CONTENTS. Thought and Language. Laws of Thought. These laws are reproduced in language, and language is to be studied in accordance with them. Laws of Language. These laws are subordinate to the laws of thought, and both are com- bined in Analysis, which is of three kinds, Grammatical Another example. Part of it syllogistically treated ... INTRODUCTION. ON ANALYSIS. and LANGUAGE and thought are two distinct things. Thought What the soul is to the body, thought is to Language. speech. If we open a book written in a language of which we are entirely ignorant, it is to us a mere lifeless body, because the spirit is wanting. Thought, also, is the more important of the two, for, as the body decays and perishes, whilst the soul lives for ever, so words change and die, but thoughts remain immortal. As the body is subject to certain physical laws, so language has natural laws belonging to it, but these are subordinate to the laws of thought, which exercise a supreme authority. That language and thought are separate, is not here stated, nor is the existence of thought apart from language treated of, but its action through that medium, as an outgrowth and production of its own, is here practically considered. Thought. The mind is said by philosophers and logicians Laws of to have three great powers; first, that of conception; secondly, that of judgment; and thirdly, that of reasoning. Thus, "man" is a conception, or in looser terms a thought, or idea; "Man is mortal" is a judgment or a proposition; and "Man is mortal, A poet is a man, B Ideas. Judgments. Syllogism. Laws of in is a syllogism, or process of reasoning. The first gives us a single thought, the second reduces two thoughts to unity, and the third combines two judgments, and derives a new one from them. Our conceptions, thoughts, or ideas, may be divided into the following three classes; Substance, as "plant;" Attribute, it is "green" and "grows;" Relation, it is "in the ground." Some ideas also are simple, and very many are compound. Judgments, or propositions, consist of two parts; the Subject, the person or thing thought and spoken of; and the Predicate, that which is thought and said of the subject. Thus, in "Man is mortal," "Man" is the subject, and "is mortal,” is the predicate. Logicians divide the proposition into three parts, Subject, Copula, and Predicate, thus, "Man" subject, "is" copula, "mortal" predicate. It would be more logical to call "mortal" the predicatum, or to invent another name for it. The Syllogism, the process of reasoning by which we form arguments, consists of three propositions. The first two of these, which are combined, are called the premisses; and the third, which is thus derived from these two, is called the conclusion. In a syllogism, the premisses must be sound, and the conclusion properly drawn, otherwise it will be false, and will deceive those who do not detect the fallacy. Thought may be expressed in many ways, withreproduced out words, by signs, sounds, signals, touch, teleLanguage. graphy or symbols. The language of words, however, is usually employed to express thought, and as it is produced by the mind, we may expect the acts of the mind to be reproduced in speech, as is actually the case. Thus, ideas are represented in words, judgments appear in sentences, and a series of syllogisms is to be found in every piece of reasoning or argument that we meet with. Hence, if we wish to analyse language, it should be done in three ways: I. As to the words,-expressing ideas or Language to thoughts. 2. As to the sentences,-containing judgments or propositions. 3. As to the paragraphs or sections,-embodying syllogisms, or other logically connected groups of propositions. be studied according to these Laws. Language also has certain laws, for, as before Laws of Language noted, thoughts thrown into material form become subject to formal laws. The mind operates in different ways upon objects brought before it, and produces ideas of different kinds, and these appear in different words, which have certain peculiarities. Thus, the mind perceives the object "horse," and gets that idea; then it analyses the idea "horse," and separates the idea "gallops" from it, then it analyses further and separates the idea "swift" as belonging to "horse," and "swiftly" as belonging to "gallops." It also perceives the relations between objects; sees that the "horse" is "under a tree," for example. Hence we have words as nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and prepositions. The study of the special laws of language is Laws of usually called grammar, and logic is the science of subordinate the laws of thought, and as language is subordinate of Thought. to thought, its special laws are subordinate to the laws of thought. The combination of the two, Parts of Speech. Language to the Laws |