unnecessary, must be tolerated among the imperfections of human things, and which require only to be registered, that they may not be increased; and ascertained, that they may not be confounded: but every language has likewise its improprieties and absurdities, which it is the duty of the lexicographer to correct or proscribe. as language was at its beginning merely oral, all words of necessary or common use were spoken before they were written; and while they were unfixed by any visible signs, must have been spoken with great diversity, as we now observe those who cannot read to catch sounds imperfectly, and utter them negligently. when this wild and barbarous jargon was first reduced to an alphabet, every penman endeavored to express, as he could, the sounds which he was accustomed to pronounce or to receive, and vitiated in writing such words as were already vitiated in speech. the powers of the letters, when they were applied to a new language, must have been vague and unsettled, and therefore different hands would exhibit the same sound by different combinations. from this uncertain pronunciation arise in a great part the various dialects of the same country, which will always be observed to grow fewer, and less different, as books are multiplied; and from this arbitrary representation of sounds by letters proceeds that diversity of spelling observable in the saxon remains, and i suppose in the first books of every nation, which perplexes or destroys analogy, and produces anomalous formations, which, being once incorporated can never be afterward dismissed or reformed. of this kind are the derivatives _length_ from _long_, _strength_ from _strong_, _darling_ from _dear_, _breadth_ from _broad_, from _dry_, _drought_, and from _high_, _height_, which milton, in zeal for analogy, writes highth. 'quid te exempta juvat spinis de pluribus una?' to change all would be too much, and to change one is nothing. this uncertainty is most frequent in the vowels, which are so capriciously pronounced, and so differently modified, by accident or affectation, not only in every province, but in every mouth, that to them, as is well known to etymologists, little regard is to be shown in the deduction of one language from another. such defects are not errors in orthography, but spots of barbarity impressed so deep in the english language, that criticism can never wash them away: these, therefore, must be permitted to remain untouched; but many words have likewise been altered by accident, or depraved by ignorance, as the pronunciation of the vulgar has been weakly followed; and some still continue to be variously written, as authors differ in their care or skill: of these it was proper to inquire the true orthography, which i have always considered as depending on their derivation, and have therefore referred them to their original languages; thus i write _enchant_, _enchantment_, _enchanter_, after the french, and _incantation_ after the latin; thus _entire_ is chosen rather than _intire_, because it passed to us not from the latin _integer_, but from the french _entier_. of many words it is difficult to say whether they were immediately received from the latin or the french, since at the time when we had dominions in france, we had latin service in our churches. it is, however, my opinion that the french generally supplied us; for we have few latin words, among the terms of domestic use, which are not french; but many french, which are very remote from latin. even in words of which the derivation is apparent, i have been often obliged to sacrifice uniformity to custom; thus i write, in compliance with a numberless majority, _convey_ and _inveigh_, _deceit_ and _receipt_, _fancy_ and _phantom_; sometimes the derivative varies from the primitive, as _explain_ and _explanation_, _repeat_ and _repetition_. some combinations of letters having the same power, are used indifferently without any discoverable reason of choice, as in _choak, choke; soap, sope; fewel, fuel_, and many others; which i have sometimes inserted twice, that those who search for them under either form, may not search in vain. in examining the orthography of any doubtful word, the mode of spelling by which it is inserted in the series of the dictionary, is to be considered as that to which i give, perhaps not often rashly, the preference. i have left, in the examples, to every author his own practice unmolested, that the reader may balance suffrages, and judge between us: but this question is not always to be determined by reputed or by real learning; some men, intent upon greater things, have thought little on sounds and derivations; some, knowing in the ancient tongues, have neglected those in which our words are commonly to be sought. thus hammond writes _fecibleness_ for _feasibleness_, because i suppose he imagined it derived immediately from the latin; and some words, such as _dependant, dependent; dependance, dependence_, vary their final syllable, as one or other language is present to the writer. in this part of the work, where caprice has long wantoned without control, and vanity sought praise by petty reformation, i have endeavored to proceed with a scholar's reverence for antiquity, and a grammarian's regard to the genius of our tongue. i have attempted few alterations, and among those few, perhaps the greater part is from the modern to the ancient practice; and i hope i may be allowed to recommend to those, whose thoughts have been perhaps employed too anxiously on verbal singularities, not to disturb, upon narrow views, or for minute propriety, the orthography of their fathers. it has been asserted, that for the law to be _known_, is of more importance than to be _right_. 'change,' says hooker, 'is not made without inconvenience, even from worse to better.' there is in constancy and stability a general and lasting advantage, which will always overbalance the slow improvements of gradual correction. much less ought our written language to comply with the corruptions of oral utterance, or copy that which every variation of time or place makes different from itself, and imitate those changes, which will again be changed, while imitation is employed in observing them. this recommendation of steadiness and uniformity does not proceed from an opinion that particular combinations of letters have much influence on human happiness; or that truth may not be successfully taught by modes of spelling fanciful and erroneous; i am not yet so lost in lexicography as to forget that 'words are the daughters of earth, and that things are the sons of heaven.' language is only the instrument of science, and words are but the signs of ideas: i wish, however, that the instrument might be less apt to decay, and that signs might be permanent, like the things which they denote. in settling the orthography, i have not wholly neglected the pronunciation, which i have directed, by printing an accent upon the acute or elevated syllable. it will sometimes be found that the accent is placed by the author quoted, on a different syllable from that marked in the alphabetical series; it is then to be understood, that custom has varied, or that the author has, in my opinion, pronounced wrong. short directions are sometimes given where the sound of letters is irregular; and if they are sometimes omitted, defect in such minute observations will be more easily excused, than superfluity. in the investigation, both of the orthography and signification of words, their etymology was necessarily to be considered, and they were therefore to be divided into primitives and derivatives. a primitive word is that which can be traced no further to any english root; thus _circumspect, circumvent, circumstance, delude, concave_, and _complicate_, though compounds in the latin, are to us primitives. derivatives, are all those that can be referred to any word in english of greater simplicity. the derivatives i have referred to their primitives, with an accuracy sometimes needless; for who does not see that _remoteness_ comes from _remote_, _lovely_ from _love_, _concavity_ from _concave_, and _demonstrative_ from _demonstrate_? but this grammatical exuberance the scheme of my work did not allow me to repress. it is of great importance, in examining the general fabric of a language, to trace one word from another, by noting the usual modes of derivation and inflection; and uniformity must be preserved in systematical works; though sometimes at the expense of particular propriety. among other derivatives i have been careful to insert and elucidate the anomalous plurals of nouns and preterites of verbs, which in the teutonic dialects are very frequent, and, though familiar to those who have always used them, interrupt and embarrass the learners of our language. the two languages from which our primitives have been derived, are the roman and teutonic: under the roman, i comprehend the french and provincial tongues; and under the teutonic, range the saxon, german, and all their kindred dialects. most of our polysyllables are roman, and our words of one syllable are very often teutonic. in assigning the roman original, it has perhaps sometimes happened that i have mentioned only the latin, when the word was borrowed from the french; and considering myself as employed only in the illustration of my own language, i have not been very careful to observe whether the latin would be pure or barbarous, or the french elegant or obsolete. for the teutonic etymologies, i am commonly indebted to junius and skinner, the only names which i have forborne to quote when i copied their books; not that i might appropriate their labors or usurp their honors, but that i might spare perpetual repetition by one general acknowledgment. of these, whom i ought not to mention but with the reverence due to instructors and benefactors, junius appears to have excelled in extent of learning, and skinner in rectitude of understanding. junius was accurately skilled in all the northern languages, skinner probably examined the ancient and remoter dialects only by occasional inspection into dictionaries; but the learning of junius is often of no other use than to show him a track by which he may deviate from his purpose, to which skinner always presses forward by the shortest way. skinner is often ignorant, but never ridiculous: junius is always full of knowledge; but his variety distracts his judgment, and his learning is very frequently disgraced by his absurdities. the votaries of the northern muses will not perhaps easily restrain their indignation, when they find the name of junius thus degraded by a disadvantageous comparison; but whatever reverence is due to his diligence, or his attainments, it can be no criminal degree of censoriousness to charge that etymologist with want of judgment, who can seriously derive _dream_ from _drama_, because 'life is a drama and a drama is a dream'; and who declares with a tone of defiance, that no man can fail to derive _moan_ from [greek: monos], _monos, single_ or _solitary_, who considers that grief naturally loves to be alone. our knowledge of the northern literature is so scanty, that of words undoubtedly teutonic, the original is not always to be found in an ancient language; and i have therefore inserted dutch or german substitutes, which i consider not as radical, but parallel, not as the parents, but sisters of the english. the words which are represented as thus related by descent or cognation, do not always agree in sense; for it is incident to words, as to their authors, to degenerate from their ancestors, and to change their manners when they change their country. it is sufficient, in etymological inquiries, if the senses of kindred words be found such as may easily pass into each other, or such as may both be referred to one general idea. the etymology, so far as it is yet known, was easily found in the volumes, where it is particularly and professedly delivered, and, by proper attention to the rules of derivation, the orthography was soon adjusted. but to collect the words of our language was a task of greater difficulty. the deficiency of dictionaries was immediately apparent, and when they were exhausted, what was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions into books and gleaned as industry should find, or chance should offer it, in the boundless chaos of a living speech. my search, however, has been either skilful or lucky, for i have much augmented the vocabulary. as my design was a dictionary, common or appellative, i have omitted all words which have relation to proper names, such as _arian, socinian, calvinist, benedictine, mahometan_, but have retained those of a more general nature, as _heathen, pagan_. of the terms of art i have received such as could be found either in books of science or technical dictionaries, and have often inserted, from philosophical writers, words which are supported perhaps only by a single authority, and which, being not admitted into general use, stand yet as candidates or probationers, and must depend for their adoption on the suffrage of futurity. the words which our authors have introduced by their knowledge of foreign languages or ignorance of their own, by vanity or wantonness, by compliance with fashion or lust of innovation, i have registered as they occurred, though commonly only to censure them, and warn others against the folly of naturalizing useless foreigners to the injury of the natives. i have not rejected any by design, merely because they were unnecessary or exuberant, but have received those which by different writers have been differently formed, as _viscid_, and _viscidity, viscous_, and _viscosity_. compounded or double words i have seldom noted, except when they obtain a signification different from that which the components have in then simple state. thus _highwayman, woodman_, and _horsecourser_, require an explanation, but of _thieflike_, or _coachdriver_, no notice was needed, because the primitives contain the meaning of the compounds. words arbitrarily formed by a constant and settled analogy, like diminutive adjectives in _ish, as greenish, bluish_; adverbs in _ly_, as _dully, openly_; substantives in _ness_, as _vileness, faultiness_; were less diligently sought, and many sometimes have been omitted, when i had no authority that invited me to insert them; not that they are not genuine, and regular offsprings of english roots, but because their relation to the primitive being always the same, their signification cannot be mistaken. the verbal nouns in _ing_, such as the _keeping_ of the _castle_, the _leading_ of the _army_, are always neglected, or placed only to illustrate the sense of the verb, except when they signify things as well as actions, and have therefore a plural number, as _dwelling, living_; or have an absolute and abstract signification, as _coloring, painting, learning_. the participles are likewise omitted, unless, by signifying rather habit or quality than action, they take the nature of adjectives; as a _thinking_ man, a man of prudence; a _pacing_ horse, a horse that can pace: these i have ventured to call _participial adjectives_. but neither are these always inserted, because they are commonly to be understood without any danger of mistake, by consulting the verb. obsolete words are admitted when they are found in authors not obsolete, or when they have any force or beauty that may deserve revival. as composition is one of the chief characteristics of a language, i have endeavored to make some reparation for the universal negligence of my predecessors, by inserting great numbers of compounded words, as may be found under _after, fore, new, night, fair_, and many more. these, numerous as they are, might be multiplied, but that use and curiosity are here satisfied, and the frame of our language and modes of our combination amply discovered. of some forms of composition, such as that by which _re_ is prefixed to note _repetition_, and _un_ to signify _contrariety_ or _privation_, all the examples cannot be accumulated, because the use of these particles, if not wholly arbitrary, is so little limited, that they are hourly affixed to new words as occasion requires, or is imagined to require them. there is another kind of composition more frequent in our language than perhaps in any other, from which arises to foreigners the greatest difficulty. we modify the signification of many verbs by a particle subjoined; as to _come off_, to escape by a fetch; to _fall on_, to attack; _fall off_, to apostatize; to _break off_, to stop abruptly; to _bear out_, to justify; _to fall in_, to comply; to _give over_, to cease; to _set off_, to embellish; to _set in_, to begin a continual tenor; to _set out_, to begin a course or journey; to _take off_, to copy; with innumerable expressions of the same kind, of which some appear wildly irregular, being so far distant from the sense of the simple words, that no sagacity will be able to trace the steps by which they arrived at the present use. these i have noted with great care; and though i cannot flatter myself that the collection is complete, i believe i have so far assisted the students of our language that this kind of phraseology will be no longer insuperable; and the combinations of verbs and particles, by chance omitted, will be easily explained by comparison with those that may be found. many words yet stand supported only by the name of bailey, ainsworth, philips, or the contracted _dict._ for dictionaries, subjoined; of these i am not always certain that they are read in any book but the works of lexicographers. of such i have omitted many, because i had never read them; and many i have inserted, because they may perhaps exist, though they have escaped my notice: they are, however, to be yet considered as resting only upon the credit of former dictionaries. others, which i considered as useful, or know to be proper, though i could not at present support them by authorities, i have suffered to stand upon my own attestation, claiming the same privilege with my predecessors, of being sometimes credited without proof. the words, thus selected and disposed, are grammatically considered; they are referred to the different parts of speech; traced when they are irregularly inflected, through their various terminations; and illustrated by observations, not indeed of great or striking importance, separately considered, but necessary to the elucidation of our language, and hitherto neglected or forgotten by english grammarians. that part of my work on which i expect malignity most frequently to fasten, is the explanation; in which i cannot hope to satisfy those, who are perhaps not inclined to be pleased, since i have not always been able to satisfy myself. to interpret a language by itself is very difficult; many words cannot be explained by synonimes, because the idea signified by them has not more than one appellation; nor by paraphrase, because simple ideas cannot be described. when the nature of things is unknown, or the notion unsettled and indefinite, and various in various minds, the words by which such notions are conveyed, or such things denoted, will be ambiguous and perplexed. and such is the fate of hapless lexicography, that not only darkness, but light impedes and distresses it; things may be not only too little, but too much known, to be happily illustrated. to explain, requires the use of terms less abstruse than that which is to be explained, and such terms cannot always be found; for as nothing can be proved but by supposing something intuitively known, and evident without proof, so nothing can be defined but by the use of words too plain to admit a definition. other words there are, of which the sense is too subtle and evanescent to be fixed in a paraphrase; such are all those which are by the grammarians termed expletives, and, in dead languages, are suffered to pass for empty sounds, of no other use than to fill a verse, or to modulate a period, but which are easily perceived in living tongues to have power and emphasis, though it be sometimes such as no other form of expression can convey. my labor has likewise been much increased by a class of verbs too frequent in the english language, of which the signification is so loose and general, the use so vague and indeterminate, and the senses detorted so widely from the first idea, that it is hard to trace them through the maze of variation, to catch them on the brink of utter inanity, to circumscribe them by any limitations, or interpret them by any words of distinct and settled meaning; such are _bear, break, come, cast, full, get, give, do, put, set, go, run, make, take, turn, throw_. if of these the whole power is not accurately delivered, it must be remembered, that while our language is yet living, and variable by the caprice of every one that speaks it, these words are hourly shifting their relations, and can no more be ascertained in a dictionary, than a grove, in the agitation of a storm, can be accurately delineated from its picture in the water. the particles are among all nations applied with so great latitude, that they are not easily reducible under any regular scheme of explication: this difficulty is not less, nor perhaps greater, in english, than in other languages. i have labored them with diligence, i hope with success; such at least as can be expected in a task, which no man, however learned or sagacious, has yet been able to perform. some words there are which i cannot explain, because i do not understand them; these might have been omitted very often with little inconvenience, but i would not so far indulge my vanity as to decline this confession: for when tully owns himself ignorant whether _lessus_, in the twelve tables, means a _funeral song_, or _mourning garment_; and aristotle doubts whether [greek: ourous] in the _iliad_ signifies a _mule, or muleteer_, i may surely without shame, leave some obscurities to happier industry, or future information. the rigor of interpretative lexicography requires that _the explanation_, and _the word explained should be always reciprocal_; this i have always endeavoured, but could not always attain. words are seldom exactly synonymous; a new term was not introduced, but because the former was thought inadequate: names, therefore, have often many ideas, but few ideas have many names. it was then necessary to use the proximate word, for the deficiency of single terms can very seldom be supplied by circumlocution; nor is the inconvenience great of such mutilated interpretations, because the sense may easily be collected entire from the examples. in every word of extensive use, it was requisite to mark the progress of its meaning, and show by what gradations of intermediate sense it has passed from its primitive to its remote and accidental signification; so that every foregoing explanation should tend to that which follows, and the series be regularly concatenated from the first notion to the last. this is specious, but not always practicable; kindred senses may be so interwoven, that the perplexity cannot be disentangled, nor any reason be assigned why one should be ranged before the other. when the radical idea branches out into parallel ramifications, how can a consecutive series be formed of senses in their nature collateral? the shades of meaning sometimes pass imperceptibly into each other, so that though on one side they apparently differ, yet it is impossible to mark the point of contact. ideas of the same race, though not exactly alike, are sometimes so little different, that no words can express the dissimilitude, though the mind easily perceives it when they are exhibited together; and sometimes there is such a confusion of acceptations, that discernment is wearied and distinction puzzled, and perseverance herself hurries to an end, by crowding together what she cannot separate. these complaints of difficulty will, by those that have never considered words beyond their popular use, be thought only the jargon of a man willing to magnify his labors, and procure veneration to his studies by involution and obscurity. but every art is obscure to those that have not learned it; this uncertainty of terms, and commixture of ideas, is well known to those who have joined philosophy with grammar; and if i have not expressed them very clearly, it must be remembered that i am speaking of that which words are insufficient to explain. the original sense of words is often driven out of use by their metaphorical acceptations, yet must be inserted for the sake of a regular origination. thus i know not whether _ardor_ is used for _material heat_, or whether _flagrant_, in english, ever signifies the same with _burning_; yet such are the primitive ideas of these words, which are therefore set first, though without examples, that the figurative senses may be commodiously deduced. such is the exuberance of signification which many words have obtained, that it was scarcely possible to collect all their senses; sometimes the meaning of derivatives must be sought in the mother term, and sometimes deficient explanations of the primitive may he supplied in the train of derivation. in any case of doubt or difficulty, it will be always proper to examine all the words of the same race; for some words are slightly passed over to avoid repetition, some admitted easier and clearer explanation than others, and all will be better understood, as they are considered in greater variety of structures and relations. all the interpretations of words are not written with the same skill, or the same happiness: things equally easy in themselves, are not all equally easy to any single mind. every writer of a long word commits errors, where there appears neither ambiguity to mislead, nor obscurity to confound him; and in a search like this, many felicities of expression will be casually overlooked, many convenient parallels will be forgotten, and many particulars will admit improvement from a mind utterly unequal to the whole performance. but many seeming faults are to be imputed rather to the nature of the undertaking, than the negligence of the performer. thus some explanations are unavoidably reciprocal or circular, as _hind, the female of the stag; stag, the male of the hind_: sometimes easier words are changed into harder, as _burial_ into _sepulture, or interment, drier_ into _desiccative, dryness_ into _siccity_ or _aridity, fit_ into _paroxysm_; for the easiest word, whatever it be, can never be translated into one more easy. but easiness and difficulty are merely relative; and if the present prevalence of our language should invite foreigners to this dictionary, many will be assisted by those words which now seem only to increase or produce obscurity. for this reason i have endeavoured frequently to join a teutonic and roman interpretation, as to _cheer_, to _gladden_ or _exhilarate_, that every learner of english may be assisted by his own tongue. the solution of all difficulties, and the supply of all defects must be sought in the examples, subjoined to the various senses of each word, and ranged according to the time of their authors. when i first collected these authorities, i was desirous that every quotation should be useful to some other end than the illustration of a word; i therefore extracted from philosophers principles of science; from historians remarkable facts; from chymists complete processes; from divines striking exhortations; and from poets beautiful descriptions. such is design, while it is yet at a distance from execution. when the time called upon me to range this accumulation of elegance and wisdom into an alphabetical series, i soon discovered that the bulk of my volumes would fright away the student, and was forced to depart from my scheme of including all that was pleasing or useful in english literature, and reduce my transcripts very often to clusters of words, in which scarcely any meaning is retained; thus to the weariness of copying, i was condemned to add the vexation of expunging. some passages i have yet spared, which may relieve the labor of verbal searches, and intersperse with verdure and flowers the dusty deserts of barren philology. the examples, thus mutilated, are no longer to be considered as conveying the sentiments or doctrine of their authors; the word for the sake of which they are inserted, with all its appendant clauses, has been carefully preserved; but it may sometimes happen, by hasty detruncation, that the general tendency of the sentence may be changed: the divine may desert his tenets, or the philosopher his system. some of the examples have been taken from writers who were never mentioned as masters of elegance, or models of style; but words must be sought where they are used; and in what pages, eminent for purity, can terms of manufacture or agriculture be found? many quotations serve no other purpose than that of proving the bare existence of words, and are therefore selected with less scrupulousness than those which are to teach their structures and relations. my purpose was to admit no testimony of living authors, that i might not be misled by partiality, and that none of my contemporaries might have reason to complain; nor have i departed from this resolution, but when some performance of uncommon excellence excited my veneration, when my memory supplied me, from late books, with an example that was wanting, or when my heart, in the tenderness of friendship, solicited admission for a favorite name. so far have i been from any care to grace my pages with modern decorations, that i have studiously endeavored to collect examples and authorities from the writers before the restoration, whose works i regard as the 'wells of english undefiled,' as the pure sources of genuine diction. our language, for almost a century, has, by the concurrence of many causes, been gradually departing from its original teutonic character and deviating towards a gallic structure and phraseology, from which it ought to be our endeavor to recall it, by making our ancient volumes the groundwork of style, admitting among the additions of later times, only such as may supply real deficiencies, such as are readily adopted by the genius of our tongue, and incorporate easily with our native idioms. but as every language has a time of rudeness antecedent to perfection, as well as of false refinement and declension, i have been cautious lest my zeal for antiquity might drive me into times too remote, and crowd my book with words now no longer understood. i have fixed sidney's work for the boundary, beyond which i make few excursions. from the authors which rose in the time of elizabeth, a speech might be formed adequate to all the purposes of use and elegance. if the language of theology were extracted from hooker and the translation of the bible, the terms of natural knowledge from bacon, the phrases of policy, war, and navigation from raleigh, the dialect of poetry and fiction from spenser and sidney, and the diction of common life from shakespeare, few ideas would be lost to mankind, for want of english words in which they might be expressed. it is not sufficient that a word is found, unless it be so combined as that its meaning is apparently determined by the tract and tenor of the sentence, such passages i have therefore chosen, and when it happened that any author gave a definition of a term, or such an explanation as is equivalent to a definition, i have placed his authority as a supplement to my own, without regard to the chronological order that is otherwise observed. some words, indeed, stand unsupported by any authority, but they are commonly derivative nouns or adverbs, formed from their primitives by regular and constant analogy, or names of things seldom occurring in books, or words of which i have reason to doubt the existence. there is more danger of censure from the multiplicity than paucity of examples, authorities will sometimes seem to have been accumulated without necessity or use, and perhaps some will be found, which might, without loss, have been omitted. but a work of this kind is not hastily to be charged with superfluities; those quotations, which to careless or unskillful perusers appear only to repeat the same sense, will often exhibit, to a more accurate examiner, diversities of signification, or, at least, afford different shades of the same meaning: one will show the word applied to persons, another to things; one will express an ill, another a good, and a third a neutral sense; one will prove the expression genuine from an ancient author; another will show it elegant from a modern: a doubtful authority is corroborated by another of more credit; an ambiguous sentence is ascertained by a passage clear and determinate: the word, how often soever repeated, appears with new associates and in different combinations, and every quotation contributes something to the stability or enlargement of the language. when words are used equivocally i receive them in either sense; when they are metaphorical, i adopt them in their primitive acceptation. i have sometimes, though rarely, yielded to the temptation of exhibiting a genealogy of sentiments, by showing how one author copied the thoughts and diction of another: such quotations are indeed little more than repetitions, which might justly be censured, did they not gratify the mind, by affording a kind of intellectual history. the various syntactical structures occurring in the examples have been carefully noted; the license or negligence with which many words have been hitherto used, has made our style capricious and indeterminate; when the different combinations of the same word are exhibited together, the preference is readily given to propriety, and i have often endeavored to direct the choice. thus have i labored by settling the orthography, displaying the analogy, regulating the structures, and ascertaining the signification of english words, to perform all the parts of a faithful lexicographer: but i have not always executed my own scheme, or satisfied my own expectations. the work, whatever proofs of diligence and attention it may exhibit, is yet capable of many improvements; the orthography which i recommend is still controvertible, the etymology which i adopt is uncertain, and perhaps frequently erroneous; the explanations are sometimes too much contracted, and sometimes too much diffused, the significations are distinguished rather with subtlety than skill, and the attention is harassed with unnecessary minuteness. the examples are too often injudiciously truncated, and perhaps sometimes--i hope very rarely--alleged in a mistaken sense; for in making this collection i trusted more to memory, than, in a state of disquiet and embarrassment, memory can contain, and purposed to supply at the review what was left incomplete in the first transcription. many terms appropriated to particular occupations, though necessary and significant, are undoubtedly omitted, and of the words most studiously considered and exemplified, many senses have escaped observation. yet these failures, however frequent, may admit extenuation and apology. to have attempted much is always laudable, even when the enterprise is above the strength that undertakes it: to rest below his own aim is incident to every one whose fancy is active, and whose views are comprehensive; nor is any man satisfied with himself because he has done much, but because he can conceive little. when first i engaged in this work, i resolved to leave neither words nor things unexamined, and pleased myself with a prospect of the hours which i should revel away in feasts of literature, the obscure recesses of northern learning which i should enter and ransack, the treasures with which i expected every search into those neglected mines to reward my labor, and the triumph with which i should display my acquisitions to mankind. when i had thus inquired into the original of words, i resolved to show likewise my attention to things; to pierce deep into every science, to inquire the nature of every substance of which i inserted the name, to limit every idea by a definition strictly logical, and exhibit every production of art or nature in an accurate description, that my book might be in place of all other dictionaries whether appellative or technical. but these were the dreams of a poet doomed at last to wake a lexicographer. i soon found that it is too late to look for instruments, when the work calls for execution, and that whatever abilities i had brought to my task, with those i must finally perform it. to deliberate whenever i doubted, to inquire whenever i was ignorant, would have protracted the undertaking without end, and, perhaps, without much improvement; for i did not find by my first experiments, that what i had not of my own was easily to be obtained: i saw that one inquiry only gave occasion to another, that book referred to book, that to search was not always to find, and to find was not always to be informed; and that thus to pursue perfection, was, like the first inhabitants of arcadia, to chase the sun, which, when they had reached the hill where he seemed to rest, was still beheld at the same distance from them. i then contracted my design, determining to confide in myself, and no longer to solicit auxiliaries which produced more incumbrance than assistance; by this i obtained at least one advantage, that i set limits to my work, which would in time be ended, though not completed. despondency has never so far prevailed as to depress me to negligence; some faults will at last appear to be the effects of anxious diligence and persevering activity. the nice and subtle ramifications of meaning were not easily avoided by a mind intent upon accuracy, and convinced of the necessity of disentangling combinations, and separating similitudes. many of the distinctions which to common readers appear useless and idle, will be found real and important by men versed in the school philosophy, without which no dictionary can ever be accurately compiled, or skillfully examined. some senses, however, there are, which, though not the same, are yet so nearly allied, that they are often confounded. most men think indistinctly, and therefore cannot speak with exactness; and consequently some examples might be indifferently put to either signification: this uncertainty is not to be imputed to me, who do not form, but register the language; who do not teach men how they should think, but relate how they have hitherto expressed their thoughts. the imperfect sense of some examples i lamented, but could not remedy, and hope they will be compensated by innumerable passages selected with propriety, and preserved with exactness; some shining with sparks of imagination, and some replete with treasures of wisdom. the orthography and etymology, though imperfect, are not imperfect for want of care, but because care will not always be successful, and recollection or information come too late for use. that many terms of art and manufacture are omitted, must be frankly acknowledged; but for this defect i may boldly allege that it is unavoidable; i could not visit caverns to learn the miner's language, nor take a voyage to perfect my skill in the dialect of navigation, nor visit the warehouses of merchants, and shops of artificers, to gain the names of wares, tools, and operations, of which no mention is found in books; what favorable accident or easy inquiry brought within my reach, has not been neglected; but it had been a hopeless labor to glean up words, by courting living information, and contesting with the sullenness of one, and the roughness of another. to furnish the academicians _della crusca_ with words of this kind, a series of comedies called _la fiera_, or _the fair_, was professedly written by buonaroti; but i had no such assistant, and therefore was content to want what they must have wanted likewise, had they not luckily been so supplied. nor are all words which are not found in the vocabulary, to be lamented as omissions. of the laborious and mercantile part of the people, the diction is in a great measure casual and mutable; many of their terms are formed for some temporary or local convenience, and though current at certain times and places, are in others utterly unknown. this fugitive cant, which is always in a state of increase or decay, cannot be regarded as any part of the durable materials of a language, and therefore must be suffered to perish with other things unworthy of preservation. care will sometimes betray to the appearance of negligence. he that is catching opportunities which seldom occur, will suffer those to pass by unregarded, which he expects hourly to return; he that is searching for rare and remote things, will neglect those that are obvious and familiar: thus many of the most common and cursory words have been inserted with little illustration, because in gathering the authorities, i forebore to copy those which i thought likely to occur whenever they were wanted. it is remarkable that, in reviewing my collection, i found the word _sea_ unexemplified. thus it happens, that in things difficult there is danger from ignorance, and in things easy, from confidence; the mind, afraid of greatness, and disdainful of littleness, hastily withdraws herself from painful searches, and passes with scornful rapidity over tasks not adequate to her powers; sometimes too secure for caution, and again too anxious for vigorous effort; sometimes idle in a plain path, and sometimes distracted in labyrinths, and dissipated by different intentions. a large work is difficult because it is large, even though all its parts might singly be performed with facility; where there are many things to be done, each must be allowed its share of time and labor, in the proportion only which it bears to the whole; nor can it be expected, that the stones which form the dome of a temple, should be squared and polished like the diamond of a ring. of the event of this work, for which; having labored it with so much application, i cannot but have some degree of parental fondness, it is natural to form conjectures. those who have been persuaded to think well of my design, will require that it should fix our language, and put a stop to those alterations which time and chance have hitherto been suffered to make in it without opposition. with this consequence i will confess that i flattered myself for a while; but now begin to fear that i have indulged expectation which neither reason nor experience can justify. when we see men grow old and die at a certain time one after another, from century to century, we laugh at the elixir that promises to prolong life to a thousand years; and with equal justice may the lexicographer be derided, who being able to produce no example of a nation that has preserved their words and phrases from mutability, shall imagine that his dictionary can embalm his language, and secure it from corruption and decay, that it is in his power to change sublunary nature, and clear the world at once from folly, vanity, and affectation. with this hope, however, academies have been instituted, to guard the avenues of their languages, to retain fugitives, and repulse intruders; but their vigilance and activity have hitherto been vain; sounds are too volatile and subtile for legal restraints; to enchain syllables, and to lash the wind, are equally the undertakings of pride, unwilling to measure its desires by its strength. the french language has visibly changed under the inspection of the academy; the style of amelot's translation of father paul is observed by le courayer to be _un peu passé_; and no italian will maintain that the diction of any modern writer is not perceptibly different from that of boccace, machiavel, or caro. total and sudden transformations of a language seldom happen; conquests and migrations are now very rare: but there are other causes of change, which, though slow in their operation, and invisible in their progress, are perhaps as much superior to human resistance, as the revolutions of the sky, or intumescence of the tide. commerce, however necessary, however lucrative, as it depraves the manners, corrupts the language; they that have frequent intercourse with strangers, to whom they endeavor to accommodate themselves, must in time learn a mingled dialect, like the jargon which serves the traffickers on the mediterranean and indian coasts. this will not always be confined to the exchange, the warehouse, or the port, but will be communicated by degrees to other ranks of the people, and be at last incorporated with the current speech. there are likewise internal causes equally forcible. the language most likely to continue long without alterations, would be that of a nation raised a little, and but a little, above barbarity, secluded from strangers, and totally employed in procuring the conveniences of life; either without books, or, like some of the mahometan countries, with every few: men thus busied and unlearned, having only such words as common use requires, would perhaps long continue to express the same notions by the same signs. but no such constancy can be expected in a people polished by arts, and classed by subordination, where one part of the community is sustained and accommodated by the labor of the other. those who have much leisure to think, will always be enlarging the stock of ideas; and every increase of knowledge, whether real or fancied, will produce new words, or combination of words. when the mind is unchained from necessity, it will range after convenience; when it is left at large in the fields of speculation, it will shift opinions; as any custom is disused, the words that expressed it must perish with it; as any opinion grows popular, it will innovate speech in the same proportion as it alters practice. as by the cultivation of various sciences a language is amplified, it will be more furnished with words deflected from their original sense; the geometrician will talk of a courtier's zenith or the eccentric virtue of a wild hero, and the physician, of sanguine expectations and phlegmatic delays. copiousness of speech will give opportunities to capricious choice, by which some words will be preferred, and others degraded; vicissitudes of fashion will enforce the use of new, or extend the signification of known terms. the tropes of poetry will make hourly encroachments, and the metaphorical will become the current sense: pronunciation will be varied by levity or ignorance, and the pen must at length comply with the tongue; illiterate writers will, at one time or other, by public infatuation, rise into renown, who, not knowing the original import of words, will use them with colloquial licentiousness, confound distinction, and forget propriety. as politeness increases, some expressions will be considered as too gross and vulgar for the delicate, others as too formal and ceremonious for the gay and airy; new phrases are therefore adopted, which must for the same reasons be in time dismissed. swift, in his petty treatise on the english language, allows that new words must sometimes be introduced, but proposes that none should be suffered to become obsolete. but what makes a word obsolete, more than general agreement to forbear it? and how shall it be continued, when it conveys an offensive idea, or recalled again into the mouths of mankind, when it has once become unfamiliar by disuse, and unpleasing by unfamiliarity? there is another cause of alteration more prevalent than any other, which yet in the present state of the world cannot be obviated. a mixture of two languages will produce a third distinct from both, and they will always be mixed, where the chief parts of education, and the most conspicuous accomplishment, is skill in ancient or in foreign tongues. he that has long cultivated another language, will find its words and combinations crowd upon his memory; and haste and negligence, refinement and affectation, will obtrude borrowed terms and exotic expressions. the great pest of speech is frequency of translation. no book was ever turned from one language into another, without imparting something of its native idiom; this is the most mischievous and comprehensive innovation; single words may enter by thousands, and the fabric of the tongue continue the same; but new phraseology changes much at once; it alters not the single stones of the building, but the order of the columns. if an academy should be established for the cultivation of our style--which i, who can never wish to see dependence multiplied, hope the spirit of english liberty will hinder or destroy--let them, instead of compiling grammars and dictionaries, endeavor, with all their influence, to stop the license of translators, whose idleness and ignorance, if it be suffered to proceed, will reduce us to babble a dialect of france. if the changes that we fear be thus irresistible, what remains but to acquiesce with silence, as in the other insurmountable distresses of humanity? it remains that we retard what we cannot repel, that we palliate what we cannot cure. life may be lengthened by care, though death cannot be ultimately defeated: tongues, like governments, have a natural tendency to degeneration; we have long preserved our constitution, let us make some struggles for our language. in hope of giving longevity to that which its own nature forbids to be immortal, i have devoted this book, the labor of years, to the honor of my country, that we may no longer yield the palm of philology, without a contest, to the nations of the continent. the chief glory of every people arises from its authors: whether i shall add any thing by my own writings to the reputation of english literature, must be left to time: much of my life has been lost under the pressures of disease; much has been trifled away; and much has always been spent in provision for the day that was passing over me; but i shall not think my employment useless or ignoble, if by my assistance foreign nations, and distant ages, gain access to the propagators of knowledge, and understand the teachers of truth; if my labors afford light to the repositories of science, and add celebrity to bacon, to hooker, to milton, and to boyle. when i am animated by this wish, i look with pleasure on my book, however defective, and deliver it to the world with the spirit of a man that has endeavored well. that it will immediately become popular i have not promised to myself: a few wild blunders, and risible absurdities, from which no work of such multiplicity was ever free, may for a time furnish folly with laughter, and harden ignorance into contempt; but useful diligence will at last prevail, and there never can be wanting some who distinguish desert; who will consider that no dictionary of a living tongue ever can be perfect, since, while it is hastening to publication, some words are budding, and some falling away; that a whole life cannot be spent upon syntax and etymology, and that even a whole life would not be sufficient; that he, whose design includes whatever language can express, must often speak of what he does not understand; that a writer will sometimes be hurried by eagerness to the end, and sometimes faint with weariness under a task which scaliger compares to the labors of the anvil and the mine; that what is obvious is not always known, and what is known is not always present; that sudden fits of inadvertency will surprise vigilance, slight avocations will seduce attention, and casual eclipses of the mind will darken learning; and that the writer shall often in vain trace his memory at the moment of need, for that which yesterday he knew with intuitive readiness, and which will come uncalled into his thoughts to-morrow. in this work, when it shall be found that much is omitted, let it not be forgotten that much likewise is performed; and though no book was ever spared out of tenderness to the author, and the world is little solicitous to know whence proceed the faults of that which it condemns; yet it may gratify curiosity to inform it, that the english dictionary was written with little assistance of the learned, and without any patronage of the great; not in the soft obscurities of retirement, or under the shelter of academic bowers, but amidst inconvenience and distraction, in sickness and in sorrow. it may repress the triumph of malignant criticism to observe, that if our language is not here fully displayed, i have only failed in an attempt which no human powers have hitherto completed. if the lexicons of ancient tongues, now immutably fixed, and comprised in a few volumes, be yet, after the toil of successive ages, inadequate and delusive; if the aggregated knowledge, and co-operating diligence of the italian academicians, did not secure them from the censure of beni; if the embodied critics of france, when fifty years had been spent upon their work, were obliged to change its economy, and give their second edition another form, i may surely be contented without the praise of perfection, which, if i could obtain, in this gloom of solitude, what would it avail me? i have protracted my work till most of those whom i wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: i therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise. to the right honorable the earl of chesterfield february , . my lord: i have lately been informed by the proprietor of _the world_, that two papers, in which my _dictionary_ is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. to be so distinguished is an honor which, being very little accustomed to favours from the great, i know not well how to receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. when, upon some slight encouragement, i first visited your lordship, i was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, by the enchantment of your address; and i could not forbear to wish that i might boast myself 'le vainqueur du vainqueur de la terre'; that i might obtain that regard for which i saw the world contending; but i found my attendance so little encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me to continue it. when i had once addressed your lordship in public, i had exhausted all the art of pleasing which a retired and uncourtly scholar can possess. i had done all that i could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, be it ever so little. seven years, my lord, have now passed, since i waited in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; during which time i have been pushing on my work through difficulties, of which it is useless to complain, and have brought it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. such treatment i did not expect, for i never had a patron before. the shepherd in virgil grew at last acquainted with love, and found him a native of the rocks. is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern on a man struggling for life in the water, and, when he has reached ground, encumbers him with help? the notice which you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, had been kind; but it has been delayed till i am indifferent, and cannot enjoy it; till i am solitary, and cannot impart it; till i am known, and do not want it. i hope it is no very cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should consider me as owing that to a patron, which providence has enabled me to do for myself. having carried on my work thus far with so little obligation to any favorer of learning, i shall not be disappointed though i should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; for i have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in which i once boasted myself with so much exultation, my lord, your lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, sam. johnson. [footnote a: for a sketch of johnson's life, see the introduction to "life of addison" in the volume of english essays. the interest of his preface to the great dictionary need hardly be pointed out, since the work itself is a landmark in the history of our language. the letter to chesterfield, short though it is is a document of great importance in the freeing of literature from patronage, and is in itself a notable piece of literature. the preface to johnson's edition of shakespeare's plays not only explains the editor's conception of his task, but contains what is perhaps the best appreciation of the dramatist written in the eighteenth century.] preface to shakespeare by samuel johnson. ( ) that praises are without reason lavished on the dead, and that the honours due only to excellence are paid to antiquity, is a complaint likely to be always continued by those, who, being able to add nothing to truth, hope for eminence from the heresies of paradox; or those, who, being forced by disappointment upon consolatory expedients, are willing to hope from posterity what the present age refuses, and flatter themselves that the regard which is yet denied by envy, will be at last bestowed by time. antiquity, like every other quality that attracts the notice of mankind, has undoubtedly votaries that reverence it, not from reason, but from prejudice. some seem to admire indiscriminately whatever has been long preserved, without considering that time has sometimes co-operated with chance; all perhaps are more willing to honour past than present excellence; and the mind contemplates genius through the shades of age, as the eye surveys the sun through artificial opacity. the great contention of criticism is to find the faults of the moderns, and the beauties of the ancients. while an author is yet living we estimate his powers by his worst performance, and when he is dead, we rate them by his best. to works, however, of which the excellence is not absolute and definite, but gradual and comparative; to works not raised upon principles demonstrative and scientifick, but appealing wholly to observation and experience, no other test can he applied than length of duration and continuance of esteem. what mankind have long possessed they have often examined and compared; and if they persist to value the possession, it is because frequent comparisons have confirmed opinion in its favour. as among the works of nature no man can properly call a river deep, or a mountain high, without the knowledge of many mountains, and many rivers; so in the productions of genius, nothing can be stiled excellent till it has been compared with other works of the same kind. demonstration immediately displays its power, and has nothing to hope or fear from the flux of years; but works tentative and experimental must be estimated by their proportion to the general and collective ability of man, as it is discovered in a long succession of endeavours. of the first building that was raised, it might be with certainty determined that it was round or square; but whether it was spacious or lofty must have been referred to time. the pythagorean scale of numbers was at once discovered to be perfect; but the poems of _homer_ we yet know not to transcend the common limits of human intelligence, but by remarking, that nation after nation, and century after century, has been able to do little more than transpose his incidents, new-name his characters, and paraphrase his sentiments. the reverence due to writings that have long subsisted arises therefore not from any credulous confidence in the superior wisdom of past ages, or gloomy persuasion of the degeneracy of mankind, but is the consequence of acknowledged and indubitable positions, that what has been longest known has been most considered, and what is most considered is best understood. the poet, of whose works i have undertaken the revision, may now begin to assume the dignity of an ancient, and claim the privilege of established fame and prescriptive veneration. he has long outlived his century, the term commonly fixed as the test of literary merit. whatever advantages he might once derive from personal allusions, local customs, or temporary opinions, have for many years been lost; and every topick of merriment, or motive of sorrow, which the modes of artificial life afforded him, now only obscure the scenes which they once illuminated. the effects of favour and competition are at an end; the tradition of his friendships and his enemies has perished; his works support no opinion with arguments, nor supply any faction with invectives; they can neither indulge vanity nor gratify malignity; but are read without any other reason than the desire of pleasure, and are therefore praised only as pleasure is obtained; yet, thus unassisted by interest or passion, they have past through variations of taste and changes of manners, and, as they devolved from one generation to another, have received new honours at every transmission. but because human judgment, though it be gradually gaining upon certainty, never becomes infallible; and approbation, though long continued, may yet be only the approbation of prejudice or fashion; it is proper to inquire, by what peculiarities of excellence _shakespeare_ has gained and kept the favour of his countrymen. nothing can please many, and please long, but just representations of general nature. particular manner, can be known to few, and therefore few only can judge how nearly they are copied. the irregular combinations of fanciful invention may delight a-while, by that novelty of which the common satiety of life sends us all in quest; but the pleasures of sudden wonder are soon exhausted, and the mind can only repose on the stability of truth. _shakespeare_ is above all writers, at least above all modern writers, the poet of nature; the poet that holds up to his readers a faithful mirrour of manners and of life. his characters are not modified by the customs of particular places, unpractised by the rest of the world; by the peculiarities of studies or professions, which can operate but upon small numbers; or by the accidents of transient fashions or temporary opinions: they are the genuine progeny of common humanity, such as the world will always supply, and observation will always find. his persons act and speak by the influence of those general passions and principles by which all minds are agitated, and the whole system of life is continued in motion. in the writings of other poets a character is too often an individual; in those of _shakespeare_ it is commonly a species. it is from this wide extension of design that so much instruction is derived. it is this which fills the plays of _shakespeare_ with practical axioms and domestic wisdom. it was said of _euripides_, that every verse was a precept; and it may be said of _shakespeare_, that from his works may be collected a system of civil and oeconomical prudence. yet his real power is not shewn in the splendour of particular passages, but by the progress of his fable, and the tenour of his dialogue; and he that tries to recommend him by select quotations, will succeed like the pedant in _hierocles_, who, when he offered his house to sale, carried a brick in his pocket as a specimen. it will not easily be imagined how much _shakespeare_ excells in accommodating his sentiments to real life, but by comparing him with other authors. it was observed of the ancient schools of declamation, that the more diligently they were frequented, the more was the student disqualified for the world, because he found nothing there which he should ever meet in any other place. the same remark may be applied to every stage but that of _shakespeare_. the theatre, when it is under any other direction, is peopled by such characters as were never seen, conversing in a language which was never heard, upon topicks which will never rise in the commerce of mankind. but the dialogue of this author is often so evidently determined by the incident which produces it, and is pursued with so much ease and simplicity, that it seems scarcely to claim the merit of fiction, but to have been gleaned by diligent selection out of common conversation, and common occurrences. upon every other stage the universal agent is love, by whose power all good and evil is distributed, and every action quickened or retarded. to bring a lover, a lady and a rival into the fable; to entangle them in contradictory obligations, perplex them with oppositions of interest, and harrass them with violence of desires inconsistent with each other; to make them meet in rapture and part in agony; to fill their mouths with hyperbolical joy and outrageous sorrow; to distress them as nothing human ever was distressed; to deliver them as nothing human ever was delivered; is the business of a modern dramatist. for this probability is violated, life is misrepresented, and language is depraved. but love is only one of many passions; and as it has no great influence upon the sum of life, it has little operation in the dramas of a poet, who caught his ideas from the living world, and exhibited only what he saw before him. he knew, that any other passion, as it was regular or exorbitant, was a cause of happiness or calamity. characters thus ample and general were not easily discriminated and preserved, yet perhaps no poet ever kept his personages more distinct from each other. i will not say with _pope_, that every speech may be assigned to the proper speaker, because many speeches there are which have nothing characteristical; but perhaps, though some may be equally adapted to every person, it will be difficult to find any that can be properly transferred from the present possessor to another claimant. the choice is right, when there is reason for choice. other dramatists can only gain attention by hyperbolical or aggravated characters, by fabulous and unexampled excellence or depravity, as the writers of barbarous romances invigorated the reader by a giant and a dwarf; and he that should form his expectations of human affairs from the play, or from the tale, would be equally deceived. _shakespeare_ has no heroes; his scenes are occupied only by men, who act and speak as the reader thinks that he should himself have spoken or acted on the same occasion: even where the agency is supernatural the dialogue is level with life. other writers disguise the most natural passions and most frequent incidents; so that he who contemplates them in the book will not know them in the world: _shakespeare_ approximates the remote, and familiarizes the wonderful; the event which he represents will not happen, but if it were possible, its effects would probably be such as he has assigned; and it may be said, that he has not only shewn human nature as it acts in real exigencies, but as it would be found in trials, to which it cannot be exposed. this therefore is the praise of _shakespeare_, that his drama is the mirrour of life; that he who has mazed his imagination, in following the phantoms which other writers raise up before him, may here be cured of his delirious extasies, by reading human sentiments in human language, by scenes from which a hermit may estimate the transactions of the world, and a confessor predict the progress of the passions. his adherence to general nature has exposed him to the censure of criticks, who form their judgments upon narrow principles. _dennis_ and _rhymer_ think his _romans_ not sufficiently _roman_; and _voltaire_ censures his kings as not completely royal. _dennis_ is offended, that _menenius_, a senator of _rome_, should play the buffoon; and _voltaire_ perhaps thinks decency violated when the _danish_ usurper is represented as a drunkard. but _shakespeare_ always makes nature predominate over accident; and if he preserves the essential character, is not very careful of distinctions superinduced and adventitious. his story requires romans or kings, but, he thinks only on men. he knew that _rome_, like every other city, had men of all dispositions; and wanting a buffoon, he went into the senate-house for that which the senate-house would certainly have afforded him. he was inclined to shew an usurper and a murderer not only odious but despicable, he therefore added drunkenness to his other qualities, knowing that kings love wine like other men, and that wine exerts its natural power upon kings. these are the petty cavils of petty minds; a poet overlooks the casual distinction of country and condition, as a painter, satisfied with the figure, neglects the drapery. the censure which he has incurred by mixing comick and tragick scenes, as it extends to all his works, deserves more consideration. let the fact be first stated, and then examined. _shakespeare's_ plays are not in the rigorous and critical sense either tragedies or comedies, but compositions of a distinct kind; exhibiting the real state of sublunary nature, which partakes of good and evil, joy and sorrow, mingled with endless variety of proportion and innumerable modes of combination; and expressing the course of the world, in which the loss of one is the gain of another; in which, at the same time, the reveller is hasting to his wine, and the mourner burying his friend; in which the malignity of one is sometimes defeated by the frolick of another; and many mischiefs and many benefits are done and hindered without design. out of this chaos of mingled purposes and casualties the ancient poets, according to the laws which custom had prescribed, selected some the crimes of men, and some their absurdities; some the momentous vicissitudes of life, and some the lighter occurrences; some the terrours of distress, and some the gayeties of prosperity. thus rose the two modes of imitation, known by the names of _tragedy_ and _comedy_, compositions intended to promote different ends by contrary means, and considered as so little allied, that i do not recollect among the _greeks_ or _romans_ a single writer who attempted both. _shakespeare_ has united the powers of exciting laughter and sorrow not only in one mind, but in one composition. almost all his plays are divided between serious and ludicrous characters, and, in the successive evolutions of the design, sometimes produce seriousness and sorrow, and sometimes levity and laughter. that this is a practice contrary to the rules of criticism will be readily allowed; but there is always an appeal open from criticism to nature. the end of writing is to instruct; the end of poetry is to instruct by pleasing. that the mingled drama may convey all the instruction of tragedy or comedy cannot be denied, because it includes both in its alterations of exhibition and approaches nearer than either to the appearance of life, by shewing how great machinations and slender designs may promote or obviate one another, and the high and the low co-operate in the general system by unavoidable concatenation. it is objected, that by this change of scenes the passions are interrupted in their progression, and that the principal event, being not advanced by a due gradation of preparatory incidents, wants at last the power to move, which constitutes the perfection of dramatick poetry. this reasoning is so specious, that it is received as true even by those who in daily experience feel it to be false. the interchanges of mingled scenes seldom fail to produce the intended vicissitudes of passion. fiction cannot move so much, but that the attention may be easily transferred; and though it must be allowed that pleasing melancholy be sometimes interrupted by unwelcome levity, yet let it be considered likewise, that melancholy is often not pleasing, and that the disturbance of one man may be the relief of another; that different auditors have different habitudes; and that, upon the whole, all pleasure consists in variety. the players, who in their edition divided our authour's works into comedies, histories, and tragedies, seem not to have distinguished the three kinds by any very exact or definite ideas. and action which ended happily to the principal persons, however serious or distressful through its intermediate incidents, in their opinion, constituted a comedy. this idea of a comedy continued long amongst us; and plays were written, which, by changing the catastrophe, were tragedies to-day, and comedies to-morrow. tragedy was not in those times a poem of more general dignity or elevation than comedy; it required only a calamitous conclusion, with which the common criticism of that age was satisfied, whatever lighter pleasure it afforded in its progress. history was a series of actions, with no other than chronological succession, independent on each other, and without any tendency to introduce or regulate the conclusion. it is not always very nicely distinguished from tragedy. there is not much nearer approach to unity of action in the tragedy of _antony and cleopatra_, than in the history of _richard the second_. but a history might be continued through many plays; as it had no plan, it had no limits. through all these denominations of the drama, _shakespeare's_ mode of composition is the same; an interchange of seriousness and merriment, by which the mind is softened at one time, and exhilarated at another. but whatever be his purpose, whether to gladden or depress, or to conduct the story, without vehemence or emotion, through tracts of easy and familiar dialogue, he never fails to attain his purpose; as he commands us, we laugh or mourn, or sit silent with quiet expectation, in tranquillity without indifference. when _shakespeare's_ plan is understood, most of the criticisms of _rhymer_ and _voltaire_ vanish away. the play of _hamlet_ is opened, without impropriety, by two sentinels; _iago_ bellows at _brabantio's_ window, without injury to the scheme of the play, though in terms which a modern audience would not easily endure; the character of _polonius_ is seasonable and useful; and the grave-diggers themselves may be heard with applause. _shakespeare_ engaged in dramatick poetry with the world open before him; the rules of the ancients were yet known to few; but publick judgment was unformed; he had no example of such fame as might force him upon imitation, nor criticks of such authority as might restrain his extravagance: he therefore indulged his natural disposition, and his disposition, as _rhymer_ has remarked, led him to comedy. in tragedy he often writes, with great appearance of toil and study, what is written at last with little felicity; but in his comick scenes, he seems to produce without labour what no labour can improve. in tragedy he is always struggling after some occasion to be comick; but in comedy he seems to repose, or to luxuriate, as in a mode of thinking congenial to his nature. in his tragick scenes there is always something wanting, but his comedy often surpasses expectation or desire. his comedy pleases by the thoughts and the language, and his tragedy for the greater part by incident and action. his tragedy seems to be skill, his comedy to be instinct. the force of his comick scenes has suffered little diminution from the changes made by a century and a half, in manners or in words. as his personages act upon principles arising from genuine passion, very little modified by particular forms, their pleasures and vexations are communicable to all times and to all places; they are natural, and therefore durable; the adventitious peculiarities of personal habits, are only superficial dies, bright and pleasing for a little while, yet soon fading to a dim tinct, without any remains of former lustre; but the discriminations of true passion are the colours of nature; they pervade the whole mass, and can only perish with the body that exhibits them. the accidental compositions of heterogeneous modes are dissolved by the chance which combined them; but the uniform simplicity of primitive qualities neither admits increase, nor suffers decay. the sand heap by one flood is scattered by another, but the rock always continues in its place. the stream of time, which is continually washing the dissoluble fabricks of other poets, passes without injury by the adamant of _shakespeare_. if there be, what i believe there is, in every nation, a stile which never becomes obsolete, a certain mode of phraseology so consonant and congenial to the analogy and principles of its respective language as to remain settled and unaltered; this style is probably to be sought in the common intercourse of life, among those who speak only to be understood, without ambition of elegance. the polite are always catching modish innovations, and the learned depart from established forms of speech, in hope of finding or making better; those who wish for distinction forsake the vulgar, when the vulgar is right; but there is a conversation above grossness and below refinement, where propriety resides, and where this poet seems to have gathered his comick dialogue. he is therefore more agreeable to the ears of the present age than any other authour equally remote, and among his other excellencies deserves to be studied as one of the original masters of our language. these observations are to be considered not as unexceptionally constant, but as containing general and predominant truth. _shakespeare's_ familiar dialogue is affirmed to be smooth and clear, yet not wholly without ruggedness or difficulty; as a country may be eminently fruitful, though it has spots unfit for cultivation: his characters are praised as natural, though their sentiments are sometimes forced, and their actions improbable; as the earth upon the whole is spherical, though its surface is varied with protuberances and cavities. _shakespeare_ with his excellencies has likewise faults, and faults sufficient to obscure and overwhelm any other merit. i shall shew them in the proportion in which they appear to me, without envious malignity or superstitious veneration. no question can be more innocently discussed than a dead poet's pretensions to renown; and little regard is due to that bigotry which sets candour higher than truth. his first defect is that to which may be imputed most of the evil in books or in men. he sacrifices virtue to convenience, and is so much more careful to please than to instruct, that he seems to write without any moral purpose. from his writings indeed a system of social duty may be selected, for he that thinks reasonably must think morally; but his precepts and axioms drop casually from him; he makes no just distribution of good or evil, nor is always careful to shew in the virtuous a disapprobation of the wicked; he carries his persons indifferently through right and wrong, and at the close dismisses them without further care, and leaves their examples to operate by chance. this fault the barbarity of his age cannot extenuate; for it is always a writer's duty to make the world better, and justice is a virtue independent on time or place. the plots are often so loosely formed, that a very slight consideration may improve them, and so carelessly pursued, that he seems not always fully to comprehend his own design. he omits opportunities of instructing or delighting which the train of his story seems to force upon him, and apparently rejects those exhibitions which would be more affecting, for the sake of those which are more easy. it may be observed, that in many of his plays the latter part is evidently neglected. when he found himself near the end of his work, and, in view of his reward, he shortened the labour to snatch the profit. he therefore remits his efforts where he should most vigorously exert them, and his catastrophe is improbably produced or imperfectly represented. he had no regard to distinction of time or place, but gives to one age or nation, without scruple, the customs, institutions, and opinions of another, at the expence not only of likelihood, but of possibility. these faults _pope_ has endeavoured, with more zeal than judgment, to transfer to his imagined interpolators. we need not wonder to find _hector_ quoting _aristotle_, when we see the loves of _theseus_ and _hippolyta_ combined with the _gothick_ mythology of fairies. _shakespeare_, indeed, was not the only violator of chronology, for in the same age _sidney_, who wanted not the advantages of learning, has, in his _arcadia_, confounded the pastoral with the feudal times, the days of innocence, quiet and security, with those of turbulence, violence, and adventure. in his comick scenes he is seldom very successful, when he engages his characters in reciprocations of smartness and contests of sarcasm; their jests are commonly gross, and their pleasantry licentious; neither his gentlemen nor his ladies have much delicacy, nor are sufficiently distinguished from his clowns by any appearance of refined manners. whether he represented the real conversation of his time is not easy to determine; the reign of _elizabeth_ is commonly supposed to have been a time of stateliness, formality and reserve; yet perhaps the relaxations of that severity were not very elegant. there must, however, have been always some modes of gayety preferable to others, and a writer ought to chuse the best. in tragedy his performance seems constantly to be worse, as his labour is more. the effusions of passion which exigence forces out are for the most part striking and energetick; but whenever he solicits his invention, or strains his faculties, the offspring of his throes is tumour, meanness, tediousness, and obscurity. in narration he affects a disproportionate pomp of diction, and a wearisome train of circumlocution, and tells the incident imperfectly in many words, which might have been more plainly delivered in few. narration in dramatick poetry is naturally tedious, as it is unanimated and inactive, and obstructs the progress of the action; it should therefore always be rapid, and enlivened by frequent interruption. _shakespeare_ found it an encumberance, and instead of lightening it by brevity, endeavoured to recommend it by dignity and splendour. his declamations or set speeches are commonly cold and weak, for his power was the power of nature; when he endeavoured, like other tragick writers, to catch opportunities of amplification, and instead of inquiring what the occasion demanded, to show how much his stores of knowledge could supply, he seldom escapes without the pity or resentment of his reader. it is incident to him to be now and then entangled with an unwieldy sentiment, which he cannot well express, and will not reject; he struggles with it a while, and if it continues stubborn, comprises it in words such as occur, and leaves it to be disentangled and evolved by those who have more leisure to bestow upon it. not that always where the language is intricate the thought is subtle, or the image always great where the line is bulky; the equality of words to things is very often neglected, and trivial sentiments and vulgar ideas disappoint the attention, to which they are recommended by sonorous epithets and swelling figures. but the admirers of this great poet have never less reason to indulge their hopes of supreme excellence, than when he seems fully resolved to sink them in dejection, and mollify them with tender emotions by the fall of greatness, the danger of innocence, or the crosses of love. he is not long soft and pathetick without some idle conceit, or contemptible equivocation. he no sooner begins to move, than he counteracts himself; and terrour and pity, as they are rising in the mind, are checked and blasted by sudden frigidity. a quibble is to _shakespeare_, what luminous vapours are to the traveller; he follows it at all adventures; it is sure to lead him out of his way, and sure to engulf him in the mire. it has some malignant power over his mind, and its fascinations are irresistible. whatever be the dignity or profundity of his disquisition, whether he be enlarging knowledge or exalting affection, whether he be amusing attention with incidents, or enchaining it in suspense, let but a quibble spring up before him, and he leaves his work unfinished. a quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career, or stoop from his elevation. a quibble, poor and barren as it is, gave him such delight, that he was content to purchase it, by the sacrifice of reason, propriety and truth. a quibble was to him the fatal _cleopatra_ for which he lost the world, and was content to lose it. it will be thought strange, that, in enumerating the defects of this writer, i have not yet mentioned his neglect of the unities: his violation of those laws which have been instituted and established by the joint authority of poets and criticks. for his other deviations from the art of writing i resign him to critical justice, without making any other demand in his favour, than that which must be indulged to all human excellence: that his virtues be rated with his failings: but, from the censure which this irregularity may bring upon him, i shall, with due reverence to that learning which i must oppose, adventure to try how i can defend him. his histories, being neither tragedies nor comedies are not subject to any of their laws; nothing more is necessary to all the praise which they expect, than that the changes of action be so prepared as to be understood, that the incidents be various and affecting, and the characters consistent, natural, and distinct. no other unity is intended, and therefore none is to be sought. in his other works he has well enough preserved the unity of action. he has not, indeed, an intrigue regularly perplexed and regularly unravelled: he does not endeavour to hide his design only to discover it, for this is seldom the order of real events, and _shakespeare_ is the poet of nature: but his plan has commonly what _aristotle_ requires, a beginning, a middle, and an end; one event is concatenated with another, and the conclusion follows by easy consequence. there are perhaps some incidents that might be spared, as in other poets there is much talk that only fills up time upon the stage; but the general system makes gradual advances, and the end of the play is the end of expectation. to the unities of time and place he has shewn no regard; and perhaps a nearer view of the principles on which they stand will diminish their value, and withdraw from them the veneration which, from the time of _corneille_, they have very generally received, by discovering that they have given more trouble to the poet, than pleasure to the auditor. the necessity of observing the unities of time and place arises from the supposed necessity of making the drama credible. the criticks hold it impossible, that an action of months or years can be possibly believed to pass in three hours; or that the spectator can suppose himself to sit in the theatre, while ambassadors go and return between distant kings while armies are levied and towns besieged, while an exile wanders and returns, or till he whom they saw courting his mistress, shall lament the untimely fall of his son. the mind revolts from evident falsehood, and fiction loses its force when it departs from the resemblance of reality. from the narrow limitation of time necessarily arises the contraction of place. the spectator, who knows that he saw the first act at _alexandria_, cannot suppose that he sees the next at _rome_, at a distance to which not the dragons of _medea_ could, in so short a time, have transported him; he knows with certainty that he has not changed his place, and he knows that place cannot change itself; that what was a house cannot become a plain; that what was _thebes_ can never be _persepolis_. such is the triumphant language with which a critick exults over the misery of an irregular poet, and exults commonly without resistance or reply. it is time therefore to tell him by the authority of _shakespeare_, that he assumes, as an unquestionable principle, a position, which, while his breath is forming it into words, his understanding pronounces to be false. it is false, that any representation is mistake for reality; that any dramatick fable in its materiality was ever credible, or, for a single moment, was ever credited. the objection arising from the impossibility of passing the first hour at _alexandria_, and the next at _rome_, supposes, that when the play opens, the spectator really imagines himself at _alexandria_, and believes that his walk to the theatre has been a voyage to _egypt_, and that he lives in the days of _antony_ and _cleopatra_. surely he that imagines this may imagine more. he that can take the stage at one time for the palace of the _ptolemies_, may take it in half an hour for the promontory of _actium_. delusion, if delusion be admitted, has no certain limitation; if the spectator can be once persuaded, that his old acquaintance are _alexander_ and _cæsar_, that a room illuminated with candles is the plain of _pharsalia_, or the bank of _granicus_, he is in a state of elevation above the reach of reason, or of truth, and from the heights of empyrean poetry, may despise the circumscriptions of terrestrial nature. there is no reason why a mind thus wandering in extacy should count the clock, or why an hour should not be a century in that calenture of the brains that can make the stage a field. the truth is, that the spectators are always in their senses, and know, from the first act to the last, that the stage is only a stage, and that the players are only players. they came to hear a certain number of lines recited with just gesture and elegant modulation. the lines relate to some action, and an action must be in some place; but the different actions that complete a story may be in places very remote from each other; and where is the absurdity of allowing that space to represent first _athens_, and then _sicily_, which was always known to be neither _sicily_ nor _athens_, but a modern theatre? by supposition, as place is introduced, times may be extended; the time required by the fable elapses for the most part between the acts; for, of so much of the action as is represented, the real and poetical duration is the same. if, in the first act, preparations for war against _mithridates_ are represented to be made in _rome_, the event of the war may, without absurdity, be represented, in the catastrophe, as happening in _pontus_; we know that there is neither war, nor preparation for war; we know that we are neither in _rome_ nor _pontus_; that neither _mithridates_ nor _lucullus_ are before us. the drama exhibits successive imitations of successive actions; and why may not the second imitation represent an action that happened years after the first, if it be so connected with it, that nothing but time can be supposed to intervene? time is, of all modes of existence, most obsequious to the imagination; a lapse of years is as easily conceived as a passage of hours. in contemplation we easily contract the time of real actions, and therefore willingly permit it to be contracted when we only see their imitation. it will be asked, how the drama moves, if it is not credited. it is credited with all the credit due to a drama. it is credited, whenever it moves, as a just picture of a real original; as representing to the auditor what he would himself feel, if he were to do or suffer what is there feigned to be suffered or to be done. the reflection that strikes the heart is not, that the evils before us are real evils, but that they are evils to which we ourselves may be exposed. if there be any fallacy, it is not that we fancy the players, but that we fancy ourselves unhappy for a moment; but we rather lament the possibility than suppose the presence of misery, as a mother weeps over her babe, when she remembers that death may take it from her. the delight of tragedy proceeds from our consciousness of fiction; if we thought murders and treasons real, they would please no more. imitations produce pain or pleasure, not because they are mistaken for realities, but because they bring realities to mind. when the imagination is recreated by a painted landscape, the trees are not supposed capable to give us shade, or the fountains coolness; but we consider, how we should be pleased with such fountains playing beside us, and such woods waving over us. we are agitated in reading the history of _henry_ the fifth, yet no man takes his book for the field of _agencourt_. a dramatick exhibition is a book recited with concomitants that encrease or diminish its effect. familiar comedy is often more powerful in the theatre, than on the page; imperial tragedy is always less. the humour of _petruchio_ may be heightened by grimace; but what voice or what gesture can hope to add dignity or force to the soliloquy of _cato_. a play read, affects the mind like a play acted. it is therefore evident, that the action is not supposed to be real; and it follows, that between the acts a longer or shorter time may be allowed to pass, and that no more account of space or duration is to be taken by the auditor of a drama, than by the reader of a narrative, before whom may pass in an hour the life of a hero, or the revolutions of an empire. whether _shakespeare_ knew the unities, and rejected them by design, or deviated from them by happy ignorance, it is, i think, impossible to decide, and useless to enquire. we may reasonably suppose, that, when he rose to notice, he did not want the counsels and admonitions of scholars and criticks, and that he at last deliberately persisted in a practice, which he might have begun by chance. as nothing is essential to the fable, but unity of action, and as the unities of time and place arise evidently from false assumptions, and, by circumscribing the extent of the drama, lessen its variety, i cannot think it much to be lamented, that they were not known by him, or not observed: nor, if such another poet could arise, should i very vehemently reproach him, that his first act passed at _venice_, and his next in _cyprus_. such violations of rules merely positive, become the comprehensive genius of _shakespeare_, and such censures are suitable to the minute and slender criticism of _voltaire_: non usque adeo permiscuit imis longus summa dies, ut non, si voce metelli serventur leges, malint a cæsare tolli. yet when i speak thus slightly of dramatick rules, i cannot but recollect how much wit and learning may be produced against me; before such authorities i am afraid to stand, not that i think the present question one of those that are to be decided by mere authority, but because it is to be suspected, that these precepts have not been so easily received but for better reasons than i have yet been able to find. the result of my enquiries, in which it would be ludicrous to boast of impartiality, is, that the unities of time and place are not essential to a just drama, that though they may sometimes conduce to pleasure, they are always to be sacrificed to the nobler beauties of variety and instruction; and that a play, written with nice observation of critical rules, is to be contemplated as an elaborate curiosity, as the product of superfluous and ostentatious art, by which is shewn, rather what is possible, than what is necessary. he that, without diminution of any other excellence, shall preserve all the unities unbroken, deserves the like applause with the architect, who shall display all the orders of architecture in a citadel; without any deduction from its strength; but the principal beauty of a citadel is to exclude the enemy; and the greatest graces of a play, are to copy nature and instruct life. perhaps what i have here not dogmatically but deliberatively written, may recal the principles of the drama to a new examination. i am almost frighted at my own temerity; and when i estimate the fame and the strength of those that maintain the contrary opinion, am ready to sink down in reverential silence; as _Æneas_ withdrew from the defence of _troy_, when he saw _neptune_ shaking the wall, and _juno_ heading the besiegers. those whom my arguments cannot persuade to give their approbation to the judgment of _shakespeare_, will easily, if they consider the condition of his life, make some allowance for his ignorance. every man's performances, to be rightly estimated, must be compared with the state of the age in which he lived, and with his own particular opportunities; and though to the reader a book be not worse or better for the circumstances of the authour, yet as there is always a silent reference of human works to human abilities, and as the enquiry, how far man may extend his designs, or how high he may rate his native force, is of far greater dignity than in what rank we shall place any particular performance, curiosity is always busy to discover the instruments, as well as to survey the workmanship, to know how much is to be ascribed to original powers, and how much to casual and adventitious help. the palaces of _peru_ or _mexico_ were certainly mean and incommodious habitations, if compared to the houses of _european_ monarchs; yet who could forbear to view them with astonishment, who remembered that they were built without the use of iron? the _english_ nation, in the time of _shakespeare_, was yet struggling to emerge from barbarity. the philology of _italy_ had been transplanted hither in the reign of _henry_ the eighth; and the learned languages had been successfully cultivated by _lilly, linacer_, and _more_; by _pole, cheke_, and _gardiner_; and afterwards by _smith, clerk, haddon_, and _ascham_. greek was now taught to boys in the principal schools; and those who united elegance with learning, read, with great diligence, the _italian_ and _spanish_ poets. but literature was yet confined to professed scholars, or to men and women of high rank. the publick was gross and dark; and to be able to read and write, was an accomplishment still valued for its rarity. nations, like individuals, have their infancy. a people newly awakened to literary curiosity, being yet unacquainted with the true state of things, knows not how to judge of that which is proposed as its resemblance. whatever is remote from common appearances is always welcome to vulgar, as to childish credulity; and of a country unenlightened by learning, the whole people is the vulgar. the study of those who then aspired to plebeian learning was laid out upon adventures, giants, dragons, and enchantments. _the death of arthur was_ the favourite volume. the mind, which has feasted on the luxurious wonders of fiction, has no taste of the insipidity of truth. a play which imitated only the common occurrences of the world, would, upon the admirers of _palmerin_ and _guy_ of _warwick_, have made little impression; he that wrote for such an audience was under the necessity of looking round for strange events and fabulous transactions, and that incredibility, by which maturer knowledge is offended, was the chief recommendation of writings, to unskilful curiosity. our authour's plots are generally borrowed from novels, and it is reasonable to suppose, that he chose the most popular, such as were read by many, and related by more; for his audience could not have followed him through the intricacies of the drama, had they not held the thread of the story in their hands. the stories, which we now find only in remoter authours, were in his time accessible and familiar. the fable of _as you like it_, which is supposed to be copied from _chaucer's_ gamelyn, was a little pamphlet of those times; and old mr. _cibber_ remembered the tale of _hamlet_ in plain _english_ prose, which the criticks have now to seek in _saxo grammaticus._ his _english_ histories he took from _english_ chronicles and _english_ ballads; and as the ancient writers were made known to his countrymen by versions, they supplied him with new subjects; he dilated some of _plutarch's_ lives into plays, when they had been translated by _north_. his plots, whether historical or fabulous, are always crouded with incidents, by which the attention of a rude people was more easily caught than by sentiment or argumentation; and such is the power of the marvellous even over those who despise it, that every man finds his mind more strongly seized by the tragedies of _shakespeare_ than of any other writer; others please us by particular speeches, but he always makes us anxious for the event, and has perhaps excelled all but _homer_ in securing the first purpose of a writer, by exciting restless and unquenchable curiosity and compelling him that reads his work to read it through. the shows and bustle with which his plays abound have the same original. as knowledge advances, pleasure passes from the eye to the ear, but returns, as it declines, from the ear to the eye. those to whom our authour's labours were exhibited had more skill in pomps or processions than in poetical language, and perhaps wanted some visible and discriminated events, as comments on the dialogue. he knew how he should most please; and whether his practice is more agreeable to nature, or whether his example has prejudiced the nation, we still find that on our stage something must be done as well as said, and inactive declamation is very coldly heard, however musical or elegant, passionate or sublime. _voltaire_ expresses his wonder, that our authour's extravagances are endured by a nation, which has seen the tragedy of _cato_. let him be answered, that _addison_ speaks the language of poets, and _shakespeare_, of men. we find in _cato_ innumerable beauties which enamour us of its authour, but we see nothing that acquaints us with human sentiments or human actions; we place it with the fairest and the noblest progeny which judgment propagates by conjunction with learning, but _othello_ is the vigorous and vivacious offspring of observation impregnated by genius. _cato_ affords a splendid exhibition of artificial and fictitious manners, and delivers just and noble sentiments, in diction easy, elevated and harmonious, but its hopes and fears communicate no vibration to the heart; the composition refers us only to the writer; we pronounce the name of _cato_, but we think on _addison_. the work of a correct and regular writer is a garden accurately formed and diligently planted, varied with shades, and scented with flowers; the composition of _shakespeare_ is a forest, in which oaks extend their branches, and pines tower in the air, interspersed sometimes with weeds and brambles, and sometimes giving shelter to myrtles and to roses; filling the eye with awful pomp, and gratifying the mind with endless diversity. other poets display cabinets of precious rarities, minutely finished, wrought into shape, and polished into brightness. _shakespeare_ opens a mine which contains gold and diamonds in unexhaustible plenty, though clouded by incrustations, debased by impurities, and mingled with a mass of meaner minerals. it has been much disputed, whether _shakespeare_ owed his excellence to his own native force, or whether he had the common helps of scholastick education, the precepts of critical science, and the examples of ancient authours. there has always prevailed a tradition, that _shakespeare_ wanted learning, that he had no regular education, nor much skill in the dead languages. _johnson_, his friend, affirms, that _he had small latin, and no greek_; who, besides that he had no imaginable temptation to falsehood, wrote at a time when the character and acquisitions of _shakespeare_ were known to multitudes. his evidence ought therefore to decide the controversy, unless some testimony of equal force could be opposed. some have imagined, that they have discovered deep learning in many imitations of old writers; but the examples which i have known urged, were drawn from books translated in his time; or were such easy coincidences of thought, as will happen to all who consider the same subjects; or such remarks on life or axioms of morality as float in conversation, and are transmitted through the world in proverbial sentences. i have found it remarked, that, in this important sentence, _go before, i'll follow_, we read a translation of, _i prae, sequar_. i have been told, that when _caliban_, after a pleasing dream, says, _i cry'd to sleep again_, the authour imitates _anacreon_, who had, like every other man, the same wish on the same occasion. there are a few passages which may pass for imitations, but so few, that the exception only confirms the rule; he obtained them from accidental quotations, or by oral communication, and as he used what he had, would have used more if he had obtained it. the _comedy of errors_ is confessedly taken from the _menæchmi_ of _plautus_; from the only play of _plautus_ which was then in _english_. what can be more probable, than that he who copied that, would have copied more; but that those which were not translated were inaccessible? whether he knew the modern languages is uncertain. that his plays have some _french_ scenes proves but little; he might easily procure them to be written, and probably, even though he had known the language in the common degree, he could not have written it without assistance. in the story of _romeo_ and _juliet_ he is observed to have followed the _english_ translation, where it deviates from the _italian_; but this on the other part proves nothing against his knowledge of the original. he was to copy, not what he knew himself, but what was known to his audience. it is most likely that he had learned _latin_ sufficiently to make him acquainted with construction, but that he never advanced to an easy perusal of the _roman_ authours. concerning his skill in modern languages, i can find no sufficient ground of determination; but as no imitations of _french_ or _italian_ authours have been discovered, though the _italian_ poetry was then high in esteem, i am inclined to believe, that he read little more than _english_, and chose for his fables only such tales as he found translated. that much knowledge is scattered over his works is very justly observed by _pope_, but it is often such knowledge as books did not supply. he that will understand _shakespeare_, must not be content to study him in the closet, he must look for his meaning sometimes among the sports of the field, and sometimes among the manufactures of the shop. there is however proof enough that he was a very diligent reader, nor was our language then so indigent of books, but that he might very liberally indulge his curiosity without excursion into foreign literature. many of the _roman_ authours were translated, and some of the _greek_; the reformation had filled the kingdom with theological learning; most of the topicks of human disquisition had found _english_ writers; and poetry had been cultivated, not only with diligence, but success. this was a stock of knowledge sufficient for a mind so capable of appropriating and improving it. but the greater part of his excellence was the product of his own genius. he found the _english_ stage in a state of the utmost rudeness; no essays either in tragedy or comedy had appeared, from which it could be discovered to what degree of delight either one or other might be carried. neither character nor dialogue were yet understood. _shakespeare_ may be truly said to have introduced them both amongst us, and in some of his happier scenes to have carried them both to the utmost height. by what gradations of improvement he proceeded, is not easily known; for the chronology of his works is yet unsettled. _rowe_ is of opinion, that _perhaps we are not to look for his beginning, like those of other writers, in his least perfect works; art had so little, and nature so large a share in what he did, that for ought i know_, says he, _the performances of his youth, as they were the most vigorous, were the best._ but the power of nature is only the power of using to any certain purpose the materials which diligence procures, or opportunity supplies. nature gives no man knowledge, and when images are collected by study and experience, can only assist in combining or applying them. _shakespeare_, however favoured by nature, could impart only what he had learned; and as he must increase his ideals, like other mortals, by gradual acquisition, he, like them, grew wiser as he grew older, could display life better, as he knew it more, and instruct with more efficacy, as he was himself more amply instructed. there is a vigilance of observation and accuracy of distinction which books and precepts cannot confer; from this almost all original and native excellence proceeds. _shakespeare_ must have looked upon mankind with perspicacity, in the highest degree curious and attentive. other writers borrow their characters from preceding writers, and diversify them only by the accidental appendages of present manners; the dress is a little varied, but the body is the same. our authour had both matter and form to provide; for except the characters of _chaucer_, to whom i think he is not much indebted, there were no writers in _english_, and perhaps not many in other modern languages, which shewed life in its native colours. the contest about the original benevolence or malignity of man had not yet commenced. speculation had not yet attempted to analyse the mind, to trace the passions to their sources, to unfold the seminal principles of vice and virtue, or sound the depths of the heart for the motives of action. all those enquiries, which from that time that human nature became the fashionable study, have been made sometimes with nice discernment, but often with idle subtilty, were yet unattempted. the tales, with which the infancy of learning was satisfied, exhibited only the superficial appearances of action, related the events but omitted the causes, and were formed for such as delighted in wonders rather than in truth. mankind was not then to be studied in the closet; he that would know the world, was under the necessity of gleaning his own remarks, by mingling as he could in its business and amusements. _boyle_ congratulated himself upon his high birth, because it favoured his curiosity, by facilitating his access. _shakespeare_ had no such advantage; he came to _london_ a needy adventurer, and lived for a time by very mean employments. many works of genius and learning have been performed in states of life, that appear very little favourable to thought or to enquiry; so many, that he who considers them is inclined to think that he sees enterprise and perseverance predominating over all external agency, and bidding help and hindrance vanish before them. the genius of _shakespeare_ was not to be depressed by the weight of poverty, nor limited by the narrow conversation to which men in want are inevitably condemned; the incumbrances of his fortune were shaken from his mind, _as dewdrops from a lion's mane_. though he had so many difficulties to encounter, and so little assistance to surmount them, he has been able to obtain an exact knowledge of many modes of life, and many casts of native dispositions; to vary them with great multiplicity; to mark them by nice distinctions; and to shew them in full view by proper combinations. in this part of his performances he had none to imitate, but has himself been imitated by all succeeding writers; and it may be doubted, whether from all his successors more maxims of theoretical knowledge, or more rules of practical prudence, can be collected, than he alone has given to his country. nor was his attention confined to the actions of men; he was an exact surveyor of the inanimate world; his descriptions have always some peculiarities, gathered by contemplating things as they really exist. it may be observed, that the oldest poets of many nations preserve their reputation, and that the following generations of wit, after a short celebrity, sink into oblivion. the first, whoever they be, must take their sentiments and descriptions immediately from knowledge; the resemblance is therefore just, their descriptions are verified by every eye, and their sentiments acknowledged by every breast. those whom their fame invites to the same studies, copy partly them, and partly nature, till the books of one age gain such authority, as to stand in the place of nature to another, and imitation, always deviating a little, becomes at last capricious and casual. _shakespeare_, whether life or nature be his subject, shews plainly, that he has seen with his own eyes; he gives the image which he receives, not weakened or distorted by the intervention of any other mind; the ignorant feel his representations to be just, and the learned see that they are compleat. perhaps it would not be easy to find any authour, except _homer_, who invented so much as _shakespeare_, who so much advanced the studies which he cultivated, or effused so much novelty upon his age or country. the form, the characters, the language, and the shows of the _english_ drama are his, _he seems_, says _dennis, to have been the very original of our_ english _tragical harmony, that is, the harmony of blank verse, diversified often by dissyllable and trissyllable terminations. for the diversity distinguishes it from heroick harmony, and by bringing it nearer to common use makes it more proper to gain attention, and more fit for action and dialogue. such verse we make when we are writing prose; we make such verse in common conversation_. i know not whether this praise is rigorously just. the dissyllable termination, which the critic rightly appropriates to the drama, is to be found, though, i think, not in _gorboduc_ which is confessedly before our author; yet in _hieronnymo_, of which the date is not certain, but which there is reason to believe at least as old as his earliest plays. this however is certain, that he is the first who taught either tragedy or comedy to please, there being no theatrical piece of any older writer, of which the name is known, except to antiquaries and collectors of books, which are sought because they are scarce, and would not have been scarce, had they been much esteemed. to him we must ascribe the praise, unless _spenser_ may divide it with him, of having first discovered to how much smoothness and harmony the _english_ language could be softened. he has speeches, perhaps sometimes scenes, which have all the delicacy of _rowe_, without his effeminacy. he endeavours indeed commonly to strike by the force and vigour of his dialogue, but he never executes his purpose better, than when he tries to sooth by softness. yet it must be at last confessed, that as we owe every thing to him, he owes something to us; that, if much of his praise is paid by perception and judgement, much is likewise given by custom and veneration. we fix our eyes upon his graces, and turn them from his deformities, and endure in him what we should in another loath or despise. if we endured without praising, respect for the father of our drama might excuse us; but i have seen, in the book of some modern critick, a collection of anomalies, which shew that he has corrupted language by every mode of depravation, but which his admirer has accumulated as a monument of honour. he has scenes of undoubted and perpetual excellence, but perhaps not one play, which, if it were now exhibited as the work of a contemporary writer, would be heard to the conclusion. i am indeed far from thinking, that his works were wrought to his own ideas of perfection; when they were such as would satisfy the audience, they satisfied the writer. it is seldom that authours, though more studious of fame than _shakespeare_, rise much above the standard of their own age; to add a little of what is best will always be sufficient for present praise, and those who find themselves exalted into fame, are willing to credit their encomiasts, and to spare the labour of contending with themselves. it does not appear, that _shakespeare_ thought his works worthy of posterity, that he levied any ideal tribute upon future times, or had any further prospect, than of present popularity and present profit. when his plays had been acted, his hope was at an end; he solicited no addition of honour from the reader. he therefore made no scruple to repeat the same jests in many dialogues, or to entangle different plots by the same knot of perplexity, which may be at least forgiven him, by those who recollect, that of _congreve's_ four comedies, two are concluded by a marriage in a mask, by a deception, which perhaps never happened, and which, whether likely or not, he did not invent. so careless was this great poet of future fame, that, though he retired to ease and plenty, while he was yet little _declined into the vale of years_, before he could be disgusted with fatigue, or disabled by infirmity, he made no collection of his works, nor desired to rescue those that had been already published from the depravations that obscured them, or secure to the rest a better destiny, by giving them to the world in their genuine state. of the plays which bear the name of _shakespeare_ in the late editions, the greater part were not published till about seven years after his death, and the few which appeared in his life are apparently thrust into the world without the care of the authour, and therefore probably without his knowledge. of all the publishers, clandestine or professed, their negligence and unskilfulness has by the late revisers been sufficiently shown. the faults of all are indeed numerous and gross, and have not only corrupted many passages perhaps beyond recovery, but have brought others into suspicion, which are only obscured by obsolete phraseology, or by the writer's unskilfulness and affectation. to alter is more easy than to explain, and temerity is a more common quality than diligence. those who saw that they must employ conjecture to a certain degree, were willing to indulge it a little further. had the author published his own works, we should have sat quietly down to disentangle his intricacies, and clear his obscurities; but now we tear what we cannot loose, and eject what we happen not to understand. the faults are more than could have happened without the concurrence of many causes. the stile of _shakespeare_ was in itself ungrammatical, perplexed and obscure; his works were transcribed for the players by those who may be supposed to have seldom understood them; they were transmitted by copiers equally unskilful, who still multiplied errours; they were perhaps sometimes mutilated by the actors, for the sake of shortening the speeches; and were at last printed without correction of the press. in this state they remained, not as dr. _warburton_ supposes, because they were unregarded, but because the editor's art was not yet applied to modern languages, and our ancestors were accustomed to so much negligence of _english_ printers, that they could very patiently endure it. at last an edition was undertaken by _rowe_; not because a poet was to be published by a poet, for _rowe_ seems to have thought very little on correction or explanation, but that our authour's works might appear like those of his fraternity, with the appendages of a life and recommendatory preface. _rowe_ has been clamorously blamed for not performing what he did not undertake, and it is time that justice be done him, by confessing, that though he seems to have had no thought of corruption beyond the printer's errours, yet he has made many emendations, if they were not made before, which his successors have received without acknowledgement, and which, if they had produced them, would have filled pages and pages with censures of the stupidity by which the faults were committed, with displays of the absurdities which they involved, with ostentatious expositions of the new reading, and self congratulations on the happiness of discovering it. of _rowe_, as of all the editors, i have preserved the preface, and have likewise retained the authour's life, though not written with much elegance or spirit; it relates however what is now to be known, and therefore deserves to pass through all succeeding publications. the nation had been for many years content enough with mr. _rowe's_ performance, when mr. _pope_ made them acquainted with the true state of _shakespeare's_ text, shewed that it was extremely corrupt, and gave reason to hope that there were means of reforming it. he collated the old copies, which none had thought to examine before, and restored many lines to their integrity; but, by a very compendious criticism, he rejected whatever he disliked, and thought more of amputation than of cure. i know not why he is commended by dr. _warburton_ for distinguishing the genuine from the spurious plays. in this choice he exerted no judgement of his own; the plays which he received, were given by _hemings_ and _condel,_ the first editors; and those which he rejected, though, according to the licentiousness of the press in those times, they were printed during _shakespeare's_ life, with his name, had been omitted by his friends, and were never added to his works before the edition of , from which they were copied by the later printers. this was a work which _pope_ seems to have thought unworthy of his abilities, being not able to suppress his contempt of _the dull duty of an editor_. he understood but half his undertaking. the duty of a collator is indeed dull, yet, like other tedious tasks, is very necessary; but an emendatory critick would ill discharge his duty, without qualities very different from dullness. in perusing a corrupted piece, he must have before him all possibilities of meaning, with all possibilities of expression. such must be his comprehension of thought, and such his copiousness of language. out of many readings possible, he must be able to select that which best suits with the state, opinions, and modes of language prevailing in every age, and with his authour's particular cast of thought, and turn of expression. such must be his knowledge, and such his taste. conjectural criticism demands more than humanity possesses, and he that exercises it with most praise has very frequent need of indulgence. let us now be told no more of the dull duty of an editor. confidence is the common consequence of success. they whose excellence of any kind has been loudly celebrated, are ready to conclude, that their powers are universal. _pope's_ edition fell below his own expectations, and he was so much offended, when he was found to have left any thing for others to do, that he past the latter part of his life in a state of hostility with verbal criticism. i have retained all his notes, that no fragment of so great a writer may be lost; his preface, valuable alike for elegance of composition and justness of remark, and containing a general criticism on his authour, so extensive, that little can be added, and so exact, that little can be disputed, every editor has an interest to suppress, but that every reader would demand its insertion. _pope_ was succeeded by _theobald_, a man of narrow comprehension and small acquisitions, with no native and intrinsick splendour of genius, with little of the artificial light of learning, but zealous for minute accuracy, and not negligent in pursuing it. he collated the ancient copies, and rectified many errours. a man so anxiously scrupulous might have been expected to do more, but what little he did was commonly right. in his report of copies and editions he is not to be trusted, without examination. he speaks sometimes indefinitely of copies, when he has only one. in his enumeration of editions, he mentions the two first folios as of high, and the third folio as of middle authority; but the truth is, that the first is equivalent to all others, and that the rest only deviate from it by the printer's negligence. whoever has any of the folios has all, excepting those diversities which mere reiteration of editions will produce. i collated them all at the beginning, but afterwards used only the first. of his notes i have generally retained those which he retained himself in his second edition, except when they were confuted by subsequent annotators, or were too minute to merit preservation. i have sometimes adopted his restoration of a comma, without inserting the panegyrick in which he celebrated himself for his atchievement. the exuberant excrescence of his diction i have often lopped, his triumphant exultations over _pope_ and _rowe_ i have sometimes suppressed, and his contemptible ostentation i have frequently concealed; but i have in some places shewn him, as he would have shewn himself, for the reader's diversion, that the inflated emptiness of some notes may justify or excuse the contraction of the rest. _theobald_, thus weak and ignorant, thus mean and faithless, thus petulant and ostentatious, by the good luck of having _pope_ for his enemy, has escaped, and escaped alone, with reputation, from this undertaking. so willingly does the world support those who solicite favour, against those who command reverence; and so easily is he praised, whom no man can envy. our authour fell then into the hands of sir _thomas hanmer,_ the _oxford_ editor, a man, in my opinion, eminently qualified by nature for such studies. he had, what is the first requisite to emendatory criticism, that intuition by which the poet's intention is immediately discovered, and that dexterity of intellect which despatches its work by the easiest means. he had undoubtedly read much; his acquaintance with customs, opinions, and traditions, seems to have been large; and he is often learned without shew. he seldom passes what he does not understand, without an attempt to find or to make a meaning, and sometimes hastily makes what a little more attention would have found. he is solicitous to reduce to grammar, what he could not be sure that his authour intended to be grammatical. _shakespeare_ regarded more the series of ideas, than of words; and his language, not being designed for the reader's desk, was all that he desired it to be, if it conveyed his meaning to the audience. _hanmer's_ care of the metre has been too violently censured. he found the measures reformed in so many passages, by the silent labours of some editors, with the silent acquiescence of the rest, that he thought himself allowed to extend a little further the license, which had already been carried so far without reprehension; and of his corrections in general, it must be confessed, that they are often just, and made commonly with the least possible violation of the text. but, by inserting his emendations, whether invented or borrowed, into the page, without any notice of varying copies, he has appropriated the labour of his predecessors, and made his own edition of little authority. his confidence indeed, both in himself and others, was too great; he supposes all to be right that was done by _pope_ and _theobald_; he seems not to suspect a critick of fallibility, and it was but reasonable that he should claim what he so liberally granted. as he never writes without careful enquiry and diligent consideration, i have received all his notes, and believe that every reader will wish for more. of the last editor it is more difficult to speak. respect is due to high place, tenderness to living reputation, and veneration to genius and learning; but he cannot be justly offended at that liberty of which he has himself so frequently given an example, nor very solicitous what is thought of notes, which he ought never to have considered as part of his serious employments, and which, i suppose, since the ardour of composition is remitted, he no longer numbers among his happy effusions. the original and predominant errour of his commentary, is acquiescence in his first thoughts; that precipitation which is produced by consciousness of quick discernment; and that confidence which presumes to do, by surveying the surface, what labour only can perform, by penetrating the bottom. his notes exhibit sometimes perverse interpretations, and sometimes improbable conjectures; he at one time gives the authour more profundity of meaning, than the sentence admits, and at another discovers absurdities, where the sense is plain to every other reader. but his emendations are likewise often happy and just; and his interpretation of obscure passages learned and sagacious. of his notes, i have commonly rejected those, against which the general voice of the publick has exclaimed, or which their own incongruity immediately condemns, and which, i suppose, the authour himself would desire to be forgotten. of the rest, to part i have given the highest approbation, by inserting the offered reading in the text; part i have left to the judgment of the reader, as doubtful, though specious; and part i have censured without reserve, but i am sure without bitterness of malice, and, i hope, without wantonness of insult. it is no pleasure to me, in revising my volumes, to observe how much paper is wasted in confutation. whoever considers the revolutions of learning, and the various questions of greater or less importance, upon which wit and reason have exercised their powers, must lament the unsuccessfulness of enquiry, and the slow advances of truth, when he reflects, that great part of the labour of every writer is only the destruction of those that went before him. the first care of the builder of a new system, is to demolish the fabricks which are standing. the chief desire of him that comments an authour, is to shew how much other commentators have corrupted and obscured him. the opinions prevalent in one age, as truths above the reach of controversy, are confuted and rejected in another, and rise again to reception in remoter times. thus the human mind is kept in motion without progress. thus sometimes truth and criour, and sometimes contrarieties of errour, take each other's place by reciprocal invasion. the tide of seeming knowledge which is poured over one generation, retires and leaves another naked and barren; the sudden meteors of intelligence which for a while appear to shoot their beams into the regions of obscurity, on a sudden withdraw their lustre, and leave mortals again to grope their way. these elevations and depressions of renown, and the contradictions to which all improvers of knowledge must for ever be exposed, since they are not escaped by the highest and brightest of mankind, may surely be endured with patience by criticks and annotators, who can rank themselves but as the satellites of their authours. how canst thou beg for life, says _achilles_ to his captive, when thou knowest that thou art now to suffer only what must another day be suffered by _achilles?_ dr. _warburton_ had a name sufficient to confer celebrity on those who could exalt themselves into antagonists, and his notes have raised a clamour too loud to be distinct. his chief assailants are the authours of _the canons of criticism_ and of the _review of_ shakespeare's _text_; of whom one ridicules his errours with airy petulance, suitable enough to the levity of the controversy; the other attacks them with gloomy malignity, as if he were dragging to justice an assassin or incendiary. the one stings like a fly, sucks a little blood, takes a gay flutter, and returns for more; the other bites like a viper, and would be glad to leave inflammations and gangrene behind him. when i think on one, with his confederates, i remember the danger of _coriolanus,_ who was afraid that _girls with spits, and boys with stones, should slay him in puny battle_; when the other crosses my imagination, i remember the prodigy in _macbeth_, _an eagle tow'ring in his pride of place, was by a mousing owl hawk'd at and kill'd._ let me however do them justice. one is a wit, and one a scholar. they have both shown acuteness sufficient in the discovery of faults, and have both advanced some probable interpretations of obscure passages; but when they aspire to conjecture and emendation, it appears how falsely we all estimate our own abilities, and the little which they have been able to perform might have taught them more candour to the endeavours of others. before dr. _warburton's_ edition, _critical observations on_ shakespeare had been published by mr. _upton_, a man skilled in languages, and acquainted with books, but who seems to have had no great vigour of genius or nicety of taste. many of his explanations are curious and useful, but he likewise, though he professed to oppose the licentious confidence of editors, and adhere to the old copies, is unable to restrain the rage of emendation, though his ardour is ill seconded by his skill. every cold empirick, when his heart is expanded by a successful experiment, swells into a theorist, and the laborious collator at some unlucky moment frolicks in conjecture. _critical, historical and explanatory notes_ have been likewise published upon _shakespeare_ by dr. _grey_, whose diligent perusal of the old _english_ writers has enabled him to make some useful observations. what he undertook he has well enough performed, but as he neither attempts judicial nor emendatory criticism, he employs rather his memory than his sagacity. it were to be wished that all would endeavour to imitate his modesty who have not been able to surpass his knowledge. i can say with great sincerity of all my predecessors, what i hope will hereafter be said of me, that not one has left _shakespeare_ without improvement, nor is there one to whom i have not been indebted for assistance and information. whatever i have taken from them it was my intention to refer to its original authour, and it is certain, that what i have not given to another, i believed when i wrote it to be my own. in some perhaps i have been anticipated; but if i am ever found to encroach upon the remarks of any other commentator, i am willing that the honour, be it more or less, should be transferred to the first claimant, for his right, and his alone, stands above dispute; the second can prove his pretensions only to himself, nor can himself always distinguish invention, with sufficient certainty, from recollection. they have all been treated by me with candour, which they have not been careful of observing to one another. it is not easy to discover from what cause the acrimony of a scholiast can naturally proceed. the subjects to be discussed by him are of very small importance; they involve neither property nor liberty; nor favour the interest of sect or party. the various readings of copies, and different interpretations of a passage, seem to be questions that might exercise the wit, without engaging the passions. but, whether it be, that _small things make mean men proud_, and vanity catches small occasions; or that all contrariety of opinion, even in those that can defend it no longer, makes proud men angry; there is often found in commentaries a spontaneous strain of invective and contempt, more eager and venomous than is vented by the most furious controvertist in politicks against those whom he is hired to defame. perhaps the lightness of the matter may conduce to the vehemence of the agency; when the truth to be investigated is so near to inexistence, as to escape attention, its bulk is to be enlarged by rage and exclamation: that to which all would be indifferent in its original state, may attract notice when the fate of a name is appended to it. a commentator has indeed great temptations to supply by turbulence what he wants of dignity, to beat his little gold to a spacious surface, to work that to foam which no art or diligence can exalt to spirit. the notes which i have borrowed or written are either illustrative, by which difficulties are explained; or judicial by which faults and beauties are remarked; or emendatory, by which depravations are corrected. the explanations transcribed from others, if i do not subjoin any other interpretation, i suppose commonly to be right, at least i intend by acquiescence to confess, that i have nothing better to propose. after the labours of all the editors, i found many passages which appeared to me likely to obstruct the greater number of readers, and thought it my duty to facilitate their passage. it is impossible for an expositor not to write too little for some, and too much for others. he can only judge what is necessary by his own experience; and how long soever he may deliberate, will at last explain many lines which the learned will think impossible to be mistaken, and omit many for which the ignorant will want his help. these are censures merely relative, and must be quietly endured. i have endeavoured to be neither superfluously copious, nor scrupulously reserved, and hope that i have made my authour's meaning accessible to many who before were frighted from perusing him, and contributed something to the publick, by diffusing innocent and rational pleasure. the compleat explanation of an authour not systematick and consequential, but desultory and vagrant, abounding in casual allusions and light hints, is not to be expected from any single scholiast. all personal reflections, when names are suppressed, must be in a few years irrecoverably obliterated; and customs, too minute to attract the notice of law, such as modes of dress, formalities of conversation, rules of visits, disposition of furniture, and practices of ceremony, which naturally find places in familiar dialogue, are so fugitive and unsubstantial, that they are not easily retained or recovered. what can be known, will be collected by chance, from the recesses of obscure and obsolete papers, perused commonly with some other view. of this knowledge every man has some, and none has much; but when an authour has engaged the publick attention, those who can add any thing to his illustration, communicate their discoveries, and time produces what had eluded diligence. to time i have been obliged to resign many passages, which, though i did not understand them, will perhaps hereafter be explained, having, i hope, illustrated some, which others have neglected or mistaken, sometimes by short remarks, or marginal directions, such as every editor has added at his will, and often by comments more laborious than the matter will seem to deserve; but that which is most difficult is not always most important, and to an editor nothing is a trifle by which his authour is obscured. the poetical beauties or defects i have not been very diligent to observe. some plays have more, and some fewer judicial observations, not in proportion to their difference of merit, but because i gave this part of my design to chance and to caprice. the reader, i believe, is seldom pleased to find his opinion anticipated; it is natural to delight more in what we find or make, than in what we receive. judgement, like other faculties, is improved by practice, and its advancement is hindered by submission to dictatorial decisions, as the memory grows torpid by the use of a table book. some initiation is however necessary; of all skill, part is infused by precept, and part is obtained by habit; i have therefore shewn so much as may enable the candidate of criticism to discover the rest. to the end of most plays, i have added short strictures, containing a general censure of faults, or praise of excellence; in which i know not how much i have concurred with the current opinion; but i have not, by any affectation of singularity, deviated from it. nothing is minutely and particularly examined, and therefore it is to be supposed, that in the plays which are condemned there is much to be praised, and in these which are praised much to be condemned. the part of criticism in which the whole succession of editors has laboured with the greatest diligence, which has occasioned the most arrogant ostentation, and excited the keenest acrimony, is the emendation of corrupted passages, to which the publick attention having been first drawn by the violence of contention between _pope_ and _theobald_, has been continued by the persecution, which, with a kind of conspiracy, has been since raised against all the publishers of _shakespeare_. that many passages have passed in a state of depravation through all the editions is indubitably certain; of these the restoration is only to be attempted by collation of copies or sagacity of conjecture. the collator's province is safe and easy, the conjecturer's perilous and difficult. yet as the greater part of the plays are extant only in one copy, the peril must not be avoided, nor the difficulty refused. of the readings which this emulation of amendment has hitherto produced, some from the labours of every publisher i have advanced into the text; those are to be considered as in my opinion sufficiently supported; some i have rejected without mention, as evidently erroneous; some i have left in the notes without censure or approbation, as resting in equipoise between objection and defence; and some, which seemed specious but not right, i have inserted with a subsequent animadversion. having classed the observations of others, i was at last to try what i could substitute for their mistakes, and how i could supply their omissions. i collated such copies as i could procure, and wished for more, but have not found the collectors of these rarities very communicative. of the editions which chance or kindness put into my hands i have given an enumeration, that i may not be blamed for neglecting what i had not the power to do. by examining the old copies, i soon found that the later publishers, with all their boasts of diligence, suffered many passages to stand unauthorised, and contented themselves with _rowe's_ regulation of the text, even where they knew it to be arbitrary, and with a little consideration might have found it to be wrong. some of these alterations are only the ejection of a word for one that appeared to him more elegant or more intelligible. these corruptions i have often silently rectified; for the history of our language, and the true force of our words, can only be preserved, by keeping the text of authours free from adulteration. others, and those very frequent, smoothed the cadence, or regulated the measure; on these i have not exercised the same rigour; if only a word was transposed, or a particle inserted or omitted, i have sometimes suffered the line to stand; for the inconstancy of the copies is such, as that some liberties may be easily permitted. but this practice i have not suffered to proceed far, having restored the primitive diction wherever it could for any reason be preferred. the emendations, which comparison of copies supplied, i have inserted in the text; sometimes where the improvement was slight, without notice, and sometimes with an account of the reasons of the change. conjecture, though it be sometimes unavoidable, i have not wantonly nor licentiously indulged. it has been my settled principle, that the reading of the ancient books is probably true, and therefore is not to be disturbed for the sake of elegance, perspicuity, or mere improvement of the sense. for though much credit is not due to the fidelity, nor any to the judgement of the first publishers, yet they who had the copy before their eyes were more likely to read it right, than we who read it only by imagination. but it is evident that they have often made strange mistakes by ignorance or negligence, and that therefore something may be properly attempted by criticism, keeping the middle way between presumption and timidity. such criticism i have attempted to practice, and where any passage appeared inextricably perplexed, have endeavoured to discover how it may be recalled to sense, with least violence. but my first labour is, always to turn the old text on every side, and try if there be any interstice, through which light can find its way; nor would _huetius_ himself condemn me, as refusing the trouble of research, for the ambition of alteration. in this modest industry i have not been unsuccessful. i have rescued many lines from the violations of temerity, and secured many scenes from the inroads of correction. i have adopted the _roman_ sentiment, that it is more honourable to save a citizen, than to kill an enemy, and have been more careful to protect than to attack. i have preserved the common distribution of the plays into acts, though i believe it to be in almost all the plays void of authority. some of those which are divided in the later editions have no division in the first folio, and some that are divided in the folio have no division in the preceding copies. the settled mode of the theatre requires four intervals in the play, but few, if any, of our authour's compositions can be properly distributed in that manner. an act is so much of the drama as passes without intervention of time or change of place. a pause makes a new act. in every real, and therefore in every imitative action, the intervals may be more or fewer, the restriction of five acts being accidental and arbitrary. this _shakespeare_ knew, and this he practised; his plays were written, and at first printed in one unbroken continuity, and ought now to be exhibited with short pauses, interposed as often as the scene is changed, or any considerable time is required to pass. this method would at once quell a thousand absurdities. in restoring the author's works to their integrity, i have considered the punctuation as wholly in my power; for what could be their care of colons and commas, who corrupted words and sentences. whatever could be done by adjusting points is therefore silently performed, in some plays with much diligence, in others with less; it is hard to keep a busy eye steadily fixed upon evanescent atoms, or a discursive mind upon evanescent truth. the same liberty has been taken with a few particles, or other words of slight effect. i have sometimes inserted or omitted them without notice. i have done that sometimes, which the other editors have done always, and which indeed the state of the text may sufficiently justify. the greater part of readers, instead of blaming us for passing trifles, will wonder that on mere trifles so much labour is expended, with such importance of debate, and such solemnity of diction. to these i answer with confidence, that they are judging of an art which they do not understand; yet cannot much reproach them with their ignorance, nor promise that they would become in general, by learning criticism, more useful, happier or wiser. as i practised conjecture more, i learned to trust it less; and after i had printed a few plays, resolved to insert none of my own readings in the text. upon this caution i now congratulate myself, for every day encreases my doubt of my emendations. since i have confined my imagination to the margin, it must not be considered as very reprehensible, if i have suffered it to play some freaks in its own dominion. there is no danger in conjecture, if it be proposed as conjecture; and while the text remains uninjured, those changes may be safely offered, which are not considered even by him that offers them as necessary or safe. if my readings are of little value, they have not been ostentatiously displayed or importunately obtruded. i could have written longer notes, for the art of writing notes is not of difficult attainment. the work is performed, first by railing at the stupidity, negligence, ignorance, and asinine tastelessness of the former editors, and shewing, from all that goes before and all that follows, the inelegance and absurdity of the old reading; then by proposing something which to superficial readers would seem specious, but which the editor rejects with indignation; then by producing the true reading, with a long paraphrase, and concluding with loud acclamations on the discovery, and a sober wish for the advancement and prosperity of genuine criticism. all this may be done, and perhaps done sometimes without impropriety. but i have always suspected that the reading is right, which requires many words to prove it wrong; and the emendation wrong, that cannot without so much labour appear to be right the justness of a happy restoration strikes at once, and the moral precept may be well applied to criticism, _quod dubitas ne feceris_. to dread the shore which he sees spread with wrecks, is natural to the sailor. i had before my eye, so many critical adventures ended in miscarriage, that caution was forced upon me. i encountered in every page wit struggling with its own sophistry, and learning confused by the multiplicity of its views. i was forced to censure those whom i admired, and could not but reflect, while i was dispossessing their emendations, how soon the same fate might happen to my own, and how many of the readings which i have corrected may be by some other editor defended and established. criticks, i saw, that other's names efface, and fix their own, with labour, in the place; their own, like others, soon their place resign'd, or disappear'd, and left the first behind, pope. that a conjectural critick should often be mistaken, cannot be wonderful, either to others or himself, if it be considered, that in his art there is no system, no principal and axiomatical truth that regulates subordinate positions. his chance of errour is renewed at every attempt; an oblique view of the passage, a slight misapprehension of a phrase, a casual inattention to the parts connected, is sufficient to make him not only fails, but fail ridiculously; and when he succeeds best, he produces perhaps but one reading of many probable, and he that suggests another will always be able to dispute his claims. it is an unhappy state, in which danger is hid under pleasure. the allurements of emendation are scarcely resistible. conjecture has all the joy and all the pride of invention, and he that has once started a happy change, is too much delighted to consider what objections may rise against it. yet conjectural criticism has been of great use in the learned world; nor is it my intention to depreciate a study, that has exercised so many mighty minds, from the revival of learning to our own age, from the bishop of _aleria_ to english _bentley_. the criticks on ancient authours have, in the exercise of their sagacity, many assistances, which the editor of _shakespeare_ is condemned to want. they are employed upon grammatical and settled languages, whose construction contributes so much to perspicuity, that _homer_ has fewer passages unintelligible than _chaucer_. the words have not only a known regimen, but invariable quantities, which direct and confine the choice. there are commonly more manuscripts than one; and they do not often conspire in the same mistakes. yet _scaliger_ could confess to _salmasius_ how little satisfaction his emendations gave him. _illudunt nobis conjectureæ nostræ, quarum nos pudet, posteaquam in meliores codices incidimus_. and _lipsius_ could complain, that criticks were making faults, by trying to remove them, _ut olim vitiis, ita nunc remediis laboratur_. and indeed, where mere conjecture is to be used, the emendations of _scaliger_ and _lipsius_, notwithstanding their wonderful sagacity and erudition, are often vague and disputable, like mine or _theobald_'s. perhaps i may not be more censured for doing wrong, than for doing little; for raising in the publick expectations, which at last i have not answered. the expectation of ignorance is indefinite, and that of knowledge is often tyrannical. it is hard to satisfy those who know not what to demand, or those who demand by design what they think impossible to be done. i have indeed disappointed no opinion more than my own; yet i have endeavoured to perform my task with no slight solicitude. not a single passage in the whole work has appeared to me corrupt, which i have not attempted to restore; or obscure, which i have not endeavoured to illustrate. in many i have failed like others, and from many, after all my efforts, i have retreated, and confessed the repulse. i have not passed over, with affected superiority, what is equally difficult to the reader and to myself, but where i could not instruct him, have owned my ignorance. i might easily have accumulated a mass of seeming learning upon easy scenes; but it ought not to be imputed to negligence, that, where nothing was necessary, nothing has been done, or that, where others have said enough, i have said no more. notes are often necessary, but they are necessary evils. let him, that is yet unacquainted with the powers of _shakespeare_, and who desires to feel the highest pleasure that the drama can give, read every play from the first scene to the last, with utter negligence of all his commentators. when his fancy is once on the wing, let it not stoop at correction or explanation. when his attention is strongly engaged, let it disdain alike to turn aside to the name of _theobald_ and of _pope_. let him read on through brightness and obscurity, through integrity and corruption; let him preserve his comprehension of the dialogue and his interest in the fable. and when the pleasures of novelty have ceased, let him attempt exactness, and read the commentators. particular passages are cleared by notes, but the general effect of the work is weakened. the mind is refrigerated by interruption; the thoughts are diverted from the principal subject; the reader is weary, he suspects not why; and at last throws away the book, which he has too diligently studied. parts are not to be examined till the whole has been surveyed; there is a kind of intellectual remoteness necessary for the comprehension of any great work in its full design and its true proportions; a close approach shews the smaller niceties, but the beauty of the whole is discerned no longer. it is not very grateful to consider how little the succession of editors has added to this authour's power of pleasing. he was read, admired, studied, and imitated, while he was yet deformed with all the improprieties which ignorance and neglect could accumulate upon him; while the reading was yet not rectified, nor his allusions understood; yet then did _dryden_ pronounce "that _shakespeare_ was the man, who, of all modern and perhaps ancient poets, had the largest and most comprehensive soul." all the images of nature were still present to him, and he drew them not laboriously, but luckily: when he describes any thing, you more than see it, you feel it too. those who accuse him to have wanted learning, give him the greater commendation: he was naturally learned: he needed not the spectacles of books to read nature; he looked inwards, and found her there. i cannot say he is every where alike; were he so, i should do him injury to compare him with the greatest of mankind. he is many times flat and insipid; his comick wit degenerating into clenches, his serious swelling into bombast. but he is always great, when some great occasion is presented to him: no man can say, he ever had a fit subject for his wit, and did not then raise himself as high above the rest of poets, "quantum lenta solent inter viburna cupressi." it is to be lamented, that such a writer should want a commentary; that his language should become obsolete, or his sentiments obscure. but it is vain to carry wishes beyond the condition of human things; that which must happen to all, has happened to _shakespeare_, by accident and time; and more than has been suffered by any other writer since the use of types, has been suffered by him through his own negligence of fame, or perhaps by that superiority of mind, which despised its own performances, when it compared them with its powers, and judged those works unworthy to be preserved, which the criticks of following ages were to contend for the fame of restoring and explaining. among these candidates of inferiour fame, i am now to stand the judgment of the publick; and wish that i could confidently produce my commentary as equal to the encouragement which i have had the honour of receiving. every work of this kind is by its nature deficient, and i should feel little solicitude about the sentence, were it to be pronounced only by the skilful and the learned. introduction to the propylÄen [a] by j.w. von goethe. ( ) the youth, when nature and art attract him, thinks that with a vigorous effort he can soon penetrate into the innermost sanctuary, the man, after long wanderings, finds himself still in the outer court. such an observation has suggested our title. it is only on the step, in the gateway, the entrance, the vestibule, the space between the outside and the inner chamber, between the sacred and the common, that we may ordinarily tarry with our friends. if the word _propylaea_ recalls particularly the structure through which was reached the citadel of athens and the temple of minerva, this is not inconsistent with our purpose; but the presumption of intending to produce here a similar work of art and splendor should not be laid to our charge. the name of the place may be understood as symbolizing what might have happened there; one may expect conversations and discussions such as would perhaps not be unworthy of that place. are not thinkers, scholars, artists, in their best hours allured to those regions, to dwell (at least in imagination) among a people to whom a perfection which we desire but never attain was natural, among whom in the course of time and life, a culture developed in a beautiful continuity, which to us appears only in passing fragments? what modern nation does not owe its artistic culture to the greeks, and, in certain branches, what nation more than the german? so much by way of excuse for the symbolic title, if indeed an excuse be necessary. may the title be a reminder that we are to depart as little as possible from classic ground; may it, through its brevity and signification, modify the demands of the friends of art whom we hope to interest through the present work, which is to contain observations and reflections concerning nature and art by a harmonious circle of friends. he who is called to be an artist will give careful heed to everything around him; objects and their parts will attract his attention, and by making practical use of such experience he will gradually train himself to observe more sharply. he will, in his early career, apply everything, so far as possible, to his own advantage; later he will gladly make himself serviceable to others. thus we also hope to present and relate to our readers many things which we regard as useful and agreeable, things which, under various circumstances, have been noted by us during a number of years. but who will not willingly agree that pure observation is more rare than is believed? we are apt to confuse our sensations, our opinion, our judgment, with what we experience, so that we do not remain long in the passive attitude of the observer, but soon go on to make reflections; and upon these no greater weight can be placed than may be more or less justified by the nature and quality of our individual intellects. in this matter we are able to gain stronger confidence from our harmony with others, and from the knowledge that we do not think and work alone, but in common. the perplexing doubt whether our method of thought belongs only to us--a doubt which often comes over us when others express the direct opposite of our convictions--is softened, even dispelled, when we find ourselves in agreement with others; only then do we go on rejoicing with assurance in the possession of those principles which a long experience, on our own part and on the part of others, has gradually confirmed. when several persons thus live united, so that they may call one another friends, because they have a common interest in bringing about their progressive cultivation and in advancing towards closely related aims, then they may be certain that they will meet again in the most varied ways, and that even the courses which seemed to separate them from one another will nevertheless soon bring them happily together again. who has not experienced what advantages are afforded in such cases by conversation? but conversation is ephemeral; and while the results of a mutual development are imperishable, the memory of the means by which it was reached disappears. letters preserve better the stages of a progress which friends achieve together; every moment of growth is fixed, and if the result attained affords us agreeable satisfaction, a look backward at the process of development is instructive since it permits its to hope for an unflagging advance in the future. short papers, in which are set down from time to time one's thoughts, convictions, and wishes, in order to find entertainment in one's past self after a lapse of time, are excellent auxiliary means for the development of oneself and of others, none of which should be neglected when one considers the brief period allotted to life and the many obstacles that stand in the way of every advance. it is self evident that we are talking here particularly of an exchange of ideas between such friends as are striving for cultivation in the sphere of science and art; although life in the world of affairs and industry should not lack similar advantages. in the arts and sciences, however, in addition to this close association among their votaries, a relation to the public is as favorable as it is necessary. whatever of universal interest one thinks or accomplishes belongs to the world, and the world brings to maturity whatever it can utilize of the efforts of the individual. the desire for approval which the author feels is an impulse implanted by nature to draw him toward something higher; he thinks he has attained the laurel wreath, but soon becomes aware that a more laborious training of every native talent is necessary in order to retain the public favor; though it may be attained for a short moment through fortune or accident also. the relation of the author to his public is important in his early period; even in later days he cannot dispense with it. however little he may be fitted to teach others, he wishes to share his thoughts with those whom he feels congenial, but who are scattered far and wide in the world. by this means he wishes to re-establish his relation with his old friends, to continue it with new ones, and to gain in the younger generation still others for the remainder of his life. he wishes to spare youth the circuitous paths upon which he himself went astray, and while observing and utilizing the advantages of the present, to maintain the memory of his praiseworthy earlier efforts. with this serious view, a small society has been brought together; may cheerfulness attend our undertakings, and time may show whither we are bound. the papers which we intend to present, though they are composed by several authors, will, it is hoped, never be contradictory in the main points, even though the methods of thought may not be the same in all. no two persons regard the world in exactly the same way, and different characters will often apply in different ways a principle which they all acknowledge. indeed, a person is not always consistent with himself in his views and judgments: early convictions must give way to later ones. the individual opinions that a man holds and expresses may stand all tests or not; the main thing is that he continue on his way, true to himself and to others! much as the authors wish and hope to be in harmony with one another and with a large part of the public, they must not shut their eyes to the fact that from various quarters many a discord will ring out. they must expect this all the more since they differ from prevailing opinions in more than one point. though far from wishing to dominate or change the way of thinking of a third person, still they will firmly express their own opinion, and, as circumstances dictate, will avoid or take tip a quarrel. on the whole, however, they will adhere to one creed, and especially will they repeat again and again those conditions which seem to them indispensable in the training of an artist. whoever takes an interest in this matter, must be ready to take sides; otherwise he does not deserve to be effective anywhere. if, therefore, we promise to present reflections and observations concerning nature, we must at the same time indicate that these remarks will chiefly have reference, first, to plastic art; then, to art in general; finally, to the general training of the artist. the highest demand that is made on an artist is this: that he be true to nature, study her, imitate her, and produce something that resembles her phenomena. how great, how enormous, this demand is, is not always kept in mind; and the true artist himself learns it by experience only, in the course of his progressive development. nature is separated from art by an enormous chasm, which genius itself is unable to bridge without external assistance. all that we perceive around us is merely raw material; if it happens rarely enough that an artist, through instinct and taste, through practice and experiment, reaches the point of attaining the beautiful exterior of things, of selecting the best from the good before him, and of producing at least an agreeable appearance, it is still more rare, particularly in modern times, for an artist to penetrate into the depths of things as well as into the depths of his own soul, in order to produce in his works not only something light and superficially effective, but, as a rival of nature, to produce something spiritually organic, and to give his work of art a content and a form through which it appears both natural and beyond nature. man is the highest, the characteristic subject of plastic art; to understand him, to extricate oneself from the labyrinth of his anatomy, a general knowledge of organic nature is imperative. the artist should also acquaint himself theoretically with inorganic bodies and with the general operations of nature, particularly if, as in the case of sound and color, they are adaptable to the purposes of art; but what a circuitous path he would be obliged to take if he wanted to seek laboriously in the schools of the anatomist, the naturalist, and the physicist, for that which serves his purposes! it is, indeed, a question whether he would find there what must be most important for him. those men have the entirely different needs of their own pupils to satisfy, so that they cannot be expected to think of the limited and special needs of the artist. for that reason it is our intention to take a hand, and, even though we cannot see prospects of completing the necessary work ourselves, both to give a view of the whole and to begin the elaboration of details. the human figure cannot be understood merely through observation of its surface; the interior must be laid bare, its parts must be separated, the connections perceived, the differences noted, action and reaction observed, the concealed, constant, and fundamental elements of the phenomena impressed on the mind, if one really wishes to contemplate and imitate what moves before our eyes in living waves as a beautiful, undivided whole. a glance at the surface of a living being confuses the observer; we may cite here, as in other cases, the true proverb, "one sees only what one knows" for just as a short-sighted man sees more clearly an object from which he draws back than one to which he draws near, because his intellectual vision comes to his aid, so the perfection of observation really depends on knowledge. how well an expert naturalist, who can also draw, imitates objects by recognizing and emphasizing the important and significant parts from which is derived the character of the whole! just as the artist is greatly helped by an exact knowledge of the separate parts of the human figure, which he must in the end regard again as a whole, so a general view, a side glance at related objects, is highly advantageous, provided the artist is capable of rising to ideas and of grasping the close relationship of things apparently remote. comparative anatomy has prepared a general conception of organic creatures; it leads us from form to form, and by observing organisms closely or distantly related, we rise above them all to see their characteristics in an ideal picture. if we keep this picture in mind, we find that in observing objects our attention takes a definite direction, that scattered facts can be learned and retained more easily by comparison, that in the practice of art we can finally vie with nature only when we have learned from her, at least to some extent, her method of procedure in the creation of her works. furthermore, we would encourage the artist to gain knowledge also of the inorganic world; this can be done all the more easily since now we can conveniently and quickly acquire knowledge of the mineral kingdom. the painter needs some knowledge of stones in order to imitate their characteristics; the sculptor and architect, in order to utilize them; the cutter of precious stones cannot be without a knowledge of their nature; the connoisseur and amateur, too, will strive for such information. now that we have advised the artist to gain a conception of the general operations of nature, in order to become acquainted with those which particularly interest him, partly to develop himself in more directions, partly to understand better that which concerns him; we shall add a few further remarks on this significant point. up to the present the painter has been able merely to wonder at the physicist's theory of colors, without gaining any advantage from it. the natural feeling of the artist, however, constant training, and a practical necessity led him into a way of his own. he felt the vivid contrasts out of the union of which harmony of color arises, he designated certain characteristics through approximate sensations, he had warm and cold colors, colors which express proximity, others which express distance, and what not; and thus in his own way he brought these phenomena closer to the most general laws of nature. perhaps the supposition is confirmed that the operations of nature in colors, as well as magnetic, electric, and other operations, depend upon a mutual relation, a polarity, or whatever else we might call the twofold or manifold aspects of a distinct unity. we shall make it our duty to present this matter in detail and in a form comprehensible to the artist; and we can be the more hopeful of doing something welcome to him, since we shall be concerned only with explaining and tracing to fundamental principles things which he has hitherto done by instinct. so much for what we hope to impart in regard to nature; now for what is most necessary in regard to art. since the arrangement of this work proposes the presentation of single treatises, some of these only in part, and since it is not our desire to dissect a whole, but rather to build up a whole from many parts, it will be necessary to present, as soon as possible and in a general summary, those thing's which the reader will gradually find unfolded in our detailed elaborations. we shall, therefore, be occupied first with an essay on plastic art, in which the familiar rubrics will be presented according to our interpretation and method. here it will be our main concern to emphasize the importance of every branch of art, and to show that the artist must not neglect a single one, as has unfortunately often happened, and still happens. hitherto we have regarded nature as the treasure chamber of material in general; now, however, we reach the important point where it is shown how art prepares its materials for itself. when the artist takes any object of nature, the object no longer belongs to nature; indeed, we can say that the artist creates the object in that moment, by extracting from it all that is significant, characteristic, interesting, or rather by putting into it a higher value. in this way finer proportions, nobler forms, higher characteristics are, as it were, forced upon the human figure; the circle of regularity, perfection, signification, and completeness is drawn, in which nature gladly places her best possessions even though elsewhere in her vast extent she easily degenerates into ugliness and loses herself in indifference. the same is true of composite works of art, of their subject and content, whether the theme be fable or history. happy the artist who makes no mistake in undertaking the work, who knows how to choose, or rather to determine what is suitable for art! he who wanders uneasily among scattered myths and far-stretching history in search of a theme, he who wishes to be significantly scholarly or allegorically interesting, will often be checked in the midst of his work by unexpected obstacles, or will miss his finest aim after the completion of the work. he who does not speak clearly to the senses, will not address himself clearly to the mind; and we regard this point as so important that we insert at the very outset a more extended discussion of it. a theme having been happily found or invented, it is subjected to treatment which we would divide into the spiritual the sensuous, and the mechanical. the spiritual develops the subject according to its inner relations, it discovers subordinate motives; and, if we can at all judge the depth of ar artistic genius by the choice of subject, we can recognize in his selection of themes his breadth, wealth, fullness, and power of attraction. the sensuous treatment we should define as that through which the work becomes thoroughly comprehensible to the senses, agreeable, delightful, and irresistible through its gentle charm. the mechanical treatment, finally, is that which works upon given material through any bodily organ, and thus brings the work into existence and gives it reality. while we hope to be useful to the artist in this way, and earnestly wish that he may avail himself of advice and of suggestions in his work, the disquieting observation is forced upon us that every undertaking, like every man, is likely to suffer just as much from its period as it is to derive occasional advantage from it, and in our own case we cannot altogether put aside the question concerning the reception we are likely to meet with. everything is subject to constant change, and since certain things cannot exist side by side, they displace one another this is true of kinds of knowledge, of certain methods of instruction, of methods of representation, and of maxims. the aims of men remain nearly always the same: they still desire to become good artists or poets as they did centuries ago; but the means through which the goal is reached are not clear to everybody, and why should it be denied that nothing would be more agreeable than to be able to carry out joyfully a great design? naturally the public has a great influence upon art, since in return for its approval and its money it demands work that may give satisfaction and immediate enjoyment; and the artist will for the most part be glad to adapt himself to it, for he also is a part of the public, he has received his training during the same years, he feels the same needs, strives in the same direction, and thus moves along happily with the multitude which supports him and which is invigorated by him. in this matter we see whole nations and epochs delighted by their artists, just as the artist sees himself reflected in his nation and his epoch, without either having even the slightest suspicion that their path might not be right, that their taste might be at least one-sided, their art on the decline, and their progress in the wrong direction. instead of proceeding to further generalities on this point, we shall make a remark which refers particularly to plastic art. for the german artist, in fact for modern and northern artists in general, it is difficult--indeed almost impossible--to make the transition from formless matter to form, and to maintain himself at that point, even should he succeed in reaching it. let every artist who has lived for a time in italy ask himself whether the presence of the best works of ancient and modern art have not aroused in him the incessant endeavour to study and imitate the human figure in its proportions, forms, and characteristics, to apply all diligence and care in the execution in order to approach those artistic works, so entirely complete in themselves, in order to produce a work which, in gratifying the sense, exalts the spirit to the greatest heights. let him also admit, however, that after his return he must gradually relax his efforts, because he finds few persons who will really see, enjoy, and comprehend what is depicted, but, for the most part, finds only those who look at a work superficially, receive from it mere random impressions, and in some way of their own try to get out of it any kind of sensation and pleasure. the worst picture can appeal to our senses and imagination by arousing their activity, setting them free, and leaving them to themselves, the best work of art also appeals to our senses, but in a higher language which, of course, we must understand; it enchains the feelings and imagination, it deprives us of caprice, we cannot deal with a perfect work at our will; we are forced to give ourselves up to it, in order to receive ourselves from it again, exalted and refined. that these are no dreams we shall try to show gradually, in detail, and as clearly as possible, we shall call attention particularly to a contradiction in which the moderns are often involved. they call the ancients their teachers, they acknowledge in their works an unattainable excellence, yet they depart both in theory and practice far from the maxims which the ancients continually observed. in starting from this important point and in returning to it often, we shall find others about which something falls to be said. one of the principal signs of the decay of art is the mixture of its various kinds. the arts themselves, as well as their branches, are related to one another, and have a certain tendency to unite, even to lose themselves in one another; but it is in this that the duty, the merit, the dignity of the real artist consists, namely, in being able to separate the field of art in which he works from others, in placing every art and every branch of art on its own footing, and in isolating it as far as possible. it has been noticed that all plastic art strives toward painting, all literary art toward the drama, and this observation may in the future give us occasion for important reflections. the genuine law-giving artist strives for the truth of art, the lawless artist who follows a blind impulse strives for the reality of nature; through the former, art reaches its highest summit, through the latter its lowest stage. what holds good of art in general holds good also of the kinds of art. the sculptor must think and feel differently from the painter, indeed he must proceed when he wishes to produce a work in relief, in a different fashion from that which he will employ for a work in the round. by the raising of low reliefs higher and higher, by the making of various parts and figures stand out completely, and finally by the adding of buildings and landscapes, so that work was produced which was half painting and half puppet-show, true art steadily declined. excellent artists of modern times have unfortunately pursued this course. when in the future we express such maxims as we think sound, we should like, since they are deduced from works of art, to have them put to the test of practice by the artist. how rarely one can come to a theoretical agreement with anyone else on a fundamental principle. that which is applicable and useful, on the other hand, is decided upon much more quickly. how often we see artists in embarrassment over the choice of subjects, over the general type of composition adapted to their art, and the detailed arrangement; how often the painter over the choice of colors! then is the time to test a principle, then will it he easier to decide whether it is bringing us closer to the great models and to everything that we value and love in them, or whether it leaves us entangled in the empirical confusion of an experience that has not been sufficiently thought out. if such maxims hold good in training: the artist, in guiding him in many an embarrassment, they will serve also in the development, valuation, and judgment of old and new works of art, and will in turn arise from an observation of these works. indeed, it is all the more necessary to adhere to this, because, notwithstanding the universally praised excellences of antiquity, individuals and whole nations among the moderns often fail to recognize wherein lies the highest excellence of those works. an exact test will protect us best from this evil. for that reason let us cite only one example to show what usually happens to the amateur in plastic art, so that we may make clear how necessary it is that criticism of ancient as well as modern works should be exact if it is to be of any use. upon him who has an eye for beauty, though untrained, even a blurred, imperfect plaster cast of an excellent antique will always have a great effect; for in such a reproduction there always remain the idea, the simplicity and greatness of form, in short, the general outlines; as much, at all events, as one could perceive with poor eyes at a distance. it may be noticed that a strong inclination toward art is often enkindled by such quite imperfect reproductions. but the effect is like the object; it is rather that an obscure indefinite feeling is aroused, than that the object in all its worth and dignity really appears to such beginners in art. these are they who usually express the theory that too minute a critical investigation destroys the enjoyment, who are accustomed to oppose and resist regard for details. if gradually, however, after further experience and training, they are confronted with a sharp cast instead of a blurred one, an original instead of a cast, their pleasure grows with their insight, and increases when the originals themselves, the perfect originals, finally become known to them. the labyrinth of exact observations is willingly entered when the details as well as the whole are perfect; indeed one learns to realize that the excellences can be appreciated only in proportion as the defects are perceived. to discriminate the restoration from the genuine parts, and the copy from the original, to see in the smallest fragments the ruined glory of the whole--this is the joy of the finished expert; and there is a great difference between observing and comprehending an imperfect whole with obscured vision, and a perfect whole with clear vision. he who concerns himself with any branch of knowledge, should strive for the highest! insight is different from practice, for in practical work everyone must soon resign himself to the fact that only a certain measure of strength is alloted to him; far more people, however, are capable of knowledge and insight. indeed, one may well say that everyone is thus capable who can deny himself and subordinate himself to external objects, everyone who does not strive with rigid and narrow-minded obstinacy to impose upon the highest works of nature and art his own personality and his petty onesideness. to speak of works of art fitly and with true benefit to oneself and others, the discussion should take place only in the presence of the works themselves. everything depends on the objects being in view; on whether something absolutely definite is suggested by the word with which one hopes to illuminate the work of art; for, otherwise, nothing is thought of at all. this is why it so often happens that the writer on art dwells merely on generalities, through which, indeed, ideas and sensations are aroused in all readers, but no satisfaction is given to the man who, book in hand, steps in front of the work of art itself. precisely on this account, however, we may in several essays be in a position to arouse rather than to satisfy the desire of the readers; for nothing is more natural than that they should wish to have before their eyes immediately an excellent work of art which is minutely dissected, in order to enjoy the whole which we are discussing, and, so far as the parts are concerned, to subject to their own judgment the opinion which they read. while the authors, however, write on the assumption that their readers either have seen the works, or will see them in the future, yet they hope to do everything in their power for those who are in neither case. we shall mention reproductions, shall indicate where casts of antique works of art and antique works themselves are accessible, particularly to germans; and thus try, as far as we can, to minister to the genuine love and knowledge of art. a history of art can be based only upon the highest and most detailed comprehension of art; only when one knows the finest things that man can produce can one trace the psychological and chronological course taken in art, as in other fields. this course began with a limited activity, busied about a dry and even gloomy imitation of the insignificant as well as the significant, whence developed a more amiable, more kindly feeling toward nature, till finally, under favorable circumstances, accompanied by knowledge, regularity, seriousness, and severity, art rose to its height. there at last it became possible for the fortunate genius, surrounded by all these auxiliaries, to produce the charming and the complete. unfortunately, however, works of art with such ease of expression, which instil into man cheerfulness, freedom, and a pleasant feeling of his own personality, arouse in the striving artist the idea that the process of production is also agreeable. since the pinnacle of what art and genius produce is an appearance of ease, the artists who come after are tempted to make things easy for themselves, and to work for the sake of appearances. thus art gradually declines from its high position, as to the whole as well as details. but if we wish to gain a fair conception, we must come down to details of details, an occupation not always agreeable or charming, but by and by richly rewarded with a more certain view of the whole. if the experience of observing ancient and mediæval works of art has shown us that certain maxims hold good we need these most of all in judging the most recent modern productions; for, since personal relations, love and hatred of individuals, favor or disfavor of the multitude so easily enter into the valuation of living or recently deceased artists, we are in all the more need of principles in order to pass judgment on our contemporaries. the inquiry can be conducted in two ways: by diminishing the influence of caprice; by bringing the question before a higher tribunal. the principle can be tested as well as its application; and even if we should not agree, the point in dispute can still be definitely and clearly pointed out. especially should we wish that the vivifying artist, in whose works we might perhaps have found something to remember, might test our judgments carefully in this way; for everyone who deserves this name is forced in our times to form, as a result of his work and his reflections, a theory, or at least a certain conception of theoretical means, by the use of which he gets along tolerably well in a variety of cases. it will often be noticed, however, that in this way he sets up as laws such maxims as are in accordance with his talent, his inclination, and his convenience. he is subject to a fate that is common to all mankind. how many act in this very way in other fields! but we are not cultivating ourselves when we merely set in motion with ease and convenience that which lies in us. every artist, like every man, is only an individual, and will always lean to one side. for that reason, man should pursue so far as possible, both theoretically and practically, that which is contrary to his nature. let the easy-going seek what is serious and severe; let the stern keep before his eyes the light and agreeable; the strong, loveliness; the amiable, strength; and everyone will develop his own nature the more, the farther he seems to remove himself from it. every art requires the whole man; the highest possible degree of art requires all mankind. the practice of the plastic arts is mechanical, and the training of the artist rightly begins in his earliest youth with the mechanical side; the rest of his education, on the other hand, is often neglected, for it ought to be far more careful than the training of others who have opportunity of deriving advantage from life itself. society soon makes a rough person courteous, a business life makes the most simple person prudent; literary labors, which through print come before a great public, find opposition and correction everywhere; only the plastic artist is, for the most part, limited to a lonely workshop; he has dealings almost solely with the man who orders and pays for his labor, with a public which frequently follows only certain morbid impressions, with connoisseurs who make him restless, with auctioneers who receive every new work with praise and estimates of value such as would fitly honor the most superlative production. but it is time to conclude this introduction lest it anticipate and forestall the work, instead of merely preceding it. we have so far at least designated the point from which we intend to set out; how far our views can and will spread, must at first develop gradually. the theory and criticism of literary art will, we hope, soon occupy us; and whatever life, travel, and daily events suggest to us, shall not be excluded. in closing, let us say a word on an important concern of this moment. for the training of the artist, for the enjoyment of the friend of art, it was from time immemorial of the greatest significance in what place the works of art happened to be. there was a time when, except for slight changes of location, they remained for the most part in one place; now, however, a great change has occurred, which will have important consequences for art in general and in particular. at present we have perhaps more cause than ever to regard italy as a great storehouse of art--as it still was until recently. when it is possible to give a general review of it, then it will be shown what the world lost at the moment when so many parts were torn from this great and ancient whole. what was destroyed in the very act of tearing away will probably remain a secret forever; but a description of the new storehouse that is being formed in paris will be possible in a few years. then the method by which an artist and a lover of art is to use france and italy can be indicated; and a further important and fine question will arise: what are other nations, particularly germany and england, to do in this period of scattering and loss, to make generally useful the manifold and widely strewn treasures of art--a task requiring the true cosmopolitan mind which is found perhaps nowhere purer than in the arts and sciences? and what are they to do to help to form an ideal storehouse, which in the course of time may perhaps happily compensate us for what the present moment tears away when it does not destroy? so much in general of the purpose of a work in which we desire many earnest and friendly sympathizers. [footnote a: the propylaen was a periodical founded in july, , by goethe and his friend heinrich meyer. during its short existence of three years, there were published in it, besides the writings of the editors, short contributions by schiller and humboldt. its purpose was to spread sound ideas about the aims and methods of art, and in this notable introduction goethe set forth with clearness and profundity his fundamental ideas on these subjects. the present translation has been made expressly for the harvard classics.] prefaces to various volumes of poems by william wordsworth[a] advertisement to lyrical ballads ( ) it is the honourable characteristic of poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind. the evidence of this fact is to be sought, not in the writings of critics, but in those of poets themselves. the majority of the following poems are to be considered as experiments. they were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to the purposes of poetic pleasure. readers accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will perhaps frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awkwardness: they will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. it is desirable that such readers, for their own sakes, should not suffer the solitary word poetry, a word of very disputed meaning, to stand in the way of their gratification; but that, while they are perusing this book, they should ask themselves if it contains a natural delineation of human passions, human characters, and human incidents; and if the answer be favourable to the author's wishes, that they should consent to be pleased in spite of that most dreadful enemy to our pleasures, our own pre-established codes of decision. readers of superior judgement may disapprove of the style in which many of these pieces are executed; it must be expected that many lines and phrases will not exactly suit their taste. it will perhaps appear to them, that wishing to avoid the prevalent fault of the day, the author has sometimes descended too low, and that many of his expressions are too familiar, and not of sufficient dignity. it is apprehended that the more conversant the reader is with our elder writers, and with those in modern times who have been the most successful in painting manners and passions, the fewer complaints of this kind will he have to make. an accurate taste in poetry, and in all the other arts, sir joshua reynolds has observed, is an acquired talent, which can only be produced by severe thought, and a long continued intercourse with the best models of composition. this is mentioned not with so ridiculous a purpose as to prevent the most inexperienced reader from judging for himself; but merely to temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest that if poetry be a subject on which much time has not been bestowed, the judgement may be erroneous, and that in many cases it necessarily will be so. the tale of _goody blake and harry gill_ is founded on a well-authenticated fact which happened in warwickshire. of the other poems in the collection, it may be proper to say that they are either absolute inventions of the author, or facts which took place within his personal observation or that of his friends. the poem of _the thorn_, as the reader will soon discover, is not supposed to be spoken in the author's own person: the character of the loquacious narrator will sufficiently show itself in the course of the story. _the rime of the ancyent marinere_ was professedly written in imitation of the _style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets; but with a few exceptions, the author believes that the language adopted in it has been equally intelligible for these three last centuries. the lines entitled _expostulation and reply_, and those which follow, arose out of conversation with a friend who was somewhat unreasonably attached to modern books of moral philosophy. [footnote a: william wordsworth ( - ), probably the greatest of the poets of the romantic movement in england, was also foremost in the critical defence of that movement. the prefaces and essays printed here form a kind of manifesto of the reaction from the poetical traditions of the eighteenth century; and contain besides some of the soundest theorizing on the nature of poetry to be found in english. they afford an interesting comparison with the parallel protest in victor hugo's preface to "cromwell," to be found later in the volume.] preface to lyrical ballads ( ) the first volume of these poems has already been submitted to general perusal. it was published as an experiment, which, i hoped, might be of some use to ascertain, how far, by fitting to metrical arrangement a selection of the real language of men in a state of vivid sensation, that sort of pleasure and that quantity of pleasure may be imparted, which a poet may rationally endeavour to impart. i had formed no very inaccurate estimate of the probable effect of those poems: i flattered myself that they who should be pleased with them would read them with more than common pleasure: and, on the other hand, i was well aware, that by those who should dislike them, they would be read with more than common dislike. the result has differed from my expectation in this only, that a greater number have been pleased than i ventured to hope i should please. * * * * * several of my friends are anxious for the success of these poems, from a belief, that, if the views with which they were composed were indeed realized, a class of poetry would be produced, well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and not unimportant in the quality, and in the multiplicity of its moral relations: and on this account they have advised me to prefix a systematic defence of the theory upon which the poems were written. but i was unwilling to undertake the task, knowing that on this occasion the reader would look coldly upon my arguments, since i might be suspected of having been principally influenced by the selfish and foolish hope of _reasoning_ him into an approbation of these particular poems: and i was still more unwilling to undertake the task, because, adequately to display the opinions, and fully to enforce the arguments, would require a space wholly disproportionate to a preface. for, to treat the subject with the clearness and coherence of which it is susceptible, it would be necessary to give a full account of the present state of the public taste in this country, and to determine how far this taste is healthy or depraved; which, again, could not be determined, without pointing out in what manner language and the human mind act and re-act on each other, and without retracing the revolutions, not of literature alone, but likewise of society itself. i have therefore altogether declined to enter regularly upon this defence; yet i am sensible, that there would be something like impropriety in abruptly obtruding upon the public, without a few words of introduction, poems so materially different from those upon which general approbation is at present bestowed. it is supposed that by the act of writing in verse an author makes a formal engagement that he will gratify certain known habits of association; that he not only thus apprises the reader that certain classes of ideas and expressions will be found in his book, but that others will be carefully excluded. this exponent or symbol held forth by metrical language must in different eras of literature have excited very different expectations: for example, in the age of catullus, terence, and lucretius, and that of statius or claudian; and in our own country, in the age of shakespeare and beaumont and fletcher, and that of donne and cowley, or dryden, or pope. i will not take upon me to determine the exact import of the promise which, by the act of writing in verse, an author in the present day makes to his reader: but it will undoubtedly appear to many persons that i have not fulfilled the terms of an engagement thus voluntarily contracted. they who have been accustomed to the gaudiness and inane phraseology of many modern writers, if they persist in reading this book to its conclusion, will, no doubt, frequently have to struggle with feelings of strangeness and awawkwardnessthey will look round for poetry, and will be induced to inquire by what species of courtesy these attempts can be permitted to assume that title. i hope therefore the reader will not censure me for attempting to state what i have proposed to myself to perform; and also (as far as the limits of a preface will permit) to explain some of the chief reasons which have determined me in the choice of my purpose: that at least he may be spared any unpleasant feeling of disappointment, and that i myself may be protected from one of the most dishonourable accusations which can be brought against an author; namely, that of an indolence which prevents him from endeavouring to ascertain what is his duty, or, when his duty is ascertained, prevents him from performing it. the principal object, then, proposed in these poems was to choose incidents and situations from common life, and to relate or describe them, throughout, as far as was possible in a selection of language really used by men, and, at the same time, to throw over them a certain colouring of imagination, whereby ordinary things should be presented to the mind in an unusual aspect; and, further, and above all, to make these incidents and situations interesting by tracing in them, truly though not ostentatiously, the primary laws of our nature: chiefly, as far as regards the manner in which we associate ideas in a state of excitement. humble and rustic life was generally chosen, because, in that condition, the essential passions of the heart find a better soil in which they can attain their maturity, are less under restraint, and speak a plainer and more emphatic language; because in that condition of life our elementary feelings coexist in a state of greater simplicity, and, consequently, may be more accurately contemplated, and more forcibly communicated; because the manners of rural life germinate from those elementary feelings, and, from the necessary character of rural occupations, are more easily comprehended, and are more durable; and, lastly, because in that condition the passions of men are incorporated with the beautiful and permanent forms of nature. the language, too, of these men has been adopted (purified indeed from what appear to be its real defects, from all lasting and rational causes of dislike or disgust) because such men hourly communicate with the best objects from which the best part of language is originally derived; and because, from their rank in society and the sameness and narrow circle of their intercourse, being less under the influence of social vanity, they convey their feelings and notions in simple and unelaborated expressions. accordingly, such a language, arising out of repeated experience and regular feelings, is a more permanent, and a far more philosophical language, than that which is frequently substituted for it by poets, who think that they are conferring honour upon themselves and their art, in proportion as they separate themselves from the sympathies of men, and indulge in arbitrary and capricious habits of expression, in order to furnish food for fickle tastes, and fickle appetites, of their own creation.[ ] i cannot, however, be insensible to the present outcry against the triviality and meanness, both of thought and language, which some of my contemporaries have occasionally introduced into their metrical compositions; and i acknowledge that this defect, where it exists, is more dishonourable to the writer's own character than false refinement or arbitrary innovation, though i should contend at the same time, that it is far less pernicious in the sum of its consequences. from such verses the poems in these volumes will be found distinguished at least by one mark of difference, that each of them has a worthy _purpose_. not that i always began to write with a distinct purpose formerly conceived; but habits of meditation have, i trust, so prompted and regulated my feelings, that my descriptions of such objects as strongly excite those feelings, will be found to carry along with them a _purpose_. if this opinion be erroneous, i can have little right to the name of a poet. for all good poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: and though this be true, poems to which any value can be attached were never produced on any variety of subjects but by a man who, being possessed of more than usual organic sensibility, had also thought long and deeply. for our continued influxes of feeling are modified and directed by our thoughts, which are indeed the representatives of all our past feelings; and, as by contemplating the relation of these general representatives to each other, we discover what is really important to men, so, by the repetition and continuance of this act, our feelings will be connected with important subjects, till at length, if we be originally possessed of much sensibility, such habits of mind will be produced, that, by obeying blindly and mechanically the impulses of those habits, we shall describe objects, and utter sentiments, of such a nature, and in such connexion with each other, that the understanding of the reader must necessarily be in some degree enlightened, and his affections strengthened and purified. it has been said that each of these poems has a purpose. another circumstance must be mentioned which distinguishes these poems from the popular poetry of the day; it is this, that the feeling therein developed gives importance to the action and situation, and not the action and situation to the feeling. a sense of false modesty shall not prevent me from asserting, that the reader's attention is pointed to this mark of distinction, far less for the sake of these particular poems than from the general importance of the subject. the subject is indeed important! for the human mind is capable of being excited without the application of gross and violent stimulants; and he must have a very faint perception of its beauty and dignity who does not know this, and who does not further know, that one being is elevated above another, in proportion as he possesses this capability. it has therefore appeared to me, that to endeavour to produce or enlarge this capability is one of the best services in which, at any period, a writer can be engaged; but this service, excellent at all times, is especially so at the present day. for a multitude of causes, unknown to former times, are now acting with a combined force to blunt the discriminating powers of the mind, and, unfitting it for all voluntary exertion, to reduce it to a state of almost savage torpor. the most effective of these causes are the great national events which are daily taking place, and the increasing accumulation of men in cities, where the uniformity of their occupations produces a craving for extraordinary incident, which the rapid communication of intelligence hourly gratifies. to this tendency of life and manners the literature and theatrical exhibitions of the country have conformed themselves. the invaluable works of our elder writers, i had almost said the works of shakespeare and milton, are driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid german tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse.--when i think upon this degrading thirst after outrageous stimulation, i am almost ashamed to have spoken of the feeble endeavour made in these volumes to counteract it; and, reflecting upon the magnitude of the general evil, i should be oppressed with no dishonourable melancholy, had i not a deep impression of certain inherent and indestructible qualities of the human mind, and likewise of certain powers in the great and permanent objects that act upon it, which are equally inherent and indestructible; and were there not added to this impression a belief, that the time is approaching when the evil will be systematically opposed, by men of greater powers, and with far more distinguished success. having dwelt thus long on the subjects and aim of these poems, i shall request the reader's permission to apprise him of a few circumstances relating to their _style_, in order, among other reasons, that he may not censure me for not having performed what i never attempted. the reader will find that personifications of abstract ideas rarely occur in these volumes; and are utterly rejected, as an ordinary device to elevate the style, and raise it above prose. my purpose was to imitate, and, as far as possible, to adopt the very language of men; and assuredly such personifications do not make any natural or regular part of that language. they are, indeed, a figure of speech occasionally prompted by passion, and i have made use of them as such; but have endeavoured utterly to reject them as a mechanical device of style, or as a family language which writers in metre seem to lay claim to by prescription. i have wished to keep the reader in the company of flesh and blood, persuaded that by so doing i shall interest him. others who pursue a different track will interest him likewise; i do not interfere with their claim, but wish to prefer a claim of my own. there will also be found in these volumes little of what is usually called poetic diction; as much pains has been taken to avoid it as is ordinarily taken to produce it; this has been done for the reason already alleged, to bring my language near to the language of men; and further, because the pleasure which i have proposed to myself to impart, is of a kind very different from that which is supposed by many persons to be the proper object of poetry. without being culpably particular, i do not know how to give my reader a more exact notion of the style in which it was my wish and intention to write, than by informing him that i have at all times endeavoured to look steadily at my subject; consequently, there is i hope in these poems little falsehood of description, and my ideas are expressed in language fitted to their respective importance. something must have been gained by this practice, as it is friendly to one property of all good poetry, namely, good sense: but it has necessarily cut me off from a large portion of phrases and figures of speech which from father to son have long been regarded as the common inheritance of poets. i have also thought it expedient to restrict myself still further, having abstained from the use of many expressions, in themselves proper and beautiful, but which have been foolishly repeated by bad poets, till such feelings of disgust are connected with them as it is scarcely possible by any art of association to overpower. if in a poem there should be found a series of lines, or even a single line, in which the language, though naturally arranged, and according to the strict laws of metre, does not differ from that of prose, there is a numerous class of critics, who, when they stumble upon these prosaisms, as they call them, imagine that they have made a notable discovery, and exult over the poet as over a man ignorant of his own profession. now these men would establish a canon of criticism which the reader will conclude he must utterly reject, if he wishes to be pleased with these volumes. and it would be a most easy task to prove to him, that not only the language of a large portion of every good poem, even of the most elevated character, must necessarily, except with reference to the metre, in no respect differ from that of good prose, but likewise that some of the most interesting parts of the best poems will be found to be strictly the language of prose when prose is well written. the truth of this assertion might be demonstrated by innumerable passages from almost all the poetical writings, even of milton himself. to illustrate the subject in a general manner, i will here adduce a short composition of gray, who was at the head of those who, by their reasonings, have attempted to widen the space of separation betwixt prose and metrical composition, and was more than any other man curiously elaborate in the structure of his own poetic diction. in vain to me the smiling mornings shine, and reddening phoebus lifts his golden fire; the birds in vain their amorous descant join, or cheerful fields resume their green attire. these ears, alas! for other notes repine; _a different object do these eyes require; my lonely anguish melts no heart but mine; and in my breast the imperfect joys expire_; yet morning smiles the busy race to cheer, and new-born pleasure brings to happier men; the fields to all their wonted tribute bear; to warm their little loves the birds complain. _i fruitless mourn to him that cannot hear, and weep the more because i weep in vain._ it will easily be perceived, that the only part of this sonnet which is of any value is the lines printed in italics; it is equally obvious, that, except in the rhyme, and in the use of the single word 'fruitless' for fruitlessly, which is so far a defect, the language of these lines does in no respect differ from that of prose. by the foregoing quotation it has been shown that the language of prose may yet be well adapted to poetry; and it was previously asserted, that a large portion of the language of every good poem can in no respect differ from that of good prose. we will go further. it may be safely affirmed, that there neither is, nor can be, any _essential_ difference between the language of prose and metrical composition. we are fond of tracing the resemblance between poetry and painting, and, accordingly, we call them sisters: but where shall we find bonds of connexion sufficiently strict to typify the affinity betwixt metrical and prose composition? they both speak by and to the same organs; the bodies in which both of them are clothed may be said to be of the same substance, their affections are kindred, and almost identical, not necessarily differing even in degree; poetry[ ] sheds no tears 'such as angels weep,' but natural and human tears; she can boast of no celestial choir that distinguishes her vital juices from those of prose; the same human blood circulates through the veins of them both. if it be affirmed that rhyme and metrical arrangement of themselves constitute a distinction which overturns what has just been said on the strict affinity of metrical language with that of prose, and paves the way for other artificial distinctions which the mind voluntarily admits, i answer that the language of such poetry as is here recommended is, as far as is possible, a selection of the language really spoken by men; that this selection, wherever it is made with true taste and feeling, will of itself form a distinction far greater than would at first be imagined, and will entirely separate the composition from the vulgarity and meanness of ordinary life; and, if metre be superadded thereto, i believe that a dissimilitude will be produced altogether sufficient for the gratification of a rational mind. what other distinction would we have? whence is it to come? and where is it to exist? not, surely, where the poet speaks through the mouths of his characters: it cannot be necessary here, either for elevation of style, or any of its supposed ornaments: for, if the poet's subject be judiciously chosen, it will naturally, and upon fit occasion, lead him to passions the language of which, if selected truly and judiciously, must necessarily be dignified and variegated, and alive with metaphors and figures. i forbear to speak of an incongruity which would shock the intelligent reader, should the poet interweave any foreign splendour of his own with that which the passion naturally suggests: it is sufficient to say that such addition is unnecessary. and, surely, it is more probable that those passages, which with propriety abound with metaphors and figures, will have their due effect, if, upon other occasions where the passions are of a milder character, the style also be subdued and temperate. but, as the pleasure which i hope to give by the poems now presented to the reader must depend entirely on just notions upon this subject, and, as it is in itself of high importance to our taste and moral feelings, i cannot content myself with these detached remarks. and if, in what i am about to say, it shall appear to some that my labour is unnecessary, and that i am like a man fighting a battle without enemies, such persons may be reminded, that, whatever be the language outwardly holden by men, a practical faith in the opinions which i am wishing to establish is almost unknown. if my conclusions are admitted, and carried as far as they must be carried if admitted at all, our judgements concerning the works of the greatest poets both ancient and modern will be far different from what they are at present, both when we praise, and when we censure: and our moral feelings influencing and influenced by these judgements will, i believe, be corrected and purified. taking up the subject, then, upon general grounds, let me ask, what is meant by the word poet? what is a poet? to whom does he address himself? and what language is to be expected from him?--he is a man speaking to men: a man, it is true, endowed with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness, who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind; a man pleased with his own passions and volitions, and who rejoices more than other men in the spirit of life that is in him; delighting to contemplate similar volitions and passions as manifested in the goings-on of the universe, and habitually impelled to create them where he does not find them. to these qualities he has added a disposition to be affected more than other men by absent things as if they were present; an ability of conjuring up in himself passions, which are indeed far from being the same as those produced by real events, yet (especially in those parts of the general sympathy which are pleasing and delightful) do more nearly resemble the passions produced by real events, than anything which, from the motions of their own minds merely, other men are accustomed to feel in themselves:--whence, and from practice, he has acquired a greater readiness and power in expressing what he thinks and feels, and especially those thoughts and feelings which, by his own choice, or from the structure of his own mind, arise in him without immediate external excitement. but whatever portion of this faculty we may suppose even the greatest poet to possess, there cannot be a doubt that the language which it will suggest to him, must often, in liveliness and truth, fall short of that which is uttered by men in real life, under the actual pressure of those passions, certain shadows of which the poet thus produces, or feels to be produced, in himself. however exalted a notion we would wish to cherish of the character of a poet, it is obvious, that while he describes and imitates passions, his employment is in some degree mechanical, compared with the freedom and power of real and substantial action and suffering. so that it will be the wish of the poet to bring his feelings near to those of the persons whose feelings he describes, nay, for short spaces of time, perhaps, to let himself slip into an entire delusion, and even confound and identify his own feelings with theirs; modifying only the language which is thus suggested to him by a consideration that he describes for a particular purpose, that of giving pleasure. here, then, he will apply the principle of selection which has been already insisted upon. he will depend upon this for removing what would otherwise be painful or disgusting in the passion; he will feel that there is no necessity to trick out or to elevate nature: and, the more industriously he applies this principle, the deeper will be his faith that no words, which _his_ fancy or imagination can suggest, will be to be compared with those which are the emanations of reality and truth. but it may be said by those who do not object to the general spirit of these remarks, that, as it is impossible for the poet to produce upon all occasions language as exquisitely fitted for the passion as that which the real passion itself suggests, it is proper that he should consider himself as in the situation of a translator, who does not scruple to substitute excellencies of another kind for those which are unattainable by him; and endeavours occasionally to surpass his original, in order to make some amends for the general inferiority to which he feels that he must submit. but this would be to encourage idleness and unmanly despair. further, it is the language of men who speak of what they do not understand; who talk of poetry as of a matter of amusement and idle pleasure; who will converse with us as gravely about a _taste_ for poetry, as they express it, as if it were a thing as indifferent as a taste for rope-dancing, or frontiniac or sherry. aristotle, i have been told, has said, that poetry is the most philosophic of all writing: it is so: its object is truth, not individual and local, but general, and operative; not standing upon external testimony, but carried alive into the heart by passion; truth which is its own testimony, which gives competence and confidence to the tribunal to which it appeals, and receives them from the same tribunal. poetry is the image of man and nature. the obstacles which stand in the way of the fidelity of the biographer and historian, and of their consequent utility, are incalculably greater than those which are to be encountered by the poet who comprehends the dignity of his art. the poet writes under one restriction only, namely, the necessity of giving immediate pleasure to a human being possessed of that information which may be expected from him, not as a lawyer, a physician, a mariner, an astronomer, or a natural philosopher, but as a man. except this one restriction, there is no object standing between the poet and the image of things; between this, and the biographer and historian, there are a thousand. nor let this necessity of producing immediate pleasure be considered as a degradation of the poet's art. it is far otherwise. it is an acknowledgement of the beauty of the universe, an acknowledgement the more sincere, because not formal, but indirect; it is a task light and easy to him who looks at the world in the spirit of love: further, it is a homage paid to the native and naked dignity of man, to the grand elementary principle of pleasure, by which he knows, and feels, and lives, and moves. we have no sympathy but what is propagated by pleasure: i would not be misunderstood; but wherever we sympathize with pain, it will be found that the sympathy is produced and carried on by subtle combinations with pleasure. we have no knowledge, that is, no general principles drawn from the contemplation of particular facts, but what has been built up by pleasure, and exists in us by pleasure alone. the man of science, the chemist and mathematician, whatever difficulties and disgusts they may have had to struggle with, know and feel this. however painful may be the objects with which the anatomist's knowledge is connected, he feels that his knowledge is pleasure; and where he has no pleasure he has no knowledge. what then does the poet? he considers man and the objects that surround him as acting and re-acting upon each other, so as to produce an infinite complexity of pain and pleasure; he considers man in his own nature and in his ordinary life as contemplating this with a certain quantity of immediate knowledge, with certain convictions, intuitions, and deductions, which from habit acquire the quality of intuitions; he considers him as looking upon this complex scene of ideas and sensations, and finding everywhere objects that immediately excite in him sympathies which, from the necessities of his nature, are accompanied by an overbalance of enjoyment. to this knowledge which all men carry about with them, and to these sympathies in which, without any other discipline than that of our daily life, we are fitted to take delight, the poet principally directs his attention. he considers man and nature as essentially adapted to each other, and the mind of man as naturally the mirror of the fairest and most interesting properties of nature. and thus the poet, prompted by this feeling of pleasure, which accompanies him through the whole course of his studies, converses with general nature, with affections akin to those, which, through labour and length of time, the man of science has raised up in himself, by conversing with those particular parts of nature which are the objects of his studies. the knowledge both of the poet and the man of science is pleasure; but the knowledge of the one cleaves to us as a necessary part of our existence, our natural and unalienable inheritance; the other is a personal and individual acquisition, slow to come to us, and by no habitual and direct sympathy connecting us with our fellow-beings. the man of science seeks truth as a remote and unknown benefactor; he cherishes and loves it in his solitude: the poet, singing a song in which all human beings join with him, rejoices in the presence of truth as our visible friend and hourly companion. poetry is the breath and finer spirit of all knowledge; it is the impassioned expression which is in the countenance of all science. emphatically may it be said of the poet, as shakespeare hath said of man, 'that he looks before and after.' he is the rock of defence for human nature; an upholder and preserver, carrying everywhere with him relationship and love. in spite of difference of soil and climate, of language and manners, of laws and customs: in spite of things silently gone out of mind, and things violently destroyed; the poet binds together by passion and knowledge the vast empire of human society, as it is spread over the whole earth, and over all time. the objects of the poet's thoughts are everywhere; though the eyes and senses of man are, it is true, his favourite guides, yet he will follow wheresoever he can find an atmosphere of sensation in which to move his wings. poetry is the first and last of all knowledge--it is as immortal as the heart of man. if the labours of men of science should ever create any material revolution, direct or indirect, in our condition, and in the impressions which we habitually receive, the poet will sleep then no more than at present; he will be ready to follow the steps of the man of science, not only in those general indirect effects, but he will be at his side, carrying sensation into the midst of the objects of the science itself. the remotest discoveries of the chemist, the botanist, or mineralogist, will be as proper objects of the poet's art as any upon which it can be employed, if the time should ever come when these things shall be familiar to us, and the relations under which they are contemplated by the followers of these respective sciences shall be manifestly and palpably material to us as enjoying and suffering beings. if the time should ever come when what is now called science, thus familiarized to men, shall be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh and blood, the poet will lend his divine spirit to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate of the household of man.--it is not, then, to be supposed that any one, who holds that sublime notion of poetry which i have attempted to convey, will break in upon the sanctity and truth of his pictures by transitory and accidental ornaments, and endeavour to excite admiration of himself by arts, the necessity of which must manifestly depend upon the assumed meanness of his subject. what has been thus far said applies to poetry in general; but especially to those parts of composition where the poet speaks through the mouths of his characters; and upon this point it appears to authorize the conclusion, that there are few persons of good sense, who would not allow that the dramatic parts of composition are defective, in proportion as they deviate from the real language of nature, and are coloured by a diction of the poet's own, either peculiar to him as an individual poet or belonging simply to poets in general; to a body of men who, from the circumstance of their compositions being in metre, it is expected will employ a particular language. it is not, then, in the dramatic parts of composition that we look for this distinction of language; but still it may be proper and necessary where the poet speaks to us in his own person and character. to this i answer by referring the reader to the description before given of a poet. among the qualities there enumerated as principally conducing to form a poet, is implied nothing differing in kind from other men, but only in degree. the sum of what was said is, that the poet is chiefly distinguished from other men by a greater promptness to think and feel without immediate external excitement, and a greater power in expressing such thoughts and feelings as are produced in him in that manner. but these passions and thoughts and feelings are the general passions and thoughts and feelings of men. and with what are they connected? undoubtedly with our moral sentiments and animal sensations, and with the causes which excite these; with the operations of the elements, and the appearances of the visible universe; with storm and sunshine, with the revolutions of the seasons, with cold and heat, with loss of friends and kindred, with injuries and resentments, gratitude and hope, with fear and sorrow. these, and the like, are the sensations and objects which the poet describes, as they are the sensations of other men, and the objects which interest them. the poet thinks and feels in the spirit of human passions. how, then, can his language differ in any material degree from that of all other men who feel vividly and see clearly? it might be _proved_ that it is impossible. but supposing that this were not the case, the poet might then be allowed to use a peculiar language when expressing his feelings for his own gratification, or that of men like himself. but poets do not write for poets alone, but for men. unless therefore we are advocates for that admiration which subsists upon ignorance, and that pleasure which arises from hearing what we do not understand, the poet must descend from this supposed height; and, in order to excite rational sympathy, he must express himself as other men express themselves. to this it may be added, that while he is only selecting from the real language of men, or, which amounts to the same thing, composing accurately in the spirit of such selection, he is treading upon safe ground, and we know what we are to expect from him. our feelings are the same with respect to metre; for, as it may be proper to remind the reader, the distinction of metre is regular and uniform, and not, like that which is produced by what is usually called poetic diction, arbitrary, and subject to infinite caprices upon which no calculation whatever can be made. in the one case, the reader is utterly at the mercy of the poet, respecting what imagery or diction he may choose to connect with the passion; whereas, in the other, the metre obeys certain laws, to which the poet and reader both willingly submit because they are certain, and because no interference is made by them with the passion, but such as the concurring testimony of ages has shown to heighten and improve the pleasure which co-exists with it. it will now be proper to answer an obvious question, namely, why, professing these opinions, have i written in verse? to this, in addition to such answer as is included in what has been already said, i reply, in the first place, because, however i may have restricted myself, there is still left open to me what confessedly constitutes the most valuable object of all writing, whether in prose or verse; the great and universal passions of men, the most general and interesting of their occupations, and the entire world of nature before me--to supply endless combinations of forms and imagery. now, supposing for a moment that whatever is interesting in these objects may be as vividly described in prose, why should i be condemned for attempting to superadd to such description the charm which, by the consent of all nations, is acknowledged to exist in metrical language? to this, by such as are yet unconvinced, it may he answered that a very small part of the pleasure given by poetry depends upon the metre, and that it is injudicious to write in metre, unless it be accompanied with the other artificial distinctions of style with which metre is usually accompanied, and that, by such deviation, more will be lost from the shock which will thereby be given to the reader's associations than will be counterbalanced by any pleasure which he can derive from the general power of numbers. in answer to those who still contend for the necessity of accompanying metre with certain appropriate colours of style in order to the accomplishment of its appropriate end, and who also, in my opinion, greatly underrate the power of metre in itself, it might, perhaps, as far as relates to these volumes, have been almost sufficient to observe, that poems are extant, written upon more humble subjects, and in a still more naked and simple style, which have continued to give pleasure from generation to generation. now, if nakedness and simplicity be a defect, the fact here mentioned affords a strong presumption that poems somewhat less naked and simple are capable of affording pleasure at the present day; and, what i wish _chiefly_ to attempt, at present, was to justify myself for having written under the impression of this belief. but various causes might be pointed out why, when the style is manly, and the subject of some importance, words metrically arranged will long continue to impart such a pleasure to mankind as he who proves the extent of that pleasure will be desirous to impart. the end of poetry is to produce excitement in co-existence with an overbalance of pleasure; but, by the supposition, excitement is an unusual and irregular state of the mind; ideas and feelings do not, in that state, succeed each other in accustomed order. if the words, however, by which this excitement is produced be in themselves powerful, or the images and feelings have an undue proportion of pain connected with them, there is some danger that the excitement may be carried beyond its proper bounds. now the co-presence of something regular, something to which the mind has been accustomed in various moods and in a less excited state, cannot but have great efficacy in tempering and restraining the passion by an inter-texture of ordinary feeling, and of feeling not strictly and necessarily connected with the passion. this is unquestionably true; and hence, though the opinion will at first appear paradoxical, from the tendency of metre to divest language, in a certain degree, of its reality, and thus to throw a sort of half-consciousness of unsubstantial existence over the whole composition, there can be little doubt but that more pathetic situations and sentiments, that is, those which have a greater proportion of pain connected with them, may be endured in metrical composition, especially in rhyme, than in prose. the metre of the old ballads is very artless; yet they contain many passages which would illustrate this opinion; and, i hope, if the following poems be attentively perused, similar instances will be found in them. this opinion may be further illustrated by appealing to the reader's own experience of the reluctance with which he comes to the re-perusal of the distressful parts of _clarissa harlowe_, or _the gamester_; while shakespeare's writings, in the most pathetic scenes, never act upon us, as pathetic, beyond the bounds of pleasure--an effect which, in a much greater degree than might at first be imagined, is to be ascribed to small, but continual and regular impulses of pleasurable surprise from the metrical arrangement.--on the other hand (what it must be allowed will much more frequently happen) if the poet's words should be incommensurate with the passion, and inadequate to raise the reader to a height of desirable excitement, then (unless the poet's choice of his metre has been grossly injudicious), in the feelings of pleasure which the reader has been accustomed to connect with metre in general, and in the feeling, whether cheerful or melancholy, which he has been accustomed to connect with that particular movement of metre, there will be found something which will greatly contribute to impart passion to the words, and to effect the complex end which the poet proposes to himself. if i had undertaken a systematic defence of the theory here maintained, it would have been my duty to develop the various causes upon which the pleasure received from metrical language depends. among the chief of these causes is to be reckoned a principle which must be well known to those who have made any of the arts the object of accurate reflection; namely, the pleasure which the mind derives from the perception of similitude in dissimilitude. this principle is the great spring of the activity of our minds, and their chief feeder. from this principle the direction of the sexual appetite, and all the passions connected with it, take their origin: it is the life of our ordinary conversation; and upon the accuracy with which similitude in dissimilitude, and dissimilitude in similitude are perceived, depend our taste and our moral feelings. it would not be a useless employment to apply this principle to the consideration of metre, and to show that metre is hence enabled to afford much pleasure, and to point out in what manner that pleasure is produced. but my limits will not permit me to enter upon this subject, and i must content myself with a general summary. i have said that poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings: it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity: the emotion is contemplated till, by a species of reaction, the tranquillity gradually disappears, and an emotion, kindred to that which was before the subject of contemplation, is gradually produced, and does itself actually exist in the mind. in this mood successful composition generally begins, and in a mood similar to this it is carried on; but the emotion, of whatever kind, and in whatever degree, from various causes, is qualified by various pleasures, so that in describing any passions whatsoever, which are voluntarily described, the mind will, upon the whole, be in a state of enjoyment. if nature be thus cautious to preserve in a state of enjoyment a being so employed, the poet ought to profit by the lesson held forth to him, and ought especially to take care, that, whatever passions he communicates to his reader, those passions, if his reader's mind be sound and vigorous, should always be accompanied with an overbalance of pleasure. now the music of harmonious metrical language, the sense of difficulty overcome, and the blind association of pleasure which has been previously received from works of rhyme or metre of the same or similar construction, an indistinct perception perpetually renewed of language closely resembling that of real life, and yet, in the circumstance of metre, differing from it so widely--all these imperceptibly make up a complex feeling of delight, which is of the most important use in tempering the painful feeling always found intermingled with powerful descriptions of the deeper passions. this effect is always produced in pathetic and impassioned poetry; while, in lighter compositions, the ease and gracefulness with which the poet manages his numbers are themselves confessedly a principal source of the gratification of the reader. all that it is _necessary_ to say, however, upon this subject, may he effected by affirming, what few persons will deny, that, of two descriptions, either of passions, manners, or characters, each of them equally well executed, the one in prose and the other in verse, the verse will be read a hundred times where the prose is read once. having thus explained a few of my reasons for writing in verse, and why i have chosen subjects from common life, and endeavoured to bring my language near to the real language of men, if i have been too minute in pleading my own cause, i have at the same time been treating a subject of general interest; and for this reason a few words shall be added with reference solely to these particular poems, and to some defects which will probably be found in them. i am sensible that my associations must have sometimes been particular instead of general, and that, consequently, giving to things a false importance, i may have sometimes written upon unworthy subjects; but i am less apprehensive on this account, than that my language may frequently have suffered from those arbitrary connexions of feelings and ideas with particular words and phrases, from which no man can altogether protect himself. hence i have no doubt, that, in some instances, feelings, even of the ludicrous, may be given to my readers by expressions which appeared to me tender and pathetic. such faulty expressions, were i convinced they were faulty at present, and that they must necessarily continue to be so, i would willingly take all reasonable pains to correct. but it is dangerous to make these alterations on the simple authority of a few individuals, or even of certain classes of men; for where the understanding of an author is not convinced, or his feelings altered, this cannot be done without great injury to himself: for his own feelings are his stay and support; and, if he set them aside in one instance, he may be induced to repeat this act till his mind shall lose all confidence in itself, and become utterly debilitated. to this it may be added, that the critic ought never to forget that he is himself exposed to the same errors as the poet, and, perhaps, in a much greater degree: for there can be no presumption in saying of most readers, that it is not probable they will be so well acquainted with the various stages of meaning through which words have passed, or with the fickleness or stability of the relations of particular ideas to each other; and, above all, since they are so much less interested in the subject, they may decide lightly and carelessly. long as the reader has been detained, i hope he will permit me to caution him against a mode of false criticism which has been applied to poetry, in which the language closely resembles that of life and nature. such verses have been triumphed over in parodies, of which dr. johnson's stanza is a fair specimen:-- i put my hat upon my head and walked into the strand, and there i met another man whose hat was in his hand. immediately under these lines let us place one of the most justly admired stanzas of the 'babes in the wood,' these pretty babes with hand in hand went wandering up and down; but never more they saw the man approaching from the town. in both these stanzas the words, and the order of the words, in no respect differ from the most unimpassioned conversation. there are words in both, for example, 'the strand,' and 'the town,' connected with none but the most familiar ideas; yet the one stanza we admit as admirable, and the other as a fair example of the superlatively contemptible. whence arises this difference? not from the metre, not from the language, not from the order of the words; but the _matter_ expressed in dr. johnson's stanza is contemptible. the proper method of treating trivial and simple verses, to which dr. johnson's stanza would be a fair parallelism, is not to say, this is a bad kind of poetry, or, this is not poetry; but, this wants sense; it is neither interesting in itself nor can _lead_ to anything interesting; the images neither originate in that sane state of feeling which arises out of thought, nor can excite thought or feeling in the reader. this is the only sensible manner of dealing with such verses. why trouble yourself about the species till you have previously decided upon the genus? why take pains to prove than an ape is not a newton, when it is self-evident that he is not a man? one request i must make of my reader, which is, that in judging these poems he would decide by his own feelings genuinely, and not by reflection upon what will probably be the judgement of others. how common is it to hear a person say, i myself do not object to this style of composition, or this or that expression, but, to such and such classes of people it will appear mean or ludicrous! this mode of criticism, so destructive of all sound unadulterated judgement, is almost universal: let the reader then abide, independently, by his own feelings, and, if he finds himself affected, let him not suffer such conjectures to interfere with his pleasure. if an author, by any single composition, has impressed us with respect for his talents, it is useful to consider this as affording a presumption, that on other occasions where we have been displeased, he, nevertheless, may not have written ill or absurdly; and further, to give him so much credit for this one composition as may induce us to review what has displeased us, with more care than we should otherwise have bestowed upon it. this is not only an act of justice, but, in our decisions upon poetry especially, may conduce, in a high degree, to the improvement of our own taste; for an _accurate_ taste in poetry, and in all the other arts, as sir joshua reynolds has observed, is an _acquired_ talent, which can only be produced by thought and a long continued intercourse with the best models of composition. this is mentioned, not with so ridiculous a purpose as to prevent the most inexperienced reader from judging for himself (i have already said that i wish him to judge for himself), but merely to temper the rashness of decision, and to suggest, that, if poetry be a subject on which much time has not been bestowed, the judgement may be erroneous; and that, in many cases, it necessarily will be so. nothing would, i know, have so effectually contributed to further the end which i have in view, as to have shown of what kind the pleasure is, and how that pleasure is produced, which is confessedly produced by metrical composition essentially different from that which i have here endeavoured to recommend: for the reader will say that he has been pleased by such composition; and what more can be done for him? the power of any art is limited; and he will suspect, that, if it be proposed to furnish him with new friends, that can be only upon condition of his abandoning his old friends. besides, as i have said, the reader is himself conscious of the pleasure which he has received from such composition, composition to which he has peculiarly attached the endearing name of poetry; and all men feel an habitual gratitude, and something of an honourable bigotry, for the objects which have long continued to please them: we not only wish to be pleased, but to be pleased in that particular way in which we have been accustomed to be pleased. there is in these feelings enough to resist a host of arguments; and i should be the less able to combat them successfully, as i am willing to allow, that, in order entirely to enjoy the poetry which i am recommending, it would be necessary to give up much of what is ordinarily enjoyed. but, would my limits have permitted me to point out how this pleasure is produced, many obstacles might have been removed, and the reader assisted in perceiving that the powers of language are not so limited as he may suppose; and that it is possible for poetry to give other enjoyments, of a purer, more lasting, and more exquisite nature. this part of the subject has not been altogether neglected, but it has not been so much my present aim to prove, that the interest excited by some other kinds of poetry is less vivid, and less worthy of the nobler powers of the mind, as to offer reasons for presuming, that if my purpose were fulfilled, a species of poetry would be produced, which is genuine poetry; in its nature well adapted to interest mankind permanently, and likewise important in the multiplicity and quality of its moral relations. from what has been said, and from a perusal of the poems, the reader will be able clearly to perceive the object which i had in view: he will determine how far it has been attained; and, what is a much more important question, whether it be worth attaining: and upon the decision of these two questions will rest my claim to the approbation of the public. [footnote : it is worth while here to observe, that the affecting parts of chaucer are almost always expressed in language pure and universally intelligible even to this day.] [footnote : i here use the word 'poetry' (though against my own judgement) as opposed to the word prose, and synonymous with metrical composition. but much confusion has been introduced into criticism by this contradistinction of poetry and prose, instead of the more philosophical one of poetry and matter of fact, or science. the only strict antithesis to prose is metre; nor is this, in truth, a _strict_ antithesis, because lines and passages of metre so naturally occur in writing prose, that it would be scarcely possible to avoid them, even were it desirable.] appendix to lyrical ballads ( ) perhaps, as i have no right to expect that attentive perusal, without which, confined, as i have been, to the narrow limits of a preface, my meaning cannot be thoroughly understood, i am anxious to give an exact notion of the sense in which the phrase poetic diction has been used; and for this purpose, a few words shall here be added, concerning the origin and characteristics of the phraseology, which i have condemned under that name. the earliest poets of all nations generally wrote from passion excited by real events; they wrote naturally, and as men: feeling powerfully as they did, their language was daring, and figurative. in succeeding times, poets, and men ambitious of the fame of poets, perceiving the influence of such language, and desirous of producing the same effect without being animated by the same passion, set themselves to a mechanical adoption of these figures of speech, and made use of them, sometimes with propriety, but much more frequently applied them to feelings and thoughts with which they had no natural connexion whatsoever. a language was thus insensibly produced, differing materially from the real language of men in _any situation_. the reader or hearer of this distorted language found himself in a perturbed and unusual state of mind: when affected by the genuine language of passion he had been in a perturbed and unusual state of mind also: in both cases he was willing that his common judgement and understanding should be laid asleep, and he had no instinctive and infallible perception of the true to make him reject the false; the one served as a passport for the other. the emotion was in both cases delightful, and no wonder if he confounded the one with the other, and believed them both to be produced by the same, or similar causes. besides, the poet spake to him in the character of a man to be looked up to, a man of genius and authority. thus, and from a variety of other causes, this distorted language was received with admiration; and poets, it is probable, who had before contented themselves for the most part with misapplying only expressions which at first had been dictated by real passion, carried the abuse still further, and introduced phrases composed apparently in the spirit of the original figurative language of passion, yet altogether of their own invention, and characterized by various degrees of wanton deviation from good sense and nature. it is indeed true, that the language of the earliest poets was felt to differ materially from ordinary language, because it was the language of extraordinary occasions; but it was really spoken by men, language which the poet himself had uttered when he had been affected by the events which he described, or which he had heard uttered by those around him. to this language it is probable that metre of some sort or other was early superadded. this separated the genuine language of poetry still further from common life, so that whoever read or heard the poems of these earliest poets felt himself moved in a way in which he had not been accustomed to be moved in real life, and by causes manifestly different from those which acted upon him in real life. this was the great temptation to all the corruptions which have followed: under the protection of this feeling succeeding poets constructed a phraseology which had one thing, it is true, in common with the genuine language of poetry, namely, that it was not heard in ordinary conversation; that it was unusual. but the first poets, as i have said, spake a language which, though unusual, was still the language of men. this circumstance, however, was disregarded by their successors; they found that they could please by easier means: they became proud of modes of expression which they themselves had invented, and which were uttered only by themselves. in process of time metre became a symbol or promise of this unusual language, and whoever took upon him to write in metre, according as he possessed more or less of true poetic genius, introduced less or more of this adulterated phraseology into his compositions, and the true and the false were inseparately interwoven until, the taste of men becoming gradually perverted, this language was received as a natural language: and at length, by the influence of books upon men, did to a certain degree really become so. abuses of this kind were imported from one nation to another, and with the progress of refinement this diction became daily more and more corrupt, thrusting out of sight the plain humanities of nature by a motley masquerade of tricks, quaintnesses, hieroglyphics, and enigmas. it would not be uninteresting to point out the causes of the pleasure given by this extravagant and absurd diction. it depends upon a great variety of causes, but upon none, perhaps, more than its influence in impressing a notion of the peculiarity and exaltation of the poet's character, and in flattering the reader's self-love by bringing him nearer to a sympathy with that character; an effect which is accomplished by unsettling ordinary habits of thinking, and thus assisting the reader to approach to that perturbed and dizzy state of mind in which if he does not find himself, he imagines that he is _balked_ of a peculiar enjoyment which poetry can and ought to bestow. the sonnet quoted from gray, in the preface, except the lines printed in italics, consists of little else but this diction, though not of the worst kind; and indeed, if one may be permitted to say so, it is far too common in the best writers both ancient and modern. perhaps in no way, by positive example could more easily be given a notion of what i mean by the phrase _poetic diction_ than by referring to a comparison between the metrical paraphrase which we have of passages in the old and new testament, and those passages as they exist in our common translation. see pope's _messiah_ throughout; prior's 'did sweeter sounds adorn my flowing tongue,' &c. &c. 'though i speak with the tongues of men and of angels,' &c. &c, st corinthians, ch. xiii. by way of immediate example take the following of dr. johnson: turn on the prudent ant thy heedless eyes, observe her labours, sluggard, and be wise; no stern command, no monitory voice, prescribes her duties, or directs her choice; yet, timely provident, she hastes away to snatch the blessings of a plenteous day; when fruitful summer loads the teeming plain, she crops the harvest, and she stores the grain. how long shall sloth usurp thy useless hours, unnerve thy vigour, and enchain thy powers? while artful shades thy downy couch enclose, and soft solicitation courts repose, amidst the drowsy charms of dull delight, year chases year with unremitted flight, till want now following, fraudulent and slow, shall spring to seize thee, like an ambush'd foe. from this hubbub of words pass to the original 'go to the ant, thou sluggard, consider her ways, and be wise: which having no guide, overseer, or ruler, provideth her meat in the summer, and gathereth her food in the harvest. how long wilt thou sleep, o sluggard? when wilt thou arise out of thy sleep? yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep. so shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth, and thy want as an armed man' proverbs, ch. vi. one more quotation, and i have done. it is from cowper's verses supposed to be written by alexander selkirk: religion! what treasure untold resides in that heavenly word! more precious than silver and gold, or all that this earth can afford but the sound of the church-going bell these valleys and rocks never heard, ne'er sighed at the sound of a knell, or smiled when a sabbath appeared ye winds, that have made me your sport convey to this desolate shore some cordial endearing report of a land i must visit no more my friends, do they now and then send a wish or a thought after me? o tell me i yet have a friend, though a friend i am never to see this passage is quoted as an instance of three different styles of composition. the first four lines are poorly expressed, some critics would call the language prosaic; the fact is, it would be bad prose, so bad, that it is scarcely worse in metre. the epithet 'church-going' applied to a bell, and that by so chaste a writer as cowper, is an instance of the strange abuses which poets have introduced into their language, till they and their readers take them as matters of course, if they do not single them out expressly as objects of admiration. the two lines 'ne'er sighed at the sound,' &c., are, in my opinion, an instance of the language of passion wrested from its proper use, and, from the mere circumstance of the composition being in metre, applied upon an occasion that does not justify such violent expressions; and i should condemn the passage, though perhaps few readers will agree with me, as vicious poetic diction. the last stanza is throughout admirably expressed: it would be equally good whether in prose or verse, except that the reader has an exquisite pleasure in seeing such natural language so naturally connected with metre. the beauty of this stanza tempts me to conclude with a principle which ought never to be lost sight of, and which has been my chief guide in all i have said,--namely, that in works of _imagination and sentiment_, for of these only have i been treating, in proportion as ideas and feelings are valuable, whether the composition be in prose or in verse, they require and exact one and the same language. metre is but adventitious to composition, and the phraseology for which that passport is necessary, even where it may be graceful at all will be little valued by the judicious. preface to poems ( ) the powers requisite for the production of poetry are: first, those of observation and description,--i.e. the ability to observe with accuracy things as they are in themselves, and with fidelity to describe them, unmodified by any passion or feeling existing in the mind of the describer; whether the things depicted be actually present to the senses, or have a place only in the memory. this power, though indispensable to a poet, is one which he employs only in submission to necessity, and never for a continuance of time: as its exercise supposes all the higher qualities of the mind to be passive, and in a state of subjection to external objects, much in the same way as a translator or engraver ought to be to his original. ndly, sensibility,--which, the more exquisite it is, the wider will be the range of a poet's perceptions; and the more will he be incited to observe objects, both as they exist in themselves and as re-acted upon by his own mind. (the distinction between poetic and human sensibility has been marked in the character of the poet delineated in the original preface.) rdly, reflection,--which makes the poet acquainted with the value of actions, images, thoughts, and feelings; and assists the sensibility in perceiving their connexion with each other. thly, imagination and fancy,--to modify, to create, and to associate. thly, invention,--by which characters are composed out of materials supplied by observation; whether of the poet's own heart and mind, or of external life and nature; and such incidents and situations produced as are most impressive to the imagination, and most fitted to do justice to the characters, sentiments, and passions, which the poet undertakes to illustrate. and, lastly, judgement, to decide how and where, and in what degree, each of these faculties ought to be exerted; so that the less shall not be sacrificed to the greater; nor the greater, slighting the less, arrogate, to its own injury, more than its due. by judgement, also, is determined what are the laws and appropriate graces of every species of composition.[ ] the materials of poetry, by these powers collected and produced, are cast, by means of various moulds, into divers forms. the moulds may be enumerated, and the forms specified, in the following order. st, the narrative,--including the epopoeia, the historic poem, the tale, the romance, the mock-heroic, and, if the spirit of homer will tolerate such neighbourhood, that dear production of our days, the metrical novel. of this class, the distinguishing mark is, that the narrator, however liberally his speaking agents be introduced, is himself the source from which everything primarily flows. epic poets, in order that their mode of composition may accord with the elevation of their subject, represent themselves as _singing_ from the inspiration of the muse, 'anna virumque _cano_;' but this is a fiction, in modern times, of slight value: the _iliad_ or the _paradise lost_ would gain little in our estimation by being chanted. the other poets who belong to this class are commonly content to _tell_ their tale;--so that of the whole it may be affirmed that they neither require nor reject the accompaniment of music. ndly, the dramatic,--consisting of tragedy, historic drama, comedy, and masque, in which the poet does not appear at all in his own person, and where the whole action is carried on by speech and dialogue of the agents; music being admitted only incidentally and rarely. the opera may be placed here, inasmuch as it proceeds by dialogue; though depending, to the degree that it does, upon music, it has a strong claim to be ranked with the lyrical. the characteristic and impassioned epistle, of which ovid and pope have given examples, considered as a species of monodrama, may, without impropriety, be placed in this class. rdly, the lyrical,--containing the hymn, the ode, the elegy, the song, and the ballad; in all which, for the production of their _full_ effect, an accompaniment of music is indispensable. thly, the idyllium,--descriptive chiefly either of the processes and appearances of external nature, as the _seasons_ of thomson; or of characters, manners, and sentiments, as are shenstone's _schoolmistress, the cotter's saturday night_ of burns, _the twa dogs_ of the same author; or of these in conjunction with the appearances of nature, as most of the pieces of theocritus, the _allegro_ and _penseroso_ of milton, beattie's _minstrel_, goldsmith's _deserted village_. the epitaph, the inscription, the sonnet, most of the epistles of poets writing in their own persons, and all loco-descriptive poetry, belonging to this class. thly, didactic,--the principal object of which is direct instruction; as the poem of lucretius, the _georgics_ of virgil, _the fleece_ of dyer, mason's _english garden_, &c. and, lastly, philosophical satire, like that of horace and juvenal; personal and occasional satire rarely comprehending sufficient of the general in the individual to be dignified with the name of poetry. out of the three last has been constructed a composite order, of which young's _night thoughts_, and cowper's _task_, are excellent examples. it is deducible from the above, that poems apparently miscellaneous, may with propriety be arranged either with reference to the powers of mind _predominant_ in the production of them; or to the mould in which they are cast; or, lastly, to the subjects to which they relate. from each of these considerations, the following poems have been divided into classes; which, that the work may more obviously correspond with the course of human life, and for the sake of exhibiting in it the three requisites of a legitimate whole, a beginning, a middle, and an end, have been also arranged, as far as it was possible, according to an order of time, commencing with childhood, and terminating with old age, death, and immortality. my guiding wish was, that the small pieces of which these volumes consist, thus discriminated, might be regarded under a two-fold view; as composing an entire work within themselves, and as adjuncts to the philosophical poem, _the recluse_. this arrangement has long presented itself habitually to my own mind. nevertheless, i should have preferred to scatter the contents of these volumes at random, if i had been persuaded that, by the plan adopted, anything material would be taken from the natural effect of the pieces, individually, on the mind of the unreflecting reader. i trust there is a sufficient variety in each class to prevent this; while, for him who reads with reflection, the arrangement will serve as a commentary unostentatiously directing his attention to my purposes, both particular and general. but, as i wish to guard against the possibility of misleading by this classification, it is proper first to remind the reader, that certain poems are placed according to the powers of mind, in the author's conception, predominant in the production of them; _predominant_, which implies the exertion of other faculties in less degree. where there is more imagination than fancy in a poem, it is placed under the head of imagination, and _vice versa_. both the above classes might without impropriety have been enlarged from that consisting of 'poems founded on the affections;' as might this latter from those, and from the class 'proceeding from sentiment and reflection.' the most striking characteristics of each piece, mutual illustration, variety, and proportion, have governed me throughout. none of the other classes, except those of fancy and imagination, require any particular notice. but a remark of general application may be made. all poets, except the dramatic, have been in the practice of feigning that their works were composed to the music of the harp or lyre: with what degree of affectation this has done in modern times, i leave to the judicious to determine. for my own part, i have not been disposed to violate probability so far, or to make such a large demand upon the reader's charity. some of these pieces are essentially lyrical; and, therefore, cannot have their due force without a supposed musical accompaniment; but, in much the greatest part, as a substitute for the classic lyre or romantic harp, i require nothing more than an animated or impassioned recitation, adapted to the subject. poems, however humble in their kind, if they be good in that kind, cannot read themselves; the law of long syllable and short must not be so inflexible,--the letter of metre must not be so impassive to the spirit of versification,--as to deprive the reader of all voluntary power to modulate, in subordination to the sense, the music of the poem;--in the same manner as his mind is left at liberty, and even summoned, to act upon its thoughts and images. but, though the accompaniment of a musical instrument be frequently dispensed with, the true poet does not therefore abandon his privilege distinct from that of the mere proseman; he murmurs near the running brooks a music sweeter than their own. let us come now to the consideration of the words fancy and imagination, as employed in the classification of the following poems. 'a man,' says an intelligent author, 'has imagination in proportion as he can distinctly copy in idea the impressions of sense: it is the faculty which _images_ within the mind the phenomena of sensation. a man has fancy in proportion as he can call up, connect, or associate, at pleasure, those internal images ([greek: phantazein] is to cause to appear) so as to complete ideal representations of absent objects. imagination is the power of depicting, and fancy of evoking and combining. the imagination is formed by patient observation; the fancy by a voluntary activity in shifting the scenery of the mind. the more accurate the imagination, the more safely may a painter, or a poet, undertake a delineation, or a description, without the presence of the objects to be characterized. the more versatile the fancy, the more original and striking will be the decorations produced.'--_british synonyms discriminated, by w. taylor_. is not this as if a man should undertake to supply an account of a building, and be so intent upon what he had discovered of the foundation, as to conclude his task without once looking up at the superstructure? here, as in other instances throughout the volume, the judicious author's mind is enthralled by etymology; he takes up the original word as his guide and escort, and too often does not perceive how soon he becomes its prisoner, without liberty to tread in any path but that to which it confines him. it is not easy to find out how imagination, thus explained, differs from distinct remembrance of images; or fancy from quick and vivid recollection of them: each is nothing more than a mode of memory. if the two words bear the above meaning, and no other, what term is left to designate that faculty of which the poet is 'all compact;' he whose eyes glances from earth to heaven, whose spiritual attributes body forth what his pen is prompt in turning to shape; or what is left to characterize fancy, as insinuating herself into the heart of objects with creative activity?--imagination, in the sense of the word as giving title to a class of the following poems, has no reference to images that are merely a faithful copy, existing in the mind, of absent external objects; but is a word of higher import, denoting operations of the mind upon those objects, and processes of creation or of composition, governed by certain fixed laws. i proceed to illustrate my meaning by instances. a parrot _hangs_ from the wires of his cage by his beak or by his claws; or a monkey from the bough of a tree by his paws or his tail. each creature does so literally and actually. in the first eclogue of virgil, the shepherd, thinking of the time when he is to take leave of his farm, thus addresses his goats:-- non ego vos posthac viridi projectus in antro dumosa _pendere_ procul de rupe videbo. ----half way down _hangs_ one who gathers samphire, is the well-known expression of shakespeare, delineating an ordinary image upon the cliffs of dover. in these two instances is a slight exertion of the faculty which i denominate imagination, in the use of one word: neither the goats nor the samphire-gatherer do literally hang, as does the parrot or the monkey; but, presenting to the senses something of such an appearance, the mind in its activity, for its own gratification, contemplates them as hanging. as when far off at sea a fleet descried _hangs_ in the clouds, by equinoctial winds close sailing from bengala, or the isles of ternate or tidore, whence merchants bring their spicy drugs; they on the trading flood through the wide ethiopian to the cape ply, stemming nightly toward the pole; so seemed far off the flying fiend. here is the full strength of the imagination involved in the word _hangs_, and exerted upon the whole image: first, the fleet, an aggregate of many ships, is represented as one mighty person, whose track, we know and feel, is upon the waters; but, taking advantage of its appearance to the senses, the poet dares to represent it as _hanging in the clouds_, both for the gratification of the mind in contemplating the image itself, and in reference to the motion and appearance of the sublime objects to which it is compared. from impressions of sight we will pass to those of sound; which, as they must necessarily be of a less definite character, shall be selected from these volumes: over his own sweet voice the stock-dove _broods_; of the same bird, his voice was _buried_ among trees, yet to be come at by the breeze; o, cuckoo i shall i call thee _bird_, or but a wandering _voice_? the stock-dove is said to _coo_, a sound well imitating the note of the bird; but, by the intervention of the metaphor _broods_, the affections are called in by the imagination to assist in marking the manner in which the bird reiterates and prolongs her soft note, as if herself delighting to listen to it, and participating of a still and quiet satisfaction, like that which may be supposed inseparable from the continuous process of incubation. 'his voice was buried among trees,' a metaphor expressing the love of _seclusion_ by which this bird is marked; and characterizing its note as not partaking of the shrill and the piercing, and therefore more easily deadened by the intervening shade; yet a note so peculiar and withal so pleasing, that the breeze, gifted with that love of the sound which the poet feels, penetrates the shades in which it is entombed, and conveys it to the ear of the listener. shall i call thee bird, or but a wandering _voice_? this concise interrogation characterizes the seeming ubiquity of the voice of the cuckoo, and dispossesses the creature almost of a corporeal existence; the imagination being tempted to this exertion of her power by a consciousness in the memory that the cuckoo is almost perpetually heard throughout the season of spring, but seldom becomes an object of sight. thus far of images independent of each other, and immediately endowed by the mind with properties that do not inhere in them, upon an incitement from properties and qualities the existence of which is inherent and obvious. these processes of imagination are carried on either by conferring additional properties upon an object, or abstracting from it some of those which it actually possesses, and thus enabling it to react upon the mind which hath performed the process, like a new existence. i pass from the imagination acting upon an individual image to a consideration of the same faculty employed upon images in a conjunction by which they modify each other. the reader has already had a fine instance before him in the passage quoted from virgil, where the apparently perilous situation of the goat, hanging upon the shaggy precipice, is contrasted with that of the shepherd contemplating it from the seclusion of the cavern in which he lies stretched at ease and in security. take these images separately, and how unaffecting the picture compared with that produced by their being thus connected with, and opposed to, each other! as a huge stone is sometimes seen to lie couched on the bald top of an eminence, wonder to all who do the same espy by what means it could thither come, and whence, so that it seems a thing endued with sense, like a sea-beast crawled forth, which on a shelf of rock or sand reposeth, there to sun himself. such seemed this man; not all alive or dead nor all asleep, in his extreme old age. * * * * * motionless as a cloud the old man stood, that heareth not the loud winds when they call, and moveth altogether if it move at all. in these images, the conferring, the abstracting, and the modifying powers of the imagination, immediately and mediately acting, are all brought into conjunction. the stone is endowed with something of the power of life to approximate it to the sea-beast; and the sea-beast stripped of some of its vital qualities to assimilate it to the stone; which intermediate image is thus treated for the purpose of bringing the original image, that of the stone, to a nearer resemblance to the figure and condition of the aged man; who is divested of so much of the indications of life and motion as to bring him to the point where the two objects unite and coalesce in just comparison. after what has been said, the image of the cloud need not be commented upon. thus far of an endowing or modifying power: but the imagination also shapes and _creates_; and how? by innumerable processes; and in none does it more delight than in that of consolidating numbers into unity, and dissolving and separating unity into number,--alternations proceeding from, and governed by, a sublime consciousness of the soul in her own mighty and almost divine powers. recur to the passage already cited from milton. when the compact fleet, as one person, has been introduced 'sailing from bengala,' 'they,' i.e. the 'merchants,' representing the fleet resolved into a multitude of ships, 'ply' their voyage towards the extremities of the earth: 'so' (referring to the word 'as' in the commencement) 'seemed the flying fiend'; the image of his person acting to recombine the multitude of ships into one body,--the point from which the comparison set out. 'so seemed,' and to whom seemed? to the heavenly muse who dictates the poem, to the eye of the poet's mind, and to that of the reader, present at one moment in the wide ethiopian, and the next in the solitudes, then first broken in upon, of the infernal regions! modo me thebis, modo ponit athenis. hear again this mighty poet,--speaking of the messiah going forth to expel from heaven the rebellious angels, attended by ten thousand thousand saints he onward came: far off his coming shone,-- the retinue of saints, and the person of the messiah himself, lost almost and merged in the splendour of that indefinite abstraction 'his coming!' as i do not mean here to treat this subject further than to throw some light upon the present volumes, and especially upon one division of them, i shall spare myself and the reader the trouble of considering the imagination as it deals with thoughts and sentiments, as it regulates the composition of characters, and determines the course of actions: i will not consider it (more than i have already done by implication) as that power which, in the language of one of my most esteemed friends, 'draws all things to one; which makes things animate or inanimate, beings with their attributes, subjects with their accessories, take one colour and serve to one effect[ ].' the grand storehouses of enthusiastic and meditative imagination, of poetical, as contra-distinguished from human and dramatic imagination, are the prophetic and lyrical parts of the holy scriptures, and the works of milton; to which i cannot forbear to add to those of spenser. i select these writers in preference to those of ancient greece and rome, because the anthropomorphitism of the pagan religion subjected the minds of the greatest poets in those countries too much to the bondage of definite form; from which the hebrews were preserved by their abhorrence of idolatry. this abhorrence was almost as strong in our great epic poet, both from circumstances of his life, and from the constitution of his mind. however imbued the surface might be with classical literature, he was a hebrew in soul; and all things tended in him towards the sublime. spenser, of a gentler nature, maintained his freedom by aid of his allegorical spirit, at one time inciting him to create persons out of abstractions; and, at another, by a superior effort of genius, to give the universality and permanence of abstractions to his human beings, by means of attributes and emblems that belong to the highest moral truths and the purest sensations,--of which his character of una is a glorious example. of the human and dramatic imagination the works of shakespeare are an inexhaustible source. i tax not you, ye elements, with unkindness, i never gave you kingdoms, call'd you daughters! and if, bearing in mind the many poets distinguished by this prime quality, whose names i omit to mention; yet justified by recollection of the insults which the ignorant, the incapable, and the presumptuous, have heaped upon these and my other writings, i may be permitted to anticipate the judgment of posterity upon myself, i shall declare (censurable, i grant, if the notoriety of the fact above stated does not justify me) that i have given in these unfavourable times evidence of exertions of this faculty upon its worthiest objects, the external universe, the moral and religious sentiments of man, his natural affections, and his acquired passions; which have the same ennobling tendency as the productions of men, in this kind, worthy to be holden in undying remembrance. to the mode in which fancy has already been characterized as the power of evoking and combining, or, as my friend mr. coleridge has styled it, 'the aggregative and associative power,' my objection is only that the definition is too general. to aggregate and to associate, to evoke and to combine, belong as well to the imagination as to the fancy; but either the materials evoked and combined are different; or they are brought together under a different law, and for a different purpose. fancy does not require that the materials which she makes use of should be susceptible of change in their constitution, from her touch; and, where they admit of modification, it is enough for her purpose if it be slight, limited, and evanescent. directly the reverse of these, are the desires and demands of the imagination. she recoils from everything but the plastic, the pliant, and the indefinite. she leaves it to fancy to describe queen mab as coming, in shape no bigger than an agate-stone on the fore-finger of an alderman. having to speak of stature, she does not tell you that her gigantic angel was as tall as pompey's pillar; much less that he was twelve cubits, or twelve hundred cubits high; or that his dimensions equalled those of teneriffe or atlas;--because these, and if they were a million times as high it would be the same, are bounded: the expression is, 'his stature reached the sky!' the illimitable firmament!--when the imagination frames a comparison, if it does not strike on the first presentation, a sense of the truth of the likeness, from the moment that it is perceived, grows--and continues to grow--upon the mind; the resemblance depending less upon outline of form and feature, than upon expression and effect; less upon casual and outstanding, than upon inherent and internal, properties: moreover, the images invariably modify each other.--the law under which the processes of fancy are carried on is as capricious as the accidents of things, and the effects are surprising, playful, ludicrous, amusing, tender, or pathetic, as the objects happen to be appositely produced or fortunately combined. fancy depends upon the rapidity and profusion with which she scatters her thoughts and images; trusting that their number, and the felicity with which they are linked together, will make amends for the want of individual value: or she prides herself upon the curious subtilty and the successful elaboration with which she can detect their lurking affinities. if she can win you over to her purpose, and impart to you her feelings, she cares not how unstable or transitory may be her influence, knowing that it will not be out of her power to resume it upon an apt occasion. but the imagination is conscious of an indestructible dominion;--the soul may fall away from it, not being able to sustain its grandeur; but, if once felt and acknowledged, by no act of any other faculty of the mind can it be relaxed, impaired, or diminished.--fancy is given to quicken and to beguile the temporal part of our nature, imagination to incite and to support the eternal.--yet is it not the less true that fancy, as she is an active, is also, under her own laws and in her own spirit, a creative faculty? in what manner fancy ambitiously aims at a rivalship with imagination, and imagination stoops to work with the materials of fancy, might be illustrated from the compositions of all eloquent writers, whether in prose or verse; and chiefly from those of our own country. scarcely a page of the impassioned parts of bishop taylor's works can be opened that shall not afford examples.--referring the reader to those inestimable volumes, i will content myself with placing a conceit (ascribed to lord chesterfield) in contrast with a passage from the _paradise lost_: the dews of the evening most carefully shun, they are the tears of the sky for the loss of the sun. after the transgression of adam, milton, with other appearances of sympathizing nature, thus marks the immediate consequence, sky lowered, and, muttering thunder, some sad drops wept at completion of the mortal sin. the associating link is the same in each instance: dew and rain, not distinguishable from the liquid substance of tears, are employed as indications of sorrow. a flash of surprise is the effect in the former case; a flash of surprise, and nothing more; for the nature of things does not sustain the combination. in the latter, the effects from the act, of which there is this immediate consequence and visible sign, are so momentous, that the mind acknowledges the justice and reasonableness of the sympathy in nature so manifested; and the sky weeps drops of water as if with human eyes, as 'earth had before trembled from her entrails, and nature given a second groan.' finally, i will refer to cotton's _ode upon winter_, an admirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of fancy. the middle part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of winter, with his retinue, as 'a palsied king,' and yet a military monarch,--advancing for conquest with his army; the several bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of _fanciful_ comparisons, which indicate on the part of the poet extreme activity of intellect, and a correspondent hurry of delightful feeling. winter retires from the foe into his fortress, where a magazine of sovereign juice is cellared in; liquor that will the siege maintain should phoebus ne'er return again. though myself a water drinker, i cannot resist the pleasure of transcribing what follows, as an instance still more happy of fancy employed in the treatment of feeling than, in its preceding passages, the poem supplies of her management of forms. 'tis that, that gives the poet rage, and thaws the gelid blood of age; matures the young, restores the old, and makes the fainting coward bold. it lays the careful head to rest, calms palpitations in the breast, renders our lives' misfortune sweet; * * * * * then let the chill sirocco blow, and gird us round with hills of snow, or else go whistle to the shore, and make the hollow mountains roar, whilst we together jovial sit careless, and crowned with mirth and wit, where, though bleak winds confine us home our fancies round the world shall roam. we'll think of all the friends we know, and drink to all worth drinking to; when having drunk all thine and mine, we rather shall want healths than wine. but where friends fail us, we'll supply our friendships with our charity; men that remote in sorrows live, shall by our lusty brimmers thrive. we'll drink the wanting into wealth, and those that languish into health, the afflicted into joy; th' opprest into security and rest. the worthy in disgrace shall find favour return again more kind, and in restraint who stifled lie, shall taste the air of liberty. the brave shall triumph in success, the lover shall have mistresses, poor unregarded virtue, praise, and the neglected poet, bays. thus shall our healths do others good, whilst we ourselves do all we would; for, freed from envy and from care, what would we be but what we are? when i sate down to write this preface, it was my intention to have made it more comprehensive; but, thinking that i ought rather to apologize for detaining the reader so long, i will here conclude. [footnote : as sensibility to harmony of numbers, and the power of producing it, are invariably attendants upon the faculties above specified, nothing has been said upon those requisites.] [footnote : charles lamb upon the genius of hogarth.] essay supplementary to preface ( ) with the young of both sexes, poetry is, like love, a passion; but, for much the greater part of those who have been proud of its power over their minds, a necessity soon arises of breaking the pleasing bondage; or it relaxes of itself;--the thoughts being occupied in domestic cares, or the time engrossed by business. poetry then becomes only an occasional recreation; while to those whose existence passes away in a course of fashionable pleasure, it is a species of luxurious amusement. in middle and declining age, a scattered number of serious persons resort to poetry, as to religion, for a protection against the pressure of trivial employments, and as a consolation for the afflictions of life. and, lastly, there are many, who, having been enamoured of this art in their youth, have found leisure, after youth was spent, to cultivate general literature; in which poetry has continued to be comprehended _as a study_. into the above classes the readers of poetry may be divided; critics abound in them all; but from the last only can opinions be collected of absolute value, and worthy to be depended upon, as prophetic of the destiny of a new work. the young, who in nothing can escape delusion, are especially subject to it in their intercourse with poetry. the cause, not so obvious as the fact is unquestionable, is the same as that from which erroneous judgements in this art, in the minds of men of all ages, chiefly proceed; but upon youth it operates with peculiar force. the appropriate business of poetry (which, nevertheless, if genuine, is as permanent as pure science), her appropriate employment, her privilege and her _duty_, is to treat of things not as they _are_, but as they _appear_; not as they exist in themselves, but as they _seem_ to exist to the _senses_, and to the _passions_. what a world of delusion does this acknowledged obligation prepare for the inexperienced! what temptations to go astray are here held forth for them whose thoughts have been little disciplined by the understanding, and whose feelings revolt from the sway of reason!--when a juvenile reader is in the height of his rapture with some vicious passage, should experience throw in doubts, or common sense suggest suspicions, a lurking consciousness that the realities of the muse are but shows, and that her liveliest excitements are raised by transient shocks of conflicting feeling and successive assemblages of contradictory thoughts--is ever at hand to justify extravagance, and to sanction absurdity. but, it may be asked, as these illusions are unavoidable, and, no doubt, eminently useful to the mind as a process, what good can be gained by making observations, the tendency of which is to diminish the confidence of youth in its feelings, and thus to abridge its innocent and even profitable pleasures? the reproach implied in the question could not be warded off, if youth were incapable of being delighted with what is truly excellent; or, if these errors always terminated of themselves in due season. but, with the majority, though their force be abated, they continue through life. moreover, the fire of youth is too vivacious an element to be extinguished or damped by a philosophical remark; and, while there is no danger that what has been said will be injurious or painful to the ardent and the confident, it may prove beneficial to those who, being enthusiastic, are, at the same time, modest and ingenuous. the intimation may unite with their own misgivings to regulate their sensibility, and to bring in, sooner than it would otherwise have arrived, a more discreet and sound judgement. if it should excite wonder that men of ability, in later life, whose understandings have been rendered acute by practice in affairs, should be so easily and so far imposed upon when they happen to take up a new work in verse, this appears to be the cause;--that, having discontinued their attention to poetry, whatever progress may have been made in other departments of knowledge, they have not, as to this art, advanced in true discernment beyond the age of youth. if, then, a new poem fall in their way, whose attractions are of that kind which would have enraptured them during the heat of youth, the judgement not being improved to a degree that they shall be disgusted, they are dazzled, and prize and cherish the faults for having had power to make the present time vanish before them, and to throw the mind back, as by enchantment, into the happiest season of life. as they read, powers seem to be revived, passions are regenerated, and pleasures restored. the book was probably taken up after an escape from the burden of business, and with a wish to forget the world, and all its vexations and anxieties. having obtained this wish, and so much more, it is natural that they should make report as they have felt. if men of mature age, through want of practice, be thus easily beguiled into admiration of absurdities, extravagances, and misplaced ornaments, thinking it proper that their understandings should enjoy a holiday, while they are unbending their minds with verse, it may be expected that such readers will resemble their former selves also in strength of prejudice, and an inaptitude to be moved by the unostentatious beauties of a pure style. in the higher poetry, an enlightened critic chiefly looks for a reflection of the wisdom of the heart and the grandeur of the imagination. wherever these appear, simplicity accompanies them, magnificence herself, when legitimate, depending upon a simplicity of her own, to regulate her ornaments. but it is a well-known property of human nature, that our estimates are ever governed by comparisons, of which we are conscious with various degrees of distinctness. is it not, then, inevitable (confining these observations to the effects of style merely) that an eye, accustomed to the glaring hues of diction by which such readers are caught and excited, will for the most part be rather repelled than attracted by an original work, the colouring of which is disposed according to a pure and refined scheme of harmony? it is in the fine arts as in the affairs of life, no man can _serve_ (i.e. obey with zeal and fidelity) two masters. as poetry is most just to its own divine origin when it administers the comforts and breathes the spirit of religion, they who have learned to perceive this truth, and who betake themselves to reading verse for sacred purposes, must be preserved from numerous illusions to which the two classes of readers, whom we have been considering, are liable. but, as the mind grows serious from the weight of life, the range of its passions is contracted accordingly; and its sympathies become so exclusive, that many species of high excellence wholly escape, or but languidly excite, its notice. besides, men who read from religious or moral inclinations, even when the subject is of that kind which they approve, are beset with misconceptions and mistakes peculiar to themselves. attaching so much importance to the truths which interest them, they are prone to overrate the authors by whom those truths are expressed and enforced. they come prepared to impart so much passion to the poet's language, that they remain unconscious how little, in fact, they receive from it. and, on the other hand, religious faith is to him who holds it so momentous a thing, and error appears to be attended with such tremendous consequences, that, if opinions touching upon religion occur which the reader condemns, he not only cannot sympathize with them, however animated the expression, but there is, for the most part, an end put to all satisfaction and enjoyment. love, if it before existed, is converted into dislike; and the heart of the reader is set against the author and his book.--to these excesses, they, who from their professions ought to be the most guarded against them, are perhaps the most liable; i mean those sects whose religion, being from the calculating understanding, is cold and formal. for when christianity, the religion of humility, is founded upon the proudest faculty of our nature, what can be expected but contradictions? accordingly, believers of this cast are at one time contemptuous; at another, being troubled, as they are and must he, with inward misgivings, they are jealous and suspicious;--and at all seasons, they are under temptation to supply by the heat with which they defend their tenets, the animation which is wanting to the constitution of the religion itself. faith was given to man that his affections, detached from the treasures of time, might be inclined to settle upon those of eternity;--the elevation of his nature, which this habit produces on earth, being to him a presumptive evidence of a future state of existence; and giving him a title to partake of its holiness. the religious man values what he sees chiefly as an 'imperfect shadowing forth' of what he is incapable of seeing. the concerns of religion refer to indefinite objects, and are too weighty for the mind to support them without relieving itself by resting a great part of the burthen upon words and symbols. the commerce between man and his maker cannot be carried on but by a process where much is represented in little, and the infinite being accommodates himself to a finite capacity. in all this may be perceived the affinity between religion and poetry; between religion--making up the deficiencies of reason by faith; and poetry--passionate for the instruction of reason; between religion--whose element is infinitude, and whose ultimate trust is the supreme of things, submitting herself to circumscription, and reconciled to substitutions; and poetry--ethereal and transcendent, yet incapable to sustain her existence without sensuous incarnation. in this community of nature may be perceived also the lurking incitements of kindred error;--so that we shall find that no poetry has been more subject to distortion, than that species, the argument and scope of which is religious; and no lovers of the art have gone farther astray than the pious and the devout. whither then shall we turn for that union of qualifications which must necessarily exist before the decisions of a critic can be of absolute value? for a mind at once poetical and philosophical; for a critic whose affections are as free and kindly as the spirit of society, and whose understanding is severe as that of dispassionate government? where are we to look for that initiatory composure of mind which no selfishness can disturb? for a natural sensibility that has been tutored into correctness without losing anything of its quickness; and for active faculties, capable of answering the demands which an author of original imagination shall make upon them, associated with a judgement that cannot he duped into admiration by aught that is unworthy of it?--among those and those only, who, never having suffered their youthful love of poetry to remit much of its force, have applied to the consideration of the laws of this art the best power of their understandings. at the same time it must be observed--that, as this class comprehends the only judgements which are trustworthy, so does it include the most erroneous and perverse. for to be mistaught is worse than to be untaught; and no perverseness equals that which is supported by system, no errors are so difficult to root out as those which the understanding has pledged its credit to uphold. in this class are contained censors, who, if they be pleased with what is good, are pleased with it only by imperfect glimpses, and upon false principles; who, should they generalize rightly, to a certain point, are sure to suffer for it in the end; who, if they stumble upon a sound rule, are fettered by misapplying it, or by straining it too far; being incapable of perceiving when it ought to yield to one of higher order. in it are found critics too petulant to be passive to a genuine poet, and too feeble to grapple with him; men, who take upon them to report of the course which _he_ holds whom they are utterly unable to accompany,--confounded if he turn quick upon the wing, dismayed if he soar steadily 'into the region';--men of palsied imaginations and indurated hearts; in whose minds all healthy action is languid, who therefore feed as the many direct them, or, with the many, are greedy after vicious provocatives;--judges, whose censure is auspicious, and whose praise ominous! in this class meet together the two extremes of best and worst. the observations presented in the foregoing series are of too ungracious a nature to have been made without reluctance; and, were it only on this account, i would invite the reader to try them by the test of comprehensive experience. if the number of judges who can be confidently relied upon be in reality so small, it ought to follow that partial notice only, or neglect, perhaps long continued, or attention wholly inadequate to their merits--must have been the fate of most works in the higher departments of poetry; and that, on the other hand, numerous productions have blazed into popularity, and have passed away, leaving scarcely a trace behind them: it will be further found, that when authors shall have at length raised themselves into general admiration and maintained their ground, errors and prejudices have prevailed concerning their genius and their works, which the few who are conscious of those errors and prejudices would deplore; if they were not recompensed by perceiving that there are select spirits for whom it is ordained that their fame shall be in the world an existence like that of virtue, which owes its being to the struggles it makes, and its vigour to the enemies whom it provokes;--a vivacious quality, ever doomed to meet with opposition, and still triumphing over it; and, from the nature of its dominion, incapable of being brought to the sad conclusion of alexander, when he wept that there were no more worlds for him to conquer. let us take a hasty retrospect of the poetical literature of this country for the greater part of the last two centuries, and see if the facts support these inferences. who is there that now reads the _creation_ of dubartas? yet all europe once resounded with his praise; he was caressed by kings; and, when his poem was translated into our language, the _faery queen_ faded before it. the name of spenser, whose genius is of a higher order than even that of ariosto, is at this day scarcely known beyond the limits of the british isles. and if the value of his works is to be estimated from the attention now paid to them by his countrymen, compared with that which they bestow on those of some other writers, it must be pronounced small indeed. the laurel, meed of mighty conquerors and poets _sage_-- are his own words; but his wisdom has, in this particular, been his worst enemy: while its opposite, whether in the shape of folly or madness, has been _their_ best friend. but he was a great power, and bears a high name: the laurel has been awarded to him. a dramatic author, if he write for the stage, must adapt himself to the taste of the audience, or they will not endure him; accordingly the mighty genius of shakespeare was listened to. the people were delighted: but i am not sufficiently versed in stage antiquities to determine whether they did not flock as eagerly to the representation of many pieces of contemporary authors, wholly undeserving to appear upon the same boards. had there been a formal contest for superiority among dramatic writers, that shakespeare, like his predecessors sophocles and euripides, would have often been subject to the mortification of seeing the prize adjudged to sorry competitors, becomes too probable, when we reflect that the admirers of settle and shadwell were, in a later age, as numerous, and reckoned as respectable, in point of talent, as those of dryden. at all events, that shakespeare stooped to accommodate himself to the people, is sufficiently apparent; and one of the most striking proofs of his almost omnipotent genius is, that he could turn to such glorious purpose those materials which the prepossessions of the age compelled him to make use of. yet even this marvellous skill appears not to have been enough to prevent his rivals from having some advantage over him in public estimation; else how can we account for passages and scenes that exist in his works, unless upon a supposition that some of the grossest of them, a fact which in my own mind i have no doubt of, were foisted in by the players, for the gratification of the many? but that his works, whatever might be their reception upon the stage, made but little impression upon the ruling intellects of the time, may be inferred from the fact that lord bacon, in his multifarious writings, nowhere either quotes or alludes to him.[ ] his dramatic excellence enabled him to resume possession of the stage after the restoration; but dryden tells us that in his time two of the plays of beaumont and fletcher were acted for one of shakespeare's. and so faint and limited was the perception of the poetic beauties of his dramas in the time of pope, that, in his edition of the plays, with a view of rendering to the general reader a necessary service, he printed between inverted commas those passages which he thought most worthy of notice. at this day, the french critics have abated nothing of their aversion to this darling of our nation: 'the english, with their bouffon de shakespeare,' is as familiar an expression among them as in the time of voltaire. baron grimm is the only french writer who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority to the first names of the french theatre; an advantage which the parisian critic owed to his german blood and german education. the most enlightened italians, though well acquainted with our language, are wholly incompetent to measure the proportions of shakespeare. the germans only, of foreign nations, are approaching towards a knowledge and feeling of what he is. in some respects they have acquired a superiority over the fellow countrymen of the poet: for among us it is a current, i might say, an established opinion, that shakespeare is justly praised when he is pronounced to be 'a wild irregular genius, in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties.' how long may it he before this misconception passes away, and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judgement of shakespeare in the selection of his materials, and in the manner in which he has made them, heterogeneous as they often are, constitute a unity of their own, and contribute all to one great end, is not less admirable than his imagination, his invention, and his intuitive knowledge of human nature? there is extant a small volume of miscellaneous poems, in which shakespeare expresses his own feelings in his own person. it is not difficult to conceive that the editor, george steevens, should have been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that volume, the sonnets; though in no part of the writings of this poet is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed. but, from regard to the critic's own credit, he would not have ventured to talk of an[ ] act of parliament not being strong enough to compel the perusal of those little pieces, if he had not known that the people of england were ignorant of the treasures contained in them: and if he had not, moreover, shared the too common propensity of human nature to exult over a supposed fall into the mire of a genius whom he had been compelled to regard with admiration, as an inmate of the celestial regions--'there sitting where he durst not soar.' nine years before the death of shakespeare, milton was born, and early in life he published several small poems, which, though on their first appearance they were praised by a few of the judicious, were afterwards neglected to that degree, that pope in his youth could borrow from them without risk of its being known. whether these poems are at this day justly appreciated, i will not undertake to decide nor would it imply a severe reflection upon the mass of readers to suppose the contrary, seeing that a man of the acknowledged genius of voss, the german poet, could suffer their spirit to evaporate, and could change their character, as is done in the translation made by him of the most popular of these pieces. at all events, it is certain that these poems of milton are now much read, and loudly praised, yet were they little heard of till more than years after their publication, and of the sonnets, dr. johnson, as appears from boswell's _life_ of him, was in the habit of thinking and speaking as contemptuously as steevens wrote upon those of shakespeare. about the time when the pindaric odes of cowley and his imitators, and the productions of that class of curious thinkers whom dr. johnson has strangely styled metaphysical poets, were beginning to lose something of that extravagant admiration which they had excited, the _paradise lost_ made its appearance. 'fit audience find though few,' was the petition addressed by the poet to his inspiring muse. i have said elsewhere that he gained more than he asked, this i believe to be true, but dr. johnson has fallen into a gross mistake when he attempts to prove, by the sale of the work, that milton's countrymen were '_just_ to it' upon its first appearance. thirteen hundred copies were sold in two years, an uncommon example, he asserts, of the prevalence of genius in opposition to so much recent enmity as milton's public conduct had excited. but be it remembered that, if milton's political and religious opinions, and the manner in which he announced them, had raised him many enemies, they had procured him numerous friends, who, as all personal danger was passed away at the time of publication, would be eager to procure the master-work of a man whom they revered, and whom they would be proud of praising. take, from the number of purchasers, persons of this class, and also those who wished to possess the poem as a religious work, and but few i fear would be left who sought for it on account of its poetical merits. the demand did not immediately increase; 'for,' says dr. johnson, 'many more readers' (he means persons in the habit of reading poetry) 'than were supplied at first the nation did not afford.' how careless must a writer be who can make this assertion in the face of so many existing title-pages to belie it! turning to my own shelves, i find the folio of cowley, seventh edition, . a book near it is flatman's poems, fourth edition, , waller, fifth edition, same date. the poems of norris of bemerton not long after went, i believe, through nine editions. what further demand there might be for these works i do not know; but i well remember that, twenty-five years ago, the booksellers' stalls in london swarmed with the folios of cowley. this is not mentioned in disparagement of that able writer and amiable man; but merely to show that, if milton's works were not more read, it was not because readers did not exist at the time. the early editions of the _paradise lost_ were printed in a shape which allowed them to be sold at a low price, yet only three thousand copies of the work were sold in eleven years; and the nation, says dr. johnson, had been satisfied from to , that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of shakespeare; which probably did not together make one thousand copies; facts adduced by the critic to prove the 'paucity of readers,'--there were readers in multitudes; but their money went for other purposes, as their admiration was fixed elsewhere. we are authorized, then, to affirm that the reception of the _paradise lost_, and the slow progress of its fame, are proofs as striking as can be desired that the positions which i am attempting to establish are not erroneous.[ ]--how amusing to shape to one's self such a critique as a wit of charles's days, or a lord of the miscellanies or trading journalist of king william's time, would have brought forth, if he had set his faculties industriously to work upon this poem, everywhere impregnated with _original_ excellence. so strange indeed are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principles[ ] in human nature for this art to rest upon. i have been honoured by being permitted to peruse in ms. a tract composed between the period of the revolution and the close of that century. it is the work of an english peer of high accomplishments, its object to form the character and direct the studies of his son. perhaps nowhere does a more beautiful treatise of the kind exist. the good sense and wisdom of the thoughts, the delicacy of the feelings, and the charm of the style, are, throughout, equally conspicuous. yet the author, selecting among the poets of his own country those whom he deems most worthy of his son's perusal, particularizes only lord rochester, sir john denham, and cowley. writing about the same time, shaftesbury, an author at present unjustly depreciated, describes the english muses as only yet lisping in their cradles. the arts by which pope, soon afterwards, contrived to procure to himself a more general and a higher reputation than perhaps any english poet ever attained during his lifetime, are known to the judicious. and as well known is it to them, that the undue exertion of those arts is the cause why pope has for some time held a rank in literature, to which, if he had not been seduced by an over-love of immediate popularity, and had confided more in his native genius, he never could have descended. he bewitched the nation by his melody, and dazzled it by his polished style and was himself blinded by his own success. having wandered from humanity in his eclogues with boyish inexperience, the praise, which these compositions obtained, tempted him into a belief that nature was not to be trusted, at least in pastoral poetry. to prove this by example, he put his friend gay upon writing those eclogues which their author intended to be burlesque. the instigator of the work, and his admirers, could perceive in them nothing but what was ridiculous. nevertheless, though these poems contain some detestable passages, the effect, as dr johnson well observes, 'of reality and truth became conspicuous even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded.' the pastorals, ludicrous to such as prided themselves upon their refinement, in spite of those disgusting passages, 'became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of rural manners and occupations.' something less than sixty years after the publication of the _paradise lost_ appeared thomson's _winter_, which was speedily followed by his other seasons. it is a work of inspiration, much of it is written from himself, and nobly from himself. how was it received? 'it was no sooner read,' says one of his contemporary biographers, 'than universally admired those only excepted who had not been used to feel, or to look for anything in poetry, beyond a _point_ of satirical or epigrammatic wit, a smart _antithesis_ richly trimmed with rime, or the softness of an _elegiac_ complaint. to such his manly classical spirit could not readily commend itself, till, after a more attentive perusal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either acquired or affected a truer taste. a few others stood aloof, merely because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical creed, and resigned themselves to an absolute despair of ever seeing anything new and original. these were somewhat mortified to find their notions disturbed by the appearance of a poet, who seemed to owe nothing but to nature and his own genius. but, in a short time, the applause became unanimous, every one wondering how so many pictures, and pictures so familiar, should have moved them but faintly to what they felt in his descriptions. his digressions too, the overflowings of a tender benevolent heart, charmed the reader no less, leaving him in doubt, whether he should more admire the poet or love the man.' this case appears to bear strongly against us--but we must distinguish between wonder and legitimate admiration. the subject of the work is the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year: and, by undertaking to write in verse, thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a poet. now, it is remarkable that, excepting the nocturnal _reverie of lady winchelsea_, and a passage or two in the _windsor forest_ of pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of the _paradise lost_ and the _seasons_ does not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet has been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination. to what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which dryden has executed a description of night in one of his tragedies, and pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the _iliad_. a blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth. dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless;[ ] those of pope, though he had homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory. the verses of dryden, once highly celebrated, are forgotten; those of pope still retain their hold upon public estimation,--nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers. strange to think of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity!--if these two distinguished writers could habitually think that the visible universe was of so little consequence to a poet, that it was scarcely necessary for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be assured that those passages of the elder poets which faithfully and poetically describe the phenomena of nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation, and that there was little accurate attention paid to those appearances. wonder is the natural product of ignorance; and as the soil was _in such good condition_ at the time of the publication of the _seasons_ the crop was doubtless abundant. neither individuals nor nations become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment. thomson was an inspired poet, but he could not work miracles; in cases where the art of seeing had in some degree been learned, the teacher would further the proficiency of his pupils, but he could do little _more_; though so far does vanity assist men in acts of self-deception, that many would often fancy they recognized a likeness when they knew nothing of the original. having shown that much of what his biographer deemed genuine admiration must in fact have been blind wonderment--how is the rest to be accounted for?--thomson was fortunate in the very title of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared sympathies of every one: in the next place, notwithstanding his high powers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ornaments are exactly of that kind which would be most likely to strike the undiscerning. he likewise abounds with sentimental commonplaces, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. in any well-used copy of the _seasons_ the book generally opens of itself with the rhapsody on love, or with one of the stories (perhaps 'damon and musidora'); these also are prominent in our collections of extracts, and are the parts of his work which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice. pope, repaying praises which he had received, and wishing to extol him to the highest, only styles him 'an elegant and philosophical poet'; nor are we able to collect any unquestionable proofs that the true characteristics of thomson's genius as an imaginative poet[ ] were perceived, till the elder warton, almost forty years after the publication of the _seasons_, pointed them out by a note in his essay on the _life and writings of pope_. in the _castle of indolence_ (of which gray speaks so coldly) these characteristics were almost as conspicuously displayed, and in verse more harmonious and diction more pure. yet that fine poem was neglected on its appearance, and is at this day the delight only of a few! when thomson died, collins breathed forth his regrets in an elegiac poem, in which he pronounces a poetical curse upon _him_ who should regard with insensibility the place where the poet's remains were deposited. the poems of the mourner himself have now passed through innumerable editions, and are universally known, but if, when collins died, the same kind of imprecation had been pronounced by a surviving admirer, small is the number whom it would not have comprehended. the notice which his poems attained during his lifetime was so small, and of course the sale so insignificant, that not long before his death he deemed it right to repay to the bookseller the sum which he had advanced for them and threw the edition into the fire. next in importance to the _seasons_ of thomson, though a considerable distance from that work in order of time, come the _reliques of ancient english poetry_, collected, new-modelled, and in many instances (if such a contradiction in terms may be used) composed by the editor, dr percy. this work did not steal silently into the world, as is evident from the number of legendary tales, that appeared not long after its publication, and had been modelled, as the authors persuaded themselves, after the old ballad. the compilation was, however ill suited to the then existing taste of city society, and dr johnson, 'mid the little senate to which he gave laws, was not sparing in his exertions to make it an object of contempt. the critic triumphed, the legendary imitators were deservedly disregarded, and as undeservedly, their ill imitated models sank in this country into temporary neglect, while burger and other able writers of germany, were translating or imitating these reliques, and composing, with the aid of inspiration thence derived, poems which are the delight of the german nation. dr percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his labours from the ignorance and insensibility of the persons with whom he lived, that, though while he was writing under a mask he had not wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos (as is evinced by the exquisite ballad of _sir cauline_ and by many other pieces), yet when he appeared in his own person and character as a poetical writer, he adopted, as in the tale of the _hermit of warkworth_, a diction scarcely in any one of its features distinguishable from the vague, the glossy, and unfeeling language of his day. i mention this remarkable fact[ ] with regret, esteeming the genius of dr. percy in this kind of writing superior to that of any other man by whom in modern times it has been cultivated. that even burger (to whom klopstock gave, in my hearing, a commendation which he denied to goethe and schiller, pronouncing him to be a genuine poet, and one of the few among the germans whose works would last) had not the fine sensibility of percy, might be shown from many passages, in which he has deserted his original only to go astray. for example, now daye was gone, and night was come, and all were fast asleepe, all save the lady emeline, who sate in her bowre to weepe: and soone she heard her true love's voice low whispering at the walle, awake, awake, my dear ladye, 'tis i thy true love call which is thus tricked out and dilated; als nun die nacht gebirg' und thal vermummt in rabenschatten, und hochburgs lampen uberall schon ausgeflimmert hatten, und alles tief entschlafen war; doch nur das fraulein immerdar, voll fieberangst, noch wachte, und seinen ritter dachte: da horch! ein susser liebeston kam leis, empor geflogen. 'ho, trudchen, ho! da bin ich schon! frisch auf! dich angezogen!' but from humble ballads we must ascend to heroics. all hail, macpherson! hail to thee, sire of ossian! the phantom was begotten by the snug embrace of an impudent highlander upon a cloud of tradition--it travelled southward, where it was greeted with acclamation, and the thin consistence took its course through europe, upon the breath of popular applause. the editor of the _reliques_ had indirectly preferred a claim to the praise of invention, by not concealing that his supplementary labours were considerable! how selfish his conduct, contrasted with that of the disinterested gael, who, like lear, gives his kingdom away, and is content to become a pensioner upon his own issue for a beggarly pittance!--open this far-famed book!--i have done so at random, and the beginning of the _epic poem temora_, in eight books, presents itself. 'the blue waves of ullin roll in light. the green hills are covered with day. trees shake their dusky heads in the breeze. grey torrents pour their noisy streams. two green hills with aged oaks surround a narrow plain. the blue course of a stream is there. on its banks stood cairbar of atha. his spear supports the king; the red eyes of his fear are sad. cormac rises on his soul with all his ghastly wounds.' precious memorandums from the pocket-book of the blind ossian! if it be unbecoming, as i acknowledge that for the most part it is, to speak disrespectfully of works that have enjoyed for a length of time a widely-spread reputation, without at the same time producing irrefragable proofs of their unworthiness, let me be forgiven upon this occasion.--having had the good fortune to be born and reared in a mountainous country, from my very childhood i have felt the falsehood that pervades the volumes imposed upon the world under the name of ossian. from what i saw with my own eyes, i knew that the imagery was spurious. in nature everything is distinct, yet nothing defined into absolute independent singleness. in macpherson's work it is exactly the reverse; everything (that is not stolen) is in this manner defined, insulated, dislocated, deadened,--yet nothing distinct. it will always be so when words are substituted for things. to say that the characters never could exist, that the manners are impossible, and that a dream has more substance than the whole state of society, as there depicted, is doing nothing more than pronouncing a censure which macpherson defied; when, with the steeps of morven before his eyes, he could talk so familiarly of his car-borne heroes;--of morven, which, if one may judge from its appearance at the distance of a few miles, contains scarcely an acre of ground sufficiently accommodating for a sledge to be trailed along its surface.--mr. malcolm laing has ably shown that the diction of this pretended translation is a motley assemblage from all quarters; but he is so fond of making out parallel passages as to call poor macpherson to account for his '_ands_' and his '_buts_!' and he has weakened his argument by conducting it as if he thought that every striking resemblance was a _conscious_ plagiarism. it is enough that the coincidences are too remarkable for its being probable or possible that they could arise in different minds without communication between them. now as the translators of the bible, and shakespeare, milton, and pope, could not be indebted to macpherson, it follows that he must have owed his fine feathers to them; unless we are prepared gravely to assert, with madame de stael, that many of the characteristic beauties of our most celebrated english poets are derived from the ancient fingallian; in which case the modern translator would have been but giving back to ossian his own.--it is consistent that lucien buonaparte, who could censure milton for having surrounded satan in the infernal regions with courtly and regal splendour, should pronounce the modern ossian to be the glory of scotland;--a country that has produced a dunbar, a buchanan, a thomson, and a burns! these opinions are of ill omen for the epic ambition of him who has given them to the world. yet, much as those pretended treasures of antiquity have been admired, they have been wholly uninfluential upon the literature of the country. no succeeding writer appears to have caught from them a ray of inspiration; no author, in the least distinguished, has ventured formally to imitate them--except the boy, chatterton, on their first appearance. he had perceived, from the successful trials which he himself had made in literary forgery, how few critics were able to distinguish between a real ancient medal and a counterfeit of modern manufacture; and he set himself to the work of filling a magazine with _saxon poems_,--counterparts of those of ossian, as like his as one of his misty stars is to another. this incapability to amalgamate with the literature of the island is, in my estimation, a decisive proof that the book is essentially unnatural; nor should i require any other to demonstrate it to be a forgery, audacious as worthless.--contrast, in this respect, the effect of macpherson's publication with the _reliques_ of percy, so unassuming, so modest in their pretensions!--i have already stated how much germany is indebted to this latter work; and for our own country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. i do not think that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the _reliques_; i know that it is so with my friends; and, for myself, i am happy in this occasion to make a public avowal of my own. dr. johnson, more fortunate in his contempt of the labours of macpherson than those of his modest friend, was solicited not long after to furnish prefaces biographical and critical for the works of some of the most eminent english poets. the booksellers took upon themselves to make the collection; they referred probably to the most popular miscellanies, and, unquestionably, to their books of accounts; and decided upon the claim of authors to be admitted into a body of the most eminent, from the familiarity of their names with the readers of that day, and by the profits, which, from the sale of his works, each had brought and was bringing to the trade. the editor was allowed a limited exercise of discretion, and the authors whom he recommended are scarcely to be mentioned without a smile. we open the volume of prefatory lives, and to our astonishment the _first_ name we find is that of cowley!--what is become of the morning-star of english poetry? where is the bright elizabethan constellation? or, if names be more acceptable than images, where is the ever to-be-honoured chaucer? where is spenser? where sidney? and, lastly, where he, whose rights as a poet, contra-distinguished from those which he is universally allowed to possess as a dramatist, we have vindicated,--where shakespeare?--these, and a multitude of others not unworthy to be placed near them, their contemporaries and successors, we have _not_. but in their stead, we have (could better be expected when precedence was to be settled by an abstract of reputation at any given period made, as in this case before us?) roscommon, and stepney, and phillips, and walsh, and smith, and duke, and king, and spratt--halifax, granville, sheffield, congreve, broome, and other reputed magnates--metrical writers utterly worthless and useless, except for occasions like the present, when their productions are referred to as evidence what a small quantity of brain is necessary to procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the aspirant will accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his day. as i do not mean to bring down this retrospect to our own times, it may with propriety be closed at the era of this distinguished event. from the literature of other ages and countries, proofs equally cogent might have been adduced, that the opinions announced in the former part of this essay are founded upon truth. it was not an agreeable office, nor a prudent undertaking, to declare them; but their importance seemed to render it a duty. it may still be asked, where lies the particular relation of what has been said to these volumes?--the question will be easily answered by the discerning reader who is old enough to remember the taste that prevailed when some of these poems were first published, seventeen years ago; who has also observed to what degree the poetry of this island has since that period been coloured by them; and who is further aware of the unremitting hostility with which, upon some principle or other, they have each and all been opposed. a sketch of my own notion of the constitution of fame has been given; and, as far as concerns myself, i have cause to be satisfied. the love, the admiration, the indifference, the slight, the aversion, and even the contempt, with which these poems have been received, knowing, as i do, the source within my own mind, from which they have proceeded, and the labour and pains, which, when labour and pains appeared needful, have been bestowed upon them, must all, if i think consistently, be received as pledges and tokens, bearing the same general impression, though widely different in value;--they are all proofs that for the present time i have not laboured in vain; and afford assurances, more or less authentic, that the products of my industry will endure. if there be one conclusion more forcibly pressed upon us than another by the review which has been given of the fortunes and fate of poetical works, it is this--that every author, as far as he is great and at the same time _original_, has had the task of _creating_ the taste by which he is to be enjoyed: so has it been, so will it continue to be. this remark was long since made to me by the philosophical friend for the separation of whose poems from my own i have previously expressed my regret. the predecessors of an original genius of a high order will have smoothed the way for all that he has in common with them;--and much he will have in common; but, for what is peculiarly his own, he will be called upon to clear and often to shape his own road:--he will be in the condition of hannibal among the alps. and where lies the real difficulty of creating that taste by which a truly original poet is to be relished? is it in breaking the bonds of custom, in overcoming the prejudices of false refinement, and displacing the aversions of inexperience? or, if he labour for an object which here and elsewhere i have proposed to myself, does it consist in divesting the reader of the pride that induces him to dwell upon those points wherein men differ from each other, to the exclusion of those in which all men are alike, or the same; and in making him ashamed of the vanity that renders him insensible of the appropriate excellence which civil arrangements, less unjust than might appear, and nature illimitable in her bounty, had conferred on men who may stand below him in the scale of society? finally, does it lie in establishing that dominion over the spirits of readers by which they are to be humbled and humanized, in order that they may be purified and exalted? if these ends are to be attained by the mere communication of _knowledge_, it does _not_ lie here.--taste, i would remind the reader, like imagination, is a word which has been forced to extend its services far beyond the point to which philosophy would have confined them. it is a metaphor, taken from a _passive_ sense of the human body, and transferred to things which are in their essence _not_ passive,--to intellectual _acts_ and _operations_. the word, imagination, has been overstrained, from impulses honourable to mankind, to meet the demands of the faculty which is perhaps the noblest of our nature. in the instance of taste, the process has been reversed; and from the prevalence of dispositions at once injurious and discreditable, being no other than that selfishness which is the child of apathy,--which, as nations decline in productive and creative power, makes them value themselves upon a presumed refinement of judging. poverty of language is the primary cause of the use which we make of the word, imagination; but the word, taste, has been stretched to the sense which it bears in modern europe by habits of self-conceit, inducing that inversion in the order of things whereby a passive faculty is made paramount among the faculties conversant with the fine arts. proportion and congruity, the requisite knowledge being supposed, are subjects upon which taste may be trusted; it is competent to this office--for in its intercourse with these the mind is _passive_, and is affected painfully or pleasurably as by an instinct. but the profound and the exquisite in feeling, the lofty and universal in thought and imagination; or, in ordinary language, the pathetic and the sublime;--are neither of them, accurately speaking, objects of a faculty which could ever without a sinking in the spirit of nations have been designated by the metaphor _taste_. and why? because without the exertion of a co-operating _power_ in the mind of the reader, there can be no adequate sympathy with either of these emotions: without this auxiliary impulse, elevated or profound passion cannot exist. passion, it must be observed, is derived from a word which signifies _suffering_; but the connexion which suffering has with effort, with exertion, and _action_, is immediate and inseparable. how strikingly is this property of human nature exhibited by the fact that, in popular language, to be in a passion is to be angry! but, anger in hasty _words_ or _blows_ itself discharges on its foes. to be moved, then, by a passion is to be excited, often to external, and always to internal, effort; whether for the continuance and strengthening of the passion, or for its suppression, accordingly as the course which it takes may be painful or pleasurable. if the latter, the soul must contribute to its support, or it never becomes vivid,--and soon languishes and dies. and this brings us to the point. if every great poet with whose writings men are familiar, in the highest exercise of his genius, before he can be thoroughly enjoyed, has to call forth and to communicate _power_, this service, in a still greater degree, falls upon an original writer, at his first appearance in the world.--of genius the only proof is, the act of doing well what is worthy to be done, and what was never done before: of genius, in the fine arts, the only infallible sign is the widening the sphere of human sensibility, for the delight, honour, and benefit of human nature. genius is the introduction of a new element into the intellectual universe: or, if that be not allowed, it is the application of powers to objects on which they had not before been exercised, or the employment of them in such a manner as to produce effects hitherto unknown. what is all this but an advance, or a conquest, made by the soul of the poet? is it to be supposed that the reader can make progress of this kind, like an indian prince or general--stretched on his palanquin, and borne by his slaves? no; he is invigorated and inspirited by his leader, in order that he may exert himself; for he cannot proceed in quiescence, he cannot be carried like a dead weight. therefore to create taste is to call forth and bestow power, of which knowledge is the effect; and _there_ lies the true difficulty. as the pathetic participates of an _animal_ sensation, it might seem--that, if the springs of this emotion were genuine, all men, possessed of competent knowledge of the facts and circumstances, would be instantaneously affected. and, doubtless, in the works of every true poet will be found passages of that species of excellence which is proved by effects immediate and universal. but there are emotions of the pathetic that are simple and direct, and others--that are complex and revolutionary; some--to which the heart yields with gentleness; others--against which it struggles with pride; these varieties are infinite as the combinations of circumstance and the constitutions of character. remember, also, that the medium through which, in poetry, the heart is to be affected, is language; a thing subject to endless fluctuations and arbitrary associations. the genius of the poet melts these down for his purpose; but they retain their shape and quality to him who is not capable of exerting, within his own mind, a corresponding energy. there is also a meditative, as well as a human, pathos; an enthusiastic, as well as an ordinary, sorrow; a sadness that has its seat in the depths of reason, to which the mind cannot sink gently of itself--but to which it must descend by treading the steps of thought. and for the sublime,--if we consider what are the cares that occupy the passing day, and how remote is the practice and the course of life from the sources of sublimity, in the soul of man, can it be wondered that there is little existing preparation for a poet charged with a new mission to extend its kingdom, and to augment and spread its enjoyments? away, then, with the senseless iteration of the word _popular_, applied to new works in poetry, as if there were no test of excellence in this first of the fine arts but that all men should run after its productions, as if urged by an appetite, or constrained by a spell!--the qualities of writing best fitted for eager reception are either such as startle the world into attention by their audacity and extravagance; or they are chiefly of a superficial kind, lying upon the surfaces of manners; or arising out of a selection and arrangement of incidents, by which the mind is kept upon the stretch of curiosity, and the fancy amused without the trouble of thought. but in everything which is to send the soul into herself, to be admonished of her weakness, or to be made conscious of her power;--wherever life and nature are described as operated upon by the creative or abstracting virtue of the imagination; wherever the instinctive wisdom of antiquity and her heroic passions uniting, in the heart of the poet, with the meditative wisdom of later ages, have produced that accord of sublimated humanity which is at once a history of the remote past and a prophetic enunciation of the remotest future, _there_, the poet must reconcile himself for a season to few and scattered hearers.--grand thoughts (and shakespeare must often have sighed over this truth), as they are most naturally and most fitly conceived in solitude, so can they not be brought forth in the midst of plaudits without some violation of their sanctity. go to a silent exhibition of the productions of the sister art, and be convinced that the qualities which dazzle at first sight, and kindle the admiration of the multitude, are essentially different from those by which permanent influence is secured. let us not shrink from following up these principles as far as they will carry us, and conclude with observing--that there never has been a period, and perhaps never will be, in which vicious poetry, of some kind or other, has not excited more zealous admiration, and been far more generally read, than good; but this advantage attends the good, that the _individual_, as well as the species, survives from age to age; whereas, of the depraved, though the species be immortal, the individual quickly _perishes_; the object of present admiration vanishes, being supplanted by some other as easily produced; which, though no better, brings with it at least the irritation of novelty,--with adaptation, more or less skilful, to the changing humours of the majority of those who are most at leisure to regard poetical works when they first solicit their attention. is it the result of the whole, that, in the opinion of the writer, the judgement of the people is not to be respected? the thought is most injurious; and, could the charge be brought against him, he would repel it with indignation. the people have already been justified, and their eulogium pronounced by implication, when it was said, above--that, of _good_ poetry, the _individual_, as well as the species, _survives_. and how does it survive but through the people? what preserves it but their intellect and their wisdom? --past and future, are the wings on whose support, harmoniously conjoined, moves the great spirit of human knowledge-- _ms._ the voice that issues from this spirit is that vox populi which the deity inspires. foolish must he be who can mistake for this a local acclamation, or a transitory out-cry--transitory though it be for years, local though from a nation. still more lamentable is his error who can believe that there is anything of divine infallibility in the clamour of that small though loud portion of the community, ever governed by factitious influence, which, under the name of the public, passes itself, upon the unthinking, for the people. towards the public, the writer hopes that he feels as much deference as it is entitled to: but to the people, philosophically characterized, and to the embodied spirit of their knowledge, so far as it exists and moves, at the present, faithfully supported by its two wings, the past and the future, his devout respect, his reverence, is due. he offers it willingly and readily; and, this done, takes leave of his readers, by assuring them--that, if he were not persuaded that the contents of these volumes, and the work to which they are subsidiary, evince something of the 'vision and the faculty divine'; and that, both in words and things, they will operate in their degree, to extend the domain of sensibility for the delight, the honour, and the benefit of human nature, nothwithstanding the many happy hours which he has employed in their composition, and the manifold comforts and enjoyments they have procured to him, he would not, if a wish could do it, save them from immediate destruction;--from becoming at this moment, to the world, as a thing that had never been. [footnote : the learned hakewill (a third edition of whose book bears date ), writing to refute the error 'touching nature's perpetual and universal decay,' cites triumphantly the names of ariosto, tasso, bartas, and spenser, as instances that poetic genius had not degenerated; but be makes no mention of shakespeare.] [footnote : this flippant insensibility was publicly reprehended by mr. coleridge in a course of lectures upon poetry given by him at the royal institution. for the various merits of thought and language in shakespeare's _sonnets_, see nos. , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , and many others.] [footnote : hughes is express upon this subject in his dedication of spenser's works to lord somers, he writes thus 'it was your lordship's encouraging a beautiful edition of _paradise lost_ that first brought that incomparable poem to be generally known and esteemed.'] [footnote : this opinion seems actually to have been entertained by adam smith, the worst critic, david hume not excepted, that scotland, a soil to which this sort of weed seems natural, has produced.] [footnote : cortes, _alone in a night-gown_. all things are hush'd as nature's self lay dead; the mountains seem to nod their drowsy head. the little birds in dreams their songs repeat, and sleeping flowers beneath the night-dew sweat: even lust and envy sleep; yet love denies rest to my soul, and slumber to my eyes. dryden's _indian emperor_.] [footnote : since these observations upon thomson were written, i have perused the second edition of his _seasons_, and find that even _that_ does not contain the most striking passages which warton points out for admiration, these, with other improvements, throughout the whole work, must have been added at a later period.] [footnote : shenstone, in his _schoolmistress_, gives a still more remarkable instance of this timidity on its first appearance (see d'israeli's d series of the _curiosities of literature_) the poem was accompanied with an absurd prose commentary, showing, as indeed some incongruous expressions in the text imply, that the whole was intended for burlesque. in subsequent editions, the commentary was dropped, and the people have since continued to read in seriousness, doing for the author what he had not courage openly to venture upon for himself.] preface to cromwell by victor hugo. ( )[a] the drama contained in the following pages has nothing to commend it to the attention or the good will of the public. it has not, to attract the interest of political disputants, the advantage of the veto of the official censorship, nor even, to win for it at the outset the literary sympathy of men of taste, the honour of having been formally rejected by an infallible reading committee. it presents itself, therefore, to the public gaze, naked and friendless, like the infirm man of the gospel--_solus, pauper, nudus_. not without some hesitation, moreover, did the author determine to burden his drama with a preface. such things are usually of very little interest to the reader. he inquires concerning the talent of a writer rather than concerning his point of view; and in determining whether a work is good or bad, it matters little to him upon what ideas it is based, or in what sort of mind it germinated. one seldom inspects the cellars of a house after visiting its salons, and when one eats the fruit of a tree, one cares but little about its root. on the other hand, notes and prefaces are sometimes a convenient method of adding to the weight of a book, and of magnifying, in appearance at least, the importance of a work; as a matter of tactics this is not dissimilar to that of the general who, to make his battle-front more imposing, puts everything, even his baggage-trains, in the line. and then, while critics fall foul of the preface and scholars of the notes, it may happen that the work itself will escape them, passing uninjured between their cross-fires, as an army extricates itself from a dangerous position between two skirmishes of outposts and rear-guards. these reasons, weighty as they may seem, are not those which influenced the author. this volume did not need to be _inflated_, it was already too stout by far. furthermore, and the author does not know why it is so, his prefaces, frank and ingenuous as they are, have always served rather to compromise him with the critics than to shield him. far from being staunch and trusty bucklers, they have played him a trick like that played in a battle by an unusual and conspicuous uniform, which, calling attention to the soldier who wears it, attracts all the blows and is proof against none. considerations of an altogether different sort acted upon the author. it seemed to him that, although in fact, one seldom inspects the cellars of a building for pleasure, one is not sorry sometimes to examine its foundations. he will, therefore, give himself over once more, with a preface, to the wrath of the _feuilletonists. che sara, sara_. he has never given much thought to the fortune of his works, and he is but little appalled by dread of the literary _what will people say_. in the discussion now raging, in which the theatre and the schools, the public and the academies, are at daggers drawn, one will hear, perhaps, not without some interest, the voice of a solitary _apprentice_ of nature and truth, who has withdrawn betimes from the literary world, for pure love of letters, and who offers good faith in default of good taste, sincere conviction in default of talent, study in default of learning. he will confine himself, however, to general considerations concerning the art, without the slightest attempt to smooth the path of his own work, without pretending to write an indictment or a plea, against or for any person whomsoever. an attack upon or defence of his book is of less importance to him than to anybody else. nor is personal controversy agreeable to him. it is always a pitiful spectacle to see two hostile self-esteems crossing swords. he protests, therefore, beforehand against every interpretation of his ideas, every personal application of his words, saying with the spanish fablist:-- quien haga aplicaciones con su pan se lo coma. in truth, several of the leading champions of "sound literary doctrines" have done him the honour to throw the gauntlet to him, even in his profound obscurity--to him, a simple, imperceptible spectator of this curious contest. he will not have the presumption to pick it up. in the following pages will be found the observations with which he might oppose them--there will be found his sling and his stone; but others, if they choose, may hurl them at the head of the classical goliaths. this said, let us pass on. let us set out from a fact. the same type of civilization, or to use a more exact, although more extended expression, the same society, has not always inhabited the earth. the human race as a whole has grown, has developed, has matured, like one of ourselves. it was once a child, it was once a man; we are now looking on at its impressive old age. before the epoch which modern society has dubbed "ancient," there was another epoch which the ancients called "fabulous," but which it would be more accurate to call "primitive." behold then three great successive orders of things in civilization, from its origin down to our days. now, as poetry is always superposed upon society, we propose to try to demonstrate, from the form of its society, what the character of the poetry must have been in those three great ages of the world--primitive times, ancient times, modern times. in primitive times, when man awakes in a world that is newly created, poetry awakes with him. in the face of the marvellous things that dazzle and intoxicate him, his first speech is a hymn simply. he is still so close to god that all his meditations are ecstatic, all his dreams are visions. his bosom swells, he sings as he breathes. his lyre has but three strings--god, the soul, creation; but this threefold mystery envelopes everything, this threefold idea embraces everything. the earth is still almost deserted. there are families, but no nations; patriarchs, but no kings. each race exists at its own pleasure; no property, no laws, no contentions, no wars. everything belongs to each and to all. society is a community. man is restrained in nought. he leads that nomadic pastoral life with which all civilizations begin, and which is so well adapted to solitary contemplation, to fanciful reverie. he follows every suggestion, he goes hither and thither, at random. his thought, like his life, resembles a cloud that changes its shape and its direction according to the wind that drives it. such is the first man, such is the first poet. he is young, he is cynical. prayer is his sole religion, the ode is his only form of poetry. this ode, this poem of primitive times, is genesis. by slow degrees, however, this youth of the world passes away. all the spheres progress; the family becomes a tribe, the tribe becomes a nation. each of these groups of men camps about a common centre, and kingdoms appear. the social instinct succeeds the nomadic instinct. the camp gives place to the city, the tent to the palace, the ark to the temple. the chiefs of these nascent states are still shepherds, it is true, but shepherds of nations; the pastoral staff has already assumed the shape of a sceptre. everything tends to become stationary and fixed. religion takes on a definite shape; prayer is governed by rites; dogma sets bounds to worship. thus the priest and king share the paternity of the people; thus theocratic society succeeds the patriarchal community. meanwhile the nations are beginning to be packed too closely on the earth's surface. they annoy and jostle one another; hence the clash of empires--war. they overflow upon another; hence, the migrations of nations--voyages. poetry reflects these momentous events; from ideas it proceeds to things. it sings of ages, of nations, of empires. it becomes epic, it gives birth to homer. homer, in truth, dominates the society of ancient times. in that society, all is simple, all is epic. poetry is religion, religion is law. the virginity of the earlier age is succeeded by the chastity of the later. a sort of solemn gravity is everywhere noticeable, in private manners no less than in public. the nations have retained nothing of the wandering life of the earlier time, save respect for the stranger and the traveller. the family has a fatherland; everything is connected therewith; it has the cult of the house and the cult of the tomb. we say again, such a civilization can find its one expression only in the epic. the epic will assume diverse forms, but will never lose its specific character. pindar is more priestlike than patriarchal, more epic than lyrical. if the chroniclers, the necessary accompaniments of this second age of the world, set about collecting traditions and begin to reckon by centuries, they labour to no purpose--chronology cannot expel poesy; history remains an epic. herodotus is a homer. but it is in the ancient tragedy, above all, that the epic breaks out at every turn. it mounts the greek stage without losing aught, so to speak, of its immeasurable, gigantic proportions. its characters are still heroes, demigods, gods; its themes are visions, oracles, fatality; its scenes are battles, funeral rites, catalogues. that which the rhapsodists formerly sang, the actors declaim--that is the whole difference. there is something more. when the whole plot, the whole spectacle of the epic poem have passed to the stage, the chorus takes all that remains. the chorus annotates the tragedy, encourages the heroes, gives descriptions, summons and expels the daylight, rejoices, laments, sometimes furnishes the scenery, explains the moral bearing of the subject, flatters the listening assemblage. now, what is the chorus, this anomalous character standing between the spectacle and the spectator, if it be not the poet completing his epic? the theatre of the ancients is, like their dramas, huge, pontifical, epic. it is capable of holding thirty thousand spectators; the plays are given in the open air, in bright sunlight; the performances last all day. the actors disguise their voices, wear masks, increase their stature; they make themselves gigantic, like their roles. the stage is immense. it may represent at the same moment both the interior and the exterior of a temple, a palace, a camp, a city. upon it, vast spectacles are displayed. there is--we cite only from memory--prometheus on his mountain; there is antigone, at the top of a tower, seeking her brother polynices in the hostile army (_the phoenicians_); there is evadne hurling herself from a cliff into the flames where the body of capaneus is burning (_the suppliants_ of euripides); there is a ship sailing into port and landing fifty princesses with their retinues (_the suppliants_ of Æschylus). architecture, poetry, everything assumes a monumental character. in all antiquity there is nothing more solemn, more majestic. its history and its religion are mingled on its stage. its first actors are priests; its scenic performances are religious ceremonies, national festivals. one last observation, which completes our demonstration of the epic character of this epoch: in the subjects which it treats, no less than in the forms it adopts, tragedy simply re-echoes the epic. all the ancient tragic authors derive their plots from homer. the same fabulous exploits, the same catastrophes, the same heroes. one and all drink from the homeric stream. the iliad and odyssey are always in evidence. like achilles dragging hector at his chariot-wheel, the greek tragedy circles about troy. but the age of the epic draws near its end. like the society that it represents, this form of poetry wears itself out revolving upon itself. rome reproduces greece, virgil copies homer, and, as if to make a becoming end, epic poetry expires in the last parturition. it was time. another era is about to begin, for the world and for poetry. a spiritual religion, supplanting the material and external paganism, makes its way to the heart of the ancient society, kills it, and deposits, in that corpse of a decrepit civilization, the germ of modern civilization. this religion as complete, because it is true; between its dogma and its cult, it embraces a deep-rooted moral. arid first of all, as a fundamental truth, it teaches man that he has two lives to live, one ephemeral, the other immortal; one on earth, the other in heaven. it shows him that he, like his destiny, is twofold: that there is in him an animal and an intellect, a body and a soul; in a word, that he is the point of intersection, the common link of the two chains of beings which embrace all creation--of the chain of material beings and the chain of incorporeal beings; the first starting from the rock to arrive at man, the second starting from man to end at god. a portion of these truths had perhaps been suspected by certain wise men of ancient times, but their full, broad, luminous revelation dates from the gospels. the pagan schools walked in darkness, feeling their way, clinging to falsehoods as well as to truths in their haphazard journeying. some of their philosophers occasionally cast upon certain subjects feeble gleams which illuminated but one side and made the darkness of the other side more profound. hence all the phantoms created by ancient philosophy. none but divine wisdom was capable of substituting an even and all-embracing light for all those flickering rays of human wisdom. pythagoras, epicurus, socrates, plato, are torches: christ is the glorious light of day. nothing could be more material, indeed, than the ancient theogony. far from proposing, as christianity does, to separate the spirit from the body, it ascribes form and features to everything, even to impalpable essences, even to the intelligence. in it everything is visible, tangible, fleshly. its gods need a cloud to conceal themselves from men's eyes. they eat, drink, and sleep. they are wounded and their blood flows; they are maimed, and lo! they limp forever after. that religion has gods and halves of gods. its thunderbolts are forged on an anvil, and among other things three rays of twisted rain (_tres imbris torti radios_) enter into their composition. its jupiter suspends the world by a golden chain; its sun rides in a four-horse chariot; its hell is a precipice the brink of which is marked on the globe; its heaven is a mountain. thus paganism, which moulded all creations from the same clay, minimizes divinity and magnifies man. homer's heroes are of almost the same stature as his gods. ajax defies jupiter, achilles is the peer of mars. christianity on the contrary, as we have seen, draws a broad line of division between spirit and matter. it places an abyss between the soul and the body, an abyss between man and god. at this point--to omit nothing from the sketch upon which we have ventured--we will call attention to the fact that, with christianity, and by its means, there entered into the mind of the nations a new sentiment, unknown to the ancients and marvellously developed among moderns, a sentiment which is more than gravity and less than sadness--melancholy. in truth, might not the heart of man, hitherto deadened by religions purely hierarchical and sacerdotal, awake and feel springing to life within it some unexpected faculty, under the breath of a religion that is human because it is divine, a religion which makes of the poor man's prayer, the rich man's wealth, a religion of equality, liberty and charity? might it not see all things in a new light, since the gospel had shown it the soul through the senses, eternity behind life? moreover, at that very moment the world was undergoing so complete a revolution that it was impossible that there should not be a revolution in men's minds. hitherto the catastrophes of empires had rarely reached the hearts of the people; it was kings who fell, majesties that vanished, nothing more. the lightning struck only in the upper regions, and, as we have already pointed out, events seemed to succeed one another with all the solemnity of the epic. in the ancient society, the individual occupied so lowly a place that, to strike him, adversity must needs descend to his family. so that he knew little of misfortune outside of domestic sorrows. it was an almost unheard of thing that the general disasters of the state should disarrange his life. but the instant that christian society became firmly established, the ancient continent was thrown into confusion. everything was pulled up by the roots. events, destined to destroy ancient europe and to construct a new europe, trod upon one another's heels in their ceaseless rush, and drove the nations pell-mell, some into the light, others into darkness. so much uproar ensued that it was impossible that some echoes of it should not reach the hearts of the people. it was more than an echo, it was a reflex blow. man, withdrawing within himself in presence of these imposing vicissitudes, began to take pity upon mankind, to reflect upon the bitter disillusionments of life. of this sentiment, which to cato the heathen was despair, christianity fashioned melancholy. at the same time was born the spirit of scrutiny and curiosity. these great catastrophes were also great spectacles, impressive cataclysms. it was the north hurling itself upon the south; the roman world changing shape; the last convulsive throes of a whole universe in the death agony. as soon as that world was dead, lo! clouds of rhetoricians, grammarians, sophists, swooped down like insects on its immense body. people saw them swarming and heard them buzzing in that seat of putrefaction. they vied with one another in scrutinizing, commenting, disputing. each limb, each muscle, each fibre of the huge prostrate body was twisted and turned in every direction. surely it must have been a keen satisfaction to those anatomists of the mind, to be able, at their debut, to make experiments on a large scale; to have a dead society to dissect, for their first "subject." thus we see melancholy and meditation, the demons of analysis and controversy, appear at the same moment, and, as it were, hand-in-hand. at one extremity of this era of transition is longinus, at the other st. augustine. we must beware of casting a disdainful eye upon that epoch wherein all that has since borne fruit was contained in germs; upon that epoch whose least eminent writers, if we may be pardoned a vulgar but expressive phrase, made fertilizer for the harvest that was to follow. the middle ages were grafted on the lower empire. behold, then, a new religion, a new society; upon this twofold foundation there must inevitably spring up a new poetry. previously--- we beg pardon for setting forth a result which the reader has probably already foreseen from what has been said above--previously, following therein the course pursued by the ancient polytheism and philosophy, the purely epic muse of the ancients had studied nature in only a single aspect, casting aside without pity almost everything in art which, in the world subjected to its imitation, had not relation to a certain, type of beauty. a type which was magnificent at first, but, as always happens with everything systematic, became in later times false, trivial and conventional. christianity leads poetry to the truth. like it, the modern muse will see things in a higher and broader light. it will realize that everything in creation is not humanly _beautiful_, that the ugly exists beside the beautiful, the unshapely beside the graceful, the grotesque on the reverse of the sublime, evil with good, darkness with light. it will ask itself if the narrow and relative sense of the artist should prevail over the infinite, absolute sense of the creator; if it is for man to correct god; if a mutilated nature will be the more beautiful for the mutilation; if art has the right to duplicate, so to speak, man, life, creation; if things will progress better when their muscles and their vigour have been taken from them; if, in short, to be incomplete is the best way to be harmonious. then it is that, with its eyes fixed upon events that are both laughable and redoubtable, and under the influence of that spirit of christian melancholy and philosophical criticism which we described a moment ago, poetry will take a great step, a decisive step, a step which, like the upheaval of an earthquake, will change the whole face of the intellectual world. it will set about doing as nature does, mingling in its creations--but without confounding them--darkness and light, the grotesque and the sublime; in other words, the body and the soul, the beast and the intellect; for the starting-point of religion is always the starting-point of poetry. all things are connected. thus, then, we see a principle unknown to the ancients, a new type, introduced in poetry; and as an additional element in anything modifies the whole of the thing, a new form of the art is developed. this type is the grotesque; its new form is comedy. and we beg leave to dwell upon this point; for we have now indicated the significant feature, the fundamental difference which, in our opinion, separates modern from ancient art, the present form from the defunct form; or, to use less definite but more popular terms, _romantic_ literature from _classical_ literature. "at last!" exclaim the people who for some time past _have seen what we were coming at_, "at last we have you--you are caught in the act. so then you put forward the ugly as a type for imitation, you make the _grotesque_ an element of art. but the graces; but good taste! don't you know that art should correct nature? that we must _ennoble_ art? that we must _select_? did the ancients ever exhibit the ugly or the grotesque? did they ever mingle comedy and tragedy? the example of the ancients, gentlemen! and aristotle, too, and boileau, and la haipe upon my word!" these arguments are sound, doubtless, and, above all, of extraordinary novelty. but it is not our place to reply to them. we are constructing no system here--god protect us from systems! we are stating a fact. we are a historian, not a critic. whether the fact is agreeable or not matters little, it is a fact. let us resume, therefore, and try to prove that it is of the fruitful union of the grotesque and the sublime types that modern genius is born--so complex, so diverse in its forms, so inexhaustible in its creations, and therein directly opposed to the uniform simplicity of the genius of the ancients, let us show that that is the point from which we must set out to establish the real and radical difference between the two forms of literature. not that it is strictly true that comedy and the grotesque were entirely unknown to the ancients. in fact, such a thing would be impossible. nothing grows without a root, the germ of the second epoch always exists in the first. in the iliad thersites and vulcan furnish comedy, one to the mortals, the other to the gods. there is too much nature and originality in the greek tragedy for there not to be an occasional touch of comedy in it. for example, to cite only what we happen to recall, the scene between menelaus and the portress of the palace. _(helen_, act i), and the scene of the phrygian _(orestes,_ act iv) the tritons, the satyrs, the cyclops are grotesque, polyphemus is a terrifying, silenus a farcical grotesque. but one feels that this part of the art is still in its infancy. the epic, which at this period imposes its form on everything, the epic weighs heavily upon it and stifles it. the ancient grotesque is timid and forever trying to keep out of sight. it is plain that it is not on familiar ground, because it is not in its natural surroundings. it conceals itself as much as it can. the satyrs, the tritons, and the sirens are hardly abnormal in form. the fates and the harpies are hideous in their attributes rather than in feature; the furies are beautiful, and are called _eumenides_, that is to say, _gentle, beneficent_. there is a veil of grandeur or of divinity over other grotesques. polyphemus is a giant, midas a king, silenus a god. thus comedy is almost imperceptible in the great epic _ensemble_ of ancient times. what is the barrow of thespis beside the olympian chariots? what are aristophanes and plautus, beside the homeric colossi, Æschylus, sophocles, euripides? homer bears them along with him, as hercules bore the pygmies, hidden in his lion's skin! in the idea of men of modern times, however, the grotesque plays an enormous part. it is found everywhere; on the one hand it creates the abnormal and the horrible, on the other the comic and the burlesque. it fastens upon religion a thousand original superstitions, upon poetry a thousand picturesque fancies. it is the grotesque which scatters lavishly, in air, water, earth, fire, those myriads of intermediary creatures which we find all alive in the popular traditions of the middle ages; it is the grotesque which impels the ghastly antics of the witches' revels, which gives satan his horns, his cloven foot and his bat's wings. it is the grotesque, still the grotesque, which now casts into the christian hell the frightful faces which the severe genius of dante and milton will evoke, and again peoples it with those laughter-moving figures amid which callot, the burlesque michelangelo, will disport himself. if it passes from the world of imagination to the real world, it unfolds an inexhaustible supply of parodies of mankind. creations of its fantasy are the scaramouches, crispins and harlequins, grinning silhouettes of man, types altogether unknown to serious-minded antiquity, although they originated in classic italy. it is the grotesque, lastly, which, colouring the same drama with the fancies of the north and of the south in turn, exhibits sganarelle capering about don juan and mephistopheles crawling about faust. and how free and open it is in its bearing! how boldly it brings into relief all the strange forms which the preceding age had timidly wrapped in swaddling-clothes! ancient poetry, compelled to provide the lame vulcan with companions, tried to disguise their deformity by distributing it, so to speak, upon gigantic proportions. modern genius retains this myth of the supernatural smiths, but gives it an entirely different character and one which makes it even more striking; it changes the giants to dwarfs and makes gnomes of the cyclops. with like originality, it substitutes for the somewhat commonplace lernaean hydra all the local dragons of our national legends--the gargoyle of rouen, the _gra-ouilli_ of metz, the _chair sallée_ of troyes, the _drée_ of montlhéry, the _tarasque_ of tarascon--monsters of forms so diverse, whose outlandish names are an additional attribute. all these creations draw from their own nature that energetic and significant expression before which antiquity seems sometimes to have recoiled. certain it is that the greek eumenides are much less horrible, and consequently less _true_, than the witches in _macbeth_. pluto is not the devil. in our opinion a most novel book might be written upon the employment of the grotesque in the arts. one might point out the powerful effects the moderns have obtained from that fruitful type, upon which narrow-minded criticism continues to wage war even in our own day. it may be that we shall be led by our subject to call attention in passing to some features of this vast picture. we will simply say here that, as a means of contrast with the sublime, the grotesque is, in our view, the richest source that nature can offer art. rubens so understood it, doubtless, when it pleased him to introduce the hideous features of a court dwarf amid his exhibitions of royal magnificence, coronations and splendid ceremonial. the universal beauty which the ancients solemnly laid upon everything, is not without monotony; the same impression repeated again and again may prove fatiguing at last. sublime upon sublime scarcely presents a contrast, and we need a little rest from everything, even the beautiful. on the other hand, the grotesque seems to be a halting-place, a mean term, a starting-point whence one rises toward the beautiful with a fresher and keener perception. the salamander gives relief to the water-sprite; the gnome heightens the charm of the sylph. and it would be true also to say that contact with the abnormal has imparted to the modern sublime a something purer, grander, more sublime, in short, than the beautiful of the ancients; and that is as it should be. when art is consistent with itself, it guides everything more surely to its goal. if the homeric elysium is a long, long way from the ethereal charm, the angelic pleasureableness of milton's paradise, it is because under eden there is a hell far more terrible than the heathen tartarus. do you think that francesca da rimini and beatrice would be so enchanting in a poet who should not confine us in the tower of hunger and compel us to share ugolino's revolting repast? dante would have less charm, if he had less power. have the fleshly naiads, the muscular tritons, the wanton zephyrs, the diaphanous transparency of our water-sprites and sylphs? is it not because the modern imagination does not fear to picture the ghastly forms of vampires, ogres, ghouls, snake-charmers and jinns prowling about graveyards, that it can give to its fairies that incorporeal shape, that purity of essence, of which the heathen nymphs fall so far short? the antique venus is beautiful, admirable, no doubt; but what has imparted to jean goujon's faces that weird, tender, ethereal delicacy? what has given them that unfamiliar suggestion of life and grandeur, if not the proximity of the rough and powerful sculptures of the middle ages? if the thread of our argument has not been broken in the reader's mind by these necessary digressions--- which in truth, might be developed much further--he has realized, doubtless, how powerfully the grotesque--that germ of comedy, fostered by the modern muse--grew in extent and importance as soon as it was transplanted to a soil more propitious than paganism and the epic. in truth, in the new poetry, while the sublime represents the soul as it is, purified by christian morality, the grotesque plays the part of the human beast. the former type, delivered of all impure alloy, has as its attributes all the charms, all the graces, all the beauties; it must be able some day to create juliet, desdemona, ophelia. the latter assumes all the absurdities, all the infirmities, all the blemishes. in this partition of mankind and of creation, to it fall the passions, vices, crimes; it is sensuous, fawning, greedy, miserly, false, incoherent, hypocritical; it is, in turn, iago, tartuffe, basile, polonius, harpagon, bartholo, falstaff, scapin, figaro. the beautiful has but one type, the ugly has a thousand. the fact is that the beautiful, humanly speaking, is merely form considered in its simplest aspect in its most perfect symmetry, in its most entire harmony with our make-up. thus the _ensemble_ that it offers us is always complete, but restricted like ourselves. what we call the ugly, on the contrary, is a detail of a great whole which eludes us, and which is in harmony, not with man but with all creation. that is why it constantly presents itself to us in new but incomplete aspects. it is interesting to study the first appearance and the progress of the grotesque in modern times. at first, it is an invasion, an irruption, an overflow, as of a torrent that has burst its banks. it rushes through the expiring latin literature, imparts some coloring to persius, petronius and juvenal, and leaves behind it the _golden ass_ of apuleius. thence it diffuses itself through the imaginations of the new nations that are remodelling europe. it abounds in the work of the fabulists, the chroniclers, the romancists. we see it make its way from the south to the north. it disports itself in the dreams of the teutonic nations, and at the same time vivifies with its breath the admirable spanish _romanceros_, a veritable iliad of the age of chivalry. for example, it is the grotesque which describes thus, in the _roman de la rose_, an august ceremonial, the election of a king:-- "a long-shanked knave they chose, i wis, of all their men the boniest." more especially it imposes its characteristic qualities upon that wonderful architecture which, in the middle ages, takes the place of all the arts. it affixes its mark on the façades of cathedrals, frames its hells and purgatories in the ogive arches of great doorways, portrays them in brilliant hues on window-glass, exhibits its monsters, its bull-dogs, its imps about capitals, along friezes, on the edges of roofs. it flaunts itself in numberless shapes on the wooden façades of houses, on the stone façades of châteaux, on the marble façades of palaces. from the arts it makes its way into the national manners, and while it stirs applause from the people for the _graciosos_ of comedy, it gives to the kings court-jesters. later, in the age of etiquette, it will show us scarron on the very edge of louis the fourteenth's bed. meanwhile it decorates coats of-arms, and draws upon knight, shields the symbolic hieroglyphs of feudalism. from the manners, it makes its way into the laws, numberless strange customs at test its passage through the institutions of the middle ages. just as it represented thespis, smeared with wine-lees, leaping in her tomb it dances with the _basoche_ on the famous marble table which served at the same time as a stage for the popular farces and for the royal banquets. finally, having made its way into the arts, the manners, and the laws, it enters even the church. in every catholic city we see it organizing some one of those curious ceremonies, those strange processions, wherein religion is attended by all varieties of superstition--the sublime attended by all the forms of the grotesque. to paint it in one stroke, so great is its vigour, its energy, its creative sap, at the dawn of letters, that it casts, at the outset, upon the threshold of modern poetry, three burlesque homers: ariosto in italy, cervantes in spain, rabelais in france. it would be mere surplusage to dwell further upon the influence of the grotesque in the third civilization. every thing tends to show its close creative alliance with the beautiful in the so called "romantic" period. even among the simplest popular legends there are none which do not somewhere, with an admirable instinct, solve this mystery of modern art. antiquity could not have produced _beauty and the beast_. it is true that at the period at which we have arrived the predominance of the grotesque over the sublime in literature is clearly indicated. but it is a spasm of reaction, an eager thirst for novelty, which is but temporary, it is an initial wave which gradually recedes. the type of the beautiful will soon resume its rights and its role, which is not to exclude the other principle, but to prevail over it. it is time that the grotesque should be content with a corner of the picture in murillo's loyal frescoes, in the sacred pages of veronese, content to be introduced in two marvellous _last judgments_, in which art will take a just pride, in the scene of fascination and horror with which michelangelo will embellish the vatican, in those awe-inspiring represervations of the fall of man which rubens will throw upon the arches of the cathedral of antwerp. the time has come when the balance between the two principles is to be established. a man, a poet-king, _poeta soverano_, as dante calls homer, is about to adjust everything. the two rival genii combine their flames, and thence issues shakespeare. we have now reached the poetic culmination of modern times. shakespeare is the drama; and the drama, which with the same breath moulds the grotesque and the sublime, the terrible and the absurd, tragedy and comedy--the drama is the distinguishing characteristic of the third epoch of poetry, of the literature of the present day. thus, to sum up hurriedly the facts that we have noted thus far, poetry has three periods, each of which corresponds to an epoch of civilization: the ode, the epic, and the drama. primitive times are lyrical, ancient times epical, modern times dramatic. the ode sings of eternity, the epic imparts solemnity to history, the drama depicts life. the characteristic of the first poetry is ingenuousness, of the second, simplicity, of the third, truth. the rhapsodists mark the transition from the lyric to the epic poets, as do the romancists that from the lyric to the dramatic poets. historians appear in the second period, chroniclers and critics in the third. the characters of the ode are colossi--adam, cain, noah; those of the epic are giants--achilles, atreus, orestes; those of the drama are men--hamlet, macbeth, othello. the ode lives upon the ideal, the epic upon the grandiose, the drama upon the real. lastly, this threefold poetry flows from three great sources--the bible, homer, shakespeare. such then--and we confine ourselves herein to noting a single result--such are the diverse aspects of thought in the different epochs of mankind and of civilization. such are its three faces, in youth, in manhood, in old age. whether one examines one literature by itself or all literatures _en masse,_ one will always reach the same result: the lyric poets before the epic poets, the epic poets before the dramatic poets. in france, malherbe before chapelain, chapelain before corneille; in ancient greece, orpheus before homer, homer before Æschylus; in the first of all books, _genesis_ before _kings, kings_ before _job_; or to come back to that monumental scale of all ages of poetry, which we ran over a moment since, the bible before the _iliad_, the _iliad_ before shakespeare. in a word, civilization begins by singing of its dreams, then narrates its doings, and, lastly, sets about describing what it thinks. it is, let us say in passing, because of this last, that the drama, combining the most opposed qualities, may be at the same time full of profundity and full of relief, philosophical and picturesque. it would be logical to add here that everything in nature and in life passes through these three phases, the lyric, the epic, and the dramatic, because everything is born, acts, and dies. if it were not absurd to confound the fantastic conceits of the imagination with the stern deductions of the reasoning faculty, a poet might say that the rising of the sun, for example, is a hymn, noon-day a brilliant epic, and sunset a gloomy drama wherein day and night, life and death, contend for mastery. but that would be poetry--folly, perhaps--- and _what does it prove_? let us hold to the facts marshalled above; let us supplement them, too, by an important observation, namely that we have in no wise pretended to assign exclusive limits to the three epochs of poetry, but simply to set forth their predominant characteristics. the bible, that divine lyric monument, contains in germ, as we suggested a moment ago, an epic and a drama--_-kings_ and _job_. in the homeric poems one is conscious of a clinging reminiscence of lyric poetry and of a beginning of dramatic poetry. ode and drama meet in the epic. there is a touch of all in each; but in each there exists a generative element to which all the other elements give place, and which imposes its own character upon the whole. the drama is complete poetry. the ode and the epic contain it only in germ; it contains both of them in a state of high development, and epitomizes both. surely, he who said: "the french have not the epic brain," said a true and clever thing; if he had said, "the moderns," the clever remark would have been profound. it is beyond question, however, that there is epic genius in that marvellous _athalie,_ so exalted and so simple in its sublimity that the royal century was unable to comprehend it. it is certain, too, that the series of shakespeare's chronicle dramas presents a grand epic aspect. but it is lyric poetry above all that befits the drama; it never embarrasses it, adapts itself to all its caprices, disports itself in all forms, sometimes sublime as in ariel, sometimes grotesque as in caliban. our era being above all else dramatic, is for that very reason eminently lyric. there is more than one connection between the beginning and the end; the sunset has some features of the sunrise; the old man becomes a child once more. but this second childhood is not like the first; it is as melancholy as the other is joyous. it is the same with lyric poetry. dazzling, dreamy, at the dawn of civilization it reappears, solemn and pensive, at its decline. the bible opens joyously with _genesis_ and comes to a close with the threatening _apocalypse_. the modern ode is still inspired, but is no longer ignorant. it meditates more than it scrutinizes; its musing is melancholy. we see, by its painful labour, that the muse has taken the drama for her mate. to make clear by a metaphor the ideas that we have ventured to put forth, we will compare early lyric poetry to a placid lake which reflects the clouds and stars; the epic is the stream which flows from the lake, and rushes on, reflecting its banks, forests, fields and cities, until it throws itself into the ocean of the drama. like the lake, the drama reflects the sky; like the stream, it reflects its banks; but it alone has tempests and measureless depths. the drama, then, is the goal to which everything in modern poetry leads. _paradise lost_ is a drama before it is an epic. as we know, it first presented itself to the poet's imagination in the first of these forms, and as a drama it always remains in the reader's memory, so prominent is the old dramatic framework still beneath milton's epic structure! when dante had finished his terrible _inferno_, when he had closed its doors and nought remained save to give his work a name, the unerring instinct of his genius showed him that that multiform poem was an emanation of the drama, not of the epic; and on the front of that gigantic monument, he wrote with his pen of bronze: _divina commedia._ thus we see that the only two poets of modern times who are of shakespeare's stature follow him in unity of design. they coincide with him in imparting a dramatic tinge to all our poetry, like him, they blend the grotesque with the sublime, and, far from standing by themselves in the great literary _ensemble_ that rests upon shakespeare, dante and milton are, in some sort, the two supporting abutments of the edifice of which he is the central pillar, the buttresses of the arch of which he is the keystone. permit us, at this point, to recur to certain ideas already suggested, which, however, it is necessary to emphasize. we have arrived, and now we must set out again. on the day when christianity said to man "thou art twofold, thou art made up of two beings, one perishable, the other immortal, one carnal, the other ethereal, one enslaved by appetites, cravings and passions, the other borne aloft on the wings of enthusiasm and reverie--in a word, the one always stooping toward the earth, its mother, the other always darting up toward heaven, its fatherland"--on that day the drama was created. is it in truth, anything other than that contrast of every day, that struggle of every moment, between two opposing principles which are ever face to face in life, and which dispute possession of man from the cradle to the tomb? the poetry born of christianity, the poetry of our time, is, therefore, the drama, the real results from the wholly natural combination of two types, the sublime and the grotesque, which meet in the drama, as they meet in life and in creation. for true poetry, complete poetry, consists in the harmony of contraries. hence, it is time to say aloud--and it is here above all that exceptions prove the rule--that everything that exists in nature exists in art. on taking one's stand at this point of view, to pass judgment on our petty conventional rules, to disentangle all those scholastic labyrinths, to solve all those trivial problems which the critics of the last two centuries have laboriously built up about the art, one is struck by the promptitude with which the question of the modern stage is made clear and distinct. the drama has but to take a step to break all the spider's webs with which the militia of lilliput have attempted to fetter its sleep. and so, let addle-pated pedants (one does not exclude the other) claim that the deformed, the ugly, the grotesque should never be imitated in art; one replies that the grotesque is comedy, and that comedy apparently makes a part of art. tartuffe is not handsome, pourceaugnac is not noble, but pourceaugnac and tartuffe are admirable flashes of art. if, driven back from this entrenchment to their second line of custom-houses, they renew their prohibition of the grotesque coupled with the sublime, of comedy melted into tragedy, we prove to them that, in the poetry of christian nations, the first of these two types represents the human beast, the second the soul. these two stalks of art, if we prevent their branches from mingling, if we persistently separate them, will produce by way of fruit, on the one hand abstract vices and absurdities, on the other, abstract crime, heroism and virtue. the two types, thus isolated and left to themselves, will go each its own way, leaving the real between them, at the left hand of one, at the right hand of the other. whence it follows that after all these abstractions there will remain something to represent--man; after these tragedies and comedies, something to create--the drama. in the drama, as it may be conceived at least, if not executed, all things are connected and follow one another as in real life. the body plays its part no less than the mind; and men and events, set in motion by this twofold agent, pass across the stage, burlesque and terrible in turn, and sometimes both at once. thus the judge will say: "off with his head and let us go to dinner!" thus the roman senate will deliberate over domitian's turbot. thus socrates, drinking the hemlock and discoursing on the immortal soul and the only god, will interrupt himself to suggest that a cook be sacrificed to _Æsculapius_. thus elizabeth will swear and talk latin. thus richelieu will submit to joseph the capuchin, and louis xi to his barber, maître olivier le diable. thus cromwell will say: "i have parliament in my bag and the king in my pocket"; or, with the hand that signed the death sentence of charles the first, smear with ink the face of a regicide who smilingly returns the compliment. thus cæsar, in his triumphal car, will be afraid of overturning. for men of genius, however great they be, have always within them a touch of the beast which mocks at their intelligence. therein they are akin to mankind in general, for therein they are dramatic. "it is but a step from the sublime to the ridiculous," said napoleon, when he was convinced that he was mere man; and that outburst of a soul on fire illumines art and history at once; that cry of anguish is the résumé of the drama and of life. it is a striking fact that all these contrasts are met with in the poets themselves, taken as men. by dint of meditating upon existence, of laying stress upon its bitter irony, of pouring floods of sarcasm and raillery upon our infirmities, the very men who make us laugh so heartily become profoundly sad. these democrituses are heraclituses as well. beaumarchais was surly, molière gloomy, shakespeare melancholy. the fact is, then, that the grotesque is one of the supreme beauties of the drama. it is not simply an appropriate element of it, but is oftentimes a necessity. sometimes it appears in homogeneous masses, in entire characters, as daudin, prusias, trissotin, brid'oison, juliet's nurse; sometimes impregnated with terror, as richard iii, bégears, tartuffe, mephistopheles; sometimes, too, with a veil of grace and refinement, as figaro, osric, mercutio, don juan. it finds its way in everywhere; for just as the most commonplace have their occasional moments of sublimity, so the most exalted frequently pay tribute to the trivial and ridiculous. thus, often impalpable, often imperceptible, it is always present on the stage, even when it says nothing, even when it keeps out of sight. thanks to it, there is no thought of monotony. sometimes it injects laughter, sometimes horror, into tragedy. it will bring romeo face to face with the apothecary, macbeth with the witches, hamlet with the grave-diggers. sometimes it may, without discord, as in the scene between king lear and his jester, mingle its shrill voice with the most sublime, the most dismal, the dreamiest music of the soul. that is what shakespeare alone among all has succeeded in doing, in a fashion of his own, which it would be no less fruitless than impossible to imitate--shakespeare, the god of the stage, in whom, as in a trinity, the three characteristic geniuses of our stage, corneille, molière, beaumarchais, seem united. we see how quickly the arbitrary distinction between the species of poetry vanishes before common sense and taste. no less easily one might demolish the alleged rule of the two unities. we say _two_ and not _three_ unities, because unity of plot or of _ensemble_, the only true and well founded one, was long ago removed from the sphere of discussion. distinguished contemporaries, foreigners and frenchmen, have already attacked, both in theory and in practice that fundamental law of the pseudo-aristotelian code. indeed, the combat was not likely to be a long one. at the first blow it cracked, so worm eaten was that timber of the old scholastic hovel! the strange thing is that the slaves of routine pretend to rest their rule of the two unities on probability, whereas reality is the very thing that destroys it. indeed, what could be more improbable and absurd than this porch or peristyle or ante-chamber--vulgar places where our tragedies are obliging enough to develop themselves; whither conspirators come, no one knows whence, to declaim against the tyrant, and the tyrant to declaim against the conspirators, each in turn, as if they had said to one another in bucolic phrase-- alternis cantemus, amant alterna camenæ. where did anyone ever see a porch or peristyle of that sort? what could be more opposed--we will not say to the truth, for the scholastics hold it very cheap, but to probability? the result is that everything that is too characteristic, too intimate, too local, to happen in the ante chamber or on the street-corner--that is to say, the whole drama--takes place in the wings. we see on the stage only the elbows of the plot, so to speak; its hands are somewhere else. instead of scenes we have narrative, instead of tableaux, descriptions. solemn-faced characters, placed, as in the old chorus, between the drama and ourselves, tell us what is going on in the temple, in the palace, on the public square, until we are tempted many a time to call out to them: "indeed! then take us there! it must be very entertaining--a fine sight!" to which they would reply no doubt: "it is quite possible that it might entertain or interest you, but that isn't the question; we are the guardians of the dignity of the french melpomene." and there you are! "but," someone will say, "this rule that you discard is borrowed from the greek drama." wherein, pray, do the greek stage and drama resemble our stage and drama? moreover, we have already shown that the vast extent of the ancient stage enabled it to include a whole locality, so that the poet could, according to the exigencies of the plot, transport it at his pleasure from one part of the stage to another, which is practically equivalent to a change of stage-setting. curious contradiction! the greek theatre, restricted as it was to a national and religious object, was much more free than ours, whose only object is the enjoyment, and, if you please, the instruction, of the spectator. the reason is that the one obeys only the laws that are suited to it, while the other takes upon itself conditions of existence which are absolutely foreign to its essence. one is artistic, the other artificial. people are beginning to understand in our day that exact localization is one of the first elements of reality. the speaking or acting characters are not the only ones who engrave on the minds of the spectators a faithful representation of the facts. the place where this or that catastrophe took place becomes a terrible and inseparable witness thereof; and the absence of silent characters of this sort would make the greatest scenes of history incomplete in the drama. would the poet dare to murder rizzio elsewhere than in mary stuart's chamber? to stab henri iv elsewhere than in rue de la ferronerie, all blocked with drays and carriages? to burn jeanne d'arc elsewhere than in the vieux-marché? to despatch the duc de guise elsewhere than in that chateau of blois where his ambition roused a popular assemblage to frenzy? to behead charles i and louis xvi elsewhere than in those ill-omened localities whence whitehall or the tuileries may be seen, as if their scaffolds were appurtenances of their palaces? unity of time rests on no firmer foundation than unity of place. a plot forcibly confined within twenty-four hours is as absurd as one confined within a peristyle. every plot has its proper duration as well as its appropriate place. think of administering the same dose of time to all events! of applying the same measure to everything! you would laugh at a cobbler who should attempt to put the same shoe on every foot. to cross unity of time and unity of place like the bars of a cage, and pedantically to introduce therein, in the name of aristotle, all the deeds, all the nations, all the figures which providence sets before us in such vast numbers in real life,--to proceed thus is to mutilate men and things, to cause history to make wry faces. let us say, rather, that everything will die in the operation, and so the dogmatic mutilators reach their ordinary result: what was alive in the chronicles is dead in tragedy. that is why the cage of the unities often contains only a skeleton. and then, if twenty-four hours can be comprised in two, it is a logical consequence that four hours may contain forty-eight. thus shakespeare's unity must be different from corneille's. 'tis pity! but these are the wretched quibbles with which mediocrity, envy and routine has pestered genius for two centuries past! by such means the flight of our greatest poets has been cut short. their wings have been clipped with the scissors of the unities. and what has been given us in exchange for the eagle feathers stolen from corneille and racine? campistron. we imagine that someone may say: "there is something in too frequent changes of scene which confuses and fatigues the spectator, and which produces a bewildering effect on his attention; it may be, too, that manifold transitions from place to place, from one time to another time, demand explanations which repel the attention; one should also avoid leaving, in the midst of a plot, gaps which prevent the different parts of the drama from adhering closely to one another, and which, moreover, puzzle the spectator because he does not know what there may be in those gaps." but these are precisely the difficulties which art has to meet. these are some of the obstacles peculiar to one subject or another, as to which it would be impossible to pass judgment once for all. it is for genius to overcome, not for treatises or poetry to evade them. a final argument, taken from the very bowels of the art, would of itself suffice to show the absurdity of the rule of the two unities. it is the existence of the third unity, unity of plot--the only one that is universally admitted, because it results from a fact: neither the human eye nor the human mind can grasp more than one _ensemble_ at one time. this one is as essential as the other two are useless. it is the one which fixes the view-point of the drama; now, by that very fact, it excludes the other two. there can no more be three unities in the drama than three horizons in a picture. but let us be careful not to confound unity with simplicity of plot. the former does not in any way exclude the secondary plots on which the principal plot may depend. it is necessary only that these parts, being skilfully subordinated to the general plan, shall tend constantly toward the central plot and group themselves about it at the various stages, or rather on the various levels of the drama. unity of plot is the stage law of perspective. "but," the customs-officers of thought will cry, "great geniuses have submitted to these rules which you spurn!" unfortunately, yes. but what would those admirable men have done if they had been left to themselves? at all events they did not accept your chains without a struggle. you should have seen how pierre corneille, worried and harassed at his first step in the art on account of his marvellous work, _le cid_, struggled under mairet, claveret, d'aubignac and scudéri! how he denounced to posterity the violent attacks of those men, who, he says, made themselves "all white with aristotle!" you should read how they said to him--and we quote from books of the time: "young man, you must learn before you teach; and unless one is a scaliger or a heinsius that is intolerable!" thereupon corneille rebels and asks if their purpose is to force him "much below claveret." here scudéri waxes indignant at such a display of pride, and reminds the "thrice great author of _le cid_ of the modest words in which tasso, the greatest man of his age, began his apology for the finest of his works against the bitterest and most unjust censure perhaps that will ever be pronounced. m. corneille," he adds, "shows in his replies that he is as far removed from that author's moderation as from his merit." the young man _so justly and gently reproved_ dares to protest; thereupon scudéri returns to the charge; he calls to his assistance the _eminent academy;_ "pronounce, o my judges, a decree worthy of your eminence, which will give all europe to know that _le cid_ is not the chef-d'oeuvre of the greatest man in france, but the least judicious performance of m. corneille himself. you are bound to do it, both for your own private renown; and for that of our people in general, who are concerned in this matter; inasmuch as foreigners who may see this precious masterpiece--they who have possessed a tasso or a guarini--might think that our greatest masters were no more than apprentices." these few instructive lines contain the everlasting tactics of envious routine against growing talent--tactics which are still followed in our own day, and which, for example, added such a curious page to the youthful essays of lord byron. scudéri gives us its quintessence. in like manner the earlier works of a man of genius are always preferred to the newer ones, in order to prove that he is going down instead of up--_melite and la galerie du palais_ placed above _le cid_. and the names of the dead are always thrown at the heads of the living--corneille stoned with tasso and guarini (guarini!), as, later, racine will be stoned with corneille, voltaire with racine, and as to-day, everyone who shows signs of rising is stoned with corneille, racine and voltaire. these tactics, as will be seen, are well-worn; but they must be effective as they are still in use. however, the poor devil of a great man still breathed. here we cannot help but admire the way in which scudéri, the bully of this tragic-comedy, forced to the wall, blackguards and maltreats him, how pitilessly he unmasks his classical artillery, how he shows the author of _le cid_ "what the episodes should be, according to aristotle, who tells us in the tenth and sixteenth chapters of his _poetics";_ how he crushes corneille, in the name of the same aristotle "in the eleventh chapter of his _art of poetry_, wherein we find the condemnation of _le cid_"; in the name of plato, "in the tenth book of his _republic_"; in the name of marcellinus, "as may be seen in the twenty-seventh book"; in the name of "the tragedies of niobe and jephthah"; in the name of the "_ajax_ of sophocles"; in the name of "the example of euripides"; in the name of "heinsius, chapter six of the _constitution_ of _tragedy_; and the younger scaliger in his poems"; and finally, in the name of the canonists and jurisconsults, under the title "nuptials." the first arguments were addressed to the academy, the last one was aimed at the cardinal. after the pin-pricks the blow with a club. a judge was needed to decide the question. chapelain gave judgment. corneille saw that he was doomed; the lion was muzzled, or, as was said at the time, the crow (_corneille_) was plucked. now comes the painful side of this grotesque performance: after he had been thus quenched at his first flash, this genius, thoroughly modern, fed upon the middle ages and spain, being compelled to lie to himself and to hark back to ancient times, drew for us that castilian rome, which is sublime beyond question, but in which, except perhaps in _nicomede_, which was so ridiculed by the eighteenth century for its dignified and simple colouring, we find neither the real rome nor the true corneille. racine was treated to the same persecution, but did not make the same resistance. neither in his genius nor in his character was there any of corneille's lofty asperity. he submitted in silence and sacrificed to the scorn of his time his enchanting elegy of _esther_, his magnificent epic, _athalie_. so that we can but believe that, if he had not been paralyzed as he was by the prejudices of his epoch, if he had come in contact less frequently with the classic cramp-fish, he would not have failed to introduce locuste in his drama between narcisse and neron, and above all things would not have relegated to the wings the admirable scene of the banquet at which seneca's pupil poisons britannicus in the cup of reconciliation. but can we demand of the bird that he fly under the receiver of an air-pump? what a multitude of beautiful scenes the _people of taste_ have cost us, from scudéri to la harpe! a noble work might be composed of all that their scorching breath has withered in its germ. however, our great poets have found a way none the less to cause their genius to blaze forth through all these obstacles. often the attempt to confine them behind walls of dogmas and rules is vain. like the hebrew giant they carry their prison doors with them to the mountains. but still the same refrain is repeated, and will be, no doubt, for a long while to come: "follow the rules! copy the models! it was the rules that shaped the models." one moment! in that case there are two sorts of models, those which are made according to the rules, and, prior to them, those according to which the rules were made. now, in which of these two categories should genius seek a place for itself? although it is always disagreeable to come in contact with pedants, is it not a thousand times better to give them lessons than to receive lessons from them? and then--copy! is the reflection equal to the light? is the satellite which travels unceasingly in the same circle equal to the central creative planet? with all his poetry virgil is no more than the moon of homer. and whom are we to copy, i pray to know? the ancients? we have just shown that their stage has nothing in common with ours. moreover, voltaire, who will have none of shakespeare, will have none of the greeks, either. let him tell us why: "the greeks ventured to produce scenes no less revolting to us. hippolyte, crushed by his fall, counts his wounds and utters doleful cries. philoctetes falls in his paroxysms of pain; black blood flows from his wound. oedipus, covered with the blood that still drops from the sockets of the eyes he has torn out, complains bitterly of gods and men. we hear the shrieks of clytemnestra, murdered by her own son, and electra, on the stage, cries: 'strike! spare her not! she did not spare our father,' prometheus is fastened to a rock by nails driven through his stomach and his arms. the furies reply to clytemnestra's bleeding shade with inarticulate roars. art was in its infancy in the time of Æschylus as it was in london in shakespeare's time." whom shall we copy, then? the moderns? what! copy copies! god forbid! "but," someone else will object, "according to your conception of the art, you seem to look for none but great poets, to count always upon genius." art certainly does not count upon mediocrity. it prescribes no rules for it, it knows nothing of it; in fact, mediocrity has no existence so far as art is concerned; art supplies wings, not crutches. alas! d'aubignac followed rules, campistron copied models. what does it matter to art? it does not build its palaces for ants. it lets them make their ant-hill, without taking the trouble to find out whether they have built their burlesque imitation of its palace upon its foundation. the critics of the scholastic school place their poets in a strange position. on the one hand they cry incessantly: "copy the models!" on the other hand they have a habit of declaring that "the models are inimitable"! now, if their craftsman, by dint of hard work, succeeds in forcing through this dangerous defile some colourless tracing of the masters, these ungrateful wretches, after examining the new _refaccimiento_, exclaim sometimes: "this doesn't resemble anything!" and sometimes: "this resembles everything!" and by virtue of a logic made for the occasion each of these formulæ is a criticism. let us then speak boldly. the time for it has come, and it would be strange if, in this age, liberty, like the light, should penetrate everywhere except to the one place where freedom is most natural--the domain of thought. let us take the hammer to theories and poetic systems. let us throw down the old plastering that conceals the facade of art. there are neither rules nor models; or, rather, there are no other rules than the general laws of nature, which soar above the whole field of art, and the special rules which result from the conditions appropriate to the subject of each composition. the former are of the essence, eternal, and do not change; the latter are variable, external, and are used but once. the former are the framework that supports the house; the latter the scaffolding which is used in building it, and which is made anew for each building. in a word, the former are the flesh and bones, the latter the clothing, of the drama. but these rules are not written in the treatises on poetry. richelet has no idea of their existence. genius, which divines rather than learns, devises for each work the general rules from the general plan of things, the special rules from the separate _ensemble_ of the subject treated; not after the manner of the chemist, who lights the fire under his furnace, heats his crucible, analyzes and destroys; but after the manner of the bee, which flies on its golden wings, lights on each flower and extracts its honey, leaving it as brilliant and fragrant as before. the poet--let us insist on this point--should take counsel therefore only of nature, truth, and inspiration which is itself both truth and nature. "quando he," says lope de vega, "quando he de escrivir una comedia, encierro los preceptos con seis llaves." to secure these precepts "six keys" are none too many, in very truth. let the poet beware especially of copying anything whatsoever--shakespeare no more than molière, schiller no more than corneille. if genuine talent could abdicate its own nature in this matter, and thus lay aside its original personality, to transform itself into another, it would lose everything by playing this role of its own double. it is as if a god should turn valet. we must draw our inspiration from the original sources. it is the same sap, distributed through the soil, that produces all the trees of the forest, so different in bearing power, in fruit, in foliage. it is the same nature that fertilizes and nourishes the most diverse geniuses. the poet is a tree that may be blown about by all winds and watered by every fall of dew; and bears his works as his fruit, as the _fablier_ of old bore his fables. why attach one's self to a master, or graft one's self upon a model? it were better to be a bramble or a thistle, fed by the same earth as the cedar and the palm, than the fungus or the lichen of those noble trees. the bramble lives, the fungus vegetates. moreover, however great the cedar and the palm may be, it is not with the sap one sucks from them that one can become great one's self. a giant's parasite will be at best a dwarf. the oak, colossus that it is, can produce and sustain nothing more than the mistletoe. let there be no misunderstanding: if some of our poets have succeeded in being great, even when copying, it is because, while forming themselves on the antique model, they have often listened to the voice of nature and to their own genius--it is because they have been themselves in some one respect. their branches became entangled in those of the near-by tree, but their roots were buried deep in the soil of art. they were the ivy, not the mistletoe. then came imitators of the second rank, who, having neither roots in the earth, nor genius in their souls, had to confine themselves to imitation. as charles nodier says: "after the school of athens, the school of alexandria." then there was a deluge of mediocrity; then there came a swarm of those treatises on poetry, so annoying to true talent, so convenient for mediocrity. we were told that everything was done, and god was forbidden to create more molières or corneilles. memory was put in place of imagination. imagination itself was subjected to hard-and-fast rules, and aphorisms were made about it: "to imagine," says la harpe, with his naive assurance, "is in substance to remember, that is all." but nature! nature and truth!--and here, in order to prove that, far from demolishing art, the new ideas aim only to reconstruct it more firmly and on a better foundation, let us try to point out the impassable limit which in our opinion, separates reality according to art from reality according to nature. it is careless to confuse them as some ill-informed partisans of _romanticism_ do. truth in art cannot possibly be, as several writers have claimed, _absolute_ reality. art cannot produce the thing itself. let us imagine, for example, one of those unreflecting promoters of absolute nature, of nature viewed apart from art, at the performance of a romantic play, say _le cid_. "what's that?" he will ask at the first word. "the cid speaks in verse? it isn't _natural_ to speak in verse."--"how would you have him speak, pray?"--"in prose." very good. a moment later, "how's this!" he will continue, if he is consistent; "the cid is speaking french!"--"well?"--"nature demands that he speak his own language; he can't speak anything but spanish." we shall fail entirely to understand, but again--very good. you imagine that this is all? by no means: before the tenth sentence in castilian, he is certain to rise and ask if the cid who is speaking is the real cid, in flesh and blood. by what right does the actor, whose name is pierre or jacques, take the name of the cid? that is _false_. there is no reason why he should not go on to demand that the sun should be substituted for the footlights, _real_ trees and _real_ houses for those deceitful wings. for, once started on that road, logic has you by the collar, and you cannot stop. we must admit, therefore, or confess ourselves ridiculous, that the domains of art and of nature are entirely distinct. nature and art are two things--were it not so, one or the other would not exist. art, in addition to its idealistic side, has a terrestrial, material side. let it do what it will, it is shut in between grammar and prosody, between vaugelas and richelet. for its most capricious creations, it has formulas, methods of execution, a complete apparatus to set in motion. for genius there are delicate instruments, for mediocrity, tools. it seems to us that someone has already said that the drama is a mirror wherein nature is reflected. but if it be an ordinary mirror, a smooth and polished surface, it will give only a dull image of objects, with no relief-faithful, but colourless; everyone knows that colour and light are lost in a simple reflection. the drama, therefore, must be a concentrating mirror, which, instead of weakening, concentrates and condenses the coloured rays, which makes of a mere gleam a light, and of a light a flame. then only is the drama acknowledged by art. the stage is an optical point. everything that exists in the world--in history, in life, in man--should be and can be reflected therein, but under the magic wand of art. art turns the leaves of the ages, of nature, studies chronicles, strives to reproduce actual facts (especially in respect to manners and peculiarities, which are much less exposed to doubt and contradiction than are concrete facts), restores what the chroniclers have lopped off, harmonises what they have collected, divines and supplies their omissions, fills their gaps with imaginary scenes which have the colour of the time, groups what they have left scattered about, sets in motion anew the threads of providence which work the human marionettes, clothes the whole with a form at once poetical and natural, and imparts to it that vitality of truth and brilliancy which gives birth to illusion, that prestige of reality which arouses the enthusiasm of the spectator, and of the poet first of all, for the poet is sincere. thus the aim of art is almost divine: to bring to life again if it is writing history, to create if it is writing poetry. it is a grand and beautiful sight to see this broad development of a drama wherein art powerfully seconds nature; of a drama wherein the plot moves on to the conclusion with a firm and unembarrassed step, without diffuseness and without undue compression; of a drama, in short, wherein the poet abundantly fulfills the multifold object of art, which is to open to the spectator a double prospect, to illuminate at the same time the interior and the exterior of mankind: the exterior by their speech and their acts, the interior, by asides and monologues; to bring together, in a word, in the same picture, the drama of life and the drama of conscience. it will readily be imagined that, for a work of this kind, if the poet must _choose_ (and he must), he should choose, not the _beautiful_, but the _characteristic_. not that it is advisable to "make local colour," as they say to-day; that is, to add as an afterthought a few discordant touches here and there to a work that is at best utterly conventional and false. the local colour should not be on the surface of the drama, but in its substance, in the very heart of the work, whence it spreads of itself, naturally, evenly, and, so to speak, into every corner of the drama, as the sap ascends from the root to the tree's topmost leaf. the drama should be thoroughly impregnated with this colour of the time, which should be, in some sort, in the air, so that one detects it only on entering the theatre, and that on going forth one finds one's self in a different period and atmosphere. it requires some study, some labour, to attain this end; so much the better. it is well that the avenues of art should be obstructed by those brambles from which everybody recoils except those of powerful will. besides, it is this very study, fostered by an ardent inspiration, which will ensure the drama against a vice that kills it--the _commonplace_. to be commonplace is the failing of short-sighted, short-breathed poets. in this tableau of the stage, each figure must be held down to its most prominent, most individual, most precisely defined characteristic. even the vulgar and the trivial should have an accent of their own. like god, the true poet is present in every part of his work at once. genius resembles the die which stamps the king's effigy on copper and golden coins alike. we do not hesitate--and this will demonstrate once more to honest men how far we are from seeking to discredit the art--we do not hesitate to consider verse as one of the means best adapted to protect the drama from the scourge we have just mentioned, as one of the most powerful dams against the irruption of the commonplace, which, like democracy, is always flowing between full banks in men's minds. and at this point we beg the younger literary generation, already so rich in men and in works, to allow us to point out an error into which it seems to have fallen--an error too fully justified, indeed, by the extraordinary aberrations of the old school. the new century is at that growing age at which one can readily set one's self right. there has appeared of late, like a penultimate branching-out of the old classical trunk, or, better still, like one of those excrescences, those polypi, which decrepitude develops, and which are a sign of decomposition much more than a proof of life--there has appeared a strange school of dramatic poetry. this school seems to us to have had for its master and its fountain-head the poet who marks the transition from the eighteenth to the nineteenth century, the man of wearisome description and periphrases--that delille who, they say, toward the close of his life, boasted, after the fashion of the homeric catalogues, of having _made_ twelve camels, four dogs, three horses, including job's, six tigers, two cats, a chess-board, a backgammon-board, a checker-board, a billiard-table, several winters, many summers, a multitude of springs, fifty sunsets, and so many daybreaks that he had lost count of them. now, delille went into tragedy. he is the father (he, and not racine, god save the mark!) of an alleged school of refinement and taste which flourished until recently. tragedy is not to this school what it was to will shakespeare, say, a source of emotions of every sort, but a convenient frame for the solution of a multitude of petty descriptive problems which it propounds as it goes along. this muse, far from spurning, as the true french classic school does, the trivial and degrading things of life, eagerly seeks them out and brings them together. the grotesque, shunned as undesirable company by the tragedy of louis the fourteenth's day, cannot pass unnoticed before her. _it must be described_, that is to say, ennobled. a scene in the guard-house, a popular uprising, the fish-market, the galleys, the wine-shop, the _poule au pot_ of henri quatre, are treasure-trove in her eyes. she seizes upon this canaille, washes it clean, and sews her tinsel and spangles over its villainies; _purpureus assuitur pannus_. her object seems to be to deliver patents of nobility to all these _roturiers_ of the drama; and each of these patents under the great seal is a speech. this muse, as may be imagined, is of a rare prudery. wonted as she is to the caresses of periphrasis, plain-speaking, if she should occasionally be exposed to it, would horrify her. it does not accord with her dignity to speak naturally. she _underlines_ old corneille for his blunt way of speaking, as in,-- "_a heap of men_ ruined by debt and crimes." "chimène, _who'd have thought it_? rodrigue, _who'd have said it_?" "when their flaminius _haggled with_ hannibal." "oh! do not _embroil_ me with the republic." she still has her "tout beau, monsieur!" on her heart. and it needed many "seigneurs" and "madames" to procure forgiveness for our admirable racine for his monosyllabic "dogs!" and for so brutally bestowing claudius in agrippina's bed. this melpomene, as she is called, would shudder at the thought of touching a chronicle. she leaves to the costumer the duty of learning the period of the dramas she writes. in her eyes history is bad form and bad taste. how, for example, can one tolerate kings and queens who swear? they must be elevated from mere regal dignity to tragic dignity. it was in a promotion of this sort that she exalted henri iv. it was thus that the people's king, purified by m. legouvé, found his "ventre-saint-gris" ignominiously banished from his mouth by two sentences, and that he was reduced, like the girl in the old _fabliau_, to the necessity of letting fall from those royal lips only pearls and sapphires and rubies: the apotheosis of falsity, in very truth. the fact is that nothing is so commonplace as this conventional refinement and nobility. nothing original, no imagination, no invention in this style; simply what one has seen everywhere--rhetoric, bombast, commonplaces, flowers of college eloquence, poetry after the style of latin verses. the poets of this school are eloquent after the manner of stage princes and princesses, always sure of finding in the costumer's labelled cases, cloaks and pinchbeck crowns, which have no other disadvantage than that of having been used by everybody. if these poets never turn the leaves of the bible, it is not because they have not a bulky book of their own, the _dictionnaire de rimes_. that is the source of their poetry--_fontes aquarum_. it will be seen that, in all this, nature and truth get along as best they can. it would be great good luck if any remnants of either should survive in this cataclysm of false art, false style, false poetry. this is what has caused the errors of several of our distinguished reformers. disgusted by the stiffness, the ostentation, the _pomposo_, of this alleged dramatic poetry, they have concluded that the elements of our poetic language were incompatible with the natural and the true. the alexandrine had wearied them so often, that they condemned it without giving it a hearing, so to speak, and decided, a little hastily, perhaps, that the drama should be written in prose. they were mistaken. if in fact the false is predominant in the style as well as in the action of certain french tragedies, it is not the verses that should be held responsible therefore, but the versifiers. it was needful to condemn, not the form employed, but those who employed it: the workmen, not the tool. to convince one's self how few obstacles the nature of our poetry places in the way of the free expression of all that is true, we should study our verse, not in racine, perhaps, but often in corneille and always in molière. racine, a divine poet, is elegiac, lyric, epic; molière is dramatic. it is time to deal sternly with the criticisms heaped upon that admirable style by the wretched taste of the last century, and to proclaim aloud that molière occupies the topmost pinnacle of our drama, not only as a poet, but also as a writer. _palmas vere habet iste duas_. in his work the verse surrounds the idea, becomes of its very essence, compresses and develops it at once, imparts to it a more slender, more definite, more complete form, and gives us, in some sort, an extract thereof. verse is the optical form of thought. that is why it is especially adapted to the perspective of the stage. constructed in a certain way, it communicates its relief to things which, but for it, would be considered insignificant and trivial. it makes the tissue of style finer and firmer. it is the knot which stays the thread. it is the girdle which holds up the garment and gives it all its folds. what could nature and the true lose, then, by entering into verse? we ask the question of our prose-writers themselves--what do they lose in molière's poetry? does wine--we beg pardon for another trivial illustration--does wine cease to be wine when it is bottled? if we were entitled to say what, in our opinion, the style of dramatic poetry should be, we would declare for a free, outspoken, sincere verse, which dares say everything without prudery, express its meaning without seeking for words; which passes naturally from comedy to tragedy, from the sublime to the grotesque; by turns practical and poetical, both artistic and inspired, profound and impulsive, of wide range and true; verse which is apt opportunely to displace the caesura, in order to disguise the monotony of alexandrines; more inclined to the _enjambement_ that lengthens the line, than to the inversion of phrases that confuses the sense; faithful to rhyme, that enslaved queen, that supreme charm of our poetry, that creator of our metre; verse that is inexhaustible in the verity of its turns of thought, unfathomable in its secrets of composition and of grace; assuming, like proteus, a thousand forms without changing its type and character; avoiding long speeches; taking delight in dialogue; always hiding behind the characters of the drama; intent, before everything, on being in its place, and when it falls to its lot to be _beautiful_, being so only by chance, as it were, in spite of itself and unconsciously; lyric, epic, dramatic, at need; capable of running through the whole gamut of poetry, of skipping from high notes to low, from the most exalted to the most trivial ideas, from the most extravagant to the most solemn, from the most superficial to the most abstract, without ever passing beyond the limits of a spoken scene; in a word, such verse as a man would write whom a fairy had endowed with corneille's mind and molière's brain. it seems to us that such verse would be _as fine as prose_. there would be nothing in common between poetry of this sort and that of which we made a _post mortem_ examination just now. the distinction will be easy to point out if a certain man of talent, to whom the author of this book is under personal obligation, will allow us to borrow his clever phrase: the other poetry was descriptive, this would be picturesque. let us repeat, verse on the stage should lay aside all self-love, all exigence, all coquetry. it is simply a form, and a form which should admit everything, which has no laws to impose on the drama, but on the contrary should receive everything from it, to be transmitted to the spectator--french, latin, texts of laws, royal oaths, popular phrases, comedy, tragedy, laughter, tears, prose and poetry. woe to the poet whose verse does not speak out! but this form is a form of bronze which encases the thought in its metre beneath which the drama is indestructible, which engraves it more deeply on the actor's mind, warns him of what he omits and of what he adds, prevents him from changing his role, from substituting himself for the author, makes each word sacred, and causes what the poet has said to remain vivid a long while in the hearer's memory. the idea, when steeped in verse, suddenly assumes a more incisive, more brilliant quality. one feels that prose, which is necessarily more timid, obliged to wean the drama from anything like epic or lyric poetry, reduced to dialogue and to matter-of-fact, is a long way from possessing these resources. it has much narrower wings. and then, too, it is much more easy of access; mediocrity is at its ease in prose; and for the sake of a few works of distinction such as have appeared of late, the art would very soon be overloaded with abortions and embryos. another faction of the reformers incline to drama written in both prose and verse, as shakespeare composed it. this method has its advantages. there might, however, be some incongruity in the transitions from one form to the other; and when a tissue is homogeneous it is much stouter. however, whether the drama should be written in prose is only a secondary question. the rank of a work is certain to be fixed, not according to its form, but according to its intrinsic value. in questions of this sort, there is only one solution. there is but one weight that can turn the scale in the balance of art--that is genius. meanwhile, the first, the indispensable merit of a dramatic writer, whether he write in prose or verse, is correctness. not a mere superficial correctness, the merit or defect of the descriptive school, which makes lhomond and restaut the two wings of its pegasus; but that intimate, deep-rooted, deliberate correctness, which is permeated with the genius of a language, which has sounded its roots and searched its etymology; always unfettered, because it is sure of its footing, and always more in harmony with the logic of the language. our lady grammar leads the one in leading-strings; the other holds grammar in leash. it can venture anything, can create or invent its style; it has a right to do so. for, whatever certain men may have said who did not think what they were saying, and among whom we must place, notably, him who writes these lines, the french tongue is not _fixed_ and never will be. a language does not become fixed. the human intellect is always on the march, or, if you prefer, in movement, and languages with it. things are made so. when the body changes, how could the coat not change? the french of the nineteenth century can no more be the french of the eighteenth, than that is the french of the seventeenth, or than the french of the seventeenth is that of the sixteenth. montaigne's language is not rabelais's, pascal's is not montaigne's, montesquieu's is not pascal's. each of the four languages, taken by itself, is admirable because it is original. every age has its own ideas; it must have also words adapted to those ideas. languages are like the sea, they move to and fro incessantly. at certain times they leave one shore of the world of thought and overflow another. all that their waves thus abandon dries up and vanishes. it is in this wise that ideas vanish, that words disappear. it is the same with human tongues as with everything. each age adds and takes away something. what can be done? it is the decree of fate. in vain, therefore, should we seek to petrify the mobile physiognomy of our idiom in a fixed form. in vain do our literary joshuas cry out to the language to stand still; languages and the sun do not stand still. the day when they become _fixed_, they are dead.--that is why the french of a certain contemporary school is a dead language. such are, substantially, but without the more elaborate development which would make the evidence in their favour more complete, the _present_ ideas of the author of this book concerning the drama. he is far, however, from presuming to put forth his first dramatic essay as an emanation of these ideas, which, on the contrary, are themselves, it may be, simply results of its execution. it would be very convenient for him, no doubt, and very clever, to rest his book on his preface, and to defend each by the other. he prefers less cleverness and more frankness. he proposes, therefore, to be the first to point out the extreme tenuity of the thread connecting this preface with his drama. his first plan, dictated by his laziness, was to give the work to the public entirely unattended _el demonio sin las cuernas_, as yriarte said it was only after he had duly brought it to a close, that at the solicitations of a few friends, blinded by their friendship, no doubt, he determined to reckon with himself in a preface--to draw, so to speak, a map of the poetic voyage he had made, to take account of the acquisitions, good or bad, that he had brought home, and of the new aspects in which the domain of art had presented itself to his mind. someone will take advantage of this admission, doubtless to repeat the reproach already uttered by a critic in germany, that he has written "a treatise in defence of his poetry." what does it matter? in the first place he was much more inclined to demolish treatises on poetry than to write them. and then, would it not he better always to write treatises based on a poem, than to write poems based on a treatise? but no, we repeat that he has neither the talent to create nor the presumption to put forth systems "systems," cleverly said voltaire, "are like rats which pass through twenty holes, only to find at last two or three which will not let them through." it would have been, therefore, to undertake a useless task and one much beyond his strength. what he has pleaded, on the contrary, is the freedom of art against the despotism of systems, codes and rules it is his habit to follow at all risks whatever he takes for his inspiration, and to change moulds as often as he changes metals. dogmatism in the arts is what he shuns before everything. god forbid that he should aspire to be numbered among those men, be they romanticists or classicists, who compose _works according to their own systems_, who condemn themselves to have but one form in their minds, to be forever _proving_ something, to follow other laws than those of their temperaments and then natures. the artificial work of these men, however talented they may be, has no existence so far as art is concerned. it is a theory, not poetry. having attempted, in all that has gone before, to point out what, in our opinion, was the origin of the drama, what its character is, and what its style should he, the time has come to descend from these exalted general considerations upon the art to the particular case which has led us to put them forth. it remains for us to discourse to the reader of our work, of this _cromwell_; and as it is not a subject in which we take pleasure, we will say very little about it in very few words. oliver cromwell is one of those historical characters who are at once very famous and very little known. most of his biographers--and among them there are some who are themselves historical--have left that colossal figure incomplete. it would seem that they dared not assemble all the characteristic features of that strange and gigantic prototype of the religious reformation, of the political revolution of england. almost all of them have confined themselves to reproducing on a larger scale the simple and ominous profile drawn by bossuet from his catholic and monarchical standpoint, from his episcopal pulpit supported by the throne of louis xiv. like everybody else, the author of this book went no further than that. the name of oliver cromwell suggested to him simply the bare conception of a fanatical regicide and a great captain. only on prowling among the chronicles of the times, which he did with delight, and on looking through the english memoirs of the seventeenth century, was he surprised to find that a wholly new cromwell was gradually exposed to his gaze. it was no longer simply bossuet's cromwell the soldier, cromwell the politician; it was a complex, heterogenous, multiple being, made up of all sorts of contraries--a mixture of much that was evil and much that was good, of genius and pettiness; a sort of tiberius-dandin, the tyrant of europe and the plaything of his family; an old regicide, who delighted to humiliate the ambassadors of all the kings of europe, and was tormented by his young royalist daughter; austere and gloomy in his manners, yet keeping four court jesters about him; given to the composition of wretched verses; sober, simple, frugal, yet a stickler for etiquette; a rough soldier and a crafty politician; skilled in theological disputation and very fond of it; a dull, diffuse, obscure orator, but clever in speaking the language of anybody whom he wished to influence; a hypocrite and a fanatic; a visionary swayed by phantoms of his childhood, believing in astrologers and banishing them; suspicious to excess, always threatening, rarely sanguinary; a strict observer of puritan rules, and solemnly wasting several hours a day in buffoonery; abrupt and contemptuous with his intimates, caressing with the secretaries whom he feared, holding his remorse at bay with sophistry, paltering with his conscience, inexhaustible in adroitness, in tricks, in resources; mastering his imagination by his intelligence; grotesque and sublime; in a word, one of those men who are "square at the base," as they were described by napoleon, himself their chief, in his mathematically exact and poetically figurative language. he who writes these lines, in presence of this rare and impressive _ensemble_, felt that bossuet's impassioned sketch was no longer sufficient for him. he began to walk about that lofty figure, and he was seized by a powerful temptation to depict the giant in all his aspects. it was a rich soil. beside the man of war and the statesman, it remained to draw the theologian, the pedant, the wretched poet, the seer of visions, the buffoon, the father, the husband, the human proteus--in a word, the twofold cromwell, _homo et vir_. there is one period of his life, especially, in which this strange personality exhibits itself in all its forms. it is not as one might think at first blush, the period of the trial of charles i, instinct as that is with depressing and terrible interest; but it is the moment when the ambitious mortal boldly attempted to pluck the fruit of that monarch's death; it is the moment when cromwell, having attained what would have been to any other man the zenith of fortune--master of england, whose innumerable factions knelt silently at his feet; master of scotland, of which he had made a satrapy, and of ireland, which he had turned into a prison; master of europe through his diplomacy and his fleets--seeks to fulfil the dream of his earliest childhood, the last ambition of his life; to make himself king. history never had a more impressive lesson in a more impressive drama. first of all, the protector arranges to be urged to assume the crown: the august farce begins by addresses from municipalities, from counties; then there comes an act of parliament. cromwell, the anonymous author of the play, pretends to be displeased; we see him put out a hand toward the sceptre, then draw it back; by a devious path he draws near the throne from which he has swept the legitimate dynasty. at last he makes up his mind, suddenly; by his command westminster is decked with flags, the dais is built, the crown is ordered from the jewelers, the day is appointed for the ceremony.--strange dénouement! on that very day, in presence of the populace, the troops, the house of commons, in the great hall of westminster, on that dais from which he expected to descend as king, suddenly, as if aroused by a shock, he seems to awaken at the sight of the crown, asks if he is dreaming, and what the meaning is of all this regal pomp, and in a speech that lasts three hours declines the kingly title. was it because his spies had warned him of two conspiracies formed by cavaliers and puritans in concert, which were intended, taking advantage of this misstep, to break out on the same day? was it an inward revolution caused by the silence or the murmurs of the populace, discomposed to see their regicide ascend the throne? or was it simply the sagacity of genius, the instinct of a far-seeing, albeit unbridled ambition, which realizes how one step forward changes a man's position and attitude, and which dares not expose its plebeian structure to the wind of unpopularity? was it all these at once? this is a question which no contemporaneous document answers satisfactorily. so much the better: the poet's liberty is the more complete, and the drama is the gainer by the latitude which history affords it. it will be seen that here the latitude is ample and unique; this is, in truth, the decisive hour, the turning-point in cromwell's life. it is the moment when his chimera escapes from him, when the present kills the future, when, to use an expressive colloquialism, his destiny _misses fire_. all of cromwell is at stake in the comedy being played between england and himself. such then is the man and such the period of which we have tried to give an idea in this book. the author has allowed himself to be seduced by the childlike diversion of touching the keys of that great harpsichord. unquestionably, more skillful hands might have evoked a thrilling and profound melody--not of those which simply caress the ear--but of those intimate harmonies which stir the whole man to the depths of his being, as if each key of the key-board were connected with a fibre of the heart. he has surrendered to the desire to depict all those fanaticisms, all those superstitions--maladies to which religion is subject at certain epochs; to the longing to "make playthings of all these men," as hamlet says. to set in array about and below cromwell, himself the centre and pivot of that court, of that people, of that little world, which attracts all to his cause and inspires all with his vigour, that twofold conspiracy devised by two factions which detest each other, but join hands to overthrow the man who blocks their path, but which unite simply without blending; and that puritan faction, of divers minds, fanatical, gloomy, unselfish, choosing for leader the most insignificant of men for such a great part, the egotistical and cowardly lambert; and the faction of the cavaliers, featherheaded, merry, unscrupulous, reckless, devoted, led by the man who, aside from his devotion to the cause, was least fitted to represent it, the stern and upright ormond; and those ambassadors, so humble and fawning before the soldier of fortune; and the court itself, an extraordinary mixture of upstarts and great nobles vying with one another in baseness; and the four jesters whom the contemptuous neglect of history permitted me to invent; and cromwell's family, each member of which is as a thorn in his flesh; and thurloe, the protector's achates; and the jewish rabbi, israel ben-manasseh, spy, usurer, and astrologer, vile on two sides, sublime on the third; and rochester, the unique rochester, absurd and clever, refined and crapulous, always cursing, always in love, and always tipsy, as he himself boasted to bishop burnet--wretched poet and gallant gentleman, vicious and ingenuous, staking his head and indifferent whether he wins the game provided it amuses him--in a word, capable of everything, of ruse and recklessness, calculation and folly, villainy and generosity; and the morose carr, of whom history describes but one trait, albeit a most characteristic and suggestive one; and those other fanatics, of all ranks and varieties: harrison, the thieving fanatic; barebones the shopkeeping fanatic; syndercomb, the bravo; garland the tearful and pious assassin; gallant colonel overton, intelligent but a little declamatory; the austere and unbending ludlow, who left his ashes and his epitaph at lausanne; and lastly, "milton and a few other men of mind," as we read in a pamphlet of (_cromwell the politician_), which reminds one of "a certain dante" of the italian chronicle. we omit many less important characters, of each of whom, however, the actual life is known, and each of whom has his marked individuality, and all of whom contributed to the fascination which this vast historical scene exerted upon the author's imagination. from that scene he constructed this drama. he moulded it in verse, because he preferred to do so. one will discover on reading it how little thought he gave to his work while writing this preface--with what disinterestedness, for instance, he contended against the dogma of the unities. his drama does not leave london; it begins on june , , at three in the morning, and ends on the th at noon. observe that he has almost followed the classic formula, as the professors of poetry lay it down to-day. they need not, however, thank him for it. with the permission of history, not of aristotle, the author constructed his drama thus; and because, when the interest is the same, he prefers a compact subject to a widely diffused one. it is evident that, in its present proportions, this drama could not be given at one of our theatrical performances. it is too long. the reader will perhaps comprehend, none the less, that every part of it was written for the stage. it was on approaching his subject to study it that the author recognized, or thought that he recognized, the impossibility of procuring the performance of a faithful reproduction of it on our stage, in the exceptional position it now occupies, between the academic charybdis and the administrative scylla, between the literary juries and the political censorship. he was required to choose: either the wheedling, tricky, false tragedy, which may be acted, or the audaciously true drama, which is prohibited. the first was not worth the trouble of writing, so he preferred to attempt the second. that is why, hopeless of ever being put on the stage, he abandoned himself, freely and submissively, to the whims of composition, to the pleasure of painting with a freer hand, to the developments which his subject demanded, and which, even if they keep his drama off the stage, have at all events the advantage of making it almost complete from the historical standpoint. however, the reading committees are an obstacle of the second class only. if it should happen that the dramatic censorship, realizing how far this harmless, conscientious and accurate picture of cromwell and his time is removed from our own age, should sanction its production on the stage, in that case, but only in that case, the author might perhaps extract from this drama a play which would venture to show itself on the boards, and would be hissed. until then he will continue to hold aloof from the theatre. and even then he will leave his cherished and tranquil retirement soon enough, for the agitation and excitement of this new world. god grant that he may never repent of having exposed the unspotted obscurity of his name and his person to the shoals, the squalls and tempests of the pit, and above all (for what does a mere failure matter?) to the wretched bickerings of the wings; of having entered that shifting, foggy, stormy atmosphere, where ignorance dogmatises, where envy hisses, where cabals cringe and crawl, where the probity of talent has so often been misrepresented, where the noble innocence of genius is sometimes so out of place, where mediocrity triumphs in lowering to its level the superiority which obscures it, where one finds so many small men for a single great one, so many nobodies for one talma, so many myrmidons for one achilles! this sketch will seem ill-tempered perhaps, and far from flattering; but does it not fully mark out the distance that separates our stage, the abode of intrigues and uproar, from the solemn serenity of the ancient stage? whatever may happen, he feels bound to warn in advance that small number of persons whom such a production might attract, that a play made up of excerpts from _cromwell_ would occupy no less time then is ordinarily occupied by a theatrical performance. it is difficult for a _romantic_ theatre to maintain itself otherwise. surely, if people desire something different from the tragedies in which one or two characters, abstract types of a purely metaphysical idea, stalk solemnly about on a narrow stage occupied only by a few confidents, colourless reflections of the heroes, employed to fill the gaps in a simple, unified, single-stringed plot; if that sort of thing has grown tiresome, a whole evening is not too much time to devote to delineating with some fullness a man among men, a whole critical period: the one, with his peculiar temperament, his genius which adapts itself thereto, his beliefs which dominate them both, his passions which throw out of gear his temperament, his genius and his beliefs, his tastes which give colour to his passions, his habits which regulate his tastes and muzzle his passions, and with the innumerable procession of men of every sort whom these various elements keep in constant commotion about him; the other, with its manners, its laws, its fashions, its wit, its attainments, its superstitions, its events, and its people, whom all these first causes in turn mould like soft wax. it is needless to say that such a picture will be of huge proportions. instead of one personality, like that with which the abstract drama of the old school is content, there will be twenty, forty, fifty,--who knows how many?--of every size and of every degree of importance. there will be a crowd of characters in the drama. would it not be niggardly to assign it two hours only, and give up the rest of the performance to opera-comique or farce? to cut shakespeare for bobèche?--and do not imagine that, if the plot is well adjusted, the multitude of characters set in motion will cause fatigue to the spectator or confusion in the drama. shakespeare, abounding in petty details, is at the same time, and for that very reason, imposing by the grandeur of the _ensemble._ it is the oak which casts a most extensive shadow with its myriads of slender leaves. let us hope that people in france will ere long become accustomed to devote a whole evening to a single play. in england and germany there are plays that last six hours. the greeks, about whom we hear so much, the greeks--and after the fashion of scudéri we will cite at this point the classicist dacier, in the seventh chapter of his _poetics_--the greeks sometimes went so far as to have twelve or sixteen plays acted in a single day. among a people who are fond of spectacles the attention is more lively than is commonly believed the _mariage de figaro_, the connecting link of beaumarchais's great trilogy, occupies the whole evening, and who was ever bored or fatigued by it beaumarchais was worthy to venture on the first step toward that goal of modern art at which it will be impossible to arrive in two hours, that profound, insatiable interest which results from a vast, lifelike and multiform plot. "but," someone will say, "this performance, consisting of a single play, would be monotonous, would seem terribly long"--not so. on the contrary it would lose its present monotony and tediousness. for what is done now? the spectator's entertainment is divided into two or three sharply defined parts. at first he is given two hours of serious enjoyment, then one hour of hilarious enjoyment, these, with the hour of entr' actes, which we do not include in the enjoyment make four hours what would the romantic drama do? it would mingle and blend artistically these two kinds of enjoyment. it would lead the audience constantly from sobriety to laughter, from mirthful excitement to heart breaking emotion, "from grave to gay, from pleasant to severe." for, as we have already proved, the drama is the grotesque in conjunction with the sublime, the soul within the body, it is tragedy beneath comedy. do you not see that, by affording you repose from one impression by means of another, by sharpening the tragic upon the comic, the merry upon the terrible, and at need calling in the charms of the opera, these performances, while presenting but one play, would be worth a multitude of others? the romantic stage would make a piquant, savoury, diversified dish of that which, on the classic stage, is a drug divided into two pills. the author has soon come to the end of what he had to say to the reader. he has no idea how the critics will greet this drama and these thoughts, summarily set forth, stripped of their corollaries and ramifications, put together _currente calamo_, and in haste to have done with them. doubtless they will appear to "the disciples of la harpe" most impudent and strange. but if perchance, naked and undeveloped as they are, they should have the power to start upon the road of truth this public whose education is so far advanced, and whose minds so many notable writings, of criticism or of original thought, books or newspapers, have already matured for art, let the public follow that impulsion, caring naught whether it comes from a man unknown, from a voice with no authority, from a work of little merit. it is a copper bell which summons the people to the true temple and the true god. there is to-day the old literary régime as well as the old political régime. the last century still weighs upon the present one at almost every point. it is notably oppressive in the matter of criticism. for instance, you find living men who repeat to you this definition of taste let fall by voltaire: "taste in poetry is no different from what it is in women's clothes." taste, then, is coquetry. remarkable words, which depict marvellously the painted, _moucheté_, powdered poetry of the eighteenth century--that literature in paniers, pompons and falbalas. they give an admirable résumé of an age with which the loftiest geniuses could not come in contact without becoming petty, in one respect or another; of an age when montesquieu was able and apt to produce _le temple de gnide_, voltaire _le temple du goût_, jean-jacques _le devin du village_. taste is the common sense of genius. this is what will soon be demonstrated by another school of criticism, powerful, outspoken, well-informed,--a school of the century which is beginning to put forth vigorous shoots under the dead and withered branches of the old school. this youthful criticism, as serious as the other is frivolous, as learned as the other is ignorant, has already established organs that are listened to, and one is sometimes surprised to find, even in the least important sheets, excellent articles emanating from it. joining hands with all that is fearless and superior in letters, it will deliver us from two scourges: tottering _classicism_, and false _romanticism_, which has the presumption to show itself at the feet of the true. for modern genius already has its shadow, its copy, its parasite, its _classic_, which forms itself upon it, smears itself with its colours, assumes its livery, picks up its crumbs, and, like _the sorcerer's pupil_, puts in play, with words retained by the memory, elements of theatrical action of which it has not the secret. thus it does idiotic things which its master many a time has much difficulty in making good. but the thing that must be destroyed first of all is the old false taste. present-day literature must be cleansed of its rust. in vain does the rust eat into it and tarnish it. it is addressing a young, stern, vigorous generation, which does not understand it. the train of the eighteenth century is still dragging in the nineteenth; but we, we young men who have seen bonaparte, are not the ones who will carry it. we are approaching, then, the moment when we shall see the new criticism prevail, firmly established upon a broad and deep foundation. people generally will soon understand that writers should be judged, not according to rules and species, which are contrary to nature and art, but according to the immutable principles of the art of composition, and the special laws of their individual temperaments. the sound judgment of all men will be ashamed of the criticism which broke pierre corneille on the wheel, gagged jean racine, and which ridiculously rehabilitated john milton only by virtue of the epic code of père le bossu. people will consent to place themselves at the author's standpoint, to view the subject with his eyes, in order to judge a work intelligently. they will lay aside--and it is m. de chateaubriand who speaks--"the paltry criticism of defects for the noble and fruitful criticism of beauties." it is time that all acute minds should grasp the thread that frequently connects what we, following our special whim, call "defects" with what we call "beauty." defects--at all events those which we call by that name--are often the inborn, necessary, inevitable conditions of good qualities. scit genius, natale comes qul temperat astrum. who ever saw a medal without its reverse? a talent that had not some shadow with its brilliancy, some smoke with its flame? such a blemish can be only the inseparable consequence of such beauty. this rough stroke of the brush, which offends my eye at close range, completes the effect and gives relief to the whole picture. efface one and you efface the other. originality is made up of such things. genius is necessarily uneven. there are no high mountains without deep ravines. fill up the valley with the mountain and you will have nothing but a steppe, a plateau, the plain of les sablons instead of the alps, swallows and not eagles. we must also take into account the weather, the climate, the local influences. the bible, homer, hurt us sometimes by their very sublimities. who would want to part with a word of either of them? our infirmity often takes fright at the inspired bold flights of genius, for lack of power to swoop down upon objects with such vast intelligence. and then, once again, there are _defects_ which take root only in masterpieces; it is given only to certain geniuses to have certain defects. shakespeare is blamed for his abuse of metaphysics, of wit, of redundant scenes, of obscenities, for his employment of the mythological nonsense in vogue in his time, for exaggeration, obscurity, bad taste, bombast, asperities of style. the oak, that giant tree which we were comparing to shakespeare just now, and which has more than one point of resemblance to him, the oak has an unusual shape, gnarled branches, dark leaves, and hard, rough bark; but it is the oak. and it is because of these qualities that it is the oak. if you would have a smooth trunk, straight branches, satiny leaves, apply to the pale birch, the hollow elder, the weeping willow; but leave the mighty oak in peace. do not stone that which gives you shade. the author of this book knows as well as any one the numerous and gross faults of his works. if it happens too seldom that he corrects them, it is because it is repugnant to him to return to a work that has grown cold. moreover, what has he ever done that is worth that trouble? the labor that he would throw away in correcting the imperfections of his books, he prefers to use in purging his intellect of its defects. it is his method to correct one work only in another work. however, no matter what treatment may be accorded his book, he binds himself not to defend it, in whole or in part. if his drama is worthless, what is the use of upholding it? if it is good, why defend it? time will do the book justice or will wreak justice upon it. its success for the moment is the affair of the publisher alone. if then the wrath of the critics is aroused by the publication of this essay, he will let them do their worst. what reply should he make to them? he is not one of those who speak, as the castilian poet says, "through the mouths of their wounds." por la boca de su herida. one last word. it may have been noticed that in this somewhat long journey through so many different subjects, the author has generally refrained from resting his personal views upon texts or citations of authorities. it is not, however, because he did not have them at his hand. "if the poet establishes things that are impossible according to the rules of his art, he makes a mistake unquestionably; but it ceases to be a mistake when by this means he has reached the end that he aimed at; for he has found what he sought,"--"they take for nonsense whatever the weakness of their intellects does not allow them to understand. they are especially prone to call absurd those wonderful passages in which the poet, in order the better to enforce his argument, departs, if we may so express it, from his argument. in fact, the precept which makes it a rule sometimes to disregard rules, is a mystery of the art which it is not easy to make men understand who are absolutely without taste and whom a sort of abnormality of mind renders insensible to those things which ordinarily impress men." who said the first? aristotle. who said the last? boileau. by these two specimens you will see that the author of this drama might, as well as another, have shielded himself with proper names and taken refuge behind others' reputations. but he preferred to leave that style of argument to those who deem it unanswerable, universal and all-powerful. as for himself, he prefers reasons to authorities; he has always cared more for arms than for coats-of-arms. _october_, . [footnote a: victor hugo ( - ) the chief of the romantic school in france, issued in the preface to "cromwell" the manifesto of the movement. poet, dramatist, and novelist, hugo remained through a long life the most conspicuous man of letters in france; and in the document here printed he laid down the principles which revolutionized the literary world of his time.] preface to leaves of grass by walt whitman. ( )[a] america does not repel the past or what it has produced under its forms or amid other politics or the idea of castes or the old religions ... accepts the lesson with calmness ... is not so impatient as has been supposed that the slough still sticks to opinions and manners and literature while the life which served its requirements has passed into the new life of the new forms ... perceives that the corpse is slowly borne from the eating and sleeping rooms of the house ... perceives that it waits a little while in the door ... that it was fittest for its days ... that its action has descended to the stalwart and well shaped heir who approaches ... and that he shall be fittest for his days. the americans of all nations at any time upon the earth, have probably the fullest poetical nature. the united states themselves are essentially the greatest poem. in the history of the earth hitherto the largest and most stirring appear tame and orderly to their ampler largeness and stir. here at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with the broadcast doings of the day and night. here is not merely a nation but a teeming nation of nations. here is action untied from strings necessarily blind to particulars and details magnificently moving in vast masses. here is the hospitality which forever indicates heroes.... here are the roughs and beards and space and ruggedness and nonchalance that the soul loves. here the performance disdaining the trivial unapproached in the tremendous audacity of its crowds and groupings and the push of its perspective spreads with crampless and flowing breadth and showers its prolific and splendid extravagance. one sees it must indeed own the riches of the summer and winter, and need never be bankrupt while corn grows from the ground or the orchards drop apples or the bays contain fish or men beget children upon women. other states indicate themselves in their deputies ... but the genius of the united states is not best or most in its executives or legislatures, nor in its ambassadors or authors or colleges or churches or parlors, nor even in its newspapers or inventors ... but always most in the common people. their manners speech dress friendship--the freshness and candor of their physiognomy--the picturesque looseness of their carriage ... their deathless attachment to freedom--their aversion to anything indecorous or soft or mean--the practical acknowledgment of the citizens of one state by the citizens of all other states--the fierceness of their roused resentment--- their curiosity and welcome of novelty--their self-esteem and wonderful sympathy--their susceptibility to a slight--the air they have of persons who never knew how it felt to stand in the presence of superiors--the fluency of their speech--their delight in music, the sure symptom of manly tenderness and native elegance of soul ... their good temper and open handedness--the terrible significance of their elections--the president's taking off his hat to them, not they to him--these too are unrhymed poetry. it awaits the gigantic and generous treatment worthy of it. the largeness of nature or the nation were monstrous without a corresponding largeness and generosity of the spirit of the citizen. not nature nor swarming states nor streets and steamships nor prosperous business nor farms nor capital nor learning may suffice for the ideal of man ... nor suffice the poet. no reminiscences may suffice either. a live nation can always cut a deep mark and can have the best authority the cheapest ... namely from its own soul. this is the sum of the profitable uses of individuals or states and of present action and grandeur and of the subjects of poets.--as if it were necessary to trot back generation after generation to the eastern records! as if the beauty and sacredness of the demonstrable must fall behind that of the mythical! as if men do not make their mark out of any times! as if the opening of the western continent by discovery and what has transpired since in north and south america were less than the small theatre of the antique or the aimless sleepwalking of the middle ages! the pride of the united states leaves the wealth and finesse of the cities and all returns of commerce and agriculture and all the magnitude of geography or shows of exterior victory to enjoy the breed of full sized men or one full sized man unconquerable and simple. the american poets are to enclose old and new for america is the race of races. of them a bard is to be commensurate with a people. to him the other continents arrive as contributions ... he gives them reception for their sake and his own sake. his spirit responds to his country's spirit ... he incarnates its geography and natural life and rivers and lakes. mississippi with annual freshets and changing chutes, missouri and columbia and ohio and st. lawrence with the falls and beautiful masculine hudson, do not embouchure where they spend themselves more than they embouchure into him. the blue breadth over the inland sea of virginia and maryland and the sea off massachusetts and maine and over manhattan bay and over champlain and erie and over ontario and huron and michigan and superior, and over the texan and mexican and floridian and cuban seas, and over the seas off california and oregon, is not tallied by the blue breadth of the waters below more than the breadth of above and below is tallied by him. when the long atlantic coast stretches longer and the pacific coast stretches longer he easily stretches with them north or south. he spans between them also from east to west and reflects what is between them. on him rise solid growths that offset the growths of pine and cedar and hemlock and live oak and locust and chestnut and cypress and hickory and limetree and cottonwood and tuliptree and cactus and wildvine and tamarind and persimmon ... and tangles as tangled as any canebrake or swamp ... and forests coated with transparent ice, and icicles hanging from boughs and crackling in the wind ... and sides and peaks of mountains ... and pasturage sweet and free as savannah or upland or prairie ... with flights and songs and screams that answer those of the wild pigeon and high-hold and orchard-oriole and coot and surf-duck and red-shouldered-hawk and fish-hawk and white ibis and indian-hen and cat-owl and water-pheasant and qua-bird and pied-sheldrake and blackbird and mockingbird and buzzard and condor and night-heron and eagle. to him the hereditary countenance descends both mother's and father's. to him enter the essences of the real things and past and present events--of the enormous diversity of temperature and agriculture and mines--the tribes of red aborigines--the weather-beaten vessels entering new ports or making landings on rocky coasts--the first settlements north or south--the rapid stature and muscle--the haughty defiance of ' , and the war and peace and formation of the constitution ... the union always surrounded by blatherers and always calm and impregnable--the perpetual coming of immigrants--the wharf-hem'd cities and superior marine--the unsurveyed interior--the loghouses and clearings and wild animals and hunters and trappers ... the free commerce--the fisheries and whaling and gold-digging--the endless gestation of new states--the convening of congress every december, the members duly coming up from all climates and the uttermost parts ... the noble character of the young mechanics and of all free american workmen and workwomen ... the general ardor and friendliness and enterprise--the perfect equality of the female with the male ... the large amativeness--the fluid movement of the population--the factories and mercantile life and laborsaving machinery--the yankee swap--the new york firemen and the target excursion--the southern plantation life--the character of the northeast and of the northwest and southwest--slavery and the tremulous spreading of hands to protect it, and the stern opposition to it which shall never cease till it ceases or the speaking of tongues and the moving of lips cease. for such the expression of the american poet is to be transcendent and new. it is to be indirect and not direct or descriptive or epic. its quality goes through these to much more. let the age and wars of other nations be chanted and their eras and characters be illustrated and that finish the verse. not so the great psalm of the republic. here the theme is creative and has vista. here comes one among the well beloved stonecutters and plans with decision and science and sees the solid and beautiful forms of the future where there are now no solid forms. of all nations the united states with veins full of poetical stuff most need poets and will doubtless have the greatest and use them the greatest. their presidents shall not be their common referee so much as their poets shall. of all mankind the great poet is the equable man. not in him but off from him things are grotesque or eccentric or fail of their sanity. nothing out of its place is good and nothing in its place is bad. he bestows on every object or quality its fit proportions neither more nor less. he is the arbiter of the diverse and he is the key. he is the equalizer of his age and land ... he supplies what wants supplying and checks what wants checking. if peace is the routine out of him speaks the spirit of peace, large, rich, thrifty, building vast and populous cities, encouraging agriculture and the arts and commerce--lighting the study of man, the soul, immortality--federal, state or municipal government, marriage, health, freetrade, intertravel by land and sea ... nothing too close, nothing too far off ... the stars not too far off. in war he is the most deadly force of the war. who recruits him recruits horse and foot ... he fetches parks of artillery the best that engineer ever knew. if the time becomes slothful and heavy he knows how to arouse it ... he can make every word he speaks draw blood. whatever stagnates in the flat of custom or obedience or legislation he never stagnates. obedience does not master him, he masters it. high up out of reach he stands turning a concentrated light ... he turns the pivot with his finger ... he baffles the swiftest runners as he stands and easily overtakes and envelopes them. the time straying towards infidelity and confections and persiflage he withholds by his steady faith ... he spreads out his dishes ... he offers the sweet firmfibred meat that grows men and women. his brain is the ultimate brain. he is no arguer ... he is judgment. he judges not as the judge judges but as the sun falling around a helpless thing. as he sees the farthest he has the most faith. his thoughts are the hymns of the praise of things. in the talk on the soul and eternity and god off of his equal plane he is silent. he sees eternity less like a play with a prologue and dénouement ... he sees eternity in men and women ... he does not see men or women as dreams or dots. faith is the antiseptic of the soul ... it pervades the common people and preserves them ... they never give up believing and expecting and trusting. there is that indescribable freshness and unconsciousness about an illiterate person that humbles and mocks the power of the noblest expressive genius. the poet sees for a certainty how one not a great artist may be just as sacred and perfect as the greatest artist.... the power to destroy or remould is freely used by him, but never the power of attack. what is past is past. if he does not expose superior models and prove himself by every step he takes he is not what is wanted. the presence of the greatest poet conquers ... not parleying or struggling or any prepared attempts. now he has passed that way see after him! there is not left any vestige of despair or misanthropy or cunning or exclusiveness or the ignominy of a nativity or color or delusion of hell or the necessity of hell ... and no man thenceforward shall be degraded for ignorance or weakness or sin. the greatest poet hardly knows pettiness or triviality. if he breathes into anything that was before thought small it dilates with the grandeur and life of the universe. he is a seer ... he is individual ... he is complete in himself ... the others are as good as he, only he sees it and they do not. he is not one of the chorus ... he does not stop for any regulation ... he is the president of regulation. what the eyesight does to the rest he does to the rest. who knows the curious mystery of the eyesight? the other senses corroborate themselves, but this is removed from any proof but its own and foreruns the identities of the spiritual world. a single glance of it mocks all the investigations of man and all the instruments and books of the earth and all reasoning. what is marvellous? what is unlikely? what is impossible or baseless or vague? after you have once just opened the space of a peachpit and given audience to far and near and to the sunset and had all things enter with electric swiftness softly and duly without contusion or jostling or jam. the land and sea, the animals fishes and birds, the sky of heavens and the orbs, the forests mountains and rivers, are not small themes ... but folks expect of the poet to indicate more than the beauty and dignity which always attach to dumb real objects,... they expect him to indicate the path between reality and their souls. men and women perceive the beauty well enough ... probably as well as he. the passionate tenacity of hunters, woodmen, early risers, cultivators of gardens and orchards and fields, the love of healthy women for the manly form, seafaring persons, drivers of horses, the passion for light and the open air, all is an old varied sign of the unfailing perception of beauty and of a residence of the poetic in outdoor people. they can never be assisted by poets to perceive ... some may but they never can. the poetic quality is not marshalled in rhyme or uniformity or abstract addresses to things nor in melancholy complaints or good precepts, but is the life of these and much else and is in the soul. the profit of rhyme is that it drops seeds of a sweeter and more luxuriant rhyme, and of uniformity that it conveys itself into its own roots in the ground out of sight. the rhyme and uniformity of perfect poems show the free growth of metrical laws and bud from them as unerringly and loosely as lilacs and roses on a bush, and take shapes as compact as the shapes of chestnuts and oranges and melons and pears, and shed the perfume impalpable to form. the fluency and ornaments of the finest poems or music or orations or recitations are not independent but dependent. all beauty comes from beautiful blood and a beautiful brain. if the greatnesses are in conjunction in a man or woman it is enough ... the fact will prevail through the universe ... but the gaggery and gilt of a million years will not prevail. who troubles himself about his ornaments or fluency is lost. this is what you shall do: love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning god, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul; and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.... the poet shall not spend his time in unneeded work. he shall know that the ground is always ready ploughed and manured ... others may not know it but he shall. he shall go directly to the creation. his trust shall master the trust of everything he touches ... and shall master all attachment. the known universe has one complete lover and that is the greatest poet. he consumes an eternal passion and is indifferent which chance happens and which possible contingency of fortune or misfortune and persuades daily and hourly his delicious pay. what baulks or breaks others is fuel for his burning progress to contact and amorous joy. other proportions of the reception of pleasure dwindle to nothing to his proportions. all expected from heaven or from the highest he is rapport with in the sight of the daybreak or a scene of the winter woods or the presence of children playing or with his arm round the neck of a man or woman. his love above all love has leisure and expanse ... he leaves room ahead of himself. he is no irresolute or suspicious lover ... he is sure ... he scorns intervals. his experience and the showers and thrills are not for nothing. nothing can jar him ... suffering and darkness cannot--death and fear cannot. to him complaint and jealousy and envy are corpses buried and rotten in the earth ... he saw them buried. the sea is not surer of the shore or the shore of the sea than he is of the fruition of his love and of all perfection and beauty. the fruition of beauty is no chance of hit or miss ... it is inevitable as life ... it is as exact and plumb as gravitation. from the eyesight proceeds another eyesight and from the hearing proceeds another hearing and from the voice proceeds another voice eternally curious of the harmony of things with man. to these respond perfections not only in the committees that were supposed to stand for the rest but in the rest themselves just the same. these understand the law of perfection in masses and floods ... that its finish is to each for itself and onward from itself ... that it is profuse and impartial ... that there is not a minute of the light or dark nor an acre of the earth and sea without it--nor any direction of the sky nor any trade or employment nor any turn of events. this is the reason that about the proper expression of beauty there is precision and balance ... one part does not need to be thrust above another. the best singer is not the one who has the most lithe and powerful organ ... the pleasure of poems is not in them that take the handsomest measure and similes and sound. without effort and without exposing in the least how it is done the greatest poet brings the spirit of any or all events and passions and scenes and persons some more and some less to bear on your individual character as you hear or read. to do this well is to compete with the laws that pursue and follow time. what is the purpose must surely be there and the clue of it must be there ... and the faintest indication is the indication of the best and then becomes the clearest indication. past and present and future are not disjoined but joined. the greatest poet forms the consistence of what is to be from what has been and is. he drags the dead out of their coffins and stands them again on their feet ... he says to the past, rise and walk before me that i may realize you. he learns the lesson ... he places himself where the future becomes present. the greatest poet does not only dazzle his rays over character and scenes and passions ... he finally ascends and finishes all ... he exhibits the pinnacles that no man can tell what they are for or what is beyond ... he glows a moment on the extremest verge. he is most wonderful in his last half-hidden smile or frown ... by that flash of the moment of parting the one that sees it shall be encouraged or terrified afterward for many years. the greatest poet does not moralize or make applications of morals ... he knows the soul. the soul has that measureless pride which consists in never acknowledging any lessons but its own. but it has sympathy as measureless as its pride and the one balances the other and neither can stretch too far while it stretches in company with the other. the inmost secrets of art sleep with the twain. the greatest poet has lain close betwixt both and they are vital in his style and thoughts. the art of art, the glory of expression and the sunshine of the light of letters is simplicity. nothing is better than simplicity ... nothing can make up for excess or for the lack of definiteness. to carry on the heave of impulse and pierce intellectual depths and give all subjects their articulations are powers neither common nor very uncommon. but to speak in literature with the perfect rectitude and insouciance of the movements of animals and the unimpeachableness of the sentiment of trees in the woods and grass by the roadside is the flawless triumph of art. if you have looked on him who has achieved it you have looked on one of the masters of the artists of all nations and times. you shall not contemplate the flight of the gray gull over the bay or the mettlesome action of the blood horse or the tall leaning of sunflowers on their stalk or the appearance of the sun journeying through heaven or the appearance of the moon afterward with any more satisfaction than you shall contemplate him. the greatest poet has less a marked style and is more the channel of thoughts and things without increase or diminution and is the free channel of himself. he swears to his art, i will not be meddlesome, i will not have in my writing any elegance or effect or originality to hang in the way between me and the rest like curtains. i will have nothing hang in the way not the richest curtains. what i tell i tell for precisely what it is. let who may exalt or startle or fascinate or soothe i will have purposes as health or heat or snow has and be as regardless of observation. what i experience or portray shall go from my composition without a shred of my composition. you shall stand by my side and look in the mirror with me. the old red blood and stainless gentility of great poets will be proved by their unconstraint. a heroic person walks at his ease through and out of that custom or precedent or authority that suits him not. of the traits of the brotherhood of writers savans musicians inventors and artists, nothing is finer than silent defiance advancing from new free forms. in the need of poems philosophy politics mechanism science behavior, the craft of art, an appropriate native grand-opera, shipcraft; or any craft, he is greatest for ever and for ever who contributes the greatest original practical example. the cleanest expression is that which finds no sphere worthy of itself and makes one. the messages of great poets to each man and woman are, come to us on equal terms, only then can you understand us, we are no better than you, what we enclose you enclose, what we enjoy you may enjoy. did you suppose there could be only one supreme? we affirm there can be unnumbered supremes, and that one does not countervail another any more than one eyesight countervails another ... and that men can be good or grand only of the consciousness of their supremacy within them. what do you think is the grandeur of storms and dismemberments and the deadliest battles and wrecks and the wildest fury of the elements and the power of the sea and the motion of nature and the throes of human desires and dignity and hate and love? it is that something in the soul which says, rage on, whirl on, i tread master here and everywhere, master of the spasms of the sky and of the shatter of the sea, master of nature and passion and death, and of all terror and all pain. the american bards shall be marked for generosity and affection and for encouraging competitors.... they shall be kosmos ... without monopoly or secrecy ... glad to pass anything to any one ... hungry for equals night and day. they shall not be careful of riches and privilege ... they shall be riches and privilege ... they shall perceive who the most affluent man is. the most affluent man is he that confronts all the shows he sees by equivalents out of the stronger wealth of himself. the american bard shall delineate no class of persons nor one or two out of the strata of interests nor love most nor truth most nor the soul most nor the body most ... and not be for the eastern states more than the western or the northern states more than the southern. exact science and its practical movements are no checks on the greatest poet but always his encouragement and support. the outset and remembrance are there ... there the arms that lifted him first and brace him best ... there he returns after all his goings and comings. the sailor and traveller ... the anatomist chemist astronomer geologist phrenologist spiritualist mathematician historian and lexicographer are not poets, but they are the lawgivers of poets and their construction underlies the structure of every perfect poem. no matter what rises or is uttered they sent the seed of the conception of it ... of them and by them stand the visible proofs of souls ... always of their fatherstuff must be begotten the sinewy races of bards. if there shall be love and content between the father and the son and if the greatness of the son is the exuding of the greatness of the father there shall be love between the poet and the man of demonstrable science. in the beauty of poems are the tuft and final applause of science. great is the faith of the flush of knowledge and of the investigation of the depths of qualities and things. cleaving and circling here swells the soul of the poet yet is president of itself always. the depths are fathomless and therefore calm. the innocence and nakedness are resumed ... they are neither modest nor immodest. the whole theory of the special and supernatural and all that was twined with it or educed out of it departs as a dream. what has ever happened ... what happens and whatever may or shall happen, the vital laws enclose all ... they are sufficient for any case and for all cases ... none to be hurried or retarded ... any miracle of affairs or persons inadmissible in the vast clear scheme where every motion and every spear of grass and the frames and spirits of men and women and all that concerns them are unspeakably perfect miracles all referring to all and each distinct and in its place. it is also not consistent with the reality of the soul to admit that there is anything in the known universe more divine than men and women. men and women and the earth and all upon it are simply to be taken as they are, and the investigation of their past and present and future shall be unintermitted and shall be done with perfect candor. upon this basis philosophy speculates ever looking towards the poet, ever regarding the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness never inconsistent with what is clear to the senses and to the soul. for the eternal tendencies of all toward happiness make the only point of sane philosophy. whatever comprehends less than that ... whatever is less than the laws of light and of astronomical motion ... or less than the laws that follow the thief the liar the glutton and the drunkard through this life and doubtless afterward ... or less than vast stretches of time or the slow formation of density or the patient upheaving of strata--is of no account. whatever would put god in a poem or system of philosophy as contending against some being or influence is also of no account. sanity and ensemble characterize the great master ... spoilt in one principle all is spoilt. the great master has nothing to do with miracles. he sees health for himself in being one of the mass ... he sees the hiatus in singular eminence. to the perfect shape comes common ground. to be under the general law is great, for that is to correspond with it. the master knows that he is unspeakably great and that all are unspeakably great ... that nothing for instance is greater than to conceive children and bring them up well ... that to be is just as great as to perceive or tell. in the make of the great masters the idea of political liberty is indispensable. liberty takes the adherence of heroes wherever men and women exist ... but never takes any adherence or welcome from the rest more than from poets. they are the voice and exposition of liberty. they out of ages are worthy the grand idea ... to them it is confided and they must sustain it. nothing has precedence of it and nothing can warp or degrade it. the attitude of great poets is to cheer up slaves and horrify despots. the turn of their necks, the sound of their feet, the motions of their wrists, are full of hazard to the one and hope to the other. come nigh them awhile and though they neither speak nor advise you shall learn the faithful american lesson. liberty is poorly served by men whose good intent is quelled from one failure or two failures or any number of failures, or from the casual indifference or ingratitude of the people, or from the sharp show of the tushes of power, or the bringing to bear soldiers and cannon or any penal statutes. liberty relies upon itself, invites no one, promises nothing, sits in calmness and light, is positive and composed, and knows no discouragement. the battle rages with many a loud alarm and frequent advance and retreat ... the enemy triumphs ... the prison, the handcuffs, the iron necklace and anklet, the scaffold, garrote and leadballs do their work ... the cause is asleep ... the strong throats are choked with their own blood ... the young men drop their eyelashes toward the ground when they pass each other ... and is liberty gone out of that place? no never. when liberty goes it is not the first to go nor the second or third to go ... it awaits for all the rest to go ... it is the last.... when the memories of the old martyrs are faded utterly away ... when the large names of patriots are laughed at in the public halls from the lips of the orators ... when the boys are no more christened after the same but christened after tyrants and traitors instead ... when the laws of the free are grudgingly permitted and the laws for informers and bloodmoney are sweet to the taste of the people ... when i and you walk abroad upon the earth stung with compassion at the sight of numberless brothers answering our equal friendship and calling no man master--and when we are elated with noble joy at the sight of slaves ... when the soul retires in the cool communion of the night and surveys its experience and has much extasy over the word and deed that put back a helpless innocent person into the gripe of the gripers or into any cruel inferiority ... when those in all parts of these states who could easier realize the true american character but do not yet--when the swarms of cringers, suckers, doughfaces, lice of politics, planners of sly involutions for their own preferment to city offices or state legislatures or the judiciary or congress or the presidency, obtain a response of love and natural deference from the people whether they get the offices or no ... when it is better to be a bound booby and rogue in office at a high salary than the poorest free mechanic or farmer with his hat unmoved from his head and firm eyes and a candid and generous heart ... and when servility by town or state or the federal government or any oppression on a large scale or small scale can be tried on without its own punishment following duly after in exact proportion against the smallest chance of escape ... or rather when all life and all the souls of men and women are discharged from any part of the earth--then only shall the instinct of liberty be discharged from that part of the earth. as the attributes of the poets of the kosmos concentre in the real body and soul and in the pleasure of things they possess the superiority of genuineness over all fiction and romance. as they emit themselves facts are showered over with light ... the daylight is lit with more volatile light ... also the deep between the setting and rising sun goes deeper many fold. each precise object or condition or combination or process exhibits a beauty ... the multiplication table its--old age its--the carpenter's trade its--the grand opera its--the hugehulled cleanshaped new-york clipper at sea under steam or full sail gleams with unmatched beauty.... the american circles and large harmonies of government gleam with theirs ... and the commonest definite intentions and actions with theirs. the poets of the kosmos advance through all interpositions and coverings and turmoils and stratagems to first principles. they are of use ... they dissolve poverty from its need and riches from its conceit. you large proprietor, they say, shall not realize or perceive more than any one else. the owner of the library is not he who holds a legal title to it having bought and paid for it. any one and every one is owner of the library who can read the same through all the varieties of tongues and subjects and styles, and in whom they enter with ease and take residence and force toward paternity and maternity, and make supple and powerful and rich and large.... these american states strong and healthy and accomplished shall receive no pleasure from violations of natural models and must not permit them. in paintings or mouldings or carvings in mineral or wood, or in the illustrations of books and newspapers, or in any comic or tragic prints, or in the patterns of woven stuffs or anything to beautify rooms or furniture or costumes, or to put upon cornices or monuments or on the prows or sterns of ships, or to put anywhere before the human eye indoors or out, that which distorts honest shapes or which creates unearthly beings or places or contingencies, is a nuisance and revolt. of the human form especially, it is so great it must never be made ridiculous. of ornaments to a work nothing outré can be allowed ... but those ornaments can be allowed that conform to the perfect facts of the open air, and that flow out of the nature of the work and come irrepressibly from it and are necessary to the completion of the work. most works are most beautiful without ornament ... exaggerations will be revenged in human physiology. clean and vigorous children are jetted and conceived only in those communities where the models of natural forms are public every day ... great genius and the people of these states must never be demeaned to romances. as soon as histories are properly told there is no more need of romances. the great poets are also to be known by the absence in them of tricks and by the justification of perfect personal candor. then folks echo a new cheap joy and a divine voice leaping from their brains: how beautiful is candor! all faults may be forgiven of him who has perfect candor. henceforth let no man of us lie, for we have seen that openness wins the inner and outer world and that there is no single exception, and that never since our earth gathered itself in a mass have deceit or subterfuge or prevarication attracted its smallest particle or the faintest tinge of a shade--and that through the enveloping wealth and rank of a state or the whole republic of states a sneak or sly person shall be discovered and despised ... and that the soul has never once been fooled and never can be fooled ... and thrift without the loving nod of the soul is only a foetid puff ... and there never grew up in any of the continents of the globe nor upon any planet or satellite or star, nor upon the asteroids, nor in any part of ethereal space, nor in the midst of density, nor under the fluid wet of the sea, nor in that condition which precedes the birth of babes, nor at any time during the changes of life, nor in that condition that follows what we term death, nor in any stretch of abeyance or action afterward of vitality, nor in any process of formation or reformation anywhere, a being whose instinct hated the truth. extreme caution or prudence, the soundest organic health, large hope and comparison and fondness for women and children, large alimentiveness and destructiveness and causality, with a perfect sense of the oneness of nature and the propriety of the same spirit applied to human affairs ... these are called up of the float of the brain of the world to be parts of the greatest poet from his birth out of his mother's womb and from her birth out of her mother's. caution seldom goes far enough. it has been thought that the prudent citizen was the citizen who applied himself to solid gains and did well for himself and for his family and completed a lawful life without debt or crime. the greatest poet sees and admits these economies as he sees the economies of food and sleep, but has higher notions of prudence than to think he gives much when he gives a few slight attentions at the latch of the gate. the premises of the prudence of life are not the hospitality of it or the ripeness and harvest of it. beyond the independence of a little sum laid aside for burial-money, and of a few clapboards around and shingles overhead on a lot of american soil owned, and the easy dollars that supply the year's plain clothing and meals, the melancholy prudence of the abandonment of such a great being as a man is to the toss and pallor of years of money-making with all their scorching days and icy nights and all their stifling deceits and underhanded dodgings, or infinitesimals of parlors, or shameless stuffing while others starve ... and all the loss of the bloom and odor of the earth and of the flowers and atmosphere and of the sea, and of the true taste of the women and men you pass or have to do with in youth or middle age, and the issuing sickness and desperate revolt at the close of a life without elevation or naivete, and the ghastly chatter of a death without serenity or majesty, is the great fraud upon modern civilization and forethought, blotching the surface and system which civilization undeniably drafts, and moistening with tears the immense features it spreads and spreads with such velocity before the reached kisses of the soul.... still the right explanation remains to be made about prudence. the prudence of the mere wealth and respectability of the most esteemed life appears too faint for the eye to observe at all when little and large alike drop quietly aside at the thought of the prudence suitable for immortality. what is wisdom that fills the thinness of a year or seventy or eighty years to wisdom spaced out by ages and coming back at a certain time with strong reinforcements and rich presents and the clear faces of wedding-guests as far as you can look in every direction, running gaily toward you? only the soul is of itself ... all else has reference to what ensues. all that a person does or thinks is of consequence. not a move can a man or woman make that effects him or her in a day or a month or any part of the direct lifetime or the hour of death but the same affects him or her onward afterward through the indirect lifetime. the indirect is always as great and real as the direct. the spirit receives from the body just as much as it gives to the body. not one name of word or deed ... not of venereal sores or discolorations ... not the privacy of the onanist ... not of the putrid veins of gluttons or rumdrinkers ... not peculation or cunning or betrayal or murder ... no serpentine poison of those that seduce women ... not the foolish yielding of women ... not prostitution ... not of any depravity of young men ... not of the attainment of gain by discreditable means ... not any nastiness of appetite ... not any harshness of officers to men or judges to prisoners or fathers to sons or sons to fathers or of husbands to wives or bosses to their boys ... not of greedy looks or malignant wishes ... nor any of the wiles practised by people upon themselves ... ever is or ever can be stamped on the programme but it is duly realized and returned, and that returned in further performances ... and they returned again. nor can the push of charity or personal force ever be anything else than the profoundest reason, whether it bring argument to hand or no. no specification is necessary ... to add or subtract or divide is in vain. little or big, learned or unlearned, white or black, legal or illegal, sick or well, from the first inspiration down the windpipe to the last expiration out of it, all that a male or female does that is vigorous and benevolent and clean is so much sure profit to him or her in the unshakable order of the universe and through the whole scope of it for ever. if the savage or felon is wise it is well ... if the greatest poet or savan is wise it is simply the same ... if the president or chief justice is wise it is the same ... if the young mechanic or farmer is wise it is no more or less ... if the prostitute is wise it is no more nor less. the interest will come round ... all will come round. all the best actions of war and peace ... all help given to relatives and strangers and the poor and old and sorrowful and young children and widows and the sick, and to all shunned persons ... all furtherance of fugitives and of the escape of slaves ... all the self-denial that stood steady and aloof on wrecks and saw others take the seats of the boats ... all offering of substance or life for the good old cause, or for a friend's sake or opinion's sake ... all pains of enthusiasts scoffed at by their neighbors ... all the vast sweet love and precious sufferings of mothers ... all honest men baffled in strifes recorded or unrecorded ... all the grandeur and good of the few ancient nations whose fragments of annals we inherit ... and all the good of the hundreds of far mightier and more ancient nations unknown to us by name or date or location ... all that was ever manfully begun, whether it succeeded or no ... all that has at any time been well suggested out of the divine heart of man or by the divinity of his mouth or by the shaping of his great hands ... and all that is well thought or done this day on any part of the surface of the globe ... or on any of the wandering stars or fixed stars by those there as we are here ... or that is henceforth to be well thought or done by you whoever you are, or by any one--these singly and wholly inured at their time and inure now and will inure always to the identities from which they sprung or shall spring ... did you guess any of them lived only its moment? the world does not so exist ... no parts palpable or impalpable so exist ... no result exists now without being from its long antecedent result, and that from its antecedent, and so backward without the farthest mentionable spot coming a bit nearer the beginning than any other spot.... whatever satisfies the soul is truth. the prudence of the greatest poet answers at last the craving and glut of the soul, is not contemptuous of less ways of prudence if they conform to its ways, puts off nothing, permits no let-up for its own case or any case, has no particular sabbath or judgment-day, divides not the living from the dead or the righteous from the unrighteous, is satisfied with the present, matches every thought or act by its correlative, knows no possible forgiveness or deputed atonement ... knows that the young man who composedly perilled his life and lost it has done exceeding well for himself, while the man who has not perilled his life and retains to old age in riches and ease has perhaps achieved nothing for himself worth mentioning ... and that only that person has no great prudence to learn who has learnt to prefer real longlived things, and favors body and soul the same, and perceives the indirect assuredly following the direct, and what evil or good he does leaping onward and waiting to meet him again--and who in his spirit in any emergency whatever neither hurries or avoids death. the direct trial of him who would be the greatest poet is to-day. if he does not flood himself with the immediate age as with vast oceanic tides ... and if he does not attract his own land body and soul to himself, and hang on its neck with incomparable love and plunge his semitic muscle into its merits and demerits ... and if he be not himself the age transfigured ... and if to him is not opened the eternity which gives similitude to all periods and locations and processes and animate and inanimate forms, and which is the bond of time, and rises up from its inconceivable vagueness and infiniteness in the swimming shape of to-day, and is held by the ductile anchors of life, and makes the present spot the passage from what was to what shall be, and commits itself to the representation of this wave of an hour and this one of the sixty beautiful children of the wave--let him merge in the general run and wait his development.... still the final test of poems or any character or work remains. the prescient poet projects himself centuries ahead and judges performer or performance after the changes of time. does it live through them? does it still hold on untired? will the same style and the direction of genius to similar points be satisfactory now? has no new discovery in science or arrival at superior planes of thought and judgment and behavior fixed him or his so that either can be looked down upon? have the marches of tens and hundreds and thousands of years made willing detours to the right hand and the left hand for his sake? is he beloved long and long after he is buried? does the young man think often of him? and the young woman think often of him? and do the middle aged and the old think of him? a great poem is for ages and ages in common, and for all degrees and complexions, and all departments and sects, and for a woman as much as a man and a man as much as a woman. a great poem is no finish to a man or woman but rather a beginning. has any one fancied he could sit at last under some due authority and rest satisfied with explanations and realize and be content and full? to no such terminus does the greatest poet bring ... he brings neither cessation or sheltered fatness and ease. the touch of him tells in action. whom he takes he takes with firm sure grasp into live regions previously unattained ... thenceforward is no rest ... they see the space and ineffable sheen that turn the old spots and lights into dead vacuums. the companion of him beholds the birth and progress of stars and learns one of the meanings. now there shall be a man cohered out of tumult and chaos ... the elder encourages the younger and shows him how ... they too shall launch off fearlessly together till the new world fits an orbit for itself and looks unabashed on the lesser orbits of the stars and sweeps through the ceaseless rings and shall never be quiet again. there will soon be no more priests. their work is done. they may wait awhile ... perhaps a generation or two ... dropping off by degrees. a superior breed shall take their place ... the gangs of kosmos and prophets _en masse_ shall take their place. a new order shall arise and they shall be the priests of man, and every man shall be his own priest. the churches built under their umbrage shall be the churches of men and women. through the divinity of themselves shall the kosmos and the new breed of poets be interpreters of men and women and of all events and things. they shall find their inspiration in real objects to-day, symptoms of the past and future.... they shall not deign to defend immortality or god or the perfection of things or liberty or the exquisite beauty and reality of the soul. they shall arise in america and be responded to from the remainder of the earth. the english language befriends the grand american expression ... it is brawny enough and limber and full enough ... on the tough stock of a race who through all change of circumstance was never without the idea of political liberty, which is the animus of all liberty, it has attracted the terms of daintier and gayer and subtler and more elegant tongues. it is the powerful language of resistance ... it is the dialect of common sense. it is the speech of the proud and melancholy races and of all who aspire. it is the chosen tongue to express growth faith self-esteem freedom justice equality friendliness amplitude prudence decision and courage. it is the medium that shall well nigh express the inexpressible. no great literature nor any like style of behavior or oratory or social intercourse or household arrangements or public institutions or the treatment of bosses of employed people, nor executive detail or detail of the army and navy, nor spirit of legislation or courts or police or tuition or architecture or songs or amusements or the costumes of young men, can long elude the jealous and passionate instinct of american standards. whether or no the sign appears from the mouths of the people, it throbs a live interrogation in every freeman's and freewoman's heart after that which passes by or this built to remain. is it uniform with my country? are its disposals without ignominious distinctions? is it for the ever growing communes of brothers and lovers, large, well-united, proud beyond the old models, generous beyond all models? is it something grown fresh out of the fields or drawn from the sea for use to me today here? i know that what answers for me an american must answer for any individual or nation that serves for a part of my materials. does this answer? or is it without reference to universal needs? or sprung of the needs of the less developed society of special ranks? or old needs of pleasure overlaid by modern science or forms? does this acknowledge liberty with audible and absolute acknowledgment, and set slavery at nought for life and death? will it help breed one goodshaped and wellhung man, and a woman to be his perfect and independent mate? does it improve manners? is it for the nursing of the young of the republic? does it solve readily with the sweet milk of the nipples of the breasts of the mother of many children? has it too the old ever-fresh forbearance and impartiality? does it look for the same love on the last born and on those hardening toward stature, and on the errant, and on those who disdain all strength of assault outside their own? the poems distilled from other poems will probably pass away. the coward will surely pass away. the expectation of the vital and great can only be satisfied by the demeanor of the vital and great. the swarms of the polished deprecating and reflectors and the polite float off and leave no remembrance. america prepares with composure and goodwill for the visitors that have sent word. it is not intellect that is to be their warrant and welcome. the talented, the artist, the ingenious, the editor, the statesman, the erudite ... they are not unappreciated ... they fall in their place and do their work. the soul of the nation also does its work. no disguise can pass on it ... no disguise can conceal from it. it rejects none, it permits all. only towards as good as itself and toward the like of itself will it advance half-way. an individual is as superb as a nation when he has the qualities which make a superb nation. the soul of the largest and wealthiest and proudest nation may well go half-way to meet that of its poets. the signs are effectual. there is no fear of mistake. if the one is true the other is true. the proof of a poet is that his country absorbs him as affectionately as he has absorbed it. [footnote a: walt whitman ( - ), the most original of american poets, was born in west hills, long island, educated in the brooklyn public schools, and apprenticed to a printer. as a youth he taught in a country school, and later went into journalism in new york, brooklyn, and new orleans. the first edition of "leaves of grass" appeared in , with the remarkable preface here printed. during the war he acted as a volunteer nurse in the army hospitals, and, when it closed, he became a clerk in the government service at washington. he continued to write almost till his death.] introduction to the history of english literature by hippolyte adolphe taine. ( )[a] i history, within a hundred years in germany, and within sixty years in france, has undergone a transformation owing to a study of literatures. the discovery has been made that a literary work is not a mere play of the imagination, the isolated caprice of an excited brain, but a transcript of contemporary manners and customs and the sign of a particular state of intellect. the conclusion derived from this is that, through literary monuments, we can retrace the way in which men felt and thought many centuries ago. this method has been tried and found successful. we have meditated over these ways of feeling and thinking and have accepted them as facts of prime significance. we have found that they were dependent on most important events, that they explain these, and that these explain them, and that henceforth it was necessary to give them their place in history, and one of the highest. this place has been assigned to them, and hence all is changed in history--the aim, the method, the instrumentalities, and the conceptions of laws and of causes. it is this change as now going on, and which must continue to go on, that is here attempted to be set forth. on turning over the large stiff pages of a folio volume, or the yellow leaves of a manuscript, in short, a poem, a code of laws, a confession of faith, what is your first comment? you say to yourself that the work before you is not of its own creation. it is simply a mold like a fossil shell, an imprint similar to one of those forms embedded in a stone by an animal which once lived and perished. beneath the shell was an animal and behind the document there was a man. why do you study the shell unless to form some idea of the animal? in the same way do you study the document in order to comprehend the man; both shell and document are dead fragments and of value only as indications of the complete living being. the aim is to reach this being; this is what you strive to reconstruct. it is a mistake to study the document as if it existed alone by itself. that is treating things merely as a pedant, and you subject yourself to the illusions of a book-worm. at bottom mythologies and languages are not existences; the only realities are human beings who have employed words and imagery adapted to their organs and to suit the original cast of their intellects. a creed is nothing in itself. who made it? look at this or that portrait of the sixteenth century, the stern, energetic features of an archbishop or of an english martyr. nothing exists except through the individual; it is necessary to know the individual himself. let the parentage of creeds be established, or the classification of poems, or the growth of constitutions, or the transformations of idioms, and we have only cleared the ground. true history begins when the historian has discerned beyond the mists of ages the living, active man, endowed with passions, furnished with habits, special in voice, feature, gesture and costume, distinctive and complete, like anybody that you have just encountered in the street. let us strive then, as far as possible, to get rid of this great interval of time which prevents us from observing the man with our eyes, _the eyes of our own head_. what revelations do we find in the calendared leaves of a modern poem? a modern poet, a man like de musset, victor hugo, lamartine, or heine, graduated from a college and traveled, wearing a dress-coat and gloves, favored by ladies, bowing fifty times and uttering a dozen witticisms in an evening, reading daily newspapers, generally occupying an apartment on the second story, not over-cheerful on account of his nerves, and especially because, in this dense democracy in which we stifle each other, the discredit of official rank exaggerates his pretensions by raising his importance, and, owing to the delicacy of his personal sensations, leading him to regard himself as a deity. such is what we detect behind modern _meditations_ and _sonnets_. again, behind a tragedy of the seventeenth century there is a poet, one, for example, like racine, refined, discreet, a courtier, a fine talker, with majestic perruque and ribboned shoes, a monarchist and zealous christian, "god having given him the grace not to blush in any society on account of zeal for his king or for the gospel," clever in interesting the monarch, translating into proper french "the _gaulois_ of amyot," deferential to the great, always knowing how to keep his place in their company, assiduous and respectful at marly as at versailles, amid the formal creations of a decorative landscape and the reverential bows, graces, intrigues, and fineness of the braided seigniors who get up early every morning to obtain the reversion of an office, together with the charming ladies who count on their fingers the pedigrees which entitle them to a seat on a footstool. on this point consult saint-simon and the engravings of perelle, the same as you have just consulted balzac and the water-color drawings of eugene lami. in like manner, on reading a greek tragedy, our first care is to figure to ourselves the greeks, that is to say, men who lived half-naked in the gymnasiums or on a public square under a brilliant sky, in full view of the noblest and most delicate landscape, busy in rendering their bodies strong and agile, in conversing together, in arguing, in voting, in carrying out patriotic piracies, and yet idle and temperate, the furniture of their houses consisting of three earthen jars and their food of two pots of anchovies preserved in oil, served by slaves who afford them the time to cultivate their minds and to exercise their limbs, with no other concern that that of having the most beautiful city, the most beautiful processions, the most beautiful ideas, and the most beautiful men. in this respect, a statue like the "meleager" or the "theseus" of the parthenon, or again a sight of the blue and lustrous mediterranean, resembling a silken tunic out of which islands arise like marble bodies, together with a dozen choice phrases selected from the works of plato and aristophanes, teach us more than any number of dissertations and commentaries. and so again, in order to understand an indian purana, one must begin by imagining the father of a family who, "having seen a son on his son's knees," follows the law and, with ax and pitcher, seeks solitude under a banyan tree, talks no more, multiplies his fastings, lives naked with four fires around him under the fifth fire, that terrible sun which endlessly devours and resuscitates all living things; who fixes his imagination in turn for weeks at a time on the foot of brahma, then on his knee, on his thigh, on his navel, and so on, until, beneath the strain of this intense meditation, hallucinations appear, when all the forms of being, mingling together and transformed into each other, oscillate to and fro in this vertiginous brain until the motionless man, with suspended breath and fixed eyeballs, beholds the universe melting away like vapor over the vacant immensity of the being in which he hopes for absorption. in this case the best of teachings would be a journey in india; but, for lack of a better one, take the narratives of travelers along with works in geography, botany, and ethnology. in any event, there must be the same research. a language, a law, a creed, is never other than an abstraction; the perfect thing is found in the active man, the visible corporeal figure which eats, walks, fights, and labors. set aside the theories of constitutions and their results, of religions and their systems, and try to observe men in their workshops or offices, in their fields along with their own sky and soil, with their own homes, clothes, occupations and repasts, just as you see them when, on landing in england or in italy, you remark their features and gestures, their roads and their inns, the citizen on his promenades and the workman taking a drink. let us strive as much as possible to supply the place of the actual, personal, sensible observation that is no longer practicable, this being the only way in which we can really know the man; let us make the past present; to judge of an object it must be present; no experience can be had of what is absent. undoubtedly, this sort of reconstruction is always imperfect; only an imperfect judgment can be based on it; but let us do the best we can; incomplete knowledge is better than none at all, or than knowledge which is erroneous, and there is no other way of obtaining knowledge approximatively of bygone times than by _seeing_ approximatively the men of former times. such is the first step in history. this step was taken in europe at the end of the last century when the imagination took fresh flight under the auspices of lessing and walter scott, and a little later in france under chateaubriand, augustin thierry, michelet, and others. we now come to the second step. ii on observing the visible man with your own eyes what do you try to find in him? the invisible man. these words which your ears catch, those gestures, those airs of the head, his attire and sensible operations of all kinds, are, for you, merely so many expressions; these express something, a soul. an inward man is hidden beneath the outward man, and the latter simply manifests the former. you have observed the house in which he lives, his furniture, his costume, in order to discover his habits and tastes, the degree of his refinement or rusticity, his extravagance or economy, his follies or his cleverness. you have listened to his conversation and noted the inflexions of his voice, the attitudes he has assumed, so as to judge of his spirit, self-abandonment or gayety, his energy or his rigidity. you consider his writings, works of art, financial and political schemes, with a view to measure the reach and limits of his intelligence, his creative power and self-command, to ascertain the usual order, kind, and force of his conceptions, in what way he thinks and how he resolves. all these externals are so many avenues converging to one center, and you follow these only to reach that center; here is the real man, namely, that group of faculties and of sentiments which produces the rest. behold a new world, an infinite world; for each visible action involves an infinite train of reasonings and emotions, new or old sensations which have combined to bring this into light and which, like long ledges of rock sunk deep in the earth, have cropped out above the surface and attained their level. it is this subterranean world which forms the second aim, the special object of the historian. if his critical education suffices, he is able to discriminate under every ornament in architecture, under every stroke of the brush in a picture, under each phrase of literary composition, the particular sentiment out of which the ornament, the stroke, and the phrase have sprung; he is a spectator of the inward drama which has developed itself in the breast of the artist or writer; the choice of words, the length or shortness of the period, the species of metaphor, the accent of a verse, the chain of reasoning--all are to him an indication; while his eyes are reading the text his mind and soul are following the steady flow and ever-changing series of emotions and conceptions from which this text has issued; he is working out its _psychology_. should you desire to study this operation, regard the promoter and model of all the high culture of the epoch, goethe, who, before composing his "iphigenia" spent days in making drawings of the most perfect statues and who, at last, his eyes filled with the noble forms of antique scenery and his mind penetrated by the harmonious beauty of antique life, succeeded in reproducing internally, with such exactness, the habits and yearnings of greek imagination as to provide us with an almost twin sister of the "antigone" of sophocles and of the goddesses of phidias. this exact and demonstrated divination of bygone sentiments has, in our days, given a new life to history. there was almost complete ignorance of this in the last century; men of every race and of every epoch were represented as about alike, the greek, the barbarian, the hindoo, the man of the renaissance and the man of the eighteenth century, cast in the same mold and after the same pattern, and after a certain abstract conception which served for the whole human species. there was a knowledge of man but not of men. there was no penetration into the soul itself; nothing of the infinite diversity and wonderful complexity of souls had been detected; it was not known that the moral organization of a people or of an age is as special and distinct as the physical structure of a family of plants or of an order of animals. history to-day, like zoölogy, has found its anatomy, and whatever branch of it is studied, whether philology, languages or mythologies, it is in this way that labor must be given to make it produce new fruit. among so many writers who, since herder, ottfried müller, and goethe have steadily followed and rectified this great effort, let the reader take two historians and two works, one "the life and letters of cromwell" by carlyle, and the other the "port royal" of sainte-beuve. he will see how precisely, how clearly, and how profoundly we detect the soul of a man beneath his actions and works; how, under an old general and in place of an ambitious man vulgarly hypocritical, we find one tormented by the disordered reveries of a gloomy imagination, but practical in instinct and faculties, thoroughly english and strange and incomprehensible to whoever has not studied the climate and the race; how, with about a hundred scattered letters and a dozen or more mutilated speeches, we follow him from his farm and his team to his general's tent and to his protector's throne, in his transformation and in his development, in his struggles of conscience and in his statesman's resolutions, in such a way that the mechanism of his thought and action becomes visible and the ever renewed and fitful tragedy, within which wracked this great gloomy soul, passes like the tragedies of shakespeare into the souls of those who behold them. we see how, behind convent disputes and the obstinacy of nuns, we recover one of the great provinces of human psychology; how fifty or more characters, rendered invisible through the uniformity of a narration careful of the proprieties, came forth in full daylight, each standing out clear in its countless diversities; how, underneath theological dissertations and monotonous sermons, we discern the throbbings of ever-breathing hearts, the excitements and depressions of the religious life, the unforeseen reaction and pell-mell stir of natural feeling, the infiltrations of surrounding society, the intermittent triumphs of grace, presenting so many shades of difference that the fullest description and most flexible style can scarcely garner in the vast harvest which the critic has caused to germinate in this abandoned field. and the same elsewhere. germany, with its genius, so pliant, so broad, so prompt in transformations, so fitted for the reproduction of the remotest and strangest states of human thought; england, with its matter-of-fact mind, so suited to the grappling with moral problems, to making them clear by figures, weights, and measures, by geography and statistics, by texts and common sense; france, at length, with its parisian culture and drawing-room habits, with its unceasing analysis of characters and of works, with its ever ready irony at detecting weaknesses, with its skilled finesse in discriminating shades of thought--all have plowed over the same ground, and we now begin to comprehend that no region of history exists in which this deep sub-soil should not be reached if we would secure adequate crops between the furrows. such is the second step, and we are now in train to follow it out. such is the proper aim of contemporary criticism. no one has done this work so judiciously and on so grand a scale as sainte-beuve; in this respect, we are all his pupils; literary, philosophic, and religious criticism in books, and even in the newspapers, is to-day entirely changed by his method. ulterior evolution must start from this point. i have often attempted to expose what this evolution is; in my opinion, it is a new road open to history and which i shall strive to describe more in detail. iii after having observed in a man and noted down one, two, three, and then a multitude of sentiments, do these suffice and does your knowledge of him seem complete? does a memorandum book constitute a psychology? it is not a psychology, and here, as elsewhere, the search for causes must follow the collection of facts. it matters not what the facts may be, whether physical or moral, they always spring from causes; there are causes for ambition, for courage, for veracity, as well as for digestion, for muscular action, and for animal heat. vice and virtue are products like vitriol and sugar; every complex fact grows out of the simple facts with which it is affiliated and on which it depends. we must therefore try to ascertain what simple facts underlie moral qualities the same as we ascertain those that underlie physical qualities, and, for example, let us take the first fact that comes to hand, a religious system of music, that of a protestant church. a certain inward cause has inclined the minds of worshipers toward these grave, monotonous melodies, a cause much greater than its effect; that is to say, a general conception of the veritable outward forms of worship which man owes to god; it is this general conception which has shaped the architecture of the temple, cast out statues, dispensed with paintings, effaced ornaments, shortened ceremonies, confined the members of a congregation to high pews which cut off the view, and governed the thousand details of decoration, posture, and all other externals. this conception itself again proceeds from a more general cause, an idea off human conduct in general, inward and outward, prayers, actions, dispositions of every sort that man is bound to maintain toward the deity; it is this which has enthroned the doctrine of grace, lessened the importance of the clergy, transformed the sacraments, suppressed observances, and changed the religion of discipline into one of morality. this conception, in its turn, depends on a third one, still more general, that of moral perfection as this is found in a perfect god, the impeccable judge, the stern overseer, who regards every soul as sinful, meriting punishment, incapable of virtue or of salvation, except through a stricken conscience which he provokes and the renewal of the heart which he brings about. here is the master conception, consisting of duty erected into the absolute sovereign of human life, and which prostrates all other ideals at the feet of the moral ideal. here we reach what is deepest in man; for, to explain this conception, we must consider the race he belongs to, say the german, the northman, the formation and character of his intellect, his ways in general of thinking and feeling, that tardiness and frigidity of sensation which keeps him from rashly and easily falling tinder the empire of sensual enjoyments, that bluntness of taste, that irregularity and those outbursts of conception which arrest in him the birth of refined and harmonious forms and methods; that disdain of appearances, that yearning for truth, that attachment to abstract, bare ideas which develop conscience in him at the expense of everything else. here the search comes to an end. we have reached a certain primitive disposition, a particular trait belonging to sensations of all kinds, to every conception peculiar to an age or to a race, to characteristics inseparable from every idea and feeling that stir in the human breast. such are the grand causes, for these are universal and permanent causes, present in every case and at every moment, everywhere and always active, indestructible, and inevitably dominant in the end, since, whatever accidents cross their path being limited and partial, end in yielding to the obscure and incessant repetition of their energy; so that the general structure of things and all the main features of events are their work, all religions and philosophies, all poetic and industrial systems, all forms of society and of the family, all, in fine, being imprints bearing the stamp of their seal. iv there is, then, a system in human ideas and sentiments, the prime motor of which consists in general traits, certain characteristics of thought and feeling common to men belonging to a particular race, epoch, or country. just as crystals in mineralogy, whatever their diversity, proceed from a few simple physical forms, so do civilizations in history, however these may differ, proceed from a few spiritual forms. one is explained by a primitive geometrical element as the other is explained by a primitive psychological element. in order to comprehend the entire group of mineralogical species we must first study a regular solid in the general, its facets and angles, and observe in this abridged form the innumerable transformations of which it is susceptible. in like manner, if we would comprehend the entire group of historic varieties we must consider beforehand a human soul in the general, with its two or three fundamental faculties, and, in this abridgment, observe the principal forms it may present. this sort of ideal tableau, the geometrical as well as psychological, is not very complex, and we soon detect the limitations of organic conditions to which civilizations, the same as crystals, are forcibly confined. what do we find in man at the point of departure? images or representations of objects, namely, that which floats before him internally, lasts a certain time, is effaced, and then returns after contemplating this or that tree or animal, in short, some sensible object. this forms the material basis of the rest and the development of this material basis is twofold, speculative or positive, just as these representations end in a _general conception_ or in an _active resolution_. such is man, summarily abridged. it is here, within these narrow confines, that human diversities are encountered, now in the matter itself and again in the primordial twofold development. however insignificant in the elements they are of vast significance in the mass, while the slightest change in the factors leads to gigantic changes in the results. according as the representation is distinct, as if stamped by a coining-press, or confused and blurred; according as it concentrates in itself a larger or smaller number of the characters of an object; according as it is violent and accompanied with impulsions or tranquil and surrounded with calmness, so are all the operations and the whole running-gear of the human machine entirely transformed. in like manner, again, according as the ulterior development of the representation varies, so does the whole development of the man vary. if the general conception in which this ends is merely a dry notation in chinese fashion, language becomes a kind of algebra, religion and poetry are reduced to a minimum, philosophy is brought down to a sort of moral and practical common sense, science to a collection of recipes, classifications, and utilitarian mnemonics, the mind itself taking a whole positive turn. if, on the contrary, the general conception in which the representation culminates is a poetic and figurative creation, a living symbol, as with the aryan races, language becomes a sort of shaded and tinted epic in which each word stands as a personage, poesy and religion assume magnificent and inexhaustible richness, and metaphysics develops with breadth and subtlety without any consideration of positive bearings; the whole intellect, notwithstanding the deviation and inevitable weaknesses of the effort, is captivated by the beautiful and sublime, thus conceiving an ideal type which, through its nobleness and harmony, gathers to itself all the affections and enthusiasms of humanity. if, on the other hand, the general conception in which the representation culminates is poetic but abrupt, is reached not gradually but by sudden intuition, if the original operation is not a regular development but a violent explosion--then, as with the semitic races, metaphysical power is wanting; the religious conception becomes that of a royal god, consuming and solitary; science cannot take shape, the intellect grows rigid and too headstrong to reproduce the delicate ordering of nature; poetry cannot give birth to aught but a series of vehement, grandiose exclamations, while language no longer renders the concatenation of reasoning and eloquence, man being reduced to lyric enthusiasm, to ungovernable passion, and to narrow and fanatical action. it is in this interval between the particular representation and the universal conception that the germs of the greatest human differences are found. some races, like the classic, for example, pass from the former to the latter by a graduated scale of ideas regularly classified and more and more general; others, like the germanic, traverse the interval in leaps, with uniformity and after prolonged and uncertain groping. others, like the romans and the english, stop at the lowest stages; others, like the hindoos and germans, mount to the uppermost. if, now, after considering the passage from the representation to the idea, we regard the passage from the representation to the resolution, we find here elementary differences of like importance and of the same order, according as the impression is vivid, as in southern climes, or faint, as in northern climes, as it ends in instantaneous action as with barbarians, or tardily as with civilized nations, as it is capable or not of growth, of inequality, of persistence and of association. the entire system of human passion, all the risks of public peace and security, all labor and action, spring from these sources. it is the same with the other primordial differences; their effects embrace an entire civilization, and may be likened to those algebraic formulæ which, within narrow bounds, describe beforehand the curve of which these form the law. not that this law always prevails to the end; sometimes, perturbations arise, but, even when this happens, it is not because the law is defective, but because it has not operated alone. new elements have entered into combination with old ones; powerful foreign forces have interfered to oppose primitive forces. the race has emigrated, as with the ancient aryans, and the change of climate has led to a change in the whole intellectual economy and structure of society. a people has been conquered like the saxon nation, and the new political structure has imposed on its customs, capacities, and desires which it did not possess. the nation has established itself permanently in the midst of downtrodden and threatening subjects, as with the ancient spartans, while the necessity of living, as in an armed encampment, has violently turned the whole moral and social organization in one unique direction. at all events, the mechanism of human history is like this. we always find the primitive mainspring consisting of some widespread tendency of soul and intellect, either innate and natural to the race or acquired by it and due to some circumstance forced upon it. these great given mainsprings gradually produce their effects, that is to say, at the end of a few centuries they place the nation in a new religious, literary, social, and economic state; a new condition which, combined with their renewed effort, produces another condition, sometimes a good one, sometimes a bad one, now slowly, now rapidly, and so on; so that the entire development of each distinct civilization may be considered as the effect of one permanent force which, at every moment, varies its work by modifying the circumstances where it acts. v three different sources contribute to the production of this elementary moral state, _race, environment_, and _epoch._ what we call _race_ consists of those innate and hereditary dispositions which man brings with him into the world and which are generally accompanied with marked differences of temperament and of bodily structure. they vary in different nations. naturally, there are varieties of men as there are varieties of cattle and horses, some brave and intelligent, and others timid and of limited capacity; some capable of superior conceptions and creations, and others reduced to rudimentary ideas and contrivances; some specially fitted for certain works, and more richly furnished with certain instincts, as we see in the better endowed species of dogs, some for running and others for fighting, some for hunting and others for guarding houses and flocks. we have here a distinct force; so distinct that, in spite of the enormous deviations which both the other motors impress upon it, we still recognize, and which a race like the aryan people, scattered from the ganges to the hebrides, established tinder all climates, ranged along every degree of civilization, transformed by thirty centuries of revolutions, shows nevertheless in its languages, in its religions, in its literatures, and in its philosophies, the community of blood and of intellect which still to-day binds together all its offshoots. however they may differ, their parentage is not lost; barbarism, culture and grafting, differences of atmosphere and of soil, fortunate or unfortunate occurrences, have operated in vain; the grand characteristics of the original form have lasted, and we find that the two or three leading features of the primitive imprint are again apparent under the subsequent imprints with which time has overlaid them. there is nothing surprising in this extraordinary tenacity. although the immensity of the distance allows us to catch only a glimpse in a dubious light of the origin of species,[ ] the events of history throw sufficient light on events anterior to history to explain the almost unshaken solidity of primordial traits. at the moment of encountering them, fifteen, twenty, and thirty centuries before our era, in an aryan, egyptian, or chinese, they represent the work of a much greater number of centuries, perhaps the work of many myriads of centuries. for, as soon as an animal is born it must adapt itself to its surroundings; it breathes in another way, it renews itself differently, it is otherwise stimulated according as the atmosphere, the food, and the temperature are different. a different climate and situation create different necessities and hence activities of a different kind; and hence, again, a system of different habits, and, finally, a system of different aptitudes and instincts. man, thus compelled to put himself in equilibrium with circumstances, contracts a corresponding temperament and character, and his character, like his temperament, are acquisitions all the more stable because of the outward impression being more deeply imprinted in him by more frequent repetitions and transmitted to his offspring by more ancient heredity. so that at each moment of time the character of a people may be considered as a summary of all antecedent actions and sensations; that is to say, as a quantity and as a weighty mass, not infinite,[ ] since all things in nature are limited, but disproportionate to the rest and almost impossible to raise, since each minute of an almost infinite past has contributed to render it heavier, and, in order to turn the scale, it would require, on the other side, a still greater accumulation of actions and sensations. such is the first and most abundant source of these master faculties from which historic events are derived; and we see at once that if it is powerful it is owing to its not being a mere source, but a sort of lake, and like a deep reservoir wherein other sources have poured their waters for a multitude of centuries. when we have thus verified the internal structure of a race we must consider the _environment_ in which it lives. for man is not alone in the world; nature envelops him and other men surround him; accidental and secondary folds come and overspread the primitive and permanent fold, while physical or social circumstances derange or complete the natural groundwork surrendered to them. at one time climate has had its effect. although the history of aryan nations can be only obscurely traced from their common country to their final abodes, we can nevertheless affirm that the profound difference which is apparent between the germanic races on the one hand, and the hellenic and latin races on the other, proceeds in great part from the differences between the countries in which they have established themselves--the former in cold and moist countries, in the depths of gloomy forests and swamps, or on the borders of a wild ocean, confined to melancholic or rude sensations, inclined to drunkenness and gross feeding, leading a militant and carnivorous life; the latter, on the contrary, living amidst the finest scenery, alongside of a brilliant, sparkling sea inviting navigation and commerce, exempt from the grosser cravings of the stomach, disposed at the start to social habits and customs, to political organization, to the sentiments and faculties which develop the art of speaking, the capacity for enjoyment and invention in the sciences, in art, and in literature. at another time, political events have operated, as in the two italian civilizations: the first one tending wholly to action, to conquest, to government, and to legislation, through the primitive situation of a city of refuge, a frontier _emporium_, and of an armed aristocracy which, importing and enrolling foreigners and the vanquished under it, sets two hostile bodies facing each other, with no outlet for its internal troubles and rapacious instincts but systematic warfare; the second one, excluded from unity and political ambition on a grand scale by the permanency of its municipal system, by the cosmopolite situation of its pope and by the military intervention of neighboring states, and following the bent of its magnificent and harmonious genius, is wholly carried over to the worship of voluptuousness and beauty. finally, at another time, social conditions have imposed their stamp as, eighteen centuries ago, by christianity, and twenty-five centuries ago, by buddhism, when, around the mediterranean as in hindostan, the extreme effects of aryan conquest and organization led to intolerable oppression, the crushing of the individual, utter despair, the whole world under the ban of a curse, with the development of metaphysics and visions, until man, in this dungeon of despondency, feeling his heart melt, conceived of abnegation, charity, tender love, gentleness, humility, human brotherhood, here in the idea of universal nothingness and there under that of the fatherhood of god. look around at the regulative instincts and faculties implanted in a race; in brief, the turn of mind according to which it thinks and acts at the present day; we shall find most frequently that its work is due to one of these prolonged situations, to these enveloping circumstances, to these persistent gigantic pressures brought to bear on a mass of men who, one by one, and all collectively, from one generation to another, have been unceasingly bent and fashioned by them, in spain a crusade of eight centuries against the mohammedans, prolonged yet longer even to the exhaustion of the nation through the expulsion of the moors, through the spoliation of the jews, through the establishment of the inquisition, through the catholic wars; in england, a political establishment of eight centuries which maintains man erect and respectful, independent and obedient, all accustomed to struggling together in a body under the sanction of law; in france, a latin organization which, at first imposed on docile barbarians, than leveled to the ground under the universal demolition, forms itself anew under the latent workings of national instinct, developing under hereditary monarchs and ending in a sort of equalized, centralized, administrative republic under dynasties exposed to revolutions. such are the most efficacious among the observable causes which mold the primitive man; they are to nations what education, pursuit, condition, and abode are to individuals, and seem to comprise all, since the external forces which fashion human matter, and by which the outward acts on the inward, are comprehended in them. there is, nevertheless, a third order of causes, for, with the forces within and without, there is the work these have already produced together, which work itself contributes toward producing the ensuing work; beside the permanent impulsion and the given environment there is the acquired momentum. when national character and surrounding circumstances operate it is not on a _tabula rasa_, but on one already bearing imprints. according as this _tabula_ is taken at one or at another moment so is the imprint different, and this suffices to render the total effect different. consider, for example, two moments of a literature or of an art, french tragedy under corneille and under voltaire, and greek drama under Æschylus and under euripides, latin poetry under lucretius and under claudian, and italian painting under da vinci and under guido. assuredly, there is no change of general conception at either of these two extreme points; ever the same human type must be portrayed or represented in action; the cast of the verse, the dramatic structure, the physical form have all persisted. but there is this among these differences, that one of the artists is a precursor and the other a successor, that the first one has no model and the second one has a model; that the former sees things face to face, and that the latter sees them through the intermediation of the former, that many departments of art have become more perfect, that the simplicity and grandeur of the impression have diminished, that what is pleasing and refined in form has augumented--in short, that the first work has determined the second. in this respect, it is with a people as with a plant; the same sap at the same temperature and in the same soil produces, at different stages of its successive elaborations, different developments, buds, flowers, fruits, and seeds, in such a way that the condition of the following is always that of the preceding and is born of its death. now, if you no longer regard a brief moment, as above, but one of those grand periods of development which embraces one or many centuries like the middle ages, or our last classic period, the conclusion is the same. a certain dominating conception has prevailed throughout; mankind, during two hundred years, during five hundred years, have represented to themselves a certain ideal figure of man, in mediæval times the knight and the monk, in our classic period the courtier and refined talker; this creative and universal conception has monopolized the entire field of action and thought, and, after spreading its involuntary systematic works over the world, it languished and then died out, and now a new idea has arisen, destined to a like domination and to equally multiplied creations. note here that the latter depends in part on the former, and that it is the former, which, combining its effect with those of national genius and surrounding circumstances, will impose their bent and their direction on new-born things. it is according to this law that great historic currents are formed, meaning by this, the long rule of a form of intellect or of a master idea, like that period of spontaneous creations called the renaissance, or that period of oratorical classifications called the classic age, or that series of mystic systems called the alexandrine and christian epoch, or that series of mythological efflorescences found at the origins of germany, india, and greece. here as elsewhere, we are dealing merely with a mechanical problem: the total effect is a compound wholly determined by the grandeur and direction of the forces which produce it. the sole difference which separates these moral problems from physical problems lies in this, that in the former the directions and grandeur cannot be estimated by or stated in figures with the same precision as in the latter. if a want, a faculty, is a quantity capable of degrees, the same as pressure or weight, this quantity is not measurable like that of the pressure or weight. we cannot fix it in an exact or approximative formula; we can obtain or give of it only a literary impression; we are reduced to nothing and citing the prominent facts which make it manifest and which nearly, or roughly, indicate about what grade on the scale it must be ranged at. and yet, notwithstanding the methods of notation are not the same in the moral sciences as in the physical sciences, nevertheless, as matter is the same in both, and is equally composed of forces, directions, and magnitudes, we can still show that in one as in the other, the final effect takes place according to the same law. this is great or small according as the fundamental forces are great or small and act more or less precisely in the same sense, according as the distinct effects of race, environment and epoch combine to enforce each other or combine to neutralize each other. thus are explained the long impotences and the brilliant successes which appear irregularly and with no apparent reason in the life of a people; the causes of these consist in internal concordances and contrarieties. there was one of these concordances when, in the seventeenth century, the social disposition and conversational spirit innate in france encountered drawing-room formalities and the moment of oratorical analysis; when, in the nineteenth century, the flexible, profound genius of germany encountered the age of philosophic synthesis and of cosmopolite criticism. one of these contrarieties happened when, in the seventeenth century, the blunt, isolated genius of england awkwardly tried to don the new polish of urbanity, and when, in the sixteenth century, the lucid, prosaic french intellect tried to gestate a living poesy. it is this secret concordance of creative forces which produced the exquisite courtesy and noble cast of literature under louis xiv. and bossuet, and the grandiose metaphysics and broad critical sympathy under hegel and goethe. it is this secret contrariety of creative forces which produced the literary incompleteness, the licentious plays, the abortive drama of dryden and wycherly, the poor greek importations, the gropings, the minute beauties and fragments of ronsard and the pleiad. we may confidently affirm that the unknown creations toward which the current of coming ages is bearing up will spring from and be governed by these primordial forces; that, if these forces could be measured and computed we might deduce from them, as from a formula, the characters of future civilization; and that if, notwithstanding the evident rudeness of our notations, and the fundamental inexactitude of our measures, we would nowadays form some idea of our general destinies, we must base our conjectures on an examination of these forces. for, in enumerating them, we run through the full circle of active forces; and when the race, the environment, and the moment have been considered,--that is to say the inner mainspring, the pressure from without, and the impulsion already acquired,--we have exhausted not only all real causes but again all possible causes of movement. vi there remains to be ascertained in what way these causes, applied to a nation or to a century, distribute their effects. like a spring issuing from an elevated spot and diffusing its waters, according to the height, from ledge to ledge, until it finally reaches the low ground, so does the tendency of mind or soul in a people, due to race, epoch, or environment, diffuse itself in different proportions, and by regular descent, over the different series of facts which compose its civilization.[ ] in preparing the geographical map of a country, starting at its watershed, we see the slopes, just below this common point, dividing themselves into five or six principal basins, and then each of the latter into several others, and so on until the whole country, with its thousands of inequalities of surface, is included in the ramifications of this network. in like manner, in preparing the psychological map of the events and sentiments belonging to a certain human civilization, we find at the start five or six well determined provinces--religion, art, philosophy, the state, the family, and industries; next, in each of these provinces, natural departments, and then finally, in each of these departments, still smaller territories until we arrive at those countless details of life which we observe daily in ourselves and around us. if, again, we examine and compare together these various groups of facts we at once find that they are composed of parts and that all have parts in common. let us take first the three principal products of human intelligence--religion, art, and philosophy. what is a philosophy but a conception of nature and of its primordial causes under the form of abstractions and formulas? what underlies a religion and an art if not a conception of this same nature, and of these same primordial causes, under the form of more or less determinate symbols, and of more or less distinct personages, with this difference, that in the first case we believe that they exist, and in the second case that they do not exist. let the reader consider some of the great creations of the intellect in india, in scandinavia, in persia, in rome, in greece, and he will find that art everywhere is a sort of philosophy become sensible, religion a sort of poem regarded as true, and philosophy a sort of art and religion, desiccated and reduced to pure abstractions. there is, then, in the center of each of these groups a common element, the conception of the world and its origin, and if they differ amongst each other it is because each combines with the common element a distinct element; here the power of abstraction, there the faculty of personifying with belief, and, finally, the talent for personifying without belief. let us now take the two leading products of human association, the family and the state. what constitutes the state other than the sentiment of obedience by which a multitude of men collect together under the authority of a chief? and what constitutes the family other than the sentiment of obedience by which a wife and children act together under the direction of a father and husband? the family is a natural, primitive, limited state, as the state is an artificial, ulterior, and expanded family, while beneath the differences which arise from the number, origin, and condition of its members, we distinguish, in the small as in the large community, a like fundamental disposition of mind which brings them together and unites them. suppose, now, that this common element receives from the environment, the epoch, and the race peculiar characteristics, and it is clear that _all the groups into which it enters will be proportionately modified_. if the sentiment of obedience is merely one of fear,[ ] you encounter, as in most of the oriental states, the brutality of despotism, a prodigality of vigorous punishments, the exploitation of the subject, servile habits, insecurity of property, impoverished production, female slavery, and the customs of the harem. if the sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of discipline, sociability, and honor, you find, as in france, a complete military organization, a superb administrative hierarchy, a weak public spirit with outbursts of patriotism, the unhesitating docility of the subject along with the hot-headedness of the revolutionist, the obsequiousness of the courtier along with the reserve of the gentleman, the charm of refined conversation along with home and family bickerings, conjugal equality together with matrimonial incompatibilities under the necessary constraints of the law. if, finally, the sentiment of obedience is rooted in the instinct of subordination and in the idea of duty, you perceive, as in germanic nations, the security and contentment of the household, the firm foundations of domestic life, the slow and imperfect development of worldly matters, innate respect for established rank, superstitious reverence for the past, maintenance of social inequalities, natural and habitual deference to the law. similarly in a race, just as there is a difference of aptitude for general ideas, so will its religion, art, and philosophy be different. if man is naturally fitted for broader universal conceptions and inclined at the same time to their derangement, through the nervous irritability of an over-excited organization, we find, as in india, a surprising richness of gigantic religious creations, a splendid bloom of extravagant transparent epics, a strange concatenation of subtle, imaginative philosophic systems, all so intimately associated and so interpenetrated with a common sap, that we at once recognize them, by their amplitude, by their color, and by their disorder, as productions of the same climate and of the same spirit. if, on the contrary, the naturally sound and well-balanced man is content to restrict his conceptions to narrow bounds in order to cast them in more precise forms, we see, as in greece, a theology of artists and narrators, special gods that are soon separated from objects and almost transformed at once into substantial personages, the sentiment of universal unity nearly effaced and scarcely maintained in the vague notion of destiny, a philosophy, rather than subtle and compact, grandiose and systematic, narrow metaphysically[ ] but incomparable in its logic, sophistry, and morality, a poesy and arts superior to anything we have seen in lucidity, naturalness, proportion, truth, and beauty. if, finally, man is reduced to narrow conceptions deprived of any speculative subtlety, and at the same time finds that he is absorbed and completely hardened by practical interests, we see, as in rome, rudimentary deities, mere empty names, good for denoting the petty details of agriculture, generation, and the household, veritable marriage and farming labels, and, therefore, a null or borrowed mythology, philosophy, and poesy. here, as elsewhere, comes in the law of mutual dependencies.[ ] a civilization is a living unit, the parts of which hold together the same as the parts of an organic body. just as in an animal, the instincts, teeth, limbs, bones, and muscular apparatus are bound together in such a way that a variation of one determines a corresponding variation in the others, and out of which a skillful naturalist, with a few bits, imagines and reconstructs an almost complete body, so, in a civilization, do religion, philosophy, the family scheme, literature and the arts form a system in which each local change involves a general change, so that an experienced historian, who studies one portion apart from the others, sees beforehand and partially predicts the characteristics of the rest. there is nothing vague in this dependence. the regulation of all this in the living body consists, first, of the tendency to manifest a certain primordial type, and, next, the necessity of its possessing organs which can supply its wants and put itself in harmony with itself in order to live. the regulation in a civilization consists in the presence in each great human creation of an elementary productor equally present in other surrounding creations, that is, some faculty and aptitude, some efficient and marked disposition, which, with its own peculiar character, introduces this with that into all operations in which it takes part, and which, according to its variations, causes variation in all the works in which it coöperates. vii having reached this point we can obtain a glimpse of the principal features of human transformations, and can now search for the general laws which regulate not only events, but classes of events; not only this religion or that literature, but the whole group of religions or of literatures. if, for example, it is admitted that a religion is a metaphysical poem associated with belief; if it is recognized, besides, that there are certain races and certain environments in which belief, poetic faculty, and metaphysical faculty display themselves in common with unwonted vigor; if we consider that christianity and buddhism were developed at periods of grand systematizations and in the midst of sufferings like the oppression which stirred up the fanatics of cevennes; if, on the other hand, it is recognized that primitive religions are born at the dawn of human reason, during the richest expansion of human imagination, at times of the greatest naïveté and of the greatest credulity; if we consider, again, that mohammedanism appeared along with the advent of poetic prose and of the conception of material unity, amongst a people destitute of science and at the moment of a sudden development of the intellect--we might conclude that religion is born and declines, is reformed and transformed, according as circumstances fortify and bring together, with more or less precision and energy, its three generative instincts; and we would then comprehend why religion is endemic in india among specially exalted imaginative and philosophic intellects; why it blooms out so wonderfully and so grandly in the middle ages, in an oppressive society, amongst new languages and literature; why it develops again in the sixteenth century with a new character and an heroic enthusiasm, at the time of an universal renaissance and at the awakening of the germanic races; why it swarms out in so many bizarre sects in the rude democracy of america and under the bureaucratic despotism of russia; why, in fine, it is seen spreading out in the europe of to-day in such different proportions and with such special traits, according to such differences of race and of civilizations. and so for every kind of human production, for letters, music, the arts of design, philosophy, the sciences, state industries, and the rest. each has some moral tendency for its direct cause, or a concurrence of moral tendencies; given the cause, it appears; the cause withdrawn, it disappears; the weakness or intensity of the cause is the measure of its own weakness or intensity. it is bound to that like any physical phenomenon to its condition, like dew to the chilliness of a surrounding atmosphere, like dilatation to heat. couples exist in the moral world as they exist in the physical world, as rigorously linked together and as universally diffused. whatever in one case produces, alters, or suppresses the first term, produces, alters, and suppresses the second term as a necessary consequence. whatever cools the surrounding atmosphere causes the fall of dew. whatever develops credulity, along with poetic conceptions of the universe, engenders religion. thus have things come about, and thus will they continue to come about. as soon as the adequate and necessary condition of one of these vast apparitions becomes known to us our mind has a hold on the future as well as on the past. we can confidently state under what circumstances it will reappear, foretell without rashness many portions of its future history, and sketch with precaution some of the traits of its ulterior development. viii history has reached this point at the present day, or rather it is nearly there, on the threshold of this inquest. the question as now stated is this: given a literature, a philosophy, a society, an art, a certain group of arts, what is the moral state of things which produces it? and what are the conditions of race, epoch, and environment the best adapted to produce this moral state? there is a distinct moral state for each of these formations and for each of their branches; there is one for art in general as well as for each particular art; for architecture, painting, sculpture, music, and poetry, each with a germ of its own in the large field of human psychology; each has its own law, and it is by virtue of this law that we see each shoot up, apparently haphazard, singly and alone, amidst the miscarriages of their neighbors, like painting in flanders and holland in the seventeenth century, like poetry in england in the sixteenth century, like music in germany in the eighteenth century. at this moment, and in these countries, the conditions for one art and not for the others are fulfilled, and one branch only has bloomed out amidst the general sterility. it is these laws of human vegetation which history must now search for; it is this special psychology of each special formation which must be got at; it is the composition of a complete table of these peculiar conditions that must now be worked out. there is nothing more delicate and nothing more difficult. montesquieu undertook it, but in his day the interest in history was too recent for him to be successful; nobody, indeed, had any idea of the road that was to be followed, and even at the present day we scarcely begin to obtain a glimpse of it. just as astronomy, at bottom, is a mechanical problem, and physiology, likewise, a chemical problem, so is history, at bottom, a _problem of psychology_. there is a particular system of inner impressions and operations which fashions the artist, the believer, the musician, the painter, the nomad, the social man; for each of these, the filiation, intensity, and interdependence of ideas and of emotions are different; each has his own moral history, and his own special organization, along with some master tendency and with some dominant trait. to explain each of these would require a chapter devoted to a profound internal analysis, and that is a work that can scarcely be called sketched out at the present day. but one man, stendhal, through a certain turn of mind and a peculiar education, has attempted it, and even yet most of his readers find his works paradoxical and obscure. his talent and ideas were too premature. his admirable insight, his profound sayings carelessly thrown out, the astonishing precision of his notes and logic, were not understood; people were not aware that, under the appearances and talk of a man of the world, he explained the most complex of internal mechanisms; that his finger touched the great mainspring, that he brought scientific processes to bear in the history of the heart, the art of employing figures, of decomposing, of deducing, that he was the first to point out fundamental causes such as nationalities, climates, and temperaments, in short, that he treated sentiments as they should be treated, that is to say, as a naturalist and physicist, by making classifications and estimating forces. on account of all this he was pronounced dry and eccentric and allowed to live in isolation, composing novels, books of travel and taking notes, for which he counted upon, and has obtained, about a dozen or so of readers. and yet his works are those in which we of the present day may find the most satisfactory efforts that have been made to clear the road i have just striven to describe. nobody has taught one better how to observe with one's own eyes, first, to regard humanity around us and life as it is, and next, old and authentic documents, how to read more than merely the black and white of the page, how to detect under old print and the scrawl of the text the veritable sentiment and the train of thought, the mental state in which the words were penned. in his writings, as in those of sainte beuve and in those of the german critics the reader will find how much is to be derived from a literary document, if this document is rich and we know how to interpret it, we will find in the psychology of a particular soul, often that of an age, and sometimes that of a race. in this respect, a great poem, a good novel, the confessions of a superior man, are more instructive than a mass of historians and histories, i would give fifty volumes of charters and a hundred diplomatic files for the memoirs of cellini, the epistles of saint paul, the table talk of luther, or the comedies of aristophanes. herein lies the value of literary productions. they are instructive because they are beautiful, their usefulness increases with their perfection and if they provide us with documents, it is because they are monuments. the more visible a book renders sentiments the more literary it is, for it is the special office of literature to take note of sentiments. the more important the sentiments noted in a book the higher its rank in literature, for it is by representing what sort of a life a nation or an epoch leads, that a writer rallies to himself the sympathies of a nation or of an epoch. hence, among the documents which bring before our eyes the sentiments of preceding generations, a literature, and especially a great literature, is incomparably the best. it resembles those admirable instruments of remarkable sensitiveness which physicists make use of to detect and measure the most profound and delicate changes that occur in a human body. there is nothing approaching this in constitutions or religions; the articles of a code or of a catechism do no more than depict mind in gross and without finesse; if there are any documents which show life and spirit in politics and in creeds, they are the eloquent discourses of the pulpit and the tribune, memoirs and personal confessions, all belonging to literature, so that, outside of itself, literature embodies whatever is good elsewhere. it is mainly in studying literatures that we are able to produce moral history, and arrive at some knowledge of the psychological laws on which events depend. i have undertaken to write a history of a literature and to ascertain the psychology of a people; in selecting this one, it is not without a motive. a people had to be taken possessing a vast and complete literature, which is rarely found. there are few nations which, throughout their existence, have thought and written well in the full sense of the word. among the ancients, latin literature is null at the beginning, and afterward borrowed and an imitation. among the moderns, german literature is nearly a blank for two centuries.[ ] italian and spanish literatures come to an end in the middle of the seventeenth century. ancient greece, and modern france and england, alone offer a complete series of great and expressive monuments. i have chosen the english because, as this still exists and is open to direct observation, it can be better studied than that of an extinct civilization of which fragments only remain; and because, being different, it offers better than that of france very marked characteristics in the eyes of a frenchman. moreover, outside of what is peculiar to english civilization, apart from a spontaneous development, it presents a forced deviation due to the latest and most effective conquest to which the country was subject; the three given conditions out of which it issues--race, climate, and the norman conquest--are clearly and distinctly visible in its literary monuments; so that we study in this history the two most potent motors of human transformation, namely, nature and constraint, and we study them, without any break or uncertainty, in a series of authentic and complete monuments. i have tried to define these primitive motors, to show their gradual effects, and explain how their insensible operation has brought religious and literary productions into full light, and how the inward mechanism is developed by which the barbarous saxon became the englishman of the present day. [footnote a: hippolyte adolphe taine (b. ; d. ) was one of the most distinguished french critics of the nineteenth century. he held the chair of esthetics at the Ècole des beaux arts, and wrote a large number of works in history, travel, and literary criticism. his "history of english literature" is the most brilliant book on the subject ever written by a foreigner, and in this introduction he expounds the method of criticism which has come to be associated with his name, and in accordance with which he seeks to interpret the characteristics of english authors.] [footnote : darwin, "the origin of species." prosper lucas, "de l'hérédité."] [footnote : spinosa, "ethics," part iv., axiom.] [footnote : for this scale of coordinate effects consult, "langues sémitiques," by renan, ch i, "comparison des civilizations grecque et romaine," vol i, ch i, d ed, by mommsen, "consequences de la démocratie," vol iii., by tocqueville.] [footnote : "l'esprit des lois," by montesquieu; the essential principles of the three governments.] [footnote : the birth of the alexandrine philosophy is due to contact with the orient. aristotle's metaphysical views stand alone. moreover, with him as with plato, they afford merely a glimpse. by way of contrast see systematic power in plotinus, proclus, schelling, and hegel, or again in the admirable boldness of brahmanic and buddhist speculation.] [footnote : i have very often made attempts to state this law, especially in the preface to "essais de critique et d'histoire."] [footnote : from to .] _planned and designed at the collier press by william patten_ [transcriber's note: the paragraph beginning "in _ute_ the name for bear is _he seizes_" will only display correctly in latin- file encoding. everything else in the article should look exactly the same on all computers or text readers.] * * * * * smithsonian institution--bureau of ethnology. j. w. powell, director. on the evolution of language, as exhibited in the specialization of the grammatic processes, the differentiation of the parts of speech, and the integration of the sentence; from a study of indian languages. by j. w. powell. * * * * * on the evolution of language * * * * * possible ideas and thoughts are vast in number. a distinct word for every distinct idea and thought would require a vast vocabulary. the problem in language is to express many ideas and thoughts with comparatively few words. again, in the evolution of any language, progress is from a condition where few ideas are expressed by a few words to a higher, where many ideas are expressed by the use of many words; but the number of all possible ideas or thoughts expressed is increased greatly out of proportion with the increase of the number of words. and still again, in all of those languages which have been most thoroughly studied, and by inference in all languages, it appears that the few original words used in any language remain as the elements for the greater number finally used. in the evolution of a language the introduction of absolutely new material is a comparatively rare phenomenon. the old material is combined and modified in many ways to form the new. how has the small stock of words found as the basis of a language been thus combined and modified? the way in which the old materials have been used gives rise to what will here be denominated the grammatic processes. i.--the process by combination. two or more words may be united to form a new one, or to perform the office of a new one, and four methods or stages of combination may be noted. _a._ by _juxtaposition_, where the two words are placed together and yet remain as distinct words. this method is illustrated in chinese, where the words in the combination when taken alone seldom give a clew to their meaning when placed together. _b._ by _compounding_, where two words are made into one, in which case the original elements of the new word remain in an unmodified condition, as in _house-top_, _rain-bow_, _tell-tale_. _c._ by _agglutination_, in which case one or more of the elements entering into combination to form the new word is somewhat changed--the elements are fused together. yet this modification is not so great as to essentially obscure the primitive words, as in _truthful_, where we easily recognize the original words _truth_ and _full_; and _holiday_, in which _holy_ and _day_ are recognized. _d._ by _inflection_. here one or more of the elements entering into the compound has been so changed that it can scarcely be recognized. there is a constant tendency to economy in speech by which words are gradually shortened as they are spoken by generation after generation. in those words which are combinations of others there are certain elements that wear out more rapidly than others. where some particular word is combined with many other different words the tendency to modify by wear this oft-used element is great. this is more especially the case where the combined word is used in certain categories of combinations, as where particular words are used to denote tense in the verb; thus, _did_ may be used in combination with a verb to denote past time until it is worn down to the sound of _d_. the same wear occurs where particular words are used to form cases in nouns, and a variety of illustrations might be given. these categories constitute conjugations and declensions, and for convenience such combinations may be called paradigmatic. then the oft-repeated elements of paradigmatic combinations are apt to become excessively worn and modified, so that the primitive words or themes to which they are attached seem to be but slightly changed by the addition. under these circumstances combination is called inflection. as a morphologic process, no well-defined plane of demarkation between these four methods of combination can be drawn, as one runs into another; but, in general, words may be said to be juxtaposed when two words being placed together the combination performs the function of a new word, while in form the two words remain separate. words may be said to be compound when two or more words are combined to form one, no change being made in either. words maybe said to be agglutinated when the elementary words are changed but slightly, _i.e._, only to the extent that their original forms are not greatly obscured; and words may be said to be inflected when in the combination the oft-repeated element or formative part has been so changed that its origin is obscured. these inflections are used chiefly in the paradigmatic combinations. in the preceding statement it has been assumed that there can be recognized, in these combinations of inflection, a theme or root, as it is sometimes called, and a formative element. the formative element is used with a great many different words to define or qualify them; that is, to indicate mode, tense, number, person, gender, etc., of verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech. when in a language juxtaposition is the chief method of combination, there may also be distinguished two kinds of elements, in some sense corresponding to themes and formative parts. the theme is a word the meaning of which is determined by the formative word placed by it; that is, the theme is a word having many radically different meanings; with which meaning it is to be understood is determined only by the formative word, which thus serves as its label. the ways in which the theme words are thus labeled by the formative word are very curious, but the subject cannot be entered into here. when words are combined by compounding, the formative elements cannot so readily be distinguished from the theme; nor for the purposes under immediate consideration can compounding be well separated from agglutination. when words are combined by agglutination, theme and formative part usually appear. the formative parts are affixes; and affixes may be divided into three classes, prefixes, suffixes, and infixes. these affixes are often called incorporated particles. in those indian languages where combination is chiefly by agglutination, that is, by the use of affixes, _i.e._, incorporated particles, certain parts of the conjugation of the verb, especially those which denote gender, number, and person, are effected by the use of article pronouns; but in those languages where article pronouns are not found the verbs are inflected to accomplish the same part of their conjugation. perhaps, when we come more fully to study the formative elements in these more highly inflected languages, we may discover in such elements greatly modified, _i.e._, worn out, incorporated pronouns. ii.--the process by vocalic mutation. here, in order to form a new word, one or more of the vowels of the old word are changed, as in _man--men_, where an _e_ is substituted for _a_; _ran--run_, where _u_ is substituted for _a_; _lead--led_, where _e_, with its proper sound, is substituted for _ea_ with its proper sound. this method is used to a very limited extent in english. when the history of the words in which it occurs is studied it is discovered to be but an instance of the wearing out of the different elements of combined words; but in the hebrew this method prevails to a very large extent, and scholars have not yet been able to discover its origin in combination as they have in english. it may or may not have been an original grammatic process, but because of its importance in certain languages it has been found necessary to deal with it as a distinct and original process. iii.--the process by intonation. in english, new words are not formed by this method, yet words are intoned for certain purposes, chiefly rhetorical. we use the rising intonation (or inflection, as it is usually called) to indicate that a question is asked, and various effects are given to speech by the various intonations of rhetoric. but this process is used in other languages to form new words with which to express new ideas. in chinese eight distinct intonations are found, by the use of which one word may be made to express eight different ideas, or perhaps it is better to say that eight words may be made of one. iv.--the process by placement. the place or position of a word may affect its significant use. thus in english we say _john struck james_. by the position of those words to each other we know that john is the actor, and that james receives the action. by the grammatic processes language is organized. organization postulates the differentiation of organs and their combination into integers. the integers of language are sentences, and their organs are the parts of speech. linguistic organization, then, consists in the differentiation of the parts of speech and the integration of the sentence. for example, let us take the words _john_, _father_, and _love_. _john_ is the name of an individual; _love_ is the name of a mental action, and _father_ the name of a person. we put them together, john loves father, and they express a thought; _john_ becomes a noun, and is the subject of the sentence; _love_ becomes a verb, and is the predicant; _father_ a noun, and is the object; and we now have an organized sentence. a sentence requires parts of speech, and parts of speech are such because they are used as the organic elements of a sentence. the criteria of rank in languages are, first, grade of organization, _i.e._, the degree to which the grammatic processes and methods are specialized, and the parts of speech differentiated; second, sematologic content, that is, the body of thought which the language is competent to convey. the grammatic processes may be used for three purposes: first, for _derivation_, where a new word to express a new idea is made by combining two or more old words, or by changing the vowel of one word, or by changing the intonation of one word. second, for _modification_, a word may be qualified or defined by the processes of combination, vocalic mutation or intonation. it should here be noted that the plane between derivation and qualification is not absolute. third, for _relation_. when words as signs of ideas are used together to express thought, the relation of the words must be expressed by some means. in english the relation of words is expressed both by placement and combination, _i.e._, inflection for agreement. it should here be noted that paradigmatic inflections are used for two distinct purposes, qualification and relation. a word is qualified by inflection when the idea expressed by the inflection pertains to the idea expressed by the word inflected; thus a noun is qualified by inflection when its number and gender are expressed. a word is related by inflection when the office of the word in the sentence is pointed out thereby; thus, nouns are related by case inflections; verbs are related by inflections for gender, number, and person. all inflection for agreement is inflection for relation. in english, three of the grammatic processes are highly specialized. _combination_ is used chiefly for derivation, but to some slight extent for qualification and relation in the paradigmatic categories. but its use in this manner as compared with many other languages has almost disappeared. _vocalic mutation_ is used to a very limited extent and only by accident, and can scarcely be said to belong to the english language. _intonation_ is used as a grammatic process only to a limited extent--simply to assist in forming the interrogative and imperative modes. its use here is almost rhetorical; in all other cases it is purely rhetorical. _placement_ is largely used in the language, and is highly specialized, performing the office of exhibiting the relations of words to each other in the sentence; _i.e._, it is used chiefly for syntactic relation. thus one of the four processes does not belong to the english language; the others are highly specialized. the purposes for which the processes are used are _derivation_, _modification_, and _syntactic relation_. _derivation_ is accomplished by combination. _modification_ is accomplished by the differentiation of adjectives and adverbs, as words, phrases, and clauses. _syntactic relation_ is accomplished by placement. syntactic relation must not be confounded with the relation expressed by prepositions. syntactic relation is the relation of the parts of speech to each other as integral parts of a sentence. prepositions express relations of thought of another order. they relate words to each other as words. placement relates words to each other as parts of speech. in the indian tongues combination is used for all three purposes, performing the three different functions of derivation, modification, and relation. placement, also, is used for relation, and for both lands of relation, syntactic and prepositional. with regard, then, to the processes and purposes for which they are used, we find in the indian languages a low degree of specialization; processes are used for diverse purposes, and purposes are accomplished by diverse processes. differentiation of the parts of speech. it is next in order to consider to what degree the parts of speech are differentiated in indian languages, as compared with english. indian nouns are extremely connotive, that is, the name does more than simply denote the thing to which it belongs; in denoting the object it also assigns to it some quality or characteristic. every object has many qualities and characteristics, and by describing but a part of these the true office of the noun is but imperfectly performed. a strictly denotive name expresses no one quality or character, but embraces all qualities and characters. in _ute_ the name for bear is _he seizes_, or _the hugger_. in this case the verb is used for the noun, and in so doing the indian names the bear by predicating one of his characteristics. thus noun and verb are undifferentiated. in _seneca_ the north is _the sun never goes there_, and this sentence may be used as adjective or noun; in such cases noun, adjective, verb, and adverb are found as one vocable or word, and the four parts of speech are undifferentiated. in the _pavänt_ language a school-house is called _pó-kûnt-în-îñ-yî-kän_. the first part of the word, _pó-kûnt_, signifies _sorcery is practiced_, and is the name given by the indians to any writing, from the fact that when they first learned of writing they supposed it to be a method of practicing sorcery; _în-îñ-yî_ is the verb signifying _to count_, and the meaning of the word has been extended so as to signify _to read_; _kän_ signifies wigwam, and is derived from the verb _küri_, _to stay_. thus the name of the school-house literally signifies _a staying place where sorcery is counted_, or where papers are read. the _pavänt_ in naming a school-house describes the purpose for which it is used. these examples illustrate the general characteristics of indian nouns; they are excessively connotive; a simply denotive name is rarely found. in general their name-words predicate some attribute of the object named, and thus noun, adjective, and predicant are undifferentiated. in many indian languages there is no separate word for _eye_, _hand_, _arm_, or other parts and organs of the body, but the word is found with an incorporated or attached pronoun signifying _my_ hand, _my_ eye; _your_ hand, _your_ eye; _his_ hand, _his_ eye, etc., as the case may be. if the indian, in naming these parts, refers to his own body, he says _my_; if he refers to the body of the person to whom he is speaking, he says _your_, &c. if an indian should find a detached foot thrown from the amputating-table of an army field hospital, he would say something like this: i have found somebody _his foot_. the linguistic characteristic is widely spread, though not universal. thus the indian has no command of a fully differentiated noun expressive of _eye_, _hand_, _arm_, or other parts and organs of the body. in the pronouns we often have the most difficult part of an indian language. pronouns are only to a limited extent independent words. among the free pronouns the student must early learn to distinguish between the personal and the demonstrative. the demonstrative pronouns are more commonly used. the indian is more accustomed to say _this_ person or thing, _that_ person or thing, than _he_, _she_, or _it_. among the free personal pronouns the student may find an equivalent of the pronoun _i_, another signifying _i and you_; perhaps another signifying _i and he_, and one signifying _we, more than two_, including the speaker and those present; and another including the speaker and persons absent. he will also find personal pronouns in the second and third person, perhaps with singular, dual, and plural forms. to a large extent the pronouns are incorporated in the verbs as prefixes, infixes, or suffixes. in such cases we will call them article pronouns. these article pronouns point out with great particularity the person, number, and gender, both of subject and object, and sometimes of the indirect object. when the article pronouns are used the personal pronouns may or may not be used; but it is believed that the personal pronouns will always be found. article pronouns may not always be found. in those languages which are characterized by them they are used alike when the subject and object nouns are expressed and when they are not. the student may at first find some difficulty with these article pronouns. singular, dual, and plural forms will be found. sometimes distinct incorporated particles will be used for subject and object, but often this will not be the case. if the subject only is expressed, one particle may be used; if the object only is expressed, another particle; but if subject and object are expressed an entirely different particle may stand for both. but it is in the genders of these article pronouns that the greatest difficulty may be found. the student must entirely free his mind of the idea that gender is simply a distinction of sex. in indian tongues, genders are usually methods of classification primarily into animate and inanimate. the animate may be again divided into male and female, but this is rarely the case. often by these genders all objects are classified by characteristics found in their attitudes or supposed constitution. thus we may have the animate and inanimate, one or both, divided into the _standing_, the _sitting_, and the _lying_; or they may be divided into the _watery_, the _mushy_, the _earthy_, the _stony_, the _woody_, and the _fleshy_. the gender of these article pronouns has rarely been worked out in any language. the extent to which these classifications enter into the article pronouns is not well known. the subject requires more thorough study. these incorporated particles are here called _article_ pronouns. in the conjugation of the verb they take an important part, and have by some writers been called _transitions_. besides pointing out with particularity the person, number, and gender or the subject and object, they perform the same offices that are usually performed by those inflections of the verb that occur to make them agree in gender, number, and person with the subject. in those indian languages where the article pronouns are not found, and the personal pronouns only are used, the verb is usually inflected to agree with the subject or object, or both, in the same particulars. the article pronouns as they point out person, number, gender, and case of the subject and object, are not simple particles, but are to a greater or lesser extent compound; their component elements may be broken apart and placed in different parts of the verb. again, the article pronoun in some languages may have its elements combined into a distinct word in such a manner that it will not be incorporated in the verb, but will be placed immediately before it. for this reason the term _article pronoun_ has been chosen rather than _attached pronoun_. the older term, _transition_, was given to them because of their analogy in function to verbal inflections. thus the verb of an indian language contains within itself incorporated article pronouns which point out with great particularity the gender, number, and person of the subject and object. in this manner verb, pronoun, and adjective are combined, and to this extent these parts of speech are undifferentiated. in some languages the article pronoun constitutes a distinct word, but whether free or incorporated it is a complex tissue of adjectives. again, nouns sometimes contain particles within themselves to predicate possession, and to this extent nouns and verbs are undifferentiated. the verb is relatively of much greater importance in an indian tongue than in a civilized language. to a large extent the pronoun is incorporated in the verb as explained above, and thus constitutes a part of its conjugation. again, adjectives are used as intransitive verbs, as in most indian languages there is no verb _to be_ used as a predicant or copula. where in english we would say _the man is good_, the indian would say _that man good_, using the adjective as an intransitive verb, _i.e._, as a predicant. if he desired to affirm it in the past tense, the intransitive verb _good_, would be inflected, or otherwise modified, to indicate the tense; and so, in like manner, all adjectives when used to predicate can be modified to indicate mode, tense, number, person, &c., as other intransitive verbs. adverbs are used as intransitive verbs. in english we may say _he is there_; the indian would say _that person there_ usually preferring the demonstrative to the personal pronoun. the adverb _there_ would, therefore, be used as a predicant or intransitive verb, and might be conjugated to denote different modes, tenses, numbers, persons, etc. verbs will often receive adverbial qualifications by the use of incorporated particles, and, still further, verbs may contain within themselves adverbial limitations without our being able to trace such meanings to any definite particles or parts of the verb. prepositions are intransitive verbs. in english we may say _the hat is on the table_; the indian would say _that hat on table_; or he might change the order, and say _that hat table on_; but the preposition _on_ would be used as an intransitive verb to predicate, and may be conjugated. prepositions may often be found as particles incorporated in verbs, and, still further, verbs may contain within themselves prepositional meanings without our being able to trace such meanings to any definite particles within the verb. but the verb connotes such ideas that something is needed to complete its meaning, that something being a limiting or qualifying word, phrase, or clause. prepositions may be prefixed, infixed, or suffixed to nouns, _i.e._, they may be particles incorporated in nouns. nouns may be used as intransitive verbs under the circumstances when in english we would use a noun as the complement of a sentence after the verb _to be_. the verb, therefore, often includes within itself subject, direct object, indirect object, qualifier, and relation-idea. thus it is that the study of an indian language is, to a large extent, the study of its verbs. thus adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, and nouns are used as intransitive verbs; and, to such extent, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, nouns and verbs are undifferentiated. from the remarks above, it will be seen that indian verbs often include within themselves meanings which in english are expressed by adverbs and adverbial phrases and clauses. thus the verb may express within itself direction, manner, instrument, and purpose, one or all, as the verb _to go_ may be represented by a word signifying _go home_; another, _go away from home_; another, _go to a place other than home_; another, _go from a place other than home_; one, _go from this place_, with reference to home; one, to _go up_; another, to _go down_; one, _go around_; and, perhaps, there will be a verb _go up hill_; another, _go up a valley_; another, _go up a river_, etc. then we may have _to go on foot_, _to go on horseback_, _to go in a canoe_; still another, _to go for water_; another _for wood_, etc. distinct words may be used for all these, or a fewer number used, and these varied by incorporated particles. in like manner, the english verb _to break_ may be represented by several words, each of which will indicate the manner of performing the act or the instrument with which it is done. distinct words may be used, or a common word varied with incorporated particles. the verb _to strike_ may be represented by several words, signifying severally _to strike with the fist_, _to strike with a club_, _to strike with the open hand_, _to strike with a whip_, _to strike with a switch_, to strike with a flat instrument, etc. a common word may be used with incorporated particles or entirely different words used. mode in an indian tongue is a rather difficult subject. modes analogous to those of civilized tongues are found, and many conditions and qualifications appear in the verb which in english and other civilized languages appear as adverbs, and adverbial phrases and clauses. no plane of separation can be drawn between such adverbial qualifications and true modes. thus there may be a form of the verb, which shows that the speaker makes a declaration as certain, _i.e._, an _indicative_ mode; another which shows that the speaker makes a declaration with doubt, _i.e._, a _dubitative_ mode; another that he makes a declaration on hearsay, _i.e._, a _quotative_ mode; another form will be used in making a command, giving an _imperative_ mode; another in imploration, _i.e._, an _implorative_ mode; another form to denote permission, _i.e._, a _permissive_ mode; another in negation, _i.e._, a _negative_ mode; another form will be used to indicate that the action is simultaneous with some other action, _i.e._, a _simulative_ mode; another to denote desire or wish that something be done, _i.e._, a _desiderative_ mode; another that the action ought to be done, _i.e._, an _obligative_ mode; another that action is repetitive from time to time, _i.e._, a _frequentative_ mode; another that action is caused, _i.e._, a _causative_ mode, etc. these forms of the verb, which we are compelled to call modes, are of great number. usually with each of them a particular modal particle or incorporated adverb will be used; but the particular particle which gives the qualified meaning may not always be discovered; and in one language a different word will be introduced, wherein another the same word will be used with an incorporated particle. it is stated above that incorporated particles may be used to indicate direction, manner, instrument, and purpose; in fact, any adverbial qualification whatever may be made by an incorporated particle instead of an adverb as a distinct word. no line of demarkation can be drawn between these adverbial particles and those mentioned above as modal particles. indeed it seems best to treat all these forms of the verb arising from, incorporated particles as distinct modes. in this sense, then, an indian language has a multiplicity of modes. it should be further remarked that in many cases these modal or adverbial particles are excessively worn, so that they may appear as additions or changes of simple vowel or consonant sounds. when incorporated particles are thus used, distinct adverbial words, phrases, or clauses may also be employed, and the idea expressed twice. in an indian language it is usually found difficult to elaborate a system of tenses in paradigmatic form. many tenses or time particles are found incorporated in verbs. some of these time particles are excessively worn, and may appear rather as inflections than as incorporated particles. usually rather distinct present, past, and future tenses are discovered; often a remote or ancient past, and less often an immediate future. but great specification of time in relation to the present and in relation to other time is usually found. it was seen above that adverbial particles cannot be separated from modal particles. in like manner tense particles cannot be separated from adverbial and modal particles. in an indian language adverbs are differentiated only to a limited extent. adverbial qualifications are found in the verb, and thus there are a multiplicity of modes and tenses, and no plane of demarcation can be drawn between mode and tense. from preceding statements it will appear that a verb in an indian tongue may have incorporated with it a great variety of particles, which can be arranged in three general classes, _i.e._, pronominal, adverbial, and prepositional. the pronominal particles we have called article pronouns; they serve to point out a variety of characteristics in the subject, object, and indirect object of the verb. they thus subserve purposes which in english are subserved by differentiated adjectives as distinct parts of speech. they might, therefore, with some propriety, have been called adjective particles, but these elements perform another function; they serve the purpose which is usually called _agreement in language_; that is, they make the verb agree with the subject and object, and thus indicate the syntactic relation between subject, object, and verb. in this sense they might with propriety have been called relation particles, and doubtless this function was in mind when some of the older grammarians called them transitions. the adverbial particles perform the functions of voice, mode, and tense, together with many other functions that are performed in languages spoken by more highly civilized people by differentiated adverbs, adverbial phrases, and clauses. the prepositional particles perform the function of indicating a great variety of subordinate relations, like the prepositions used as distinct parts of speech in english. by the demonstrative function of some of the pronominal particles, they are closely related to adverbial particles, and adverbial particles are closely related to prepositional particles, so that it will be sometimes difficult to say of a particular particle whether it be pronominal or adverbial, and of another particular particle whether it be adverbial or prepositional. thus the three classes of particles are not separated by absolute planes of demarkation. the use of these particles as parts of the verb; the use of nouns, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions as intransitive verbs; and the direct use of verbs as nouns, adjectives, and adverbs, make the study of an indian tongue to a large extent the study of its verbs. to the extent that voice, mode, and tense are accomplished by the use of agglutinated particles or inflections, to that extent adverbs and verbs are undifferentiated. to the extent that adverbs are found as incorporated particles in verbs, the two parts of speech are undifferentiated. to the extent that prepositions are particles incorporated in the verb, prepositions and verbs are undifferentiated. to the extent that prepositions are affixed to nouns, prepositions and nouns are undifferentiated. in all these particulars it is seen that the indian tongues belong to a very low type of organization. various scholars have called attention to this feature by describing indian languages as being holophrastic, polysynthetic, or synthetic. the term synthetic is perhaps the best, and may be used as synonymous with undifferentiated. indian tongues, therefore, may be said to be highly synthetic in that their parts of speech are imperfectly differentiated. in these same particulars the english language is highly organized, as the parts of speech are highly differentiated. yet the difference is one of degree, not of kind. to the extent in the english language that inflection is used for qualification, as for person, number, and gender of the noun and pronoun, and for mode and tense in the verb, to that extent the parts of speech are undifferentiated. but we have seen that inflection is used for this purpose to a very slight extent. there is yet in the english language one important differentiation which has been but partially accomplished. verbs as usually considered are undifferentiated parts of speech; they are nouns and adjectives, one or both, and predicants. the predicant simple is a distinct part of speech. the english language has but one, the verb _to be_, and this is not always a pure predicant, for it sometimes contains within itself an adverbial element when it is conjugated for mode and tense, and a connective element when it is conjugated for agreement. with adjectives and nouns this verb is used as a predicant. in the passive voice also it is thus used, and the participles are nouns or adjectives. in what is sometimes called the progressive form of the active voice nouns and adjectives are differentiated in the participles, and the verb "to be" is used as a predicant. but in what is usually denominated the active voice of the verb, the english language has undifferentiated parts of speech. an examination of the history of the verb _to be_ in the english language exhibits the fact that it is coming more and more to be used as the predicant; and what is usually called the common form of the active voice is coming more and more to be limited in its use to special significations. the real active voice, indicative mode, present tense, first person, singular number, of the verb to eat, is _am eating_. the expression _i eat_, signifies _i am accustomed to eat_. so, if we consider the common form of the active voice throughout its entire conjugation, we discover that many of its forms are limited to special uses. throughout the conjugation of the verb the auxiliaries are predicants, but these auxiliaries, to the extent that they are modified for mode, tense, number, and person, contain adverbial and connective elements. in like manner many of the lexical elements of the english language contain more than one part of speech: _to ascend_ is _to go up_; _to descend_ is _to go down_; and _to depart_ is _to go from_. thus it is seen that the english language is also synthetic in that its parts of speech are not completely differentiated. the english, then, differs in this respect from an indian language only in degree. in most indian tongues no pure predicant has been differentiated, but in some the verb _to be_, or predicant, has been slightly developed, chiefly to affirm, existence in a place. it will thus be seen that by the criterion of organization indian tongues are of very low grade. it need but to be affirmed that by the criterion of sematologic content indian languages are of a very low grade. therefore the frequently-expressed opinion that the languages of barbaric peoples have a more highly organized grammatic structure than the languages of civilized peoples has its complete refutation. it is worthy of remark that all paradigmatic inflection in a civilized tongue is a relic of its barbaric condition. when the parts of speech are fully differentiated and the process of placement fully specialized, so that the order of words in sentences has its full significance, no useful purpose is subserved by inflection. economy in speech is the force by which its development has been accomplished, and it divides itself properly into economy of utterance and economy of thought. economy of utterance has had to do with the phonic constitution of words; economy of thought has developed the sentence. all paradigmatic inflection requires unnecessary thought. in the clause _if he was here_, _if_ fully expresses the subjunctive condition, and it is quite unnecessary to express it a second time by using another form of the verb _to be_. and so the people who are using the english language are deciding, for the subjunctive form is rapidly becoming obsolete with the long list of paradigmatic forms which have disappeared. every time the pronoun _he_, _she_, or _it_ is used it is necessary to think of the sex of its antecedent, though in its use there is no reason why sex should be expressed, say, one time in ten thousand. if one pronoun non-expressive of gender were used instead of the three, with three gender adjectives, then in nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases the speaker would be relieved of the necessity of an unnecessary thought, and in the one case an adjective would fully express it. but when these inflections are greatly multiplied, as they are in the indian languages, alike with the greek and latin, the speaker is compelled in the choice of a word to express his idea to think of a multiplicity of things which have no connection with that which he wishes to express. a _ponka_ indian, in saying that a man killed a rabbit, would have to say the man, he, one, animate, standing, in the nominative case, purposely killed, by shooting an arrow, the rabbit, he, the one, animate, sitting, in the objective case; for the form of a verb to kill would have to be selected, and the verb changes its form by inflection and incorporated particles to denote person, number, and gender as animate or inanimate, and gender as standing, sitting, or lying, and case; and the form of the verb would also express whether the killing was done accidentally or purposely, and whether it was by shooting or by some other process, and, if by shooting, whether by bow and arrow, or with a gun; and the form of the verb would in like manner have to express all of these things relating to the object; that is, the person, number, gender, and case of the object; and from the multiplicity of paradigmatic forms of the verb to kill this particular one would have to be selected. perhaps one time in a million it would be the purpose to express all of these particulars, and in that case the indian would have the whole expression in one compact word, but in the nine hundred and ninety-nine thousand nine hundred and ninety-nine cases all of these particulars would have to be thought of in the selection of the form of the verb, when no valuable purpose would be accomplished thereby. in the development of the english, as well as the french and german, linguistic evolution has not been in vain. judged by these criteria, the english stands alone in the highest rank; but as a written language, in the way in which its alphabet is used, the english has but emerged from a barbaric condition. index. page adjective, the, in indian tongues adverbial particles adverbs in indian tongues , , agglutination in language article pronouns in indian languages , combination in indian tongues in language, process of, , comparison, of english with indian compounding in language connotation of indian nouns derivation, how accomplished differentiation of parts of speech evolution of language gender in indian languages grammatic processes, agglutination ----, combination ----, compounding ----, inflection ----, intonation ----, juxtaposition ----, placement , ----, vocalic mutation indian tongues, relative position of inflection in english language in language ----, paradigmatic , juxtaposition in language language, evolution of - ----, processes of - modal particles mode in indian tongues modification, how accomplished mutation, vocalic nouns in indian tongues paradigmatic inflection , particles, adverbial ----, modal ----, pronominal ----, tense placement, process of - prepositions in indian tongues processes of language - pronominal particles pronouns in indian languages speech, differentiation of parts of syntactic relation, how accomplished tense in indian tongues particles verbs in english language in indian tongues , vocalic mutation in language, process of