The Conjectural History of Language in the Scottish Enlightenment

The Conjectural History of Language in the Scottish Enlightenment

By Christopher H. Badenoch

Department of History

Submitted in partid fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts

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This thesis examines the secular conjectural histories of language offered by the men of the Scottish Enlightenment. The institutional nature of language led the

Scots philosophers to approach language from a historical perspective, rather than the merely genetic method pursued by purely analytical commentators on the operations of the mind- The historical approach allowed them to draw on a wide conceptual framework that brought envimnrnental, social and temporal contexts to bear on the science of human nature-

The thesis follows the development of thought on language fiom Locke to the early decades of the nineteenth century, highiighting the empiricist and secular points of view from which writers from England, France and especially Scotland, pursued the questions of the origin and development of language.

The thesis begins with an Introduction that defines '%onjectural history" as it was applied to the study of language in the eighteenth century, and briefly discusses the subject's relevant historiography.

Chapter One examines John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding

(1689) and its implications for the study of language and conjectural history in the eighteenth century

Chapter Two illustrates the way two French writers, Etieme Bonnot de

Condillac, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau, examined the topic of language fmm a conjectural historical point of view. It highlights the manner in which they articulated the problems that subsequent explanations of the origin of language would need to overcome, Chapter Three examines the conjectural history of language as philosophers of

the Scottish Enlightenment practised it It argues that the empirical docvines of

Locke, Berkeley and Hume formed the philosophical context for the Scottish

conjectural histories of language, and that Scots philosophers were also influenced

by the writings of Condillac and Rousseau. This chapter stresses that Scots

philosophers made connections between language, mind, and society while

approaching the conjecnual history of language fiom varying secular points of

view.

The thesis concludes by considering the body of research as a whoIe, and by

noting the contribution this study has made to the historiography of the Scottish

Enlightenment.

KEYWORDS: language, conjectural history, philosophy, Enlightenment, Scotland,

France, secular, empiricism. Dedication

To my mother, Sharon Anne Badenoch Acknowledgements

I have received much help from friends and family over my years at UWO and I would like to use a few words to thank these people. First, my father and mother for encouraging me to pursue my dreams and interests and for lending much needed material support on occasion. My sister Amy deserves thanks for taking care of business in

Toronto while I was absorbed in the final stages of the thesis. Luke and Kevin helped me through this demanding year by keeping my assignments in perspective as only housemates can. I would like to tank Catherine for her understanding and willingness to partake in the same conversation for what must have seemed like weeks at a time.

I would Wre to give special thanks to my advisor Roger Emerson for his patience in attending to my questions, and for the discerning and sincere attention he has given to my work and my general education over the past several years at UWO. TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

INTRODUCTION 1

CHAPTER ONE Locke and the 'Historical, plain Method' Applied to 9 bguage

CHAPTER TWO Condillac and Rousseau: Empiricism and the Obstacles 44 to Conjectural Origins

CHAPTER THREE Scots Philosophers and the Conjectural-Historicd 69 Study Of Language

CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY

VITA Introduction

In an essay read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh on the 21 January and 18 March, 1793 '. Dugdd Stewart discussed the notion of "ZJzeoreticalor

Conjectural History", terms he may have coined. As Stewart noted, conjectural histories had served a valuable intellectual function for Enlightenment philosophers engaged in the study of a wide range of philosophical topics2

'When, in such a period of society as that in which we live, we compare our intellectual acquirements, our opinions, manners, and institutions, with those which prevail among rude tribes, it cannot faii to occur to us as an interesting question. by what gradual steps the transition has been made from the tint simple efforts of uncultivated nature, to a state of things so wonderfuily artificial and cornplicated"(Stewart Works, 10: 33). To trace the history of a human institution in this manner involved using conjectures about the invariability of man's nature, for example, to fill the gaps in the historical record. Often travel reports and diaries supplied the philosopher with empirical testimony about primitive peoples at various stages of civilization. The levels of civilization cultures had achieved then served to construct a temporal scale of societies evolving in increasingly complex ways. The philosopher believed that when he observed a contemporary society at a particular state of civilization, he could use that culture as the living record of a society that had existed at a comparable level of civilization some time in the distant and unknown past. While the information contained in the accounts of contemporary primitive societies was often disjointed and insignificant on its own, the conjectural historian could supplement it with the principles of human nature that he had formed through the processes of introspection and reflection.

Together, the data collected from primitive societies and the philosopher's speculations could form the basis for important discoveries about human nature and society. The conjectural historical method involved the philosopher in an empirical and deductive procedure that proposed to clarify the principles of human nature.

It is significant that Stewart explained the conjectural historical method before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, and in the context of an account of the life and writings of one of the Scottish Enlightenment's most important intellectuals,

Adam Smith. Conjectural histories were a characteristic feature of the Scottish

Enlightenment's and Smith's own, secular approach to epistemology and methodology. To give a secular explanation was to attribute the origins and development of a given phenomenon to natural, and not divine causes3 Among the many uses to which Scots philosophers applied this fundamentally secular method of inquiry, was the explanation of the origin and development of

Nearly all those Scots philosophers who conjectured about the history of language aimed to illustrate how man. left to his natural faculties, could have invented language. Most believed that the creation and development of language was an essential feature of man's progress from primitive to polite society. The explanation of its origin therefore, would give philosophers both an understanding of the principles of human nature and of the formation of society. With that knowledge they could attempt to understand their own societies and those primitive ones they encountered abroad, Scots philosophers believed that

language and its history offered them a window open to the operations of the

mind. In this light, the prospect of locating the origin of Ianguage, even if it was

only hypothetical, seemed to promise an understanding of the nature of and the

operation of the mind. I€ the Scots philosophers could show, according to what

they believed were the principles of human aature, how all the various parts of

language might gradually have arisen, they would have shown the order in which

the mind's faculties had developed and the principles by which they operated.

Thus, when Scots philosophers applied the conjectural historical method to the

study of language, they were engaged in the wider Enlightenment endeavour of

establishing the nature of man and society with reasonable, empirical and secular

arguments.

In the past twenty or more years, numerous scholars across North America

and Europe have shown renewed interest in the history of linguistics. Two

scholarly journals in particular have devoted themselves to promoting and exploring this relatively new academic field: Although many of the existing

studies in this field arrange themselves around particular philosophical,

institutional and even geographical communities~it is difficult, especially for those interested in the eighteenth century, to attempt the historical study of

Linguistics without considering ideas and personalities across the whole of

Enlightened Europe. As with many of the philosophical topics that fall within the domain of eighteenth century intellectual history, the Enlightenment debate on language incorporated many voices fiom many intellectual and regional

backgrounds,

In a sequence of essays titled From Locke to Saussure, Hans AarsIeff

compiled the widest ranging interpretation of the history of linguistics yet

attempted. Aarsleff devoted much of that work to highlighting the cohesion of

themes broached by philosophers of language between the middle of the

seventeenth and the end of the nineteenth centuries- His major study on the

history of linguistics in the eighteenth century took the form of an essay, "The

Tradition of Condillac: The Roblem of the Origin of Language in the Eighteenth

Century and the Debate in the Berlin Academy before ~erder.'" As the title

indicates, Aarsleff considered the exchange of ideas that occurred between French

and German philosophers on the topic of language. His inter-regional study was

limited, to France and Germany, with only a few, general acknowledgements that

a debate on the origin of language was taking place in Scotland at the same time!

James H. Stam, in Inquiries Into the Origin of language: The Fate of a

Question, considerad the British context for the topic of the origin of language.

He discussed Locke, Hartley, Bentham and Smith, and went into a detailed

exposition of Monboddo's curious argument about Orangutans and speech. As

Stam examined only smithg and Monboddo among the Scots, and then separately

fiom each other, he left the specifically Scottish context to the debate unexplored

while devoting the majority of his Inquiry to the developments in France and

Germany from 1771 to 1865.'O Stephen K. Land gave a much more thorough study of Scottish theories of language in The Philosophy of Language in Britain: Major ~eoriesjkornHobbes to 27zomus Reid. Land devoted the better part of two chapters to the Scottish philosophers Smith, Monboddo and Thomas Reid. Chapter four: "Smith and

Monboddo: the Search for Origins"," extensively discussed these authors' conjectural histories of language. As he stated in its introduction, his study was

'hot a history of the philosophy of language, [or conjectural histories of language] but rather an examination of the major theories of language" fiom Hobbes to

Reid. He approached his subject hman analytic point of view. examining only the major philosophers without providing much historical context.12

There have been several journal length studies of the conjectural bistories of language written in eighteenth century scotland." While most have attempted to place these theories within some sort of intellectual context, they have focussed only on one theory at a time. Separate articles exist on the theories of Smith,

Monboddo, and Dunbar respectively, but only the articles by Christopher Berry:

'6JamesDunbar and the Enlightenment Debate on ~an~ua~e"'*and Riidiger

Schreyer: " 'Pray what language did your wild couple speak, when first they met?' - Language and the Science of Man in the Scottish ~nli~htenment,"'~ attempt to study Scottish conjectural histories of language fiom a comparative perspective. One of the aims of this thesis is to begin to redress the lack of historical-contextual and comparative study that has thus far been undertaken in the historiography of Scottish enlightenment language philosophy. The other is to emphasize that the method and gods of the Scots philosophers' conjectural

histories of language were fimdarnentally secular. Endnotes

I The tide of the essay was "Account of the Life and Writings of Adam Smith LL.D," in Dugald Stewart, The Collected Works of Dugafd Stewart 10 vols,, ed, Sir William Hamilton (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co., 1858): 1-100, A11 fbrther references to Stewart's writings will be cited parentheticalIy in the text as (Stewart Works, volume number, page number)-

2 Roger Emerson has discussed the ancient sources from which enlightenment philosophers @artidarly those of Scotland) could have derived their conjectural historical method- Roger Emerson, "Conjectural History and Scottish Philosopher" in Historical Papers/Cornmunicationr Historiques. 1994: 63-9, Also see: Clarence J. Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thoughrfiorn Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967). Paul Wood has argued that when Scots philosophers looked at human history in their efforts to understand human natwe, they did not write "conjectural histories" but "natural histories9'- In Wood's view, the Scots philosophical histories were not as conjectural as some, including Dugald Stewart, have claimed, For Wood, these works should be considered "natural histories" and not "conjectural histories", because they encompassed "the enterprise of describing and classifying the creation." Wood emphasized the dassificatory aspect of the historical work of a man like Adam Ferguson who "maintained that the historian should not go beyond the evidence of the historical record." Ferguson and those like him, were "adamantly opposed to the type of hypothetical reasoning advocated by Stewart, and insisted that the methodological standards of natural history be upheld when tracing the rise of civil society." In addition to Ferguson, Wood cited Thomas Reid, John Millar, Wiarn Robertson, James Dunbar, Lord Kames and David Skene, as men who approached the history of man not fiom a conjectural point of view, but fiom the methodologically more rigorous perspective of "natural history". Paul B Wood, "The History of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment," History of Science 27 (1989).

For the development of natural religion in the Scottish Enlightenment see: Roger Emerson, 'The religious, the secular and the worldly: Scotland 1680-1800" in Religion, Secularization and Political Thought ed. James E. Crimrnins, (New York: RoutIedge, 1990): especially 84-

4 For the various uses Scottish philosophers made of the conjectural historical method. see: Emerson, "Conjectural History" and Christopher Berry, Social Theory of the Scom'sh Enlightenment, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997): 6 1-71.

The journals SNdics in the History of the Language Sciences and Historiogruphica Linguistics are filled with articles dealing with the history of man's beliefs about language. Of interest for this study is the fact that many of these articles explore the philosophical doctrines and methods advanced by seventeenth and eighteenth century intellectuals on the various aspects of language and mind. 6 Examples of the most common institutional settings are: The Royal Society of London, the London Phi~ologicaiSociety, the Academie myale des sciences, the Soci6ti de linguistique, the Beriin Academy of Sciences- The most common national contexts considered are French, German and English.

7 Hans, Aarsleff. From Locke to Saussure:&says on the St- of Lungmge curd Intellectual History, (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982): 146-210-

* Aarsleff, Lock to Soussure: 148. "Cross influences soon passed between Berlin and Paris, and the debate also reached Scotland as seen in two distinguished works, which fal1 outside my present plan-" The works he spoke of were, Adam Smith's Considerations concerning the first Formation of Languages" (1762) and Lord Monboddo' s "brilliant" Of the Origin and Progress of Language 6 vols- (1773-1799)

9 By reading backwards from Marx and Hegel into Smith's Considerations, and applying some curious metaphors, Stam often took Smith's arguments out of context and gave them an original but dubious interpretation: "The nominaiization of all actions and reification of all relations is the sure giveaway of Smith's capitalist ideology. (As Hegei analyzed the former, so Marx exposed the latter.) Human and other relations are "handled" as though they were things - money in the bank, so to speak- The 'wealth of notions' consists in the transformation of ideas into exchangeabIe and marketable commodities." Stam, Inquiries into the Origin of Lunguage: 39.

'O These dates mark Herder's Treatise on the Origin of Language, which was the prize essay of the Berlin Academy competition in 1769; and the decision of the Socitfttfde linguiszique de Paris, to reheany further essays on the topic of the origin of language.

1 I Stephen K-Land, The Philosophy of Language in Britain: Major Theories from Hobbes to Thomas Reid (New York: AMS Press, 1986): 13 1-1 92.

I2 Land, Philosophy of Language in Britain: 1. l3 Christopher J Berry, "Adam Smith's Considerations on Language," Journal of the History of Ideas" 35 (1974); John R.R. Christie, "Adam Smith's Metaphysics of Language" in The Figural and the Literal ed. Andrew E, Benjamin, Geoffky N, Carter and John R.R. Christie, (Manchestec Manchester University Press, 1987); Frank Plank, "Adam Smith: Grammatical Ecoaomics," in Adam Smith Reviewed, ed. Peter Jones and Andrew Skinner, (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1992). l4 Christopher J. Beny, James Dunbar and the Enlightenment Debate on Language" in Aberdeen and the Enlightenment eds. Jennifer J. Carter and Joan H-Pittock (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Ptess, 1987)-

1s Riidiger Schreyer, " 'Pray what language did your wild couple speak, when they first met? - Language and the Science of Man in the Scottish Enlightenment*' in The 'Science of Man' in the Scottish Enlightenment: Hume Reid and their Contemporaries, ed., Peter Jones (Edinburgh: Edinburgh U~versityPress, 1989). Chapter 1

"Locke and the 'Historical, plain Method' Applied to Language"

A general assumption behind the great scientific progress of the seventeenth century was that nature or creation was ordered. Whether the order was arranged by God or by a mechanistic cosmic force, it dictated that the natural philosopher's task was to classify everything he sensed or understood in terms that would reflect this perfectly ordered scheme. It was essential that the philosopher be equipped with a clear and philosophically adequate language with which to categorize and reason about the world around him. If the ideas and information gathered and analyzed by philosophers could not be recorded and communicated in clear and precise terms, the scientific enterprise would fail.

These difficulties set many of the seventeenth century's most well-known philosophers thinking about the problems of language, nature, and science.

Francis Bacon (1561 -1626) was among the first seventeenth century authors to bring attention to problems posed by language for the acquisition of scientific truth. In the Advancement of Learning (1 605) he warned that words often imposed false appearances on the objects they denoted because they had been ''framed and applied according to the conceit and capacities of the vulgar sort-"' They were, in short, ofien based on analogies and metaphors, both of which gave rise to errors. Using precise and exhaustive verbal definitions to overcome these emors would have limited success in those sciences that dealt with the natural world. Bacon did not have faith in the power of definition because, as he noted: "definitions themselves consist of words, and those words beget others."

The project of uncovering truths about the natural wodd by fixing the proper meanings of the words used to describe it would result in endless verbal disputes without ever gaining knowledge of nature, To avoid the problems raised by these

''Zdols of the Marketplace", Bacon called on his fellow philosophers to set aside general theories that generated verbal disputes and reflect instead upon the observations of "individual ins~ces"that were got by experience? The best definitions were ostensive and operational since these referred to things perceived or done.

Rent5 Descartes (15964650)was more optimistic than Bacon about the prospect of a scientific language of clearly and precisely defined terms. Writing in 1629, he observed that most words had confused meanings and that most men had become so accustomed to using them that there was very littIe they could undersrand perfectly. Any improvement in the languages of Europe, in

Descartes' view, would have had to be founded on the establishment of the "true philosophy." This philosophy would entail the correct explanation of the b'simple ideas of the imagination out of which all human thoughts are compounded" and would have had the effect of distinguishing men's thoughts into their clear and distinct components- Descartes proposed that the exactness of the "true philosophy" would enable mankind to "number and order" all its thoughts and give them a precision comparable to that found in mathematics. Such a language wodd greatly reduce the errors of judgement that regularly thwarted the scientific enterprise. Its institution would "make peasants better judges of the truth about the world than philosophers are now." Descartes was hopeful that a Ianguage based on the "true philosophy" would one day be formed but he doubted whether it would ever come into general use among mankind..'

Descartes' contemporary and Bacon's former assistant? Thomas Hobbes,

(1588-1678) was also aware that the imprecision of language often obstructed mankind in its attempts to understand the world sciendfically. In De cive (1642)'

Hobbes complained that popular usage, and rhetoric, the "passion for ornament or even deception" had distorted the meanings affixed to a great number of words.'

In Leviathan (165 I), Hobbes warned that imperfections in the definitions of words made scientific knowledge impossible by increasing the errors in men's reasoning and leading them into linguistic absurdities from which they could not escape! These generally recognized problems gave rise to a curious set of solutions - the efforts to create an ideal language.

In 1688, John Wilkins (16141672) published An essay Towards a Real

Character and a Philosophical Language, with the official imprimatur of the

Royal Society in an effort to construct a universal language that would make possibIe the kinds of philosophical knowledge he and many of his contemporaries sought: The problem of delinition raised by Hobbes was one Wilkins explicitly recognized and aimed to overcome, Wilkins assumed that the principles of reason operated similarly in the minds of all men so that all men had, or could have, identical notions about the objects of the natural world. The confused state of languages was purely the result of the inconstant manner in which men assigned names to the notions they held in common. Men would be freed from the curse and confusion of tongues introduced at Babel if their common notions could be fastened to simple and common marks, either written or spoken! With the aid of strictly observed grammatical principles, language would be able to fulfill its proper hnction: "the expression of our Conceptions by Marks wbich should signifie things, and not words." Wilkins predicted that such a language would greatly improve mankind's memory and understanding, allowing it to learn the nature of things fiom their names. "the knowledge of both which ought to k c~njoined."~

Less radical solutions were also given; the most important was by John

Locke. He, like other advocates of the 'new science', whether of a rational or an empirical inclination, viewed language as an important philosophical topic. The large portion of Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding devoted to an examination of words and their imperfections, put that work, which was first published in1689, near the end of the philosophical tradition I have described-

WleLucke agreed that achieving a better understanding of language was important for the progress of philosophy, his own deliberations on the subject set him apart from those who wrote before him. Like Descartes, he hoped to overcome the "cheat of words" and apply to philosophical problems the precise forms of reasoning lately achieved in mathernati~s.'~While Locke was well aware of the problems that common language posed for a philosophical understanding of the world, he rejected Willcins' solution of a constructed and artificial, universal and philosophical language. ' In the Essay, he devoted all of Book III, entitled "Of Words", as well as other smaller sections throughout that work, to examining the nature and function of language and to the epistemoLogicaI problems associated with it. In the

"Epistle to the Reader'' Lncke pomayed himself as an 'Vnder-Labourer" to the great men of science whose task it was on the one hand, to warn against the danger of placing too much trust in the truth of words, and on the other to expose the harmful practice of Erivolously employing unintelligible terms in scientific

Locke observed that occurrences of linguistic imprecision had been frequently mistaken for issues of philosophical importance and had retarded the development of knowledge. He wrote:

Vague and insignificant Fomof Speech, and Abuse of Language, have so Long passed for Mysteries of Science; And hard or misapply'd Words, with little or no meaning, have, by Prescription, such a Right to be mistaken for deep Learning, and height of Speculation. that it will not be easie to persuade, either those who speak, or those who hear them, that they are Covers of Ignorance, and hindrance of true

Locke directed these cornments at those "learned Men" who still advocated the scholastic method of disputation as the proper means to discover truth.14 Locke supposed that once philosophers acknowledged that language was inherently inexact and began to trace their ideas to their source in experience, many of the capricious language-based problems that occupied the time of philosophers would be replaced with new ones that promised to be fruidul for empirical research. In addition to making thought clearer, an improved natural language would also enhance humankind's ability to communicate with one another. Communication,

Locke repeatedly asserted, was "the chief end of language"(locke Essay, 3.5.7).15 In addition to shedding light on the workings of the human mind and promoting a more empirically oriented type of science, Locke hoped that his examination of language would help human beings avoid needless misunderstandings in their social relations and thereby increase the efficient and peaceful operation of society.

In the "Introduction" to the Essay, Locke stated that he planned to proceed by the "HistoricaI, gIain Method" and inquire into the "Ori@zal of those Ideas,

Notions, or whatever else you pleas to call them which a Man observes, and is conscious to himself he has in his From this empirical and genetic perspective, Locke argued that all man's ideas ultimately originated in experience.

"The great source of most of the Ideas we have," hkewrote, were "derived wholly from our senses" (Locke Essay, 2. l.24).17 Locke compared a mind barren of the ideas of experience to "an empty Cabinet"(Locke Essay, 1-2-15), Although aU the ideas of the mind were founded ultimately in experience, the mind could have complex ideas it had never encountered directly in experience. '*These it manufactured by setting its mental faculties to work on simple ideas (Locke

Essay, 2.1.22). Ideas served as the fundamental building blocks out of which all human knowledge was formed. Knowledge was nothing but "the perception of the connexion and agreement, or disagreement and repugnancy of any of our

Ideas." The surest way for a philosopher to acquire clear and distinct knowledge was to consider his ideas by themselves, independently of their corresponding signs or words. While Locke may have hoped for a sort of 'Pvordless discourse of the mind," he acknowledged that when his fellow men thought or reasoned, they nearly always made use of the names of ideas and not the ideas themselves.tg He concluded that this prevailing practice made "the consideration of Words and

Propositions, so necessary a part of the Treatise of Knowledge," that it would be

"very hard to speak intelligibly of the one without explaining the other" (Locke

Essay. 2.33.19)?'

It is plain that Locke gave the examination of language an important function in his endeavor '30 inquire into the Original, Certainty, and Extent of humane Knowledge" (Locke Essay, 1.1.2-). In Book III he applied the same genetic and empirical method to the subject of language that he had utilized in his deliberation on ideas and the operations of the mind. This meant searching for the

"Originals" from whence words had derived- Because tocke believed that words were signs that men had arbitrarily instituted to represent their ideas, his inquiry into their origin led him to examine the mental operations that had made such assignations possible (Locke Essay, 3.1.5; 3.3 -8). Locke' s empirical presuppositions and his genetic method flatly contradicted the Adamic account of the origin of language adhered to by many early modern thinkers such as Luther

(1483-lS46), Comenius (1592-1670), and Robert South (1634-1716) who had been "an old school-mate" of ~ocke-~l

Robert South summed up the Adamic doctrine in a sermon given in 1662.

Adam, he said: "Came into the world a philosopher, which sufficiently appeared by his writing the nature of things upon their names; he could view essences in themselves, and read forms without the comment of their respective

In opposition to this view, Locke held that Adamic language was not privileged, recoverable or better than the language that modern man had created and

continued to build, In a section of the Essay in which he treated the subject of

Adamic language at length, Locke remarked:

What liberty Adam had at first to make any complex Ideas of mixed Modes, by no other fattem, but by his own Thoughts, the same have all Men ever since had. And the same necessity of coaforming his Ideas of Substances to Thiags without him, as to Archetypes made by Nature, that Adam was under, if he would not wilblly impose upon himseLf, the same are all Men ever since under too. The same Liberty also, that Adam had of affixing any new name to any Idea; the same has any one still, (especially the beginners of Languages, if we can imagine any such) (Locke Essay, 3-6.5 1)-

Locke set aside the notion that language had been a divine gift, and replaced it

with a naturalistic explanation in which man's mind possessed the God given

abilities required to create language.

Constructing hypotheses based on "matterrs1 of fact" made up an integral

part of the natural philosopher's procedure (Locke Essay, 2.1.10). Locke was

untroubled by the prospect that any explanation of the mental principles in

operation at the time when mankind first created language would necessarily be

hypothetical. He thought that natural philosophy could never become a science

on the same level as geometry because its aim was to understand the various

substances of creation? Mankind's knowledge of substances consisted only of

the "Nominal Essences the Mind makes, and not in the real Essences to be found

in the Things themselves."(Lucke Essay, 3.6.1 1).24 Thus Locke denied the validity of Willrins' project for a universal scientific language and also the notion that Adamic language was recoverable. Man could not understand essences and had no empirically based reason to believe in an Adamic language. Locke was not however, dissuaded ftom advocating the study of nature as a usem, Iegitimate

md progressive form of human inquiry. He instructed natural philosophers to be

wary of building grand systems and mistaking unintelligible notions for scientific

demonstrations. The best methods for obtaining knowledge of the natural world as perceived or experienced, Locke believed, was experimental and historical (Locke

Essay, 4-12.10-12).~~Often however, in the absence of adequate data, these experiments would need to rely on well made 'Wyptheses" or guesses. Locke cautioned that natural philosophers should not adopt any hypothesis until its particulars had been thoroughly examined with the aid of experiments. In addition, a good hypothesis would in no way be inconsistent with the observable phenomena of nature. He warned that the principle established by a verified hypothesis should not be received as "an unquestionable Truth, which is really, at best, but a very doubtful conjecture, such as are most (Ihad almost said all) of the

Hypotheses in natural Philosophy" (LockeEssay, 4.12.13). Despite their hypothetical and conjectural nature, Locke advocated the use of experimental and historical hypotheses for the natural historian. Based on "matter[s] of fact," and consistent with the observable phenomena of nature, properly constructed hypotheses met the criteria of Locke' s philosophical method.

One of the principle hypotheses that enabled hcke to proceed with his conjectural history was that human nature was uniform throughout history.26 He supposed that the mental principles at work in human minds at the time language was created were the same as those everywhere at work on the minds of men in his own day. This meant that the way a contemporary child acquires the use of language could be viewed as a prototypical example of the manner in which the human species invented language at some time in the distant and unknown past-

Another methodological hypothesis Locke made was that mankind as it had existed in the earliest stages of its history, shared a great deal with those primitive peoples described in contemporary travel accounts? Tbe information contained in these travel accounts could be substituted for the synthetic knowledge that

Locke hoped natural philosophers would produce by conducting experiments."

Using contemporary observations of language acquisition among children and primitives, Locke was able to base his historical conjectures about the mental operations of ''the first Beginners of Languages" on what he took to be experimentally acquired particulars (Locke Essay, 3.l.S).

His willingness to conjecture about the natural world decisively shaped his method for discussing language throughout the Essay- In his endeavour to frnd the mental operations responsible for the "Originals" of words, Locke adopted a hypothetical method utilizing what he believed to be empirically grounded conjectures. By using hypotheses about a child's acquisition of language. (Locke

Essay, 3.3.1-8) the differences between men and beasts, (Locke Essay, 3 3. 11.10) and the linguistic pre-conditions for the establishment of society Wcke Essay,

2.22.2), Locke constructed a conjectural account of the historical and psychological relationship between mind and language.

The opening paragraphs of Book III were the only ones of the Essay in which Locke dealt directly with the origin of language without using conjectures based on the observations of children or primitives. His first remark on the subject was that God, in addition to giving mankind an inclination for social living, ''furnished him also with language" (Locke Essay, 3.1.1). By this comment

Locke did not mean that mankind had received an innate and fidly formed language as the gift of God- He meant merely that "by Nature" mankind possessed the organs required to make articulate sounds and that they therefore had the physical capacity to develop and use language. Locke noted that although parrots and several other species of birds could be taught to articulate words, this ability did not make them able to use language. In his description of man's acquisition of language, Locke contended that besides being able to "articulate

Sounds.. .it was farther necessary, that he should be able to use these Sounds, as

Signs of internal Conceptions; and to make them stand as marks for the ideas within his own Mind" (Locke Essay, 3.1 .2).w

For Locke, what distinguished words from "insignificant" noises was that they were the Verbal Signs" and "sensible Marks of Ideas" (Locke Essay, 3.2.7;

2.1 1.8; 3.2.1). As he noted in the "Introduction" to the Essay, the term "idea" was one that he used quite frequently. He there defined it as "whatsoever is the Object of the Understanding when a Man thinks.. ., whatever is meant by Phantasm,

Notion, Species, or whatever it is, which the Mind can be employ 'd about in thinking" (Locke Essay, 1-1.8). In Book I of the Essay, hcke argued that ideas are not innately present in man's mind and in the opening paragraphs of Book I1 he stated that they are all acquired through 'cEiperience." Experience was received in the mind by either the "SENSATION" of "external, sensible Objects" or through "REFLECTION," (which he likened to an "internal Sense") on the "internal Operations of our ~inds."~~As all the ideas of the mind had their origin

in experience, so all words flowed &om '%ommon sensible Ideas." Locke noted

that even the words that "stand for Actions and Notions quite removed from

sense, have their rise fiom.. - obvious sensible Ideas" (Locke Essay, 3-1-5).

For the purpose of understanding Locke's views on the place of language

in mankind's mental development, examining the subtleties of his semantic theory

is less important than recognizing that he believed that the mind contained ideas of varying complexity prior to, and independently of, its ability to use language.

In a short paragraph describing the process of language acquisition among children, Locke stated clearly that the ability of a child to use words presupposed that it already possessed ideas and had mastered several mental operations (Locke

Essay, 2.1 1.8). The process of language acquisition began when children's minds were presented with ideas through the two operations of sensation and reflection.

Next, they developed the capacity to remember those ideas, which once retained in the memory, became the mental signs of the objects of sensation and reflection.

After the mind was furnished with those signs, it was able to willfully perform a variety of mental operations. The creation of language was then just a matter of articulating "verbal signs" to stand as the "outward Marks" of "internal ideas"

(Locke Essay, 2.1 1.8). Once the mind contained determinate ideas as the natural and mental signs of the objects of experience, it required no fiutber mental development to articulate words: this was an ability that man just "found himself able to make.. .with so much Ease and Variety" (Locke Essay, 3.2-1). In agreement with his arguments against innate ideas put forth in Book I,

Locke began his consideration of a chiId's acquisition of language by remarking

that the minds of children were empty before their fitexperiences. A child's

initial experiences were "like floating visions," and the impressions they left in

the mind were not deep enough to create clear and distinct ideas Wcke Essay,

2.1.8)- Locke compared the child's mind at this stage in its development to a

'Zooking-glass" which, aIthough capabIe of constantly receiving a variety of

images, could retain none of them and was capabIe of only a "very useless sort of

rhinking9' (Locke Essay, 2. I.@' Over time however, and through repeated

experiences, the ideas 'Cofmestrejkeshed" began to fix themselves in the memory,

as the mental signs of the "Objects or Actions that produce themTy(Locke Essay,

2.10.6)- Locke emphasized that a child's ability to store ideas in its memory was

an extremely important mental accomplishment. Memory, he contended. was

second in importance only to perception for the mental performance of

intellectual creatures. Without it, the rest of the mind's faculties were for the

most part useless, as they would be able to operate only on those ideas

immediately present to the senses (Locke Essay, 2.10.8). With its memory the

mind could revive and contemplate its ideas at will, further enabling it to compose, enlarge, compare and abstract its idead2 As a summary of the process

Locke wrote:

When Children have, by repeated Sensations, got Ideas fixed in their Memories, they begin, by degrees, to learn the use of Signs. And when they have got the skill to apply the Organs of Speech to the fiarning of articulate Sounds, they begin to make Use of Words, to sirmifie their Ideas to others (LockeEssay, 2.1 1.8). Starting fiom the assumption that alI things that exist are particular, Locke

argued that the first words uttered by a child would be the names of iudividual

objects (LockeEssay, 3.1 -1). He supposed that among the kt'keLI framed"

ideas a child would form would be those individual ideas of its nurse and mother-

As the verb1 signs of these particular ideas, the fist names the child would

recognize would Likewise be particular 'Wme and Mamma" (Locke Essay,

3-3 -7). As its experiences and acquaintance with the world increased, the child

would learn to subsume the individual name it had come to use under a more

general one. Gradually the child wouid observe that there were many things in the

world that more or less resembled the particular ideas of his father and mother.

Locke posited that after the child became aware of the similarities among these

ideas, it would unite them all under '?he name Man" and could, by repeating this process, easily advance through the more general names of "Animr', 'Yivens",

"Body, Substance, and at last to Being" (Locke Essay, 3.3.7-8).

Locke remarked that though the first words were verbal signs for particular ideas, "the far greatest pan of Words,that make Languages, are general terms: which has not been the Effect of Neglect, or Chance, but of

Reason, and Necessity." He listed several reasons for the advent of general terms.

First, it was beyond the capacity of the mind to frame and retain the distinct ideas of every particular thing it was confronted with- The mind was also incapable of applying a distinct name to every one of its individual ideas. To do so would require giving a distinct name to every sheep, Leaf, or grain of sand perceived in experience. Second, co~ll~llunicationwould be impossibLe without general terms because the names used by an individual speaker would be unintelligible to a

listener "who was not acquainted with all those very particular Things" that the

speaker had encountered in experience and subsequently named (Locke Essay,

3.3.2)- Third, without general names, the improvement of knowledge, which consisted in classifying things "into sorts under general Names" would have been

impossible WkeEssay, 3 -3-3). General words and the mental operations that

formed them occupied an important place in Locke's Essay- It was in his discussion of the invention of general and abstract terms that Locke most clearly argued for a correlation between the increasing sophistication of the mind and the refmement of the language that it had available for its use. While the mental entities termed 'ideas' remained at the heart of Locke's account of the human understanding, his deliberations on general and abstract names, and the names of simple and mixed modes increased the importance of language in his view of the operation of the mind. More than a medium of communication, language was an element in the thought process itself. Locke raised the issue, which would so puzzie later men like Jean-Jacques Rousseau, of whether the creation of sophisticated language presupposed refined mental capacities, or whether refined mental capacities presupposed the existence of a sophisticated language.

The mental process involved in creating general words seemed at first to differ little from the one that had made possible the invention of proper names.

Locke's main semantic thesis, which he stated similarly in several passages throughout the Essay, was that: "...Words in their primary or immediate

Signiiication, stand for nothing, but the Ideas in the Mind of him that uses them.. ." (Lofke Essay, 3322)?3 A general word, just like a particular name, served as the sign for a corresponding fked idea in the mind. It was the fact that the idea signified by a general word was itself general, that constituted the important difference between the mental operations required to invent proper names and genera1 words. As Locke put it:

Words become general, by being made the signs of general Ideas: and Ideas become general, by separating fkom them the circumstances of Time, and Place. and any other Ideas, that may determine them to this or that particular Existence. By this way of Abstraction they are made capable of representing more Individuals than one (Locke Essay, 3.3.6).

What set general names apart from proper names, was that the creation of the former presupposed the mind's ability to form general abstract ideas through the complex mental operation of abstraction.

As noted earlier, the memory stored the ideas received through sensation and reflection so that the mind could willfblly set in motion those operations of comparing, composing, and abstracting its ideas. In his discussion of the mental operations of comparison and composition Locke gave no indication that either of them depended on words for their exe~ution.'~Likewise, when Locke discussed the mental faculty of abstraction he maintained, with some important reservations, that it operated independently of language.

In chapter XI of Book II, Locke's examination of abstraction began with an acknowledgement that a language of particular names would be unmanageably prolix. The ensuing discussion of abstraction was fiamed as a description of the way in which the human mind overcame this linguistic difficulty, thereby linking Locke's notion of abstraction to the needs of Ianguage at the outset. Abstraction enabled the mind to make: 'the particular Ideas received fiom particular

Objects.. - [genedl ,. .by considering them as they are in the Mind.. ,Appearances, separate fiom all other Existences, and the circumstances of.. .Time, Place, or any other concomitant ideas" (Locke Essay, 2-11-9)." In this way the ideas taken from particular objects "become general Representatives of all of the same kind; and their Names general Names, applicable to whatever exists conformable to such abstract Ideas." These abstract ideas "(with Names commonly annexed to them)" contained within them the standard or pattern by which to rank objects into sorts and "denominate them accordingly," To illustrate the process of how the mind formed an abstract idea, Locke imagined that on one day he observed some chalk or snow and on the next day he observed some milk. Noticing that the colour of each of the objects was white, and focussing on that idea of white exclusively, his mind, he conjectured, would make that idea of white the representative of all other ideas of that kind. 'TEaving given it the name

Whiteness,. .. [the mind]. ..by that sound signifies the same quality wheresoever to be imagn'd or met with, and thus Universals, whether Ideas or Terms, are made"

(Locke Essay, 2.1 1.9). From the passages just quoted it appears as though Locke conceived of abstract general ideas as the products of mental operations that occurred independently of language. Being able to detect similarities was not merely the result of the immediate sensation of ideas, but the outcome of a process of reflection. The frequent references to names in these passages do not indicate that Locke thought of language as a medium that was necessary for and facilitated abstraction, Rather, these references suggest that for Locke, linguistic

needs often provided the occasion for the abstraction.

Like the mental operations by which men compounded and enlarged their

ideas, the faculty of abstraction put "aperfect distinction betwixt Man and

Brutes" (Locke Essay, 3-1 1. lo)? To support his claim that beasts could think but

were unable to form abstract ideas he stated that "we observe no foot-steps in

them, of making use of genera1 signs for universal Ideas. ..since they have no use

of Words" (Locke Essay, 3-1 1-10). Their inability to use Ianguage could not be

explained by a lack of sufficient vocal organs since many were able to make

articulate sounds and pronounce words. What distinguished tbis vocal capacity

fiom the ability to use language was that it could never apply itself to the

signification of general ideas. The human capacities to form abstract general ideas

and attach determinate vocal signs to them were what separated mankind from the brutes. When Locke surveyed the vast array of substances found in the natural

world, he observed that between them there were "no Chasms, or Gaps."

Considered together, all the various sorts of organisms that existed on earth formed a near continuum of animal life that differed in "almost insensible degrees." Uncovering the trait(s) that defined a species, locating its place within the "continued series of Things" found in nature, was often very difficult. By making the defining characteristic of the human species its ability abstract Locke amplified the importance of understanding the nature of abstract ideas (Locke

Essay, 3.6.12). When he argued that the only way to observe the presence of abstract ideas was in their verbal "foot-steps." he made language one of the def~gattriiutes of man and increased the urgency of explaining the role of

language in the operation of the human mind.

The importance of abstract ideas for Locke's account ofthe human

understanding did not go unnoticed by his critics. The famous attack against bcke's notion of abstract ideas that Berkeley launched in A Treatise concerning the Principles of Hlnan Knowledge (1710) would play an important role in the development of eighteenth century conjecttiraI histories of language in France and particularly in cotl land? Berkeley interpreted Locke as having held that as "the mind frames to itself abstract ideas of qualities or modes, so does it by the same precision or mental separation, attain abstract ideas of the more compounded beings, which included several coexistent qualities."3s What Berkeley objected to was that Locke seemed to have believed it was possible for the mind to make "an abstract idea wherein all the particulars equally partake, abstracting entirely from and cutting off all those circumstances and differences, which might determine it to any particular existence." This led to the absurd notion that the mind could have an 'abstract7 idea of a triangle that was "neither oblique, nor rectangle, equilateral, equicrural, nor scalenon, but all and none of these at once."39 Berkeley noted that Locke had made the ability to form abstract general ideas the characteristic that distinguished man f?om beast. Restating LockeTs argument that we could be sure that beasts had no abstract ideas because they were incapable of using general signs, Berkeley pointed out that this argument was based on the

"supposition.. .that the making use of words, implies the having of general ideas.

From which it follows, that men who use language are able to abstract or generalize their ideas.'" While Berkeley denied that it was possible for man to have abstract general ideas, he acknowIedged that he was able to form general ideas that were not abstract- The way the mind formed general ideas was to make one idea stand indifterently "for all other particular ideas of the same sod*' The same held true for general terms: "there is no such tbing as one precise and def~tesignification annexed to any general name, they all simrifying indifferently a great number of particular ideas.'42

David Hume discussed abstract ideas in a way that was clearly indebted to

~erke1e~P~The remarks of Berkeley and Hume complicated the prospect of giving an explanation of the origin of language- Because of Berkeley's rehtation of Lockean abstract ideas, an empirical explanation of the origin of language would not only be required to proceed without positing an abstracting mental capacity, it would also be required to explain how, once it was invented, man's primitive language could have developed into its modem sophisticated form while man was incapable of forming the abstract ideas which formed so much a part of languages.

When Locke considered what he called simple and mixed modes, he found that the connection between language and thought was even closer than his deliberations on abstraction had led him to believe. He defined simple modes as complex ideas made fiom variations or Werent combinations of the "same simple Idea, without the mixture of any other" (Locke Essay, 2.12.5). They were often formed by joining together repetitions of a single simple idea to make the distinct simple modes of, for example, quantity: " a Dozen, a Gross, Million" or distance: "an Inch, Foot, Yard,Fathom, Mile, Diameter of the Earth, etc? (Locke

Essay, 2.12.1,4). Mixed modes were more complex in that they were

"compounded of simple Ideas of several kinds." Examples of mixed modes were

"beauty", and "theeff7fLocke Essay, 2.22- 1). Terms that Locke did not cite but would have also counted as mixed modes were: property, state, sovereignty, church. When Locke discussed mixed modes he was discussing words whose meanings were often the most highIy disputed and important among his seventeenth century contemporaries.

What set mixed modes apart from the complex ideas of substances or abstract general ideas, was that were "made very arbitrarily, made without patterns, or reference to any real Existence" Wcke Essay, 3.5.3)- Locke warned that the combination of ideas selected out of nature to form a mixed mode had no more genuine connection with one another than with some of the others not contained within the selected aggregate (Locke Essay, 3-5.6). Though the ideas that made up a mixed mode were not "jumbled together without any reason at all" the mind enjoyed "great liberty" to form them as it pleased (Locke Essay, 3.5.7).

In making this sort of complex idea the, mind performed three operations. First, it selected a limited number of ideas out of its experience. Second, it conceived of the manner in which all these ideas were connected and subsumed them all under one idea. Third, it tied "them together by a Name" (Locke Essay, 354).

Locke stated that the significance of naming a mixed mode was due to the

"scattered", "flee$ing, and transient" combination of ideas that constituted it The particular combinations of ideas that formed a mixed mode existed in the mind only briefly, while men were actu- engaged in thinking about them. This

explained why they had "not so much any where the appearance of a constanr

and lasting exr'stence, as in their Nmes" (Locke Essay, 2.22.8). Locke asked his

readers to consider whether the particular mixed modes of "Tn'umph,or

Apotheosis" could be said to exist "altogether any where in the things themselves." His own answer was that these ideas denoted a series of actions

occurring over an extended period of time and therefore neither combination of ideas could be observed to "exist together." Locke cautioned that the combinations of ideas that made up these mixed modes were not only tenuous within the natural world, but also very "uncertain" in the minds of those who used them (Locke Essay, 2.22.8). Even in the mind, the particuiar combination of ideas

"would cease", if not for "the Name which is, as it were the Knot, that ties them fast together" (Locke Essay, 3-5- 10).

Given the precarious and arbitrary character of mixed modes, one might ask what reason man had for creating them. Locke's simple answer was that they were created, like all aspects of language, to aid the communication of ideas from man to man. Oniy those combinations of ideas that men had "occasion to mention one to another" were grouped into mixed modes Dcke Essay, 3-57). To increase the ease of dispatch, men used mixed modes to communicate, "by short

Sounds," those abundant and various collections of particular ideas they frequently used "in their way of Living and Conversation" Gcke Essay, 3-57;

2.22.5). So as not to over-burden their memories, men left unconsidered the infinitely large number of mixed modes that could be collected out of experience but of which they seldom or never had any occasion to make use (Locke Essay,

2-22-5)-

The fact that mixed modes originated out of the need to "avoid long

descriptions" of the 'Wngs of daily Conversation," meant that the invention of

the names of mixed modes was greatly innuenced by the 'Fashions, Customs, and

Manners" that determined the sorts of conversations in which people engaged

(Locke Essay, 2.22.7) In his discussion of mixed modes Locke emphasized the

social aspect of language, noting that the creation and transformation of words

often occurred in social situations as men attempted to communicate their ideas to

one another. The reason why languages changed, Locke observed, was because

an alteration in the '%ustoms and Opinions" of any nation required its inhabitants

"frequently to think on, and talk about, new names" (Locke Essay, 2.22-7)- The

influence that manners and customs had on the development of language also

helped to illuminate why some words of a given language were not translatable into another. The people of a nation that did not share the customs of another would often lack the complex ideas of the activities involved in those customs and therefore lack the corresponding names.

Locke clearly stated the importance of mixed modes for human communication and the advancement of knowledge when he remarked that they form the "greatest part of the Words made use of in divinity, ethicks, law, and politicks, and several other Sciences" (Locke Essoy. 2.22.12). He listed several examples of mixed modes used in the institutional settings just mentioned:

"obligation", "lie", ''hypocrisy", "sacrilege", "murder", and "parricide" Ocke Essay, 2.22.14,12), Mixed modes were essential for the smooth running of

society, for without them 'Zaws could be but ill made, or Vice and Disorder

repressed" (Lacke Essay, 2.22.9). Lawmakers often made laws prohibiting

species of actions that had yet to be observed and thus existed "only as the

creatures of their own understanding" (Locke Essay, 33.S): The ability to

fiame and put words to combinations of ideas that had yet to be observed was

crucial for the advent of society. Locke conjectured that "in the beginning of

. Languages and Societies" the establishment of rules for their creation took the

form of "Constitutions." The ideas required to form these constitutions were

necessady complex and abstract. Such abstract ideas, he continued to

hypothesize, must have been "in the Minds of Men, before they existed any where

else." Likewise the "many names that stood for such complex Ideas, were in

use.. .before the Combinations they stood for, ever existed" (Locke Essay,

2.22.2)? In these passages Locke suggested that before primitive man had

formed societies he had mastered a number of complex mental operations that

allowed him to fkame abstract ideas, and invent a shared, sophisticated language

to communicate them. Further, Locke held that the creation of societies would

have been impossible if man had not first been able to perform such compIex

mental and linguistic operations. Here Locke had raised one of the questions

pondered by those eighteenth century thinkers, such as Conciillac and Rousseau,

who would attempt to explain the origin of language: did the formation of society

presuppose human Linguistic competence or did the invention of language require

that man had reached a sufficientlyadvanced stage of social living?47 Having asserted that the mind could frame ideas of mixed modes without ever having observed the corresponding combination of simple ideas, kke moved on to consider whether the mind could use the names of mixed modes without having first determined their complex ideas. His Immediate judgement was afhirmativeP8 Because the combination of ideas denoted by a mixed mode was an arbitrary and abstract creation of the mind and did not exist in the appearances of things, it would not be noticed in ordinary experience. For this reason Locke observed, that it was "convenient, if not necessary" to know the name before framing the abstract idea of a mixed mode. Considering the process by which children acquired their knowledge of mixed modes Locke argued for the priority of the name of a mixed mode over its idea. 'What one of a thousand" children, Locke exclaimed, "ever frames the abstract Idea of Glory or Ambition, before he has heard the Names of them" WkeEssay, 3-5.15)- The abstract ideas of glory and ambition were sufficiently complex and removed fiom ordinary experience that it was extremely unlikely that a child could ever come to form them without having first possessed their names.

The forgoing account of the reIation between the names and ideas of mixed modes seemed to contradict Locke's earlier discussion of the relation between abstract ideas and general names. Whether the formation of abstract ideas presupposed a sophisticated language or the invention of language presupposed abstract mental operations were questions that Locke did not answer in strait-forward either-or terms. In most cases the use of abstract words presupposed complex mental operations. In some cases however, abstract mental operations could not proceed without the use of language. Locke argued that if

we looked inward at the operations of our thoughts, we would notice that when

we formed any propositions about the abstract ideas of "White or Black, Sweet or

Biner, a Triangle or a Circle9" we would find that we were capable of reasoning

about these ideas without calling on their names to keep them before our

attention. However, when forming propositions about more complex ideas such

as those of "Man, Vitriol, Fortitude, Glory," which were "imperfect, confused,

and undetermined," we would consider their names alone, which were more

"clear, certain and distinct, and readier to occur to our Thoughts, than the pure

Ideas." This was the case "'even when we would meditate and reason within our

selves" (Locke Essay, 4.5.4). The mind was capable of performing many abstract operations without the use of language. But as the sort of abstraction necessary to

formulate a given idea or proposition became more sophisticated, the mind came

increasingly to rely on language for its own internal operations-

By considering the relationship between thought and language as it must have been at the time of the invention of language, Locke reduced the ambiguity in his doctrine. He held '%hatin the beginning of languages, it was necessary to have the Idea, before one gave it the Name" (Locke Essay, 33.- 15). Here Locke supplied the general time perspective missing from his statements of language acquisition among children. He asserted that the origin of language came only after man was able to perform the diverse mental operations needed to form various kinds of ideas. In the next sentence Locke remarked: 'But this concerns not Languages made." With this qualification Locke removed what seemed to be the contradiction between his remarks about the inability of children to frame ideas of mixed modes without first hearing their names, and his conjecture that at the beginning of languages ideas preceded words. Locke distinguished between the mental operations required of those who originated language and those who learned language. Those who were the originators of language found it was necessary to form ideas prior to articulating the words that would stand for them.

For those who acquired language, that is, those who Ieamed Ianguage within a commUILity in which language was already well established, the relationship between idea and word was often the reverse, For them, it was often impossible to contemplate a complex idea without having the word that served as its sign before their attention. Locke seemed to imply that when man originally created language, he simply put signs to the ideas existing in his mind, and that as language developed and became more complex, the mental processes responsible for this linguistic development became themselves increasingly influenced by

Ianguage.

Locke discussed topics dealing immediately with the origin of language in only a few sections of the Essay amounting to nothing close to a systematic account- His remarks on the subject were peripheral to his main linguistic pwpose, which was to remedy the inaccurate use of words in scientific discourse-

His empirical and genetic method led him to assume that the causes behind the indeterminacy of words could be found by examining the mental operations responsible for their creation. Conjecturing about the experiences of children,

Locke suggested that they created words by making outward marks and verbal sounds to stand as the signs of their ideas. He gave detailed consideration to the mental processes that made such assignations possible, especially with regard to abstract general names. As Locke probed the relationship between the mind's ability to form abstract ideas and the words used to denote them, the fabric of his straightforward description of language acquisition among children began to unravel- The process whereby the mind came to form ideas of increasing complexity seemed to presuppose that the mind had already formed the names of these ideas- After making many concessions to the contrary, Locke maintained that the mind was able to perform all of its operations prior to the invention of language and independently of the words it had at its disposal.

The issues raised by Locke's perplexing discussion of the relationship between miad and language influenced several eighteenth century philosophers.

The mculty of making an empirical explanation of the mind's ability to form abstract ideas without presupposing the existence of abstract words, was one that would trouble those eighteenth century philosophers who attempted secular accounts of the origin and development of language. By developing a theory of language in which communication and social interaction were XluentiaI, if not governing factors in the invention and transformation of words, Locke helped to articulate another major set of problems that confkonted those who attempted to explain the origin of language. Given the difficulty of explaining how man could have founded societies without the use of language, how could one explain how man invented language while he still lived in isolation. Abbe' Etienne Bonnot de

Condillac and Adam Smith passed over the second of these two problems by assuming that the inventors of language lived in social settings. Much of their philosophical conjecturing was occupied with overcoming the difficulty of accounting for the origin of language without giving its inventors the prior ability to perform abstract mental operations. Rousseau and Monboddo, and to a lesser extent James Dunbar were concerned with the social as well as the mental - hypotheses that needed to be explained to make a plausible secular account of the origin of language. Each of these thinkers added an explicitly historical dimension to Locke's technique of making empirically grounded conjectures about the workings of the mind and the invention of words*While each of these philosophers owed a debt to Locke, Condillac's was the one that was perhaps the deepest and the most openly acknowledged. The next chapter attempts to show that Condillac and Rousseau were among the first to write conjectural histories of language and that they helped to make the origin of language an important philosophical topic for Scots philosophers in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Endnotes

- 1 Francis Bacon, Advancement of learning, (1605) in The Works of Francis Bacon ed. James Spedding, Robert Leslie EUis, and Douglas Denon Heath, (London: Longman, 1858), VOL3: 396-97.

'Francis Bacon, Novum Organum, (1 620) in Works vol. 4: 60-6 1.

3 Ren6 Descartes, Descartes' Philosophical Letters trans- ed- Anthony Ke~y,(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970): 5-6,

4Hobbes did some secretarial work for Bacon in the final years before Bacon died- Hobbes also exchanged several phiIosophica1 Ietters with Descartes in 1640-1- Noel, Malcom. "A summary biography of Hobbes," in The Camb~dgeCompanion ro Hobbes, ed, Tom SoreU, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996): 18,26.

Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthome, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 237-238-

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan ed. Michael Oakeshott (New York: Collier Books, 1978): 36-37. Hobbes held that "-..in the right definition of names lies the first use of speech; which is the acquisition of science. ..Seeing then that truth consisteth in the right ordering of names in our affirmations, a man that seeketh precise truth had need to remember what every name he uses stands for, and to pIace it accordingly, or eke he will find himself entangled in words, as a bird in lime twigs, the more he struggles the more belimed."

7 John Wilkins, An Essay Towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language, (1668) (Menston Eng.: Scolar Press, 1968). For Wrlkins' relation to the Royal Society see: Barbara J. Shapiro, John Wilkins 1614-1672: An Intellectual Biography, (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969): 19 1-224-

Wilkins, Real Character: 2.

9 Willcins, Real Character: 20. lo It was in a letter that to William Molyneawr (26 December, 1692) that Locke used these often quoted words, The entire sentence went as follows: "I frnd none so fit nor so fair judges as those whose minds the study of mathematicks has open'd, and distangl'd from the cheat of words, which has too great an idhence in all the other which go for Sciences: And I think (were it not for the doubtfid and fallacious use is made of those signs) might be made much more sciences than they are-" Ttte Correspondence of John Locke vol. 4. ed. E, S. De Beer (Oxford: Clarendon fress, 1979): 609.

L'In addition to doubting that men would be able to use their words constantly in the same sense, Locke believed that it was utterly impossible "that all Men should have the same Notions, and should talk of nothing but what they have clear and distinct Ideas of." John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Utrderstanding ed. Peter Nidditch, (Oxjiord: Clarendon Press, 1979),3.1 1.2. Hereafter references to Locke's Essay will be put in the text parenthetically as (Lake Essay, followed by numbers referring to Book, Chapter and Paragraph) - " The "Masters" of science Locke listed in the '%pistle" were Boyle, Sydenham. Newton and Huygens. Locke, Essay "Epistle to the Reader-,' Locke's purpose was similar to that of the Royal Society as recorded by Thomas Sprat in The History of the Royal Sociery (1668). Describing the way the RoyaI Society had gone about improving natural philosophy Sprat wrote: "They have therefore been most rigorous in putting in execution, the only Remedy, that can be found for this extravagance: and that has been, a constant Resolution, to reject all the amplifications, digressions, and swellings of style: to retum back to the primitive purity, and shortness, when men deliver'd so many things, almost in an equal number of words. They have exacted fiom all their members, a close, naked, natural way of speaking; positive expressions, clear senses; a native easiness: bringing all things as near the Mathematical plainness, as they can: and preferring the language of Artizans, Countrymen, and Merchants, before that, of Wits, or Scholars." Thomas Sprat, The History of the Royal Society (St. Louis: Washington University Studies, 1959): 113,

13 John Locke, Essay, "Epistle to the Reader"-

14 Locke was scathing in his attack on the scholastic method of the "learned Disputants" and "all-knowing Doctors-" By arguing for such absurd notions as "that White was BlacK' these men destroyed the "Instruments and Means of Discourse, Conversation, Instruction, and Society; whilst with great Art and Subttety they did no more but perplex and confound the signification of Words, and thereby render Language less useful, than the real Defects of it had made it, a Gift, which the illiterate had not attained to." Locke, Essay: 3-10-11-

'*For other indications that Locke held co~~l~nunicaaonto be one of the chief ends of language see: Essay: (2.1 1.8.); (2.22.5.); (2.28.2.); (3-1.2.); (3.2.1.); (3.2.2-); (35-7.); (3.6.32J; (3.9-6.); (3-10.1.); (3.1 1.5.)

Locke, Essay: "Epistle to the "Reader:'

17 Locke, Essay: 2. 1.24. ''In all that great Extent wherein the mind wanders, in those remote Speculations, it may seem to be elevated with, it stirs not one jot beyond those Ideas, which Sense or Refection, have offered for its Contemplation." See also Essay: 2.12.8,

For Locke on complex ideas see: Book 2 chapter 12 entitled "Complex Ideas." "Ideas thus made up of several simple ones put together, I call Complex;. ..which though complicated of various simple Ideas, or complex Ideas made up of simple ones, yet are, when the mind pleases, considered each by it self, as one entire thing, and signified by one name." Essay: 2-12-1. l9 Hans Aarsleff argued that both Locke and Descartes believed that howledge would best be served by conducting a "wordless discourse of the mind. '2ocke's Influence" in The Cambridge Companion to Locke ed. Vere Chappell (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994): 27 1.

In the last paragraph of the second book "On Ideas," Lock introduced the next book which was to deal with words by making the same connection between kuowledge and language. ''Having thus given an account of the original, sorts, and extent of our Ideas, - with severat other Considerations, about these (I know not whether I may say) Instruments, or Materials, of our Knowledge, the method I at first proposed to my self, would now require, that I should immediately proceed to show, what use the Understanding makes of them, and what Knowledge we have by them- This was that, which, in the first general view I had of this Subject, was all that I thought I should have to do; but upon a nearer approach, I find, that there is so close a connexion between Ideas and Words;. ..that it is impossible to speakclearly and distinctly of our Knowledge,,. ,without considering, first, the Nature, Use, and Signification of Language; which therefore must be the business of the next Book-" Essay: 2-33-19, See also Essay: 3-9-21,

21 For the 'Adarnic" doctrine of language origins given by Luther and Comenius see: Hans Aarsleff, 'Zeibniz on Locke on Language" in From Lock to Saussure: Essays on the Srudy of Language and lntellectuai History (Minneapolis: University of Minesota, 1982): 59-

Robert South, SemnsPreached on Several Occasions, vol. I (Oxford, 1823): 37-38, quoted in Aarsleff 'Zocke on Leibniz": 59.

* For Locke's comments that geometrical and mathematical propositions afford "real Truth., .real Knowledge" and "general Knowledge," see: Essay: 4.8.8; 4.1.9- For Locke's reservations about natural philosophy see: Essay: 4-12.10- "This way of getting, and improving our Knowledge in Substances only by Ekperience and History which is dlthat the weakness of our Faculties in this State of Mediocrity, which we are in this Worid, can attain to, makes me suspect, that natural Philosophy is not capable of being made a Science."

24 The "nominal Essence" is derived fiom appearances and forms the abstract idea and general name by which mankind distinguishes substances into sorts. Essay: 3.4.2. It is not "real" because it pertains only to the outward appearances of substances "which however made with the greatest diligence and exactness, we are capable of, yet is more remote from the true interna.1Constitution, fiom which those Qualities flow, than, as I said, a Countryman's Idea is fiom the inward contrivance of that famous Clock at Strassburg, whereof he only sees the outward Figure and Motions." Essay: 3-69. The scientific nature of mathematics and specifically geometry could be explained by the fact that the idea that corresponded to the nominal essence of a geometrical figure was the same idea that corresponded to its real essence. In the study of geometry, for Locke knowledge of the nominal essence entailed knowledge of the real essence because they were identical- "Thus a Figure including a Space between three Lines, is the real, as well as nominal Essence of a Triangie; it being not only the abstract Idea to which the general Name is annexed, but the very Essentia, or Being, of the thing it self, that Foundation fiom which all its Properties flow, and to which they are ail inseparably annexed." Essay: 3 -3-8-

25 By 6Lhi~t~rical"Locke did not mean a method employed by historians but the one used by philosophers in the study of natural history, i.e- the gathering of the facts of a topic with the intent of placing it within a grand scheme of classification for all of nature. "In so doing, Locke offered a means of transcending the limitations of the introspective method, and he opened up new perspectives on the relevance of history, anthropology, and the comparative study of languages for the science of the mind which were to be explored by enlightened savants in Scotland and elsewhere during the eighteenth - -- century-" Paul Wood, 'The Natural History of Man in the Scottish EnIighteament," Hisrory of Science 27 (1989).

f6 In the Conduct of the Understanding Locke wrote: "Men, I think, have been much the same for natural endowments, in alI times," Conduct of the Understanding ed, Thomas Fowler (New York: Burt Franklyn, 1971): 52- Referring to his &soy in a reply to the criticisms of the Bishop of Worcester, Edward Stillingflett (1635-1699), Locke wrote: "AIl therefore that I can say of my book is, that it is a copy of my own mind, in its several ways of operation- And that I can say for the publishing of it, is that 1think the intellectual faculties are made and operate alike in most men." "Mr- Locke's Reply to the Bishop of Worcester's Answer to his Letter" in me Works of John Lock (London: 1794): 2, 139. For a discussion of the general philosophical issues involved in the controversy between Locke and Worcester, seer Robert Todd Carrot, The Common-Sense Philosophy of Religion of Bishop Edward SriIIingfleet 1635-1699,(The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1975).

2-1 Books recounting the voyages and travels of Europeans comprised a significant portion of Locke's library. John Harrison and Peter Laslett, The Library of John Locke (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965): 18,27-29-

" Ham Aarsleff commented that the travel diary served as a sort of "laboratory" for philosophers of the eighteenth century- Aarsleff, "Tradition of CondiUac" in From Locke To Suassure, 161. Riidiger Schreyer noted that in the eighteenth century the examination of "savagery could be considered a natural experiment, of use both in the analytic and the synthetic part of the method: (1) in analysis to abstract the principles of human nature, and (2) in synthesis to reconstruct the early stages of human progress." Riidiger Schreyer "Linguistics Meets Caliban or The Uses of Savagery in Eighteenth Century Theoretical History of Language" in Papers in the History of linguistics (1987):3 10-3 1 1.

Locke noted that an obvious function of these marks would be to facilitate the more precise communication of ideas between men-

'Yocke Essay: (22.2.) (2.23.) Locke noted that the mental "Operations" observed through reflection should be understood in "'a large sense, as comprehending not barely the Actions of the Mind about its Ideas, but some sort of Passions arising sometimes from them." Essay: 2.1.4.

" Locke supposed that those ideas that made the fit, deepest, and longest lasting impression were those "accompanied with Pleasure or Pain." Essay: 2.10.3-

'' Locke defined these mental operations at Essay: 2.1 1.4-9. Their manner of operation will be discussed in more detail in the discussion of generid and abstract words below-

)'That this was Locke's main semantic thesis has been agreed upon by EJ. Ashworth. "Locke on Language," CdirutJournal of Philosophy 14 (1984):45; David E. Soles 'Zocke on Ideas, Words, and Knowledge," Revue Intemationale de Philosophie 42 (1988): 150; Deanis W.Stamp "The Main Thesis of Locke's Semantic Theory," Philosophical Review 77 (1968): 177, For similar statements by Locke see: Essay: (2.1 1.8.), (3.2.1.), (3.2.2.), (3.2.4.), (3.2.6.), (4.5-53, (4.8.7.), (4.21.4.). "For "Comparing" see Essay: (2-I 1-4-5) and (I .2.15.). "For a ChiId knows.. .certainly, before it can speak, the difference between the Ideas of Sweet and Bitter (Le- That Sweet is not Bitter) as it knows afterwards (when it comes to speak) That Worm-wood and Sugar-Plums, are not the same thing-" (1.2-15-) For "Composition" see (2-11-6-7.)

" Among Locke's several definitions of abstract ideas, his statement at Essay: 4-7-9. was the one that elicited Berkeley's criticism. The importance of this criticism, which Hume, writing in 1739 called "one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years," will be discussed in relation to the conjectural histories of linguistic and mental development offered by the Scots in Chapter 3 below- David Hum, A Treatise of Human Narure ed. P.H. Nidditch, (Oxfofd: Clarendon Press, 1978): 17- xiAt Essay: 2.1 15, Locke stated that "Beasts compare not their ideas" and at Essoy: 2.1 I-?., he commented that with regard to composing and enlarging their ideas, "Bnrtes come far short of Men."

" For the impact of Berkeley's treatment of abstract ideas in France and Scotland see chapters 2 and 3 below-

38 George Berkeley, A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge in Philosophical Works ed, M.R. Ayers (Totowa, NJ-:Rowman and Littlefield, 1975): Intro. 9.

'' Berkeley, Principles: Intro. 13. These remarks of Berkeley followed a long passage in which he discussed and quoted Locke's treatment of the abstract idea of a triangle at Essay: 4-7.9.

" Berkeley, Principles: Intro. 11.

4 1 Berkeley, Principles: Intro. 12. Compare with Principles Intro. 11. "But it seems that a word becomes general by being made the sign, not of an abstract general idea but, of several particular ideas, any one of which it indifferently suggests to the mind." This process did not require the mind to consider distinctly ideas of quality that could not be separated- Berkeley held that it was impossible for the mind to consider the idea of shape without the idea of colour, or the abstract idea of motion without the idea of a moving body- Principles: Intro. 12-

42 Berkeley, Principles: Intm. 18.

" On the topic of abstract ideas, Hume summarized Berkeley with approval: "all general ideas are nothing but particular ones, annexed to a certain term, which gives them a more extensive signification, and makes them recall upon occasion other individuals, which are similar to them." His own conclusion was that: "Abstract ideas are therefore in themselves individual, however they may become general in their representation- The image in the mind is only that of a particular object, tho* the application of it in our reasoning be the same, as if it were universal." Hume, Treatise: 17,20.

44 Locke emphasized the economical fiurction of mixed modes when he wrote: "Whata number of different Ideas are by this means wrapped up in one short sound, and how much of our Time and Breath is thereby saved, any one will see, who will but take the pains to enumerate all the Ideas, that either Reprieve or Appeal stand for; and instead of either of those Names use a Periphrasis, to make any one understand their meaning-" Essay: 3-57,

Locke mentioned "'Sacrilege"and '%dultry" as mixed modes that existed in the mind before their pamcular combinations were observed in experience,

46 Emphasis added.

47 Etie~eBonnot de Condillac, An Essay on the Origin of HumKnowledge, trans- Thomas Nugent (GainesvilIe, Floridar Scholars' Facsimiles and Reprints, 1971), :I, 46; II, 25,60, 130. Jean Jacques Rousseau, "On the Origin and Foundation of hequality Among Men" in The Collected Wrirings of Rourseau vol3, ed- Roger D- Masters and Christopher KelIy, (Hanoverr University Press of New EngIand, 1992): 130-

" At Essay: 35.15. Locke wrote "...for the most part the Names of mired Modes are got, before the Ideas they stand for are peflectly known." Chapter 2

"Condillac and Rousseau: Empiricism and the Obstacles to

Conjectural Origins"

In this chapter I show see how the conjectural historical method of studying the relationship between mind and language suggested by Lake was more Illy developed by Condillac and Rousseau. Though neither Condiilac nor

Rousseau explained the origin of language conclusively, their attempts to do so identified the major obstacles that subsequent explanations would be forced to overcome. They also established the conjectural historical method as the one most suitable for such a line of inquiry1The difficulties that Locke had identified with regard to establishing whether linguistic capacities pre-supposed mental abilities or vice versa, and whether mental and linguistic capacities pre-supposed social relations or vice versa, were treated by Condillac and Rousseau as questions that could most profitably be answered with historical conjectures consistent with reason and experience. Publishing in the middle years of the eighteenth century,

(17464755) CondiUac and Rousseau provided the men of the Scottish

Enlightenment who were interested in the philosophical importance of language with two examples of the manner in which conjectural history could be used to explain the development of human language and mind. In their secular and empirically spirited accounts of the origin of language they developed and went beyond Locke's suggestions and while they identified the major difficulties facing

any such explanation they also offered several promising lines of thought-

The conjectwal histories offered by Condillac and Rousseau were

connected by more than their secular and empirical outlooks. The two men had

known each other in Lyon and in Paris where they discussed philosophical topics,

such as the origin of language, weekly, during meals at which Diderot was

routinely present. In The Confessions, Rousseau recalled the opinion he had had

of Condillac at the time An Essay on the Origin of HumKnowledge (1746) was

being completed? He noted that he was "perhaps the fmt who saw his

[Condillac's] scope and who esteemed him at his true value."' Condillac began

his Essai lamenting what he believed to be the contemptible state of affairs in the

branch of philosophy he called metaphysics. He distinguished between two sorts

of metaphysical inquiry. The hrst soa, which had dominated philosophy until

very recently, was "vain and ambitious" because it sought to explain the essences

and hidden causes of things (CondiLlac Essai, intro 2). The second type, which

Condillac credited Locke with having created, was much more reserved in its

purpose and more cautious in its empirical Echoing Locke, Condillac acknowledged that even though the second sort of metaphysics would not produce

"the great store of knowledge" philosophers had sought in the past, it could help them avoid becoming over-burdened with indeterminate notions, and would thus improve philosophers' abilities to reason clearly and assuredly about those limited ideas they did have. The virtues of the new philosophy were that it 'proportions her researches to the weakness of the human understanding; and not concerning herself about what is above her sphere, but eager to know whatever is within her

reach, she wisely keeps within the bounds prescribed by nature" (Coadillac Essai,

intro, 3).

In his Essai, Condillac began the task of charting these philosophical boundaries with a long discussion of the nature of language and the human mind.

Though he praised Locke for his philosophical outlook and method, he also criticized the content of the Essay on the Human Uiderstmding its severaI respects. Locke's main shortcoming was that he had an insufficient grasp of the importance of language for the operation of the human mind. Though Locke had been the first who had "handled the subject [language] Like a philosopher,"

Condillac considered him to have examined it only "very lightly" (Condillac

Essai, intro. 10-1 1). He praised Locke for being aware that the study of words was useful for understanding the mental principles involved in the formatim of ideas, but he suggested that Locke should have given words a more central place in his philosophy, and discussed them in Book II of the Essay which dealt with

"Ideas", instead of Book III which considered 'Words", Condillac believed that if Locke had given more thought to language it was Iikely that he would have penetrated far deeper into "the origin of human knowledge." He promised he would improve upon Locke's philosophy by discussing the subja of language in

"a new and more extensive light" (Condillac Essai, intro. 11). To accomplish this he constructed a conjectural history of the origin of language, which, as Aarsleff has remarked, developed the '%me perspective already latent in ~ocke.'~ Condillac intended his theses relating the fbndamentd hter-co~ectedness

of language and miad to explain the basic principles at work in the operation of

the human understanding. His aim was not to uncover the "nature," of the human

understanding (which would have been a "vain" pursuit in the spirit of the old sort

of metaphysics) but to know its operations (Condillac Essai. intro. 6).

To do this along empirical lines would mean coming to terms with several

problems already noted by Locke.6 Condillac believed that he could solve all

these problems with the single principle of "the connection of ideas, either with

signs, or with one another" (Condillac Essai, intro. 6): He emphasized the

importance of signs for the operation of the understanding when he remarked:

'The ideas are connected with the signs, and it is only by this means, as I shall

prove, they are connected with each other" (Condillac Essni, intro. 7).' He

acknowledged that he would be "obliged, in order more fully to explain.. .ms]. . -

principle, not only to Wow the workings of the mind through ail their

gradations", as Locke had, "but likewise to inquire in what manner we have contracted the habit of signs of every kind " (Condillac Essai, intro. 7). Condillac

made language the guiding principle of the Essai and set himself the task of explaining its origins. He hoped to forge a new and thorough understanding of the human mind within the bounds of a Lockean inspired empirical philosophy-

If Condillac was going to "reduce to a single principle whatever relates to the human understanding" (Condillac Essai, intro. 6), this precluded him fkom supposing, as Locke had done, that the mind possesses a faculty of reflection in addition to a faculty of sensation. CondUac set out to explain the advancement of the mind's operations, hmits most basic sensations to its most complex

abstractions, without presupposing or buildingin any mental capacities that were

not derived hmexperience? His aim was not merely to classify the operations of

the mind, but "to unfold their gradud progression, and to shew in what manner

they are all derived from one fundamental, and simple perception" (Condillac

Essui, 1.2. intro).'O

Accordingly, CondilIac began his genetic account with the most

elementary and immediate source of alI our ideas: '?he impression caused in the

mind by the agitation of the senses" (Condillac Essai, 1.2.1). The first step in the

development of the mind beyond its basic awareness of impressions occurred

when it became able to focus on one or several of its impressions to the neglect of

the others. This mental capacity, which Condillac called "attention," dowed the

mind to remember its impressions and thus progress beyond its original state of

passive sensation (Condillac Essai, 1.2.12). An object became the subject of a

man's attention to the degree it was related to his needs, and to the extent that it excited his passions. Subsequently, the mind would form a connection or

association between the sensation of an object and the passion it stimulated or satisfied. As the mind's experience increased, the comections between its needs and the objects and circumstances required to satisfy them would increase, creating a "chain" of ideas." Once the mind formed a chain of associated ideas, it could recall all or any of those ideas linked by such a chain by merely attending to the first one in the sequence (Condillac Essai, 1-2-15). In his explanation of this first and important step in the progress of the mind, Condillac thought he had remained within the confines of his reductionist, empiricist program by making

man's oon-reflective passions the stimulus for his attention (Condillac Essai,

1-2-14).

At this point in its development, the understanding remained passive, relying on chance encounters with objects to stimulate the association of ideas

(Condillac Emi, 1.2.4~).'~Lacking the '"powerto regulate the act and habit" of its operations, the mind, if stopped at this stage in its deveIopment wouId have achieved only the same instinctual level of consciousness as that found in animals

(Condillac Essai. 1.2.42).13 What set man apart from the other animals and allowed him to direct the operation of his understanding was his ability "to connect his ideas with signs of his own chusing." Using "'arbitrary signs" to stand for ideas, the mind was able to recall its ideas at will (Condillac Essai, 1.2-46).'~

Through the use of signs, the imagination and memory were brought under the conscious direction of the understanding. 'This manner of s~~ccessivelyapplying our attention of ourselves to different objects, or the different parts of one object only, is what we call to reflect. Thus we sensibly perceive in what manner reflexion arises fiom imagination and memory" (Condillac Essai, 1-2-48),

Condillac believed that since he had introduced the mind's reflective capacity only after he had accounted for the mind's ability to wWUy manipulate its imagination and memory through the use of arbitrary signs, he had not jeopardized his overall empiricist project. Condillac was aware that his empiricist account of the operation of the human understanding made him a follower but aiso an innovative critic of Locke. Near the end of the Essai, Condillac summarized his relationship with Locke's philosophy:

The schoolmen and the Cartesians were strangers both to the origin and formation of our ideas: for the principle of inaate ideas, and the vague notion of the understanding, with which they set out, have no comexion with this discovery. Mr. hkehad better success, because he began at the senses, and if he has left any thing imperfect in his work, it must be owing to his not having developed the fmt progression of the operations of the mind I have attempted what this philosopher forgot, by ascending to the first operation of the mind, and have I think, not only given a complete analysis of the understanding, but likewise discovered the absolute necessity of signs, and the principle of the comexion of ideas (Condillac Essai, 3-2-39),

Locke had failed to explain adequately ''the first progression of the operations of the mind" when he had posited an original mental faculty of reflection in addition to the faculty of sensation. Condillac believed he had reduced the original principles of the mind to one: sensation. From this single principle he codd derive all of the mind's most complex mental operations. The use of arbitrary signs allowed the mind to remember and imagine its ideas, giving it voluntary control over its operations. The mind developed the reflective capacity that Locke had assumed was originally active. "

Condillac confidently claimed that all the higher operations of the mind, including abstraction, were the "sensible effects of reflection."

Reflection allowed the mind to consider "ideas separately" and thus it facilitated abstraction and the creation of general ideas (Condillac Essai,

1.2.55; 57). The process by which Condillads abstract general ideas were formed was similar to the one that Berkeley had found inadequate in the philosophy of Locke.16 Condillac held that "by distinguishing our ideas, we sometimes consider those qualities which are most essential to the subject, as intirely separate from it. This is what we call more particularly to abstract" (Condillac Essai, 1-2-37). However, Condillac's notion of abstraction was more guarded than Locke's. Although he admitted the necessity of an abstracting capacity for the higher operations of the mind

(Condillac Essai, 1-52),he warned that the "notions arising from such an origin, must needs be defective." Philosophers who had "realized.. .their abstractions", that is, mistaken their artificial mental creations for objects that existed independently of their minds, were thus foolish to do so

(Condillac Essai, 1.5.5). Still. Condillac held that abstract general ideas were a necessary fixture of the human understanding:

For if the mind is too much limited to embrace its beings and its modifications all at the same time, it must needs distinguish them, by framing abstract ideas; and though the modifications by this means lose all the reality they had, yet it must still suppose them to be something real, otherwise it could never be able to make them the object of . its reflexion (Condillac Essai, 1.5.6).

The use of instituted signs dowed the mind to develop and direct its reflective and abstract capacities for thought, further enabling it to form abstract general ideas. The mind's intellectual and linguistic capacities developed dialectically. As the use of signs awakened the mind's higher faculties, the mind consciously invented more complex signs. which in turn allowed for more sophisticated mental operations.L7Thus, it was by "mutual assistance" that "'these operations" were able to ""reciprocalIy contribute to each otherys props"(Condillac Essai. 1-2-49).

Condillac acknowledged that there were several questions he would need to answer if his language-based explanation of the human mind was to withstand close scrutiny. He had shown the guiding principle behind human mental development to be the mutually assisting relationship between mind and language. This principle, he thought, had made it possible to account for the entire range of mental operations without having to suppose any innate mental capacities beyond sensation. With words to stand as signs for things. man could willfully manipulate the chains of associated ideas that naturally formed in his mind. making possible the most complex functions of reason. Condillac recognized that a major requirement of his theory would be to explain how man invented the language that had made his mental deveIopment possible. He put the question to himself in the following way: "It seems that we could never make use of instituted signs, unless we were previously capable of sufficient reflexion to chuse those signs, and to affix ideas to them: what is the reason then, some perhaps will object, that the habit of reflexion is to be acquired only by the use of these signs?" At this early juncture in the Essai, Condillac was content with replying that he would solve this mculty when he came to consider "the history of language" (ConcUac Essai, 1.1.49). In Part Two of the Essai Condillac attempted to strengthen his analysis of the relationship between language and mind by hypothetically reconstructing the manner in which language must have originated and developed. Condillac followed Locke, who, as we have seen, began his discussion of

words by noting that God had hmished man with language- The abM began his

own conjectural account "Of the origin and progress of language"'8 by endorsing

the notion that language was the gift of God. His initial statements on the subject

seemed to contradict his empiricist psychology by supposing that it was not

experience that allowed man to use language and control his intellectual

operations, but "the extraordinary assistance of the Deity" which occurred

immediately after man's creation. Again, like Lacke, Condillac warned that such

a biblical explanation of the origin of language was inadequate. lg He then began

his secular account by supposing that two children living together after the

deluge would be able to invent language without the assistance of ~od."Starting

with these basic, and what he took to be perfectly reasonable hypotheses,

CondilIac believed he could formulate an account of the origin of language that

would be far more philosophically sound than those that deferred to scripture. He

explained: "'My motive for supposing two children under a necessity of inventing even the first signs of language, is because I did not think it sufficient for a philosopher to say a thing was effected by extraordinary means, but judged it to be also incumbent upon him to explain how it could have happened according to the ordinary course of nature9' (Condillac Essai. 2.1. intro). His initial hypotheses would be supported by rational conjectures, which were themselves confinned by matter of fact observations of the world and man's mind (Condillac

Essai, 2.1. intro). The empirical and hypothetical methods Locke had used in his attempt to gain a philosophical understanding of the human mind were adapted by Condillac to suit his own historical inquj.. By forming empirically grounded conjectures about the historical circumstances and mental capacities invoived in the invention of language, CondilIac hoped to make a conttibution to the empirical science of man. A plausible description of the invention of language which presupposed only that man was capable of having sensations, would greatly enhance the empiricist psychology he had laid out in Part I- As we shall see,

CondiUac's conjectural history of the origin and progress of language was far less concerned with establishing historical truth, than with supporting his own theory of the human mind.

Writing less than a decade after the publication of CondilIac's Essai, and with that work in mind. Rousseau also used the conjectural historical method to explain the origin of language. It was in the Second Discourse on the Fowrdations of Inequality Among Men that he made suggestions about language origins and the conjectural historical method that would later influence the Scottish

~nli~htenrnent?Although the primary subject of the Second Discourse was not language, the question it was intended to answer - "What is the origin of inequality among men; and is it authorized by natural law?"" - was well suited for philosophical and historical conjecturing and led him to consider the origin of language.

In the preface to the Second Discourse. Rousseau used several introductory paragraphs to caution his readers and other philosophers about expecting conjectural histories to achieve results in the field of moral philosophy equal to those achieved by natural philosophers in the study of nature. Despite this warning, Rousseau remarked that the coajectural researches of philosophers, were "the only means we have left to remove a multitude of difficulties that hide from us knowledge of the real foundations of human society" To give the conjectural historical method sufficient philosophical rigor, Rousseau demanded that two procedural questions be answered: "Wtexperiments would be necessary to achieve knowledge of natural man? And what are the meansfor making these experintents in the midrt of sociery" (Rousseau SD, 13)? He cautioned his readers that they would not find concIusive answers to these questions in the pages that followed.

Perhaps the greatest diff~cultyfacing one who attempted to describe man as he had existed in the state of nature, was the obvious paucity of historical facts to which he could appeal. Rousseau warned that it was unwise for a philosopher to make the plausibility of his description of the state of nature depend on any set of historical facts because on the one hand none could be established, and on the other, understanding the past was not the primary purpose of the conjectural endeavour. He would be better off to acknowledge the speculative nature of his inquiry and proceed to his normative or philosophically important conclusions with consistent and credible arguments. Rousseau instructed his readers and fellow thinkers to be aware that inquiries into the state of nature "must not be taken for historical truths, but only for hypothetical and conditional reasonings better suited to clarify the Nature of things than to show their genuine origin"

(Rousseau SD. 19). His own manner of observing natural man was to consider him as he existed in eighteenth century European society,2sand then strip him of all the abilities he could have acquired through his long progress (Rousseau SD,

20). Rousseau hoped this procedure would allow him to see through man's artificial, socially and institutionally acquired clothing and observe the true. naked nature of man.

He acknowledged that his contribution to understanding man as he must have lived in the state of nature would produce only some promising lines for further inquiry. He admitted that others wodd be Iikely to make larger discoveries than his own, but that most likely they would fall short of the knowledge they were after. "For it is no light undertaking to separate what is original fiom what is artificial in the present Nature of man, and to know correctly a state which no longer exists, which perhaps never existed, which probably never will exist, and about which it is nevertheless necessary to have precise Notions in order to judge our present state correctly" (Rousseau SD,23). Rousseau emphasized that the search for answers to questions about origins, whether about society, languages or other human institutions, were motivated by desires to explain and judge man and society as they existed in the present. By separating those characteristics that man possessed originally fiom those he acquired, Rousseau and the others who adopted the conjectural historical method hoped to isoIate the universal principles of human nature that could be used to illuminate a whole range of philosophical and moral problems.

While both Rousseau and Condillac empIoyed the conjectural historical method in their considerations of the origin of language, the conjectures they made and the conclusions they drew from them were often different. CondiUac postulated that two children Living together in the wilderness after the flood wodd have been capable of inventing language without "extraordinary'* help fiom God

(Condillac Essai, 2-1.2). Untike Adam and Eve, who, fiom their very beginnings, had been able to reflect upon and communicate their thoughts with language, these children, so long as they lived in isolation, could perform only those non- reflective26mental operations that Condillac had described in the first part of

Essai. Living together provided them with the occasion to attempt some form of communication and thus it was social living that provided the stimulus for the first use of signs. Whde Rousseau agreed with the secular intent of Condillac's opening suppositions, he criticized Condillac for passing over the problem of explaining how his primitive children would have abandoned solitary for social living2' Primitive man, Rousseau explained, had no fixed dwellings and moved around constantly. Males and females united by chance and then parted soon after and the short time children stayed with their mothers was not long enough to

"give any idiom the time to gain consist en^^."^ Rousseau asserted that Condillac had been mistaken to assume the social conditions that had made linguistic communication possible and therefore his conjectural history of language was fundamentally flawed fiom the

For Condillac, the invention of language could be explained by the efforts of primitive children to communicate their natural need-driven passions to one another. Each child made naturally spontaneous and passionate cries, often accompanying those with gestures or actions. The combmation of passion-driven cries and gestures constituted what Condillac called "natural" signs (Condillac Essai, 1.1.35) and these were produced by "instinct alone" (Condillac Essai,

2.1.2). Rousseau agreed with Condillac in this instance, but put less emphasis on

the communicative arpect of these most rudimentary sips? Condillac was

assured that natural signs were instinctual because they arose out of the passions aroused by the body's most pressing needs. For example, in an attempt to acquire

some edible object, one child would utter cries and wave his arms or move his head. The other child, sympathetic to his companion's suffering, would be eager to relieve his hunger and would follow this natural sign to the best of his ability.

Condillac insisted that this rudimentary form of communication, to which sympathy was essential, occurred prior to the development of a reflective capacity in either of the children. Upon confronting the cries and gestures of the other, neither child said to himself "I see by his motions that he wants such a thing, and

I will let him have itr but they both acted in consequence of the want which pressed them most" (Condillac Essai, 2.1.2). Gradually, they became accustomed to associate certain perceptions with particular cries and gestures. As their familiarity with these natural signs increased, they slowly gained the ability to recall them at will, The use of these signs began to develop their memories, give them control over their imaginations, and allow them "to do by refexion what they had hitherto done merely by instinct" (CondiIlac Essai, 2.1.3)." The more they used these signs, the more they developed their mental capacities, which, in turn perfected the signs and made their use more familiar (CondiIlac Essui, 2.1.4).

For Rousseau, natural man's sympathetic passions played an even more crucial role in the invention of language. Primitive man had been endowed with "natural pity" for his fellow men. In his state of nanual vulnerability, this

sympathetic passion, shaped man's original disposition and formed "a virtue all

the more universal and useful to man because it precedes in him the use of all

reflection"(Rousseau SD, 36). In the Essay on the Origin of

Rousseau described in more detail how it was that man's natural passions and heart-felt affections gave birth to the first spoken words and thus he distinguished himself hmCondillac who had heId that the first words were spoken to express anxieties about needs.33 In response to Condillac' s thesis. Rousseau concluded that if primitive man had only felt physical needs, and not sympathetic passions, human language Likely would not have progressed beyond gestures to spoken wordd4

Once Condillads primitive children had acquired the habit of connecting ideas with signs they were able to use their rudimentary language of natdcries as the model on which to construct a Ianguage of arbitrary signs. Rousseau noted that among the reasons for developing a conventional language of words were that geswes had limited use for indicating objects not immediately present to the senses; gestures could not be seen at a distance, in darkness or when obstructed; and to be useful for communication they demanded that both people attentively face one another (Rousseau SD, 3 1). Condillac explained that by repeating sounds many times and accompanying them with gestures to indicate the objects of their attention, the young couple became accustomed to giving things articulated names (Condillac Essai, 2.1 5). CondiIIac and Rousseau differed about the way the meanings of arbitrary signs would become fixed, Rousseau felt that the substitution of instituted signs for the cries and gestures of passion could not have been made "except by common consent." That primitive men were capable of this sort of agreement was doubtful "since speech seems to have been highly necessary in order to establish the use of speech" (Rousseau SD, 3 1). For Condillac, the formation of the first conventional words did not require primitive man to enter into any sort of reflective discussion or compact. Condillac explained that:

In order to comprehend in what manner mankind agreed among themselves, about the first signification of words. it is sufficient to observe, that they pronounced them under such particular circumstances, that every one was obliged to refer them to the same perceptions. Thus they ascertained the meaning with more precision, according as from the more frequent repetition of circumstances, the mind was more accustomed to connect the same ideas with the same signs (Condillac Essai, 2.1 -80).

The creation of words with fixed meanings occurred by the habitual use of the same sounds to stand for similar experiences. Progress in this manner was very slow due to the inflexibility of the speech organs so that the natural language of cries and gestures remained the dominant form of communication for a long time.

Gradually, however, as articulate signs became more numerous, they became as or more convenient to use than the language of action and thus prevailed

(Condillac Essai, 2-13).

Condillac took up the arguments he had begun in Part One of the Essai, and asserted that once the mind was furnished with a language of arbitrary and conventional signs, it was able to perform the complete range of mental operations characteristic of a fully developed understanding. '' Rousseau agreed that the Invention of a conventional language was among the most important components of man's "faculty of sex-perfection" (Rousseau SD,26). In particular, conventional words were the sole means by which the mind could form

"general ideas" and thus make propositions that allowed man to achieve a level of knowledge far beyond that of any other animal. Without the use of conventional words, man could "neither formuIate such &eneralJ ideas nor ever acquire the perfectibility which depends on them."" Like Condillac, Rousseau saw that the development of the mind and language were closely related. In addition, he shared with Condillac the initid and basic naturalistic and secular hypotheses that

"For a long time inarticulate cries, many gestures, and some imitative noises must have composed the universal language." But, Rousseau showed a greater sensitivity to the conceptual difficulties that neither he nor Condillac had been able to solve. The complications involved in establishing the causal relationships between language and society, and language and reason weighed heavily on

Rousseau. He even feared that it might be impossible to produce a convincingly secular explanation of the origin of language."

Even though their discussions of the origin of language were far from conclusive, Condillac and Rousseau helped later thinkers to identify the problems and possibilities that such conjectural inquiries posed. In his account of the origin of language, Condillac tried to increase the explanatory power of the sort of empirical psychology attempted by Locke. By reducing all of the mind's reflective operations, including abstraction, to its ability to use language, Condillac had seemingly done away with the remnants of innatism that Locke had retained by postulating an innate faculty of reflection. Tbis meant that he could account for the development of the mind. which was itself the source of man's intellectual and social progress, fiom the most basic empirical and secular assumptions. Rousseau placed his consideration of language origins within a larger discussion of the dawn of society and social inequality. For him, studying the development of language created an opportunity to understand the manner and extent to which the human mind had been shaped by social institutions.

Condillac's use of conjectural history suggested that those philosophical problems

(such as the difficulty of explaining abstract ideas) that seemed to resist explanation by the 'anatomical' approach to the study of the human mind, might be solved by adopting a conjectural historical method which charted the long-term mental development of the species as indicated by the history of language. In their conjectural histories of language, Condillac and Rousseau hoped to produce new insights into the nature of man. These histories were not antiquarian in intent, but designed to contribute to the eighteenth century understanding of human nature. They suggested the limitations as well as the possibilities of the conjectural history of language as it would be pursued in Scotland in the latter half of the eighteenth century. Endnotes

1 Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees (1729) contained a secular and conjectural historical account of the origin of language eighteen years before the appearance of Condillac's Essay on the Origin of Human Knowledge (1746) See: Bernard MandevilIe, Fable of the Bees.. or, Private Vices, Publick Beneflrs 2 vols. ed- FB. &ye, (Oxford: The Clarendon Press 1924): 190-1,285-90, Rudiger Schreyer has argued that Condillac's explanation of the origin of language was influenced by the French reviews of the Fable of the Bees and the 1740 French translation of that work which was placed on the index of prohibited books (22 May, 1745), a year before Condillac published his Essay. Riidiger Schreyer, 'Condilla~,Mandeville, and the Origin of Language" in Historiogruphia Linguisticu 5 (1978): 34-35 -

Etieme Bonnot de Condillac. An Essay on the Origin of HUM Knowledge trans. by Thomas Nugent (Gainesville, Ha: Scholars' Facsimiles & Reprints, 1971)- All citations from this work will appear parenthetically in the text as (Condillac Essai, Part, Section, and Paragraph).

Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Conf&ionr in The Collected Wrirings of Rousseau vol. 5.ed. by Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, ('mover= University Press of New England, 1995): 291. In the same passage in the Confessions Rousseau also recalled that he had asked Diderot to help find a publisher for Condillac's work.

4 By 1746. CondiIlac codd assume that his French readers would have at least some familiarity with Locke's Essay. Jean Leclerc's one hundred page French Abre'ge' of the Essay had been published in 1688 and Pierre Coste's full translation appeared in 1700- In addition, VoItaire' s lames philosophiques or Lettres anglaises published in 1734 popularized Locke's empiricist philosophy- In the letter titled "On Mr. Locket*,Voltaire wrote: "Locke has unfolded to man the nature of human reason as a fine anatomist explains the powers of the body, Throughout his work he makes use of the torch of science." Voltaire, Philosophical Letters trans. by Ernest Dilworth (New York: Bobbs- Merril, 1961): 53-4, In addition to attempting to give an "anatomical" explanation of the mind, Condillac would also undertake to tell its history. Also see: John C. O'Ned, The Authority of Experience: Sensationalist Theory in the French Enlightenment (University Park PA.: The Pennsylvania State University Ress, 1996): 13.

Hans Aarsleff, b'Introd~~tion~'troFrom bcke to Saussurcr Essays on the Study of Language and Intellectual History (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1982): 28.

Condillac, Essai: into. 6. "This inquiry cannot be canied on with success but by the way of observation; and our only aim should be to discover a fundamental experiment which no one can question, and will be sufficient to explain alJ the rest. It ought sensibly to point out to the source of our ideas, to the materials of which they are formed, the principle which sets them in motion, the instruments employed about them, and the manner in which we should apply them-"

CondiUac felt assued that the use of this principle did not betray his empiricist intentions. At Essai: 1.2.68, he wrote: 'If therefore, we must have principles, this does not imply tbat we ought to begin with them in order to descend afterwards to less general notices; but that we ought to have made a diligent study of particular truths, and to have ascended by different abstractions up to universal propositions."

8 The use Condillac made of the word 'idea' in the quoted sentence seemed to indicate that he conceived of ideas as existing independently of and prior to signs- At this eady stage in the Essar' he made no effort to define what he meant by 'idea'- Later however, he distinguished ideas &om perceptions making the contemptation of the former completely dependent on the availability on words. At Essai: 1-4-25,Condillac wrote: ".-.for perceptions which never were the object of reflexion, are not properly ideas. They are only impressions made in the mind, which must be considered as images before they can be ideas." At Ersai 1-4-27. CondilIac sighted severd passages in Locke's Essay Concenu'ng Human Understcurding in which Lucke had supposed that "the mind makes mental propositions, in which it joins or separates ideas without the intervention of words." Condillac remarked that after having gone through the Essai thus far, it would be "needless for me to lose any time in shewing how inaccurate he Eocke] is this respect."

9 CondilIac, Essai: 1,15 Condillac summarized his reductionist account of the operation of the mind as follows: '2et us therefore conclude that there are no ideas but such as are acquired: the first proceed immediately from the senses; the others are owing to experience, and increase in proportion as we become capable of reflecting."

''AS Condillac defined it in the next paragraph, a "simple perceptiod'was "the impression occasioned in the mind by the action of the senses, is the first operation of the understanding" Essai: 2.1 .I.

I I Condillac acknowledged that he was unable to explain how the chains of ideas connecting the perceptions of objects with passions and needs were formed- He admitted that: "If any one should ask me how that chair itself can be formed by attention, I answer, that the reason thereof is to be found only in the nature of the soul and body. Hence I consider this connexion as a first and firndamental experience, which has a right to be considered as sufficient to explain every other." Essai: 1-2-15.

12 Isabel F. Knight has argued that the source for Condillac's idea of "association" "probably cannot be established." Hume had not been trandated into French by 1746 and Condillac read little English. Although it is possible that he may have read Hobbes there is no evidence that he did. As Knight remarked, "Neither Locke's use of association nor the traditional Aristotelian conception was broad enough to allow for Conditlac's development of it into a universal principal. Perhaps the best that can be said is that the notion of the association of ideas was in the air-" Isabel F. Knight, The Geometric Spirit The Abbe' Condillac and the French Enlightenment (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1968): 33.

'' Condillac defined "instid as 'We imagination, which at the presence of the objects, revives the perceptions immediately connected with it, and thereby directs every species of animals without the assistance of reflexion." Essai: 1-2-43. l4 CondiUac remarked that "A single arbitrary sign is enough to enable a person to revive an idea by himself." Essai: f 2-49. I5 In an appendix to the Trait6 de sensations, titled Earait raisonnt? du "Traitifdes semc~tio~~~"CondiIIac emphasized that his empiricism was more consistent than Locke's: 'Zocke distinguishes two sources of our ideas, the senses and reflection. It would be more exact to recognize only one of them, either because reflection is in its principle but sensation itself, or because it is less the source of ideas, than the canal through which they flow fiom the senses." Quotations taken fkom: O'Neal, The Authonlry of fiperience: 17.

I6 Ellen McNiven Hine has suggested that Condillac may have encountered Berkeley's views on language and abstract ideas in the French translations of Berkeley's Alciphron and Essay towards a new theory of vision, which were published in Paris and in The Hague in 1734. Ellen McNiven Hine, "Condillac and the Problem of Language" in Srudies on Vohireand tire Eighteenth Century 106 (1973):44 Berkeley devoted the whole of the "Seventh Dialogue" in the Alciphron to restating and expanding the criticism of Locke's views concerning abstract general ideas he had made earlier in A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710). Ln the Alciphron the critic of abstract general ideas, Euphranor, stated, in a way that would be echoed by Condillac, that man's rationality was the product of his ability to use signs: 'It is not, therefore, by mere contemplation of particular things, and much less of their abstract general ideas, that the mind makes her progress, but by an apposite choice and skilful management of signs-" George Berkeley, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher ed-David Berman, (London: Routledge, 1993): 137. Also see: T.E, Jessop, A Bibliography of George Berkeley, (The Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1973).

I7 Condillac, Essai: 1.2.49. CondilIac noted that the first instituted signs allowed the mind to exercise oniy a very weak power over its attention, But even this weak power "begins to render us sensible of the advantages of signs; and, consequentiy, it is proper for making us embrace at least some of those opportunities, on which it may be either useful or necessary to invent new signs-"

IS This was the title of fisai: 2-1.

19 When Condillac argued that two children in the state of nature would have been able to invent language, he was also arguing that the creation of language was possible even for fallen creatures. " Condillac cited William Warbruton as an author who had been aware of a similarly conjectural method for dealing with the question of the origin of language. In the passages Condillac quoted ffom The Divine Legation of Moses (1738-1741), Warburton mentioned two ancient authors who had attempted to answer the question by "judging only fiom the nature of things-" Warburton opposed this secdar method and went on to describe the gradual improvement of the God-given language that had been intended originally to serve only man's immediate needs, Quoted by Condillac: Essai: 2-1. The authors mentioned by Warburton were Diodorus Siculus and Vitruvius Warburton himself preferred the divine over the natwal theory of the origin of language, warning that if man could reasonably be thought to have invented language without the assistance of God, it may also have been possible for him to have invented religion. Warburton was content to rely on the testimony of Moses that language was indeed gift of God: "God brought every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air, unto Adam, to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam dedevery living creature, that was the name thereof. And Adam gave names to all cattIe, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field." Genesis. ii. 19, LO- William Warburton The Divine Lqation of Moses vol- 4, (London: Luke Hansard & Sons, 18 11): 390-

In Catholics & Unbelieverslit Eighteenth Century France, R.R. Palmer argued that French religious apologists used the principles of modem historical criticism to support Catholicism- In response to the religious skepticism of the philosophes. many Jesuits and Benedictines attempted to establish that certain historical religious events, particularly miracles, had actually taken place in the past, Palmer noted that the Dom Calmet in his twenty-two volume Commentaire line'ral sur tous les Iivres & I'Ancien et du Nouveau Testament (1707-1726) attempted to prove that every statement in the Old and New Testaments could be literally true. Apologists hoped, that "by making most of it [the Bible] seem probable, to have the occasional miracles more readily believed. They assumed that the wonders would be accepted only if the writers told, on the whole, a sensible story? Palmer highlighted the fimdamental similarities between the apologist and the philosophical historical projects: "Both parties used historicd evidence within the framework of a larger faith, which for the one party was belief in the tradition of the church, and for the other the conviction that nature conformed to general laws unifody through the ages." R.R- Palmer- Catholics and Unbeliever in Eighteenth Century France (New York: Cooper Square Pulbishers, Inc., 1961): S.SS96O,82,102. " When. in an essay that was predominantly concerned with political issues, Rousseau came to reflect on the origin of languages, he remarked: "I could be satisfied to cite or repeat here the researches that the AbM de CondiUac has made on this matter, which all fully confirm my sentiment, and which perhaps gave me the first idea of it-" Jean Jacques Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin and Foudztions of Inequality Among Men in The Collected Writings of Rousseau vol. 3.dby Roger D. Masters and Christopher Kelly, (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1992): 29.

Rousseau's Second Discourse was praised and quoted at length by Adam Smith in the Edinburgh Review of 1755. See: Adam Smith, "A LETTER to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review," in The Early Wn'tings of Adam Smith ed. I. Ralph Linger (New York: Sentry Press, 1967):15-28.Rousseau's conjectural account of the origin of language, and particularly the conundrums it articulated, were noted by Adam Smith, Lord Mondboddo and James Dunbar in their own conjectural histories of language- The influence of Rousseau's Discourses on Scottish conjectural histories of language will be developed more fdly in Chapter Three.

24 This was the question posed as the subject of an essay contest by the Academy of Dijon in 1754. Rousseau Second Discourse, 17. All subsequent references to Rousseau's Second Discourse wiil be made parenthetically in the text as (Rousseau SD, page number).

25 In a letter to M. de FcanquiCns, 15 January 1769, Rousseau defined what he meant by contemporary 'man*:''This reasonable and destman who is neither brute nor prodigy is man properly so called, the mean between the two extremes, and who makes up the nineteen twentieths of human Kind-" Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and other later political wn'tings ed. and trans- by Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997): 276. ------26 These operations included perception, consciousness. attention, and involuntary reminiscence. Condillac Essai, 2-1 - 1,

Speaking of Condillac, Roweau remarked: "...the way this Philosopher resolves the dmculties he himself raises concerning the origin of instituted signs shows that he assumed what I question - namely, a kind of society already established among the inventors of language-" Second Discourse: 29.

Rousseau, Second Discourse: 30.

" In note 10 Rousseau devoted over a thousand words to refbting locke's notion that enduring social relationships among family members were natural- Among the most general of his objections to this notion was that "although it may be advantageous to the human species for the union between man and woman to be permanent, it does not follow that it was thus established by natwe; otherwise it would be necessary to say that Nature also instituted Civil Society, the Arts, Commerce, and all that is claimed to be useful to men." Second Discourse: 87. As can be seen from this quote, Rousseau believed that establishing the origin of the first social relationships was the crucial fvst step in explaining the origin of all particularly human institutions-

30 Rousseau. Second Discourse: 3 1. Rousseau stated that: Wan's first language, the most universal, most energetic, and only language he needed before it was necessary to persuade assembled men, is the cry of Nature."

In a note Condillac c1aimcd that with these arguments he had answered the question he had set himself at Essui, 1.2.49: how could one account for the invention of Ianguage without endowing the inventor's mind with a prior reflective capacity?

" This essay was not published until after Rousseau's death (1778) although, as he related in the Draft Preface, he began it as 'a Fragment of the discourse on inequality which I omitted from it as too long and out of place." Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Bsuy on the Origin of Languages in which Melody and Musical Iinitattrbn are Treated in The Collected Wn'tings of Rousseau vol. 7. (Hanover: University Press of New England, 1998): xxvii, 289.

33 Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Lunguages: 292-3. Rousseau emphasized the suitability of spoken words for the expression of emotions when he remarked: "The passions have their gestures, but they also have their accents, and these accents, which make US tremble, these accents, from which we cannot shield our organ, penetrate by it to the bottom of the heart, and in spite of us carry to it the movements that wrest them, and make us fee1 what we hear. Let us conclude that visible signs convey a more precise imitation, but that interest is aroused more effectively by sounds- -.It is therefore to be supposed that needs dictated the first gestures and that the passions wrested the first voices."

" Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Lunguages: 292. '' In a note at Essui: 2.1.2, Condillaf made it clear that his conjectural history of the invention of language and his empirical-genetic psychology based on the connection of ideas and signs were mutually supportive: "WhatI bave here advanced concerning the intellectual operations of these children, cannot be calIed into question, after what has been proved in the first part of this essay-"

36 Rousseau, Essay on the Origin of Language: 27.29-

" Rousseau declared that he was both 'Yrightened by the multiplying difficulties, and convinced of the almost demonstrated impossibility that Languages could have arisen and been established by purely human means," He left this question "to whomever would undertake it." Second Discourse: 33- Chapter 3

"Scots PMosophers and the Conjectural-Historical Study of Language"

As in France, the study of the origin and development of language in Scotland was tied to questions about human nature and the nature of human society. Influenced by Lockean epistemology and Baconian and Newtonian science, many Scots attempted to establish the science of human nature on firm empirical ground by undertaking to explain the operations of the human mind according to thoroughly empirical criteria. They linked the development of man's capacities to use language with his more general psychological development. One of the central goals shared by those Scottish empiricists who set about explaining the origin of language was to describe man's linguistic and mental development without positing a mental faculty of abstraction- To include such an abstracting mental faculty in their explanation would have undermined the consistency of the sensationalist account they sought. It wouM also involve them in a host of philosophical difficulties by forcing them to confront Berkeley's criticism of Locke's notion of abstract ideas.' The empirical program, with its materialist and mechanist implications. did not go totally unopposed. James Burnett, Lord Monboddo (17 141799). although in many ways sympathetic to the causes of the new science, was critical of the empiricism he found in the philosophies of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. This modem form of empiricism, he believed, had atheist implications. His philosophy looked for rationalist solutions to problems such as the origin of language. But like Adam Smith (1723-1790) and James Dunbar (d- 1798), Monboddo discussed the birth of human societies and the progress of the human mind within the context of a conjectural history of language. He argued, with the help of the doctrines of Plato and especially James Harris, that man's defining characteristic was reasoning, or an ability to perform abstract mental operations. What was abstracted from sense experience was an idea that ultimately reflected a perfect idea in the mind of God- His ideas constituted and regulated allthings, things that we come to know best when our ideas are most abstract and unrelated to the particular ideas of experience. For Monboddo, abstraction preceded the invention of language and therefore provided the guiding principle of all of mankind's subsequent linguistic and mental development. While not an empiricist, he wrote in the context formed by the works of Locke, Berkeley, Hume, Condillac and ~oussead Indeed, the empiricist doctrine contained in Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding should be seen as the common conceptual backdrop against which Scottish secular conjectural histories of the origin of language were conceived? The methods that they adopted were the conjectural historical ones that, as we have seen, Condillac and Rousseau had used to explain human nature and society in the spirit of Lockean empirical and secular science. The problems that directed Smith's and Monboddo's explanations included those that Berkeley and Hume had raised against Locke's notion of abstract ideas. Both Smith and Monboddo conducted their discussions of abstract ideas and the mental operations of man within their secular conjectural histories of language! Smith, Dunbar and Monboddo brought developmental perspectives to the problem of abstraction that had acquired its modem form in the debates that had followed the publication of

Locke' s Essay Concerning Human Understanding. Besides its philosophical interest, the subject of language development was pursued for cultural and political reasons within Scotland. The Scottish Enlightenment was seriously interested in literary and conversational style. Scots feared that they appeared provincial in comparison with fashionabIe and cosmopolitan Londoners. Attempting to eradicate 'Scotticisms' and to improve the quality of their English, Scots established the Select Society for Promoting the Reading and Speaking of the English Language in scotlands and encouraged lectures and the publishing of books that would improve Scotsmen's ~n~lish.~

Part of this endeavour included the study and teaching of the origin and development of language and literary forms?

In addition to the origin of language, Scots philosophers applied the conjectural historical method to many subjects that fell within the domain of moral philosophy.8As Roger Emerson has shown, Scottish conjectural histories had a lineage that went far beyond the relatively recent suggestions made by

Lmke and the contemporary examples given by CondilIac and Rousseau. In addition to travel accounts of contemporary 'savage' and 'primitive' nations, the

Scots used the works of ancient authors as sources against which to confirm their own historical conjectures? Emerson has also documented an increasing interest in history among Scots philosophers in the years between 17 17 and 1753 when all five universities began to teach secular history. The teaching of history was integrated into various courses that were not specifically concerned with histoq such as logic, moral and natural philosophy, mathematics and rnedi~ine.'~

Language had become an important topic for Scots because of their anxiety about the cultural dominance of London; men who "wished to uphold the honour, independence, integrity and dignity of their people and kingdom in the face of denigration and threats from abroad", pursued history for patriotic purposes.

Historical researches, often of the conjectural kind, were then numerous in

Scotland even before the writings of CondilIac and Rousseau.

Eleven years before CondilIac published The Essay on the Orrgin of

Human Knowledge, Thomas Blackwell Jr. (170 1- l7S7), a Scottish professor at

MarischaL College h Aberdeen, published An Enquiry into the life and Writings of

Homer (1735). In this work, which derived fiom his classroom, as well as in

Letters Concerning Mythology (1748). BlackweIl constructed a conjectural history of ancient Greece with the hope of discovering why no poet equaled the artistic achievements of ~omer."He rejected the hypothesis that Homer's poetical works had been divinely inspired and devised an explanation that attempted to ground

Homer's particular genius in the circumstances and ''Manners" of his age (LWH

12). After examining severaI letters that Blackwell wrote to Sir John Clerk, Paul

Wood has determined that the lectures Blackwell gave at Marischal College were intended to provide his students with a firm grounding in history in order to understand classical literature- In Wood's interpretation, the historical perspective adopted by Blackwell was part of a general movement in Aberdeen toward the view that history was a repository of facts about human nature that could be used in the study of literature, politics and law.LZ

Although the title of Blackwell's Enquiry into Life and Writings of Homer seemed to indicate that his work was conceived in the spirit of Renaissance humanism, its sophisticated historical method made it an early and important Scottish example of a kind of inquiry that was also being outlined by George

Turnbull, a colleague of BlackwelI's at Marischal College. Turnbull claimed, in

The PfincQles of Moral Philosophy (1740), that since

men, in all ages, are actuated by the same springs, i.e. by the same affections. and have nearly the very same powers, and the very same connexions and dependencies... [there is no doubt that] ...men acquainted with history and human nature. might carry on moral investigations about moral qualities, and combinations of moral qualities, and their effects, a much greater length than bath been yet done.13 Turnbull went on in A Treatise on Ancient Painting (1740) to give a conjectural history of the development of taste and ad4 Language was among the several social institutions that Blackwe11 considered and part of his discussion of it included a conjectural history of the origin of the fmt parts of speech.15 His secular explanation of the origin of language anticipated much that we have already encountered in Rousseau. After remarking that language had had a civilizing effect on ancient man. Blackwell conjectured that the first words had been crude vocalizations of human passions. He wrote:

It is certain that the primitive Parts of the Languages reputed Original, are many of them rough, undeclined, impersonal Monosyllables; expressive commonly of the highest Passions. and most striking Objects that present themselves in solitary savage Life. From this Deduction, it is plain that any Language. formed as above described, must be ibll of metaphor, and that Metaphor of the boldest, daring, and most natural kind (Blackwell LWH. 40-41).

Blackwell held that this primitive language was poetical by nahue: "Neither the

Syllables, nor the Tone could be ascertained; but when they put several of these vocal Marks together, they wou'd seem to sing.. .And hence came the ancient

Opinion, That Poetry was before Prose" (Blackwe11 LET?, 38). Blackwell did not use this discussion of the origin of language to contribute to a scientific

understanding of human nature. His conjectures about the character of original

and ancient languages helped him determine that the source of Homer's poetical

genius was the "united Influence of the happiest Climate, the most natural

Manners.. .and most expressive Religion" as well as the heroic and inspirational wars of ancient times. These influences combined with the metaphorical and

musical character of early speech to "create the boldest Language", one in which a poet such as Homer could compose his works (Blackwell LWH, 334). Blackwell

looked to the manners and customs of modern society to explain the development of language from its eady poetical stages to its modern polished character, and

found that it was the growth of courtly society that had caused the decline of poetic language. Blackwell held that the influence of the court upon the manners of its people decisively transformed their language. A primary directive of courtly society was to establish orderly and uniform customs among its people, resulting in a diminution of the variety of dialects and expressions in the language of the nation (Blackwell LWH,60). The complexity of the customs of codysociety had the effect of doing away with the "Simplicity of Manners absolutely necessary in Epic Poetry" and the censorship characteristic of such governments further inhibited the fi-ee flow of passion required of the epic poet (Blackwell LWH,57-

60). Blackwell's importance for subsequent discussions about the origin of language was that he offered a secular account of language development in which the metaphorical character of ancient languages gradually transformed into the more polished and analytic, but less expressive and less poetic character of modem languages. He saw this transformation as greatIy affected by manners or social relations. Since Blackwell was professor of Greek at Marischal College between 1723 and 1757, it was likely that those who attended the college during those years would have been exposed to his ideas about the origin and development of language. Among those who attended Marischd CoLIege during this period and subsequently wrote on the origin and development of language were James Beattie (1735-18O3), Thomas Reid (17 10-1796) and George

Campbell (1719-1796).16

The question of the origin of language was of more than Literary and cultural interest for most Scottish philosophers who wrote on the subject. The connections between linguistic development and the nature of man and society were relationships in which Scottish thinkers of all philosophical and religious sympathies were interested." Scots were well aware of the difficuities that

Rousseau had set for anyone who aspired to explain the origin of language. In an article which was in part concerned with encouraging Scottish intellectuals to study seriously the best new philosophical works then emerging from France,

Adam Smith quoted at length fiom Rousseau's Second Discourse on Inequality and indicated that his fellow Scots could learn a great deal from the Encyclopidie of Diderot and d9Alembertthat had begun to be published in 17~1.'~

The Preliminary Discourse to the EncycIop6die indicated that like the rest of the subjects covered by the Encyclope'die, language would be treated as a natural phenomenon that could be best explained by combining the experimental method advocated by Bacon and the "Historical plain Method" of~ocke.'~ D'Afembert confidently asserted "that no known work will be either as rich or as instructive as ours concerning the rules and usages of the French language, and likewise, indeed, concerning the nature' origin, and philosophical basis of language in He also raised the two issues that had perplexed CondiIiac and Rousseau, and that were to stimulate philosophers in Scotland as well; those were the relationships between language and society, and language and mental development? Based on the assumption that "the order in which words are generated followed the order of the operations of the mind," d7Alembertgave a brief conjectural description of the manner in which language developed fkom its particular to its abstract forms? He added that knowledge of the principles involved in the development of grammar and logic would go a long way to improve modem philosophy. The Encyclopkdie, would attempt to reconstruct the interrelated development of mind and language by employing "that philosophical spirit which delves back to the source of everything."23

In its articles on language, the Encyclopeiiie often referred to the semantic and conjectural historical theories of Lake. Condillac and Rousseau. In the article

'EtymoIogie", Turgot (1727-178 1) referred to Locke and Condillac as philosophers who had made it necessary to study the origins of words when studying ideas and logic?4 The article 'Tangage" written by the Chevalier Louis de Jaucourt (1704-1780), contained lengthy discussions of Condillac's and

Rousseau's attempts to explain the origin of language. Jaucourt commented that

Condillac had attempted a secular rather than a divine explanation of the origin of language in order to treat the subject philosophic ally.^ Ih opposition to those articles that praised the secular account of the origin of language offered by

Condillac, Nicolas Beauzie put forth a divine explanation in his article "Langue."

He wrote that God had given man everything he required to live in primitive societies, including lanpage. He commented that Rousseau's unsolved quandary regarding whether language preceded man's ability to abstract was false and humiliating for mankind, Beauzke argued that by the grace of God, man had always possessed the abiIity to analyse and abstract ideas as well as the language to express them. He concluded: "C'est que si les hommes cornmencent par exister sans parler, jamais ils ne parleront."26 By themselves, the articles of the

Encyclopidie would have made Scots philosophers aware of several of the most important available explanations for the natural origin of language, including those of Condillac and Rousseau.

Generally considered, there were two problems that con6ronted those

Scottish philosophers who attempted to produce secular explanations of the origin of language - both of which, as we have seen, were articulated by Condillac and

Rousseau. The first question was: 'Which was most necessary, previously formed society for the institution of languages; or previously invented languages for the establishment of society?'" The second problem was: which was most necessary, a previously formed reflective capacity for the invention of words, or previously formed words for the operation of man's reflective capacity? The fist problem as it was considered by the Scots took the form given it by Rousseau. The second problem was made even more difficult by the empirical philosophy of Berkeley and ~ume.~*Lacke's Essay Concerning Hiunan Understanding had tied the mind's reflective capacity to its ability to form abstract ideas. After Berkeley's

attack on Locke's notion of abstract ideas, it was difficult for empiricist

philosophers to speak intelligibly about abstract general ideas so that any

explanation of mental and linguistic development that depended on the mind's

ability to form abstract general ideas would have been suspect Monboddo's

theories, in which abstraction played such an essential role, were not popular or

generally accepted. An empirical explanation of the origin of language wodd not

only be required to proceed without positing an abstracting mental capacity but, as

Condillac and Rousseau had pointed out, it would also be required to explain

how, once it was invented, man's primitive language could have developed its

modem abstract character while man was incapable of forming abstract ideas.

Adam Smith was one Scottish philosopher who attempted to explain the

development of language in a way that would not be susceptible to the critique of

abstract ideas offered by Berkeley and Hume. His Considerations concerning the

First Formation of was published first in a collection of essays

entitled Philological Miscellany (1761) and was later added to the third edition of

the Theory of Moral Sentiments (1767)? A version of the Considerufionsare

also found in a set of lecture notes taken by a student who attended Smith's

lectures on rhetoric and belles-lettres, in 1762-63:' Smith bad been giving these

lectures in some form since 1748, but it is unknown when the Considerations

became regularly included in them.

Smith was aware of the European-wide debate stmounding the origin of language and in the Considerations he cited Rousseau's ~econd isc course^* which itself contained references to CondilIac's Essays on the Origin of Human

Knowledge. In a letter of 1763 written to George Baird, Smith mentioned that in

addition to the abM Gabriel Girard's Les Vrais Pn'ncipes de la Langue Fran~oise

(1747), it was the grammatical articles of the Encyclopkdie that first set him

thinking about the "origin and use of all the different parts of speech.'"3 In

addition to being exposed to CondilIacTsconjectures about the origin of language

through the artides of the Encyclope'die, Smith owned a copy of Condillac's

Essay on the Origin of Humon Knowledge, published in 1746." Considering only

those sources that Smith acknowledged aquaintance with, it appears he was well

aware of the most significant eighteenth-century accounts of the origin of

language. Besides recording the modem grammatical sources he had read, Smith's

letter to Baird, indicated that he viewed the history of language as important for

the philosophical study of human nature- In response to reading an early draft of

William Ward's An Essay on Grammar, as it nury be applied to the English

language. Zn two treatises. The one speculative*..The other practical (176S),

Smith wrote that such a rational treatment of language "may prove not only the

best System of Grammar, but the best System of Logic in any Language, as weLl

as the best History of the natural progress of the Human mind in forming the most

important abstractions upon which all reasoning depends."" These remarks indicated that when Smith approached the conjectural history of language he was aware that such an investigation would be significant for an understanding of the history of the human mind and human nature? As Smith's purpose was to chart and explain the development of

language, not its invention, he left the psychological preconditions of language

unconsidered. He did explain however, the evolution of language as occurring

simultaneously with the development of the human mind and the inter-mixing of

societies, a process Blackwell had also noted (Blackwell LWH. 37). P his conjectural history, Smith presented the deveiopment of language from a primitive

to a more complex form capable of expressing generality. qualities and relations, without giving man the ability to perfom abstract mental operations.

Smith described several periods of marked linguistic development. Like

Condillac, he began by assuming a partnership between two primitives thus giving his explanation of the origin of language the social context that Rousseau had thought necessary but impossible to explain. Echoing Condillac, Smith began:

'Two savages, who had never been taught to speak, but had been bred up removed from the societies of men, would naturally begin to form that language by which they would endeavour to make their mutual wants intelligible to each other, by uttering certain sounds, whenever they meant to denote certain objects."

The first words would have been particular names given to those particular objects that were most familiar and important to these primitive men. Examples of these objects were "cave, tree, fountain " taken as denoting particular objects (Smith

Considerations, 225).

The first stage in the development of language involved a change from an initial "primitive jargon" (Smith Considerutions, 225) consisting of the sorts of proper nouns just mentioned, to a language containing general nouns. Smith's conjectural historical treatment of the development of general words had much in common with the analytical one posited by Berkeley. In his essay "The Principles

Which Lead and Direct Philosophical Enquiries; Illustrated by the History of the

Ancient Physicsi*Smith noted the difficulty of accounting for the miad's supposed ability to form abstract ideas. There he used Locke's account of general ideas as an example of one that had failed:

To explain the nature, and to account for the origin of general Ideas, is, even at this day, the greatest difficulty in abstract philosophy. How the human mind, when it reasons concerning the general nature of triangles, should either conceive, as Mr. Locke imagines it does, the idea of a triangle, which is neither obtusangdar, nor rectangular, nor acutangular; but which was at once both none and all of those together.. .is a uestion, to which it is surely not easy to give a satisfactory answer.9, By using the concept of b6~ntonomasiaT938to explain the historical invention of general words, Smith combined Berkeley's account of general ideas with associationist principles to avoid positing an abstracting mental faculq As the experience of the two savages increased, they came to notice and mention other caves, trees and fountains which they would "naturally" associate with the objects of their previous experiences. Accordingly, they would denote the newly encountered particular object by the same name they had used to express the original which it resembled. As the primitive men had occasion "to mention, or to point out to each other, any of the new objects, they would naturally utter the name of the correspondent old one, of which the idea could not fail, at that instant, to present itself to their memory in the strongest and liveliest manner." A word that had served as the proper name of an individual object would thus "insensibly become the name of a multitude" (Smith Consideratiom, 226). Smith held that this process of antonomasia had been responsible for the formation of those general words that "M. Rousseau of Geneva finds himself so much at a loss to account for the origin" (Smith Considerations, 227)- In terms that sounded much like those used by Berkeley, Smith asserted that antonomasia made it clear that "What constitutes a species is merely a number of objects, bearing a certain degree of resemblance to one another, and on that account denominated by a single appellation, which may be applied to express any one of them" (Smith Considerations, 227). While he did not consider directly the problem of abstraction and the origin of language, Smith's argument that the first languages of man could have contained general terms without requiring their speakers to be able to perform advanced feats of abstraction, diminished the role of abstraction in language creation and seemed to indicate that Rousseau's problem might be dis~nissed?~ From the invention of proper and general nouns Smith turned his attention to adjectives. He acknowledged that the invention of separate terms to denote qualities would have taken a considerable degree of abstraction. He argued that perhaps the way qualities were first signified was by making some variation upon the noun substantive itseif. This would not have required the invention of separate, abstract, qualitative terms. In nature, Smith counseled, qualities appear as modifications of substances; therefore, it would be appropriate for primitive man to denote qualities by modifying the nouns substantive of his language?' In this way the quality and the subject would be blended together as they would have appeared to be in the object and in the idea. "By this means," he continued, '?he most important of all distinctions.,.seem to have been sufficiently marked without the assistance of adjectives, or any general names denoting this most extensive species of qualitications" (Smith Considerations, 208)- Smith was able to account for the manner in which primitive man had created terms capable of denoting general ideas and qualities without giving him a faculty of ab~traction.~' Smith next turned his attention to the question of terms that expressed "relations" and remarked that the invention of these words would have required a greater effort of abstraction than that involved in the creation of adjectives. This was because a relation expressed "a more metaphysical object than a quality." Relations, like Locke's mixed modes, were never "the objects of our external senses" (Smith Considerations, 232-3). To have invented separate words to denote relations in the form of prepositions would have required primitive man to consider these relations in abstraction from their related objects and then to make them stand as general words expressive of all similar relations. This could not have been done "without a considerable effort of comparison and generalization" (Smith Consi&ratiom, 233). Smith conjectured that primitive man would have avoided inventing prepositions in a manner similar to the way he had avoided inventing adjectives. The invention of separate and highly abstract prepositions was stalled by using the genitive, dative, and other cases found in ancient Greek and Latin, and in some modem languages such as Armenian (Smith

Comiderations, 235). By producing a variation in the noun substantive to do the work of a preposition, he could express the relation that existed between that noun substantive and some other term without having to abstract To illustrate his point, Smith noted that in the expressions '6fiuctusarboris, the@it of the tree; sacer Herculi, sacred to Hercules; the variations made in the co-relative words, arbor and Hercules, express the same relations which are expressed in English by the prepositions of and row (Smith Considerations, 234). The variety of cases in ancient languages indicated to Smith that primitive man had been able to articulate any given relation by making a variation on its correiative term. In summary he explained:

To express relation, therefore, by a variation in the name of the correlative object, requiting neither abstraction, nor generalization, nor comparison of any kind, would. at first, be much more natural and easy, than to express it by those general words called prepositions, of which the first invention must have demanded some degree of all those operations (Smith Considerations, 235). The reason that such a procedure would have been "natural and easy" was that it

expressed the relation "as it appears in nature, not as something separated and detached. but as thoroughly mixed and blended with the co-dative object" (Smith Considerations, 234). The use of genitive and dative cases to express reIations did not require any effort of abstraction, generalization or comparison (Smith Considerations, 234). While the words arboris and Herculi signified ideas of relation nearly identical to the same relations expressed by the English

prepositions of and to, they were not, like those prepositions, general words. Arboris and Herculi could only be used to express the relations 'of the tree' and 'of the man' so they were therefore not gene&. Verbs were among the most important parts of speech for Smith. Because no affirmation couid exist without one, verbs must have been c'ciieval" with man's first efforts to invent language:* In keeping with the rest of his conjectural account of the origin of language, Smith asserted that impersonal verbs would have been the fmt species of verbs because they did not quire any abstract mental operation to invent. This was because an impersonal verb could express a complete event in a single word. Again Smith listed several examples taken from ancient Latin to illustrate his point. The verbs "pluit, it rains; nrirgit, it snows; tonut, it thunders; lucet, it is &y; mrbatur," each expressed an entire affirmation and a whole event "with that perfect simplicity and unity with which the mind conceives it in nature." By expressing complete events in this manner, impersonal verbs allowed primitive man to avoid performing a "'metaphysical division of the event into its several constituent members'' and thus made it possible to speak without being able to abstract (Smith Consderations, 239). Smith argued that primitive language advanced by antonomasia to express

. general ideas of the type Berkeley had conceived of, and by inflection to express

ideas denoting quaiity and relation, Neither antonomasia, nor the inflection of nouns and verbs involved abstract mental operations. In keeping with the empiricism of his time, Smith was concerned to show that the use of language did not presuppose that man had an originally active reflective faculty capable of abstract mental operations. Antonomasia and inflection allowed primitive men to use language for a wide range of purposes without being able to abstract. In the ancient languages of Greek and Latin Smith found the basis for an account of human linguistic and mental development that could forestall the vexed issue of abstraction until a stage in man's development well after the his first use of

Smith's interests were not idiosyncratic or unique- In the Aberdeen Philosophical Society in the 1760's and 1770'~~several other men took up the conjectural historical approach to the study of language. Various discourses given at Society meetings dealt with the history of natural phenomena, mental capacities, or social iasdt~tions.~In 1758 Robert TraiU gave a discourse containing "An Abstract of a Discourse of M. Rousseau on the Source of the

Inequality among Mankind" in which Rousseau's conjectures about language origins would have been relayed. Several Society members gave papers on language, some of which seem to be written from a conjectural pint of view? That the Society considered the historical treatment of language to be of philosophical interest becomes clear when the Society's rules are considered. Rule number 17 stated:

The Subject of the Discourses and Questions shall be Philosophical, all Grammatical Historical and Philological Discussions being foreign to the Design of this Society. And Philosophical Matters are understood to comprehend, Every Principle of Science which may be deduced by Just and Lawfrull Induction hmthe Phenomena either of the human Mind or the Material world? If the spirit of this rule was followed, as the titles of all the topics discussed in the society would suggest, the history of language, insofar as it was discussed in the Society, would have been considered a philosophical topic relevant to the nature and progress of the human mind-

Among those philosophers who were members of the Society and wrote

about the historical retationship between language and mind, Thomas Reid and James Dunbar deserve special attention. Reid, the founder of the Scottish Common Sense school of phiIosophy~7was a member of the Society &om 1758 to 1764. In that time he presented nine discourses. seven of which dealt with epistemology and formed the bases of An Inquiry Into the Hw~n~ind (1764):~ In the section of that work entitled "Of Natural Language" Reid developed a secular conjectural history of the origin of language consonant with the principles of his common sense philosophy. The origin of language was a subject that Reid believed deserved to be "more carefully inquired into" than it had been before.

Such an inquiry would aid the improvement of language and more importantly, it would "lay open some of the first principles of human nature" (Reid Inquiry, 50- 51).

Reid interpreted the empiricai philosophies of Berkeley and Hume as having established the skeptical notion that the connection between our senses and our beliefs about the external world were not the product of "habit, experience, education, or any principle of human nature that hath been admitted by philosophers" (Reid Ihquiry, 61). Reid held that it was impossible to deny that our sensations were connected with and helped shape our beliefs about the red nature of external existences. "Hence," Reid asserted, "by all rules of just reasoning, we must conclude, that this co~ectionis the effect of our constitution. and ought to be considered as an original principle of human nature, till we find some more general principle into which it may be resolved" (Reid Inquiry, 61):' Reid's account of the origin of language depended upon a similar supposition that it was an original and necessary principle of human nature that man understood the meaning of natural signs. Reid stated that men were led by "nature and necessity" to Live and converse with one another, In doing so he avoided, as had Condillac and Smith before him, what Rousseau had taken to be one of the most serious obstacles in the way of a secular explanation of the origin of language. Like Rousseau however, Reid saw that the invention of arbitrary signs seemed to presuppose the ability of primitive man to form compacts, an ability Reid agreed was not likely to be present among savages. Where Reid differed from Rousseau was that he held that natural signs, "which every man understands by the principles of his nature" and "the original constitution of' his mind, were sufficient for that task (Reid Inquiry, 5 1, ~9).~* Natural signs and natural speech consisted of modulations of the voice,

face and the muscles of the body. Reid compared it to the language of "dumb people and savages" (Reid Inquiry, 52). The fact that natural language flourished in the savage nations of the modem world seemed to confirm for Reid, that such a language would have existed at the dawn of mankind when all men were savage. The system of natural signs formed a 'ccommon language" and would have been sufficient for the communications required for daily sunival. On this point Reid sounded much like Condillac: 'By means of these, [natural signs] two savages who have no common artificial language, can converse together; can communicate their thoughts in some tolerable manner; can ask and refuse, affirm and deny, threaten and supplicate; can traffic, enter into covenants, and plight their faith" (Reid Inquiry, 52). Having the use of a language of natural signs that was sufficient for the formation of covenants, it took "no great ingenuity" to improve it "'by the addition of artificial signs" (Reid Inquiry, 52). For Reid. the explanation of the origin of language demanded that it be taken as a principle of human nature that man had an original understanding of the meaning and use of natural signs. From this common-sensical supposition Reid proceeded to deduce the invention of a conventional language that set man apart fiom the rest of the animal kingdom (Reid Iquiry, 52-53). Another member of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society, James Dunbar, in his Essays on the History of Man- in Rude and Cultivated Ages (178 I), hereafter EHM, gave the origin of Language a much longer examination than had ~eid? In this work Dunbar gave considerable attention to mads transition fiom a pre-linguistic primitive to a more social, and linguistically proficient human being. Dunbar's interest in the conjectural history of language dated fiom at least 1768 when he delivered a discourse to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society titled 'What are the characteristics of a polished Language. And how is the comparative excellency of different languages to be estimated?"n Like Smith, Dunbar tried to explain the origin of language without giving man original powers of abstraction. He began the EHM by acknowledging that the historical record was '"necessarily defective in opening the scene of man" so that he would be required to make many conjectures in discussing it? When considering the origin of language, he encountered the same difficulty as

Condillac, Rousseau, and Smith: given that primitive man was "scarcely capable of abstraction, and a stranger to all the combinations and connections of systematic thought" how could he develop the ability to create language (Dunbar Em,69)? Dunbar answered: 'Now these difficulties and encumbrances, in a great measure, disappear, by contemplating ideas and language as uniformly in close conjunction; and the changes in the former, and the innovations in the latter, of the same chronological date" (Dunbar Em,94). Dunbar assumed as did many others, that language and the human mind developed together. Like Smith, he denied that man possessed complex powers of abstraction long before the invention of language and he attempted to account for most, if not all of man's psychological and linguistic development, without giving him such powers. The first step in Dunbar's account of the development of language was

primitive man's use of natural exclamations or cries of passion. Dunk conjectured that language had been born out of man's natural inclination to express his passions with uttered sounds. These cries were formed by "a

mechanical co~mexionbetween the feelings of the soul and the enunciation of

sound." These sounds, which were "natural signs", were connected to the passions by "associations'* produced by "an original establishment, calculated, in the Grst ceconomy, for all the purposes of social life." As for Reid, aU men

immediately understood the natural association between emotions and sound- At this early stage in its development, Language required no abstraction and operated without any arbitrary logical rules (Dunbar EMM, 68-71). The second step in the progress of language was made possible by an "imitative faculty" (Dunbar EFIM, 78). The mental powers exhibited by the

inventors of language were the same as those exercised by all children as they acquired their first words. In both cases, Dunbar asserted, "imitation" drove man to speak his fmt words, The child's utterance of a sound in imitation of its parent occurred prior to the act of the understanding that allowed that child, with the help of its parent to "affix a meaning" to that sound. Likewise, at the origin of language, man uttered an imitative sound '"by instinct" which the understanding only later would render more meaningful. "In both cases" Dunbar concluded. "the act of the understanding is posterior to a sort of organical impulse; and in both cases there seems to be less abstraction than is contended for in the schools of phiIosophy" (Dunbar Em,88). The third and most important step in the progress of language occurred when man developed his "analogical faculty" which had ''vast power[s] in binding the associatioas of thoughts, and in all the mental arrangements" (Dunbar Em,79). Christopher Berry has suggested that Dunbar's postulated analogical faculty Iinked his account of the operation of the human mind with "the prevalent

associationist psychology" articulated at that time by Alexander ~erard." In An Essay on Genius (1774). Alexander Gerard made the association of ideas one of

the guiding principles of his description of the operation of the human mind." It was by means of this principle that '%he multitudes of ideas originally distinct" in the mind became co~ectedand subject to the conscious direction of the imagination? Dunbar stressed the significance of this development when he

noted that: "there is not an object that can present itself to the senses, or to the imagination, which the mind, by its analogical faculty, cannot assimilate to something antecedently in its possession. By consequence, a term already appropriated, and in use, will, by no violent transition, be shaped and adjusted to the new idea" (Dunbar EM, 80)? The operation of tbe analogical faculty did not presuppose that the mind was capable of any abstract mental operations. Like' Gerard's principle of association, Dunbar's principle of analogy operated by instinct. Gerrard claimed that "reIations or qualities of bsociated] ideas operate

upon the imagination in an instinctive or mechanical way, that is, without our

reflecting that they belong to the ideas." After comparing the associated relation between two ideas we discover that they indeed do resemble one another. But as Gerard points out, it was not our perception of that resemblance that caused the association: "It suggested it instinctively without our perceiving at the time, how or wherefore it suggested it.'J8 The same automatic mechanismgoverned the operation of Dunbar's analogical faculty. As the mind became Wed with automatic analogical associations, the "imagination" became activated, and man's hitherto instinctual consciousness gained an inventive capacity that distinguished him from the rest of the animai kingdom @unbar EHM, 79). Dunbar remarked that before the advent of the analogical faculty, words were either natural cries produced by instinct, or restricted to sounds produced by imitating things with a red existence in nature. The analogical faculty gave man the important ability to associate ideas whose connection nature might not have made clear to man's instinctual consciousness. It provided for the creation and combination of new ideas and terms demonstrating that 'Many subsequent innovations in language may be traced up to the same source" - analogy. Among signs, even the "most arbitrary are either the result of some more rehed comexion, or are separated from their primitives by a longer chain of analogy" (Dunbar EHM. 81-2). The separation and combination of ideas could be achieved through this analogical faculty without involving the mind in complex mental feats of abstraction. Besides devising this analogical faculty to account for the origin of abstract words, Dunbar used Smith's notion of inflection to account for the origin of general tenns and impersonal verbs. In the case of a savage who was simuitaneously aware of an approaching lion and his own passion of fear excited by that lion, it would have been "abundantly natural" (Dunbar Em,84) for the savage to express with one word, the entire event, preserving "in the expression that perfect simplicity and unity which there always are in the object and in the idea, and which suppose no abstraction or metaphysical division of the event" (Dunbar EHM,w)." In addition, primitive man would have been able to articulate the "most important distinctions and relations of objects" by producing "an inflection of the voice, or a slight variation of the same sound, without resorting so often to the Little engines, which support the modem systems"

(Dunbar Em,84)- Dunbar warned that if the growing complexity of language could not be explained by inflection or with the aid of a simple analogical faculty, the conjectural historian would be Ieft to consider that primitive man had been able to imagine all the subtleties of logic and grammar before the objects of either had come into existence- Emphasizing the importance of his postulated faculty of analogy, Dunbar concluded that "that the laws of analogy, by one gentle and uniform effect, superceding or alleviating the efforts of abstraction, permit language to advance towards its perfection free fiom the embarrassments which seemed to obstruct its progress" (Dunbar EMCI. 93). Dunbar had intended his account of the origin and development of language to illustrate the manner in which the increasing complexity of language had corresponded with the successive improvements of the human mind (Dunbar EEIM. 99). Like Smith, Dunbar had explained that language had increased its capacity for signifyiag and communicating ideas of ever growing complexity, without having to invoke a rationalist principle of abstraction. Each of the conjectural histories of language offered by Smith, Reid and Dunbar were guided by the empiricist presuppositions that had dominated British philosophy since Newton and Locke. Lord Monboddo's account Of the Ongin and Progress of Language (1773-92) stood apart fiom these because it was directed by presuppositions of a rationalist and Platonic sort. For him, man's ability to form abstract ideas was the defining characteristic of his rational consciousness and was what set him apart fiom the rest of the animal kingdom. It was also his ability to form abstract ideas that suited man for the use of language.

Still, in one sense Monboddo's treatment of language was perhaps the most empirical of those produced by the Scottish Enlightenment He utilized the empirical accounts of savage peoples contained in contemporary travel to a greater extent than my of his compatriots and thus his conjetural history of man, society and language had an element of empirical authenticity6' that was lacking in Reid and Dunbar. But, his assumptions about human nature and the operation of the human mind were influenced greatly by his sympathy with lat ton ism? On the one hand Monboddo was intent on giving a secular,64 empirically plausible conjectural history of language. On the other. he intended this conjecturd history to substantiate his Platonic and rationalist views about human natwe and at the same time to refbte what he took to be the atheistic empiricism of Locke, Berkeley and Hume. At the outset of his six-volume work, Ofthe Origin mtd Progress of Language,which began to be published in 1773, Monboddo stated that an inquiry into the origin of language offered a promising opportunity to increase man's understanding of "human nature9*(Monboddo OPL, 1: 2)- His discussion of the origin and development of language led him to consider theology, metaphysics. epistemology, aesthetics, social philosophy, and what now might be called anthropology. Monboddo's work was thus more comprehensive than Smith's, Reid's or Dunbar's. Like them however, he saw the invention of language as a crucial development in the progress of human nature. A decisive issue in Monboddo's account of the origin of language was how ideas were formed, He thought it ualikely that man would need or create language before he already possessed ideas. In agreement with his Platonic convictions, Monboddo supposed that ideas existed pennaaently and independently of the impressions of the senses, and that they were 'in' us and all other things in some manner. To understand Monboddo's philosophical view of ideas it is useful to inspect the account of ideas offered by his friend James

~arris.~' Harris gained immediate and lasting success with his treatise Hermes, which went through six editions and was translated into French and ~errnad~It was there that he argued for the primacy of abstract general ideas in the operation of the human mind and the formation of language- After a discussion of the limited uses to which particular ideas could be put, Harris declared: "The Sum of all is, that Words are the Symbols of Ideas both general and particular; yet of the general, primarily, essentially, and immediately; of the particular, only secondarily, accidentally, and mediately.'*' With the primacy of general ideas in mind, Monboddo criticized the empiricist doctrines of Berkeley and Hume, which denied the abstract nature of general ideas. He interpreted the empirical philosophy of these authors, including Locke, as asserting that all conceptions were only perceptions of sense and reducible to impressions of external objects. If taken seriously he believed, this doctrine entailed that what he had come to call ideas were really only "fainter perceptions of sense" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 11 1)P8 In addition, the empiricists' doctrine endowed man with only the powers of the brutes: "sense, memory, and imagination" and denied him "the faculty of abstraction" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 112, 115). Without the ability to abstract, man would be incapable of creating a single "general ternT'or proposition, the result of which would be "an end of all belief in religioa morals, philosophy, or science of any kind" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 112). Clearly, Monboddo believed that the status of ideas, and, more importantly for his religious concerns, general terms and the faculty of abstraction, was threatened by empiricism. Monboddo thought that the doctrines of Locke. Berkeley and Hume, who derived ideas from sensations, tended to lead to materialism, atheism or brute savagery?' Monboddo did not deny that sensation played a crucial part in the formation of man's ideas. Where hkehad been mistaken, he insisted, was in his assertion that the contents of ideas of sensation, were "the immediate perceptions of sense." For Monboddo. ideas were derived partidy 6rom sense data but did not consist of sense data alone- Before the data became ideas of sense they underwent a process of analysis in which it they were sorted and filed under a general category defined by an idea. This led Monboddo to affirm later that there were "no other ideas but obs~actedideas;" produced by "mind, genuine and pure, without any mixture of body, and its operations" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 8455-6). The cGef exror of the empirical philosophers was derived fkom Locke

himself. Lockets great defect was that from the outset he confused the "operations of sense and intellect under the common name of ideas" and thereafter never sufficiently distingukhed between them (Monboddo OPL, 1: 20). According to Monboddo, Locke was mistaken when he used the term "idea of sensation" to denote what was present in the mind when he perceived a horse or man. What Locke really saw when he looked at a man was what was 4'pi~turedin the bottom of the eye, viz. the figure,colour, and size of a certain mass of matter" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 37). The idea of a man could not be an idea of sensation but had to be an idea of "inteUectTT(Monboddo OPL, 1: 6). Before he could pronounce the mass before him a man, he had to perform two operations of intellect. The first was that by which he formed the idea of ''that species of animal we call man; and whoever sees a man must have that idea ready formed in his mind" (Monboddo OPL. 1: 37). He was arguing that before it was possible to have a particular idea, one must first have the general or species idea formed in his mind. The second operation of the intellect was to compare the general idea of man with the object presented by the senses and then to conclude whether the object belonged to the species man or to the species of some other object. The last operation mentioned was "a conception of reason.. .not a perception of sense" (Monboddo OPL,1: 38). Monboddo warned that even though this process could occur instantaneously, it was nonetheless a process of intellect and abstraction. In Hennes, Harris had argued similarly that the mind could have only ideas that had already been processed by the intellect, He likened the differences between the mind's higher inteIlectua1 capacities and sensation to the differences between wax and water.

As the Wax would not be adequate to its business of signature, had it not a Power to retain, as well as to receive; the same holds of the Soul, with respect to Sense and Imagination. Sense is its receptive Power; Imagination, its retentive. Had it sense without Imagination, 'twouId not be as Wax, but as Water, where tho' all Impressions may be instantly made, yet as soon as made they are as iastrntly In Monboddo's genetic explanation of the formation of ideas, general ideas were logically and causally prior to particular ideas. As has been noted above, Monboddo held that it was only possible to have the idea of a particular object after comparing it with the idea of its species. The way that one formed the idea of a species was through a process of "separation or discrimination-" Out of the mixed and compounded material that the world brought to the senses, some combined to form a common subject, which was the first rude notion in the minds of men and beasts. Beasts perceived the several sensible qualities as a united whole, whereas the human mind was able to separate and discriminate specific qualities by themselves. Monboddo used the example of being able to consider colour without figure, and size without either. In order to "form the idea, a separation or discriminatiorz is necessary of these qualities from one another: and this kind of abstraction I hold to be the first act of human intellect" (Monboddo

OPL. 1: 161). When man is shown examples of several perceptions of the same species, he will identify them as similar on the basis that they share some species of qualities that had previously been abstracted out of the manifold of perception. To be aware that an object of a specific kind was present before him, man must first have general ideas of the qualities that gave that object identity among the mixed and compounded materials presented to the mind in sensation. Monboddo placed the formation of abstract ideas far before the kt formation of languages in human history. He explained the reason for his Long discussion of epistemology at the end of chapter IX; many eighteenth century writers on language and its origins probably could have given this explanation:

I have explained at too great length; and. instead of a treatise upon language, have written a system of the philosophy of mind, But it should be considered, that I have undertaken to give a philosophical account of the Origin and Rogress of Language, which it would have been impossible for me to give, if I had not entered into the philosophy of mind and ideas; without the knowledge of which, the study of language is the most barren of all studies (Monboddo OPL, 1: 122-3). Now that Monboddo had made man a "rationu1 animal'* it remained to make him a "speaking animal" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 196). When viewing Monboddo's account of the historical development of man's rational and linguistic capabilities, it is important to keep in mind that he perceived nahual man to be little more developed than an animal? AU those amiutes that had set man apart from the animals through the course of his history had been the product of habit and effort, not nature or instinct. Human nature, he wrote, "is almost wholly composed of artificial habits; and.. .even the perceptions of sense, which one should think were natural, if any thing belonging to us was so, are, for the greater part, the result of acquired habit*' (Monboddo OPL, 1: 151). He recalled that in his epistemological discussion he had established that in the "rejlex act" of framing any idea the mind was required to abstract or separate what existed joined in nature (Monboddo OPL, 1: 146, 148). Even in the act of seeing, the mind was at work, establishing the habits that transform "the picture upon the bottom of our eye" into the image we have grown accustomed to perceiving (Monboddo OPL, 1: 153). Likewise, language was unknown to man in his natural state; it was instead the %it of human art and industry" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 189). What Monboddo meant by language was a system of "articulate sounds" which enabled men to "express their conceptions and to mark every conception by a different sound" (Monboddo OPL, 302-3). Given the emphasis he placed on the role of abstract ideas in the operation of the mind, it is fitting that he asserted at

the outset of his description of the origin of language that man could not use language before he had 'conceptions'. With this already decided, much of Monboddo's conjectural history was concerned with explaining how man

acquired the habit of articulation. The requirement that signs needed to be verbal articulations to count as Language meant that, unlike Reid, Monboddo did not consider natural signs as constitutive of the first languages. Natural signs such as inarticulate cries, gestures, imitative sounds and paintings, were often precise, but nonetheless pre-linguistic fonns of communication (Monboddo OPL, 1: 305).

There were two main developments that had allowed man to invent the first articulate language. One was the growth of political societies and the other was the maturation of man's speech organs. On the topic of the social pre- conditions for the invention of language, Monboddo acknowledged that he was considering a problem that had been articulated by Rousseau. Monboddo's answer

to Rousseau was that "though it was impossible that language could have been invented without society, yet society, and even civil society, may have subsisted, perhaps for ages, before language was invented" (Monbodd OPL, 1: 196-7).

Drawing on such sources as Diodorus Siculus. Herodotus, Hobbes, Rousseau, Bougainville, and Grottius, Monboddo constructed a five stage conjectural history of the development of European societies (Monboddo OPL, I: 240,266,206, 293). The first stage saw man existing in herding societies with no government. The second saw the birth of governments but only for the occasional needs of defence in times of war. Next came the development of a permanent form of government that regulated the public affairs of society while leaving private matters untouched. Monboddo compared this stage of civil society to the one established among "the Indians of North America" The permanent form of government present in contemporary Europ made up the fourth stage. This type regulated the public and private aspects of Me through the instrument of law, punishing those who transgress the laws. The ha1and most perfect stage of government was the one established in ancient Sparta and in the Republic of Plato (Monboddo OPL,240-3). Monboddo held that man could have passed through each of the stages in the absence of language. with only the use of natural signs (Monboddo OPL,, 1: 279-80)- although as society became more complex so would man's "arts and occupations", making communication by natural signs increasingiy insufficient (Moboddo OPL, 1: 307,320). After setting aside Rouss-eau's doubt that man would have been unable to institute a society before he could speak, Monboddo affirmed that before the advent of society man would have lacked the stimulus of regular communication that was required to develop his ability to articulate words and invent the first language (Monboddo OPL, 1: 196,299). Only when man lived in society, engaged in joint labour and the work necessary for common defence, would the invention of language have been possible.

Having satisfied the mental and social preconditions for the invention of language, all that remained was for Monboddo to describe the slow process whereby man's speech organs developed the capacity to articulate the first spoken words. Basing his conjectures on Gabriel Sagard's Grand voyage drr pays des

Hurons (163 I), Monboddo asserted that the articulate sounds making up the first words "were of great length" and "no other but cries, calling or exhorting, a Little articulated" (Monboddo OPL, 1: 341,323). Citing Smith, he supposed that the Grst words were "proper names" and that these became general 3ybeing applied to objects of the same kind" (Monboddo Of%, 1: 397). In his account of the invention of the different parts of speech, Monboddo made the commonplace assumption that language and mind developed together. Against Condillac, Smith and Dunbar however, Monboddo diminished the role that language played in mental development Assured that the mind was capable of abstract thought long before the advent of abstract words [or any articulate words for that matter), he was able to treat language development as dependent on mental development and not vice versa (Monboddo OPL, 1: 397,347). Like Smith, Monboddo speculated about the transformation of the ancient inflective languages into the modem languages which had invented "prepositions, conjunctions, and adverbs" to designate abstract relations (Monboddo OPL, 2: 93-1 10). He disagreed with Smith however, about what could be iaferred fkom these linguistic developments about the history and nature of the human mind with regard to abstraction. It was erroneous to conclude that "the persons who hedthose [inflective] languages, not having the faculty of abstraction to such a degree as to separate those relations from the several things to which they belong, were obliged to throw them into the lump, as it were, with the signification of the noun, and to express ail by one word, with some variation indeed, order to prevent ambiguity and confusion-" (Monboddo OPL, 2: 112-1 13). The inventors of such inflective languages expressed their abstract notions in tbis way because they had the "skill" and "art" required to create a linguistic form that was capable of communicating alI the abstract ideas characteristic of our modern languages with much greater simplicity?2 These ancient men "had as distinct ideas as we, of all the several relations, accidents, and circumstances of things," and were in no way "wanting the power of abstraction" (Monboddo OPL, 2: 113-1 15). Monboddo shared none of Berkeley's or Hume's doubts with regard to man's ability to form abstract ideas- Consequently, unlike Smith and Dunbar, he was able to make the ability to form abstract ideas, along with a sufficiently complex social existence, one of the necessary preconditions for the invention of language. Monboddo took an empirical approach to the study of New World languages while he approached the philosophy of mind with the rationalism of a Platonist. The outcome was a secular conjectural history of the origin of language that was unique in the Scottish Enlightenment. Ih 1787 Monboddo received a letter from the phiioIogist Sir William Jones that included Jones' "Third Anniversary Discourse", which he had read before the Asiatic Society of Bengal in February, 17867 The interesting but unsystematic use Monboddo had made of the records and reports of exotic languages was exploited more lllyby Jones, who in the process suggested a comparative approach to the study of language that would transform the way European philosophers thought about the history and origin of language?4 Jones' "Third Anniversary Discourse" advanced the theory that languages were related because of common descent fcom an earlier language rather than borrowings or historical coincidences. Jones formulated the suggestive thesis that Greek, Latin, Gothic, Celtic, and Persian all had the ancient Indian language of Sanskrit as their parent? They formed a family of Indo-European languages. In the 'With Discourse" (1792), which he subtitled: "On the Origin and Families of Nations," Jones related that he had begun his researches into the languages of Asia with the hope of "tracing the origin and progress of the five principle nations, who have

peopled Asia" (Jones Works, IE 203). The questions he hoped to answer by comparing their languages were: "who they severally were, whence, and when

they came, where they now are settled, and what advantage a more perfect knowledge of them all may bring to our European world." (Jones Works III: 27-8) These questions showed that Jones was interested in discovering the historical comections between languages and societies and cultures. The history of language was no longer considered the conjectural record of the history of the human mind. Instead of conjecturing about the origin of language considered as a general system of signs representing the state of human intellectual development, he conjectured reservedly about the origin and history of particular languages that could also be observed in written records (Jones Works, IIE 35)? Nor would he conjecture about the origin of specific words in the hope of knowing the nature of the mental effort that lay behind their creation. Against such a speculative

etymological approach to the study of the human mind Jones proclaimed: "I beg leave, as a philologer, to enter my protest against conjectural etymology.. .than which no mode of reasoning is in general weaker or more delusive" (Jones Works, Ilk 199, 198). The object of Jones' comparative and historical study of languages was a greater understanding of the languages themselves, not the mental principles involved in their creation. Dugald Stewart, who bad read and been impressed by Jones 'Third Anniversary Discourse," also perceived some problems with the conjectural approach to the history of language. Stewart warned against the ofien whimsical

procedures of what Jones' had called 6cconjecturaletyrnology"n as it was practiced by John Home ~ooke?' In his two-volume Diversions of Purley (1798-

1805) Tooke took an etymoiogical approach to the study of language and mind, criticizing those who had gone before him- Despite Tooke's determination to produce a wholly original study of language, his Diversions had much in common with the conjectural histories of language that came before him.

Tooke held that since words were the signs of things, grammarians had been right to acknowledge only as many parts of speech as there were things. Having designated four sorts of things however, they mistakenly attempted to reduce all words to one of four types. When this proved impossible they "reversed the method of proceeding from things to signs ...and. still allowing the principle. (viz. That there must be as many sorts of words as of things,) they traveled backwards. and sought for the things from the signs."*79This Ied them to

reverse the relationship between things and names and to assert that "there must be as many differences of things as signs." Unfortunately for the understanding of the human mind, '?hey supposed many imaginary differences of things: and thus added greatly to the number of parts of speech. and in consequence to the errors of philosophy" (Tmke Diversions, 1: 22). In this view, it was "the different operations of the mind" that codd explain the differences among words and, subsequently the differences among things. The problem with this procedure was that when grammarians came upon of a part of speech that could not be explained by the mental operations available to them,they supposed "an imaginary operation or two," hoping that the difficulties would be 'Yor the time shuffled over" (Tooke Diversions, 1: 23). This method created "dispute, diversity, and darkness" among the best of the Grammarians who consequently have 'prudently contented themselves with remarking the differences of words, and have left the causes of language to shift for themselves" (Tmke Diversions, 1: 24). Historical conjectures about the mental operations behind the invention of the several parts of speech were misguided in Tooke's view. He disagreed with the notion that words were ''signs of different sorts of Ideas, or of different operations of the mind," and asserted that what mistakenly were thought of as mental operations were really linguistic operations (Tooke Diversions, 1: 51). In a section of the Diversions titled "Some Consideration of Mr. Locke's Essay". Tooke argued that what Locke called "the composition, abstraction, complexity, generalization. relation &c. of Ideas, does indeed merely concern Language" pooke Diversions. 1: 39). When looking at Locke's Essay, Tooke found that as Locke thought more deeply about his subject matter he became convinced of the inseparable connection between knowledge and language." Had Locke continued in this promising train of thought, he would have refrained from discussing the "composition of ideas," and realired that "the onIy composition was in the terms; and consequently that it was as improper to speak of a complex idea, as it would be to call a constellation a complex star" (Tooke Diversions, 1: 36-37). Tooke suggested that if while one read Locke's Essay, one substituted the phrase "composition. &c. of tern" wherever Locke wrote of the "composition.

&c- of ideas,'" he would do away with many of the c'difficulties in which the supposed composition of Ideas necessarily involves us" (Tooke Diversions. 1: 38). For Tooke, the sorts of words that philosophers had thought were abstractions were really "abbreviation" Vmke Diversions, 1: 27). The notion of abstract ideas came from confusing words that were really only the abbreviations of other variously collected words. with words that signified distinct ideas in the mind. Tooke believed that the errors of those who came before him had arisen '%om supposing all words to be immedately either the signs of things or the signs of ideas: whereas in fact many words are merely abbreviations employed for dispatch, and are the signs of other words" (Tooke Diversions, 1: 27)- Like

Locke, Tooke held that the primary end of language was to facilitate speedy comrn~nication!~Where Locke had asserted that this was achieved through the use of general words to signify complex or abstract ideas and mixed modes, Tooke, a nominalist, contended that the dispatching hnction of general words lay in the fact that each one was an abbreviating sign for a collection of words and not the sign of an abstract idea (Tooke Diversions, 1: 27.51). The mind's sphere of operation extended "no farther than to receive Impressions, that is, to have

Sensations or Fexhgs." Tooke held that a consideration of the ideas of the mind would lead no farther than to "Nouns: i.e. the signs of those impressions, or names of ideas," and to verbs, which were necessary for communication. The simpIicity of the mind's ideas8* meant that what philosophers had called "its operations, are merely the operations of language" (Tooke Diversions. 1: 5 1)- Since no abstract ideas or mental operations lay behind the invention of the greater part of all

words, the history of language could tell philosophers nothing about the unfolding of the human mind.83 The purpose of the etymological study of language was to uncover the true origins, and thus the meanings, of words that had been corrupted or abbreviated throughout history.84 Dugald Stewart, a follower of Reid, who had lectured on Tooke's first publication on etymology, the Letter to Mr.Dunning, as early as 1778-7ga5,made several criticisms of his conjectural etymological approach to the study of language. Stewart also criticized the conjectural history of language as Adam Smith practiced it. Stewart censured both Tooke's and Smith's misrepresentation of the connection between mind and language. Once this relationship was understood more accurately, Stewart believed that the conjectural historical approach to the study of language would be abandoned altogether.

In the fifth essay of Stewart's Philosophical Essays (18 10) titled "On the Tendency of Some Late Philological Speculations," he surmised that on the topic of abstraction "Mi. Twke has fden into an error very prevalent among later writers, that of supposing Berkeley's argument against abstract general ideas to have proved a great deal more than it does"(S tewart Works,5: 172)- Stewart acknowledged the success of that criticism against Locke's particular doctrine of abstract ideas, but went on to comment that Locke's was neither the only nor the best of such doctrines. In his Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind Part 1(1792). Stewart recounted Reid's doctrine of universals in support of man's abstracting mental faculty (Stewart Workr,2: 190-3). Reid had drawn a distinction between the 66conception'Tand the "imagination" of a universal. Reid saw that Berkeley and Hume had been right to dispute Locke's ability to imagine or represent to himself an abstract general idea? Reid however, applied this criticism to particular as well as abstract ideas. He argued contrary to Locke, Berkeley and Hume, that neither abstract nor particular ideas may be imagined or represented. For Reid, an idea, either of the abstract or particular sort is "a thought; it is the act of the mind in thinking, or in conceiving any objec~'.""An idea was not an image that lay in the mind to be contemplated, it was the act, the process of thought that one was engaged in while contemplating. He went on to assert that dthough it was impossibIe to imagine an abstract idea, it was possible to conceive one. Stewart quoted Reid to illustrate this proposition: "When Mr. Pope says. 'The proper study of mankind is man,' I conceive his meaning distinctly,'although I neither imagine a black or a white, a crooked or a straight man." Reid argued that he could conceive in generalities, but imagine only particulars. In the hke-Berkeley-Hume sense, imagining generalities was impossible. We could conceive "a proposition or demonstration" without being able to imagine either. Terms that would have fallen under Locke's category of mixed modes, such as "will, virtue and vice" were conceivable but not imaginable. "In like manner," Reid '9 can distinctly conceive universals, but I cannot imagine them" (Stewart Works.2: 19 1-2; or Reid Works, I: 407). The conclusion Stewart wanted to draw fkom Reid's arguments was that the act of conceiving a universal idea involved abstraction. The mind was able to abstract, but only when abstracting was not considered as imagining, but as "understanding the meaning of propositions involving general terms." Terms denoting abstract ideas had significance insofar as their meanings could be expressed in propositions. As propositions could only be formed with words denoting conceptions, Stewart added that ''without the use of language. ,-we should never have been able to extend our speculations beyond individuak" (Stewart Works, 2: 192-3)- The mind was able to conceive abstract ideas indeed, but only by considering together the meanings of a number of words in the context of a sentence which itself purported to carry a single abstract meaning. Good sentences gave a form to conceptions produced by the natural workings of the human mind and reflected the mind's structure, operations and the empirical contents given in experience. Stewart's manner of dealing with Berkeley's arguments against abstraction not only served to contradict Tooke's notion of abbreviation, it also called into question Tooke's entire 'microscopic' etymological procedure, Stewart emphasized that the meaning of a word was in large part dependent on its place in a proposition or sentence. The individual words contained in a proposition did not present, each by themselves, a distinct idea to the mind which it combined and compared to gather the meaning of the sentence. Rather "our words, when examined separately, are often as completely insignificant as the letters of which they are composed; deriving their meaning solely from the comexion, or relation, in which they stand to others" (Stewart Works, 5: 154-5). This observation seemed to diminish the usefulness of employing etymology to derive the meanings of words. Stewart believed that, as a principle of his etymological method, Tooke had assumed that in order to discover the precise philosophical meaning of a word, it was necessary either, to trace its entire "progress historically through all the successive meanings which it has been employed to convey," or, if the word seemed to be of foreign origin, to uncover the "literal and primitive sense of the root from whence it sprung." Further, Tooke held that once this meaning was uncovered it was the only one philosophers were permitted to acknowledge and reason with, regardless of the confusion it would cause "in the present advanced state of science," Stewart condemned this line of reasoning because it failed to acknowledge the crucial role that context had to play in the signification of a given term. He asserted that the use of etymology to decide philosophical disputes was "altogether nugatory," and could assist only in the establishment of laws that govern the "human fancy," not the human mind (Stewart Works, 5: 161). Stewart's emphasis on linguistic context also undercut Tooke's statement that what grammarians and philosophers falsely have called the operations of the mind was realIy the operations of language. (Tooke, Diversions 1: 51) Central to

Tooke's (and Locke's) speculations about language was that its primary aim was communication. But, given that the communication of many ideas, especially abstract ideas, occurred only when the meanings of entire propositions were understood, the individual words in a sentence should be considered as doing "nothing more than to suggest hints to our hearers, leaving by far the principal part of the process of interpretation to be performed by the Mind itself' (Stewart Works, 5: 153). Stewart added that the alacrity with which the mind was able to interpret the meaning of a proposition meant that the context-gathering process remained unobserved, and "to the eyes of common observers, the use of speech" would appear "as a much simpler, and less curious phenomenon, than it is in reality" (Stewart Works, 5: 155). He cautioned that understanding the meaning of a sentence which has as its subject some "abstract and complex" notion, is possible only after 'We have made the reasonings our own." This was because "in cases of this sort, the function of language is not so much to convey knowledge

(according to the common phrase)88from one mind to another, as to bring two minds into the same train of thinking; and to confine them, as nearly as possible, to the same track" (Stewart Works, V: 156). In the relationship between mind and language, the mind retained a degree of autonomy which allowed it to create and look for meanings that were not immediately suggested by the content and the form of a given sentence.sg Stewart intended his analysis to encourage philosophers to redirect their energies into studying the mind's mental operations rather than its linguistic operations. He noted: 'Many authors have spoken of the

wondefi mechanism of speech; but none has hitherto attended to the far more wonderful mechanism which it puts into action behind the scene" (Stewart Works, 5: 156). The shadow40 relationship between mental operations and language had strong implications for the conjectural history of language in the tradition estabiished by Condillac, Rousseau and Adam Smith. Stewart's Dissertation: Erhibiting the Progress of MetaphynkaI? Ethical, and Political Philosophy, Since the Revival of Letters in Europe (18 IS), devoted five pages to the exposition and criticism of the conjectural histories of language offered by these men (Stewart Works, 1: 361-6)P1 With regard to Condillac and Rousseau, Stewart limited himself primarily to exposition, while he added a critical element to his treatment of Smith's Considerations.

Stewart found that even "the best philosophers" were guilty of "6confoundingthe historical progress of an art with its theoretical principles when advanced to maturity (Stewart Works?5: 166). Much of Stewart's criticism of Smith's Considerations amounted to an accusation of having committed this mistake. Smith, he asserted, had assumed erroneously, that the metaphysical nature of any part of speech entailed that its invention would have required an "extraordinary effort of inteIlectua.1capacity" (Stewart Works, 1: 364). That this was simply not the case could be observed in the ability of peasants to overcome the metaphysical diff~cultiesinvolved in making use of the "notion of a When a peasant spoke of "the distance between two places; or the length, breadth. or height of his cottage" he grasped the meaning of 'line' without performing a metaphysical mental operation. Stewart asserted that the prepositions "of' and "by", which Smith perceived as requiring great metaphysical knowledge to

understand and as therefore one of the last parts of speech to be invented, could be

used by children only three years old. Stewart warned that "we ought not" therefore, "to conclude that the invention of them implied any metaphysical knowledge in the individual who first employed them" (Stewart Works, I: 364). Stewart drew on a reflection made by Adam Ferguson in his Principles of Moral

mtd Political Science (1792) " to develop this criticism more fully:

Parts of speech, which, in speculation, cost the grammarian so much study, are in practice famiLiar to the vulgar: The rudest triis, even the idiot, and the insane, are possessed of them: They are soonest learned in childhood; insomuch, that we must suppose human nature, in its lowest state, competent to the use of them; and, without the intervention of uncommon genius, mankind, in a succession of ages, qualified to accomplish in detail this amazing fabric of language.w By assuming an incorrect relationship between the principles of language and the operations of the mind, Smith had been led to suppose mistakenly, that a conjectural inquiry into the history of the development of language would uncover the history of the principles that directed the operation of the human mind and shaped human nature.

Because Tooke's etymological conjectures about language led him to focus exclusively on the historical sequence of the successive meanings of words, while wholly neglecting to analyze language in its mature state, Stewart considered them "speculations not of a metaphysical, but of a purely philological nature; belonging to that particular species of disquisition which I have elsewhere called theoretical history" (Stewart Works 5: 167). The study of the history of language was incapable of providing the sort of metaphysical knowledge about the operation of the human mind that Loeke had suggested was possible, and that Condillac, Rousseau, Smith, Dunbar and Monboddo had tried to realize. As Stewart considered these men to be philologers and not metaphysicians, they were subject to the following consideration: "As long as the philologer confines himself to discussions of grammar and of etymology, his labours - -.may often furnish important data for illustrating the progress of laws, of arts, and of manners; - for clearing up obscure passages in ancient writers; - or for tracing the migrations of mankind, in ages of which we have no historical records." This program for the study of language could have been achieved by Sir William Jones' comparative philological method as he had laid it out in the "Third Anniversary Discourse." Stewart went on to warn that those who continued to work in the conjectural history of language, without the guidance of the new phiiological method, would be "more likely to bewilder than direct us in the study of the Mind" (Stewart Works, 5: 176). The new comparative method promised "important future disc~veries'~and while the history of language would continue to be pursued, and often with conjectures, its aim was to uncover the historical co~ectionsbetween languages and societies, institutions and cdtures, not the development of the human mind and the progress of human nature. Elsewhere in Europe during the same period, the conjectural history of language began to be replaced by comparative philology. In Germany, Friedrich Schlegel, like Dugald Stewart in Britain, attempted to disengage the pursuit of the "historical aspect" of the origin of language from the "philosophicd aspect" of that subject. Perhaps convinced that the historical origin of language could never be explained, Schlegel gave his reason for exploring the topic further: 'We do not view the origin of language as something that can be placed at a particular point in time; rather we consider it in the sense in which language always arise^.'"^ The book in which Schlegel made these remarks was, in the words of James H, Stam, "a watershed work.. .because in it Schlegel envisioned a whole new way of studying language."% While Jones had used the organic metaphor of a family to connote the relationships between languages, Schlegel used the organic discipline of anatomy to descn'be the method and aim of the comparative philologist: "There is...one single point, the investigation of which ought to decide every doubt, and elucidate every difhculty: The structure or comparative grammar of the languages furnishes as certain a key to their general analogy, as the study of comparative anatomy has done to the loftiest branch of natural science-*'w Between 1833 and 1852 Franz Bopp, published his Comparative Grammar of Sanskrit, Greek Latin, Lithuanian, Gothic and German- Its six volumes constituted what Stnmm has called "the first definitive or paradigmatic work in comparative ling~istics."~~Bopp intended to avoid using language as a vehicle for the propagation of a philosophical doctrine. He proposed to give a "history and natural description of language" in which he would '%race the natural-historical laws according to which occurred its development." His method as he stated in the title would be comparative and refrain fiom speculations about the mental principles involved in the formation of the different languages or parts of speech:

In this book I intend to give a comparative description of the organism of the languages mentioned in the titIe, bringing together all of their related aspects, and exploring their physical and mechanical laws as well as the origin of the forms which signify grammatical relations. The only thing which we will leave untouched is the secret of the roots, that is, the basis for the naming of the original concepts." In France. Auguste Comte had by 1854 incorporated the biological conception of language into his positivist scheme of world history. He used the familiar hypothesis that language originated out of human sociability. It was man's development out of self-sufficient families into a larger ''social organism" that created the mutual dependence, that gave occasion to the first languages. Comte emphasized that his account of the origin of speech had been derived not kom historical conjectures but fiom a sort of comparative biology:

Without the convincing Light thrown on the study of the human mind by the study of animals, we should never have got rid of the empty speculations of metaphysicians on human language,. .All these insoluble questions take a new form or disappear altogether, as soon as we cease to study man apart fiom the other races of which he is the master.- .The comparisons fiunished to us by the study of animals are of immense importance in guiding us to the Positive theory of human language; as this is the ody means of tracing it to its proper biological originsin1O0

Presuming that the question admitted any positive answer, the origin of language wouId be explained in the end through the methods employed in the emerging biological sciences and not through the historical conjectural method adopted by the metaphysicians of the previous century. The comparative and positivist approaches to language study had made historical conjectures about the mental principles behind Ianguage invention obsolete. In doing so they invalidated one of the primary aims of the conjecnval histories of language as practiced in the eighteenth century. Students of language were no longer interested in what the historical origin of language could teU them about human nature.lol

In France the move away ftom the question of the origin of language found its strongest expression in Article II of the SociM de hguistique de Paris newly formed in 1865. It read: "The Society will accept no communication dealing with either the origin of language or the creation of a universal language."'02 In 1873 Alexander J. EUis, the president of the Philological Society of London, made an effort to steer the Society's linguistic endeavours away from the religious controversy raised by Darwin and at the same time proceed with empirical rigor. Ih an address to the Society Ellis declared: I conceive such questions to be out of the field of philology proper. We have to investigate what is, we have to discover, if possible, the invariable unconditional relations under which language as we obseme it, forms, develops, changes, or at least to construct an empirical statement of definite linguistic relations, and ascertain how far that statement obtains in individual cases. Real language, the go-between of man and man, is a totaIly different organism from philosophical language, the misty ill-understood exponent of sharp metaphysical distinctions. Our work is with the former. We shall do more by tracing the historical growth of one single work-a-day tongue, than by filling wastepaper baskets with reams of paper covered with speculations on the origin of aLl tongues.lo3

As new forms of language study developed in the last years of the eighteenth and the first years of the nineteenth centuries, the origin of language still begged an explanation. It was thought that the new comparative study of language could answer such a question without resorting to the sort of unconfirmable conjectures characteristic of endeavours such as these. As philologists applied the comparative method with increasing accuracy however, it became clear that an explanation of the origin of language would require them to delve into the ever- distant past- For Monboddo, Jones, and Friedrich Schlegel, Sanskrit seemed to be near the absolute beginning of human history. By the middle of the nineteenth century, the time of Bopp and Darwin, it was apparent that human history was far longer and its origin far more remote than had been thought previously. In the interim period, the comparative method had advanced and the study of language had become a discipline all on its own. Despite these progresses, the origin of language remained mysterious and wan now outside the realm of respectable scientific inquiry. Endnotes

I Refer to Chapter 1 passim.

2 ELCloyd, James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, ( Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972): 67-70.

3 For the influence of Lockean empiricism on the moral philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment see: Roger Emerson, "Science and Moral Philosophy in the Scottish Enlightenment" in Studies in the Philosophy of the Scottish Enlightenment ed., MA- Stewart (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990): 17-24. In the Second Part of his Dissertation on the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical. and Political Philosophy prefixed to the 182 1 Encyclopedia Bn'tmica, Dugald Stewart noted the influence of Locke on his Scottish compatriots: '% Scotland, where the Iiberal constitution of the universities has been always peculiarly favourable to the diffusion of a free and eclectic spirit of inquiry, the philosophy of Locke seems very early to have struck its roots, deeply and pennanentIy, into a kindly and congenial soil." Dugafd Stewart, ~krerfationon the Progress of Metaphysical, Ethical adPolitical Philosophy in the Collected Works of Dugald Stewart 10 vols., (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co, 1854): 1: 216.

4 The Encyclopedia Britannica published in Edinburgh (1771), treated the origin of language from a secular point of view, possibly indicating that by this time the Adarnic thesis for the origin of language had been generally discredited in Scotland- Encyclopedia Britannica 3 vols. (Edinburgh: 1771): 2: 863-869.

* D.D. McElroy, Scotland's Age of lrnproven2etzt (Washington, 1969): 58.

6 For the circumstances surrounding Thomas Sheridan's Lectures see: W.S. Howell, Eighteenth Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1971): 2 14-243- For concerns with 'Scotticisms' see James Beattie Scotticisms,- arranged in Alphabetical Order designed to correct Improprieties of Speech and Writing (1787)and E-C. Mossner, Lfe of David Hume (Edinburgh: Nelson, 1954): 2834,606.

7 Both Hugh Blair and George Campbell included conjectures about the origin and history of language in their lectures on Rhetoric. See: Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres (1783) 2 vols. (New York: Garland Publishing, 1970); and George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1776), ed. Lloyd F.Bitzer, (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963).

8 For a discussion of the wider significance of conjectural history in the Scottish Enlightenment see: Roger L. Emerson, "Conjectural History and Scottish Philosophers" in Historical Papers 1984

9 Emerson, "Conjectural History": 69-70, Emerson cites kcretius on the Nature of Things Bk-5; Diodoms Siculus, Bibliotheca historicu. In Traces on the Rhodim Shore: Nature and Culture in Western Thoughzfiom Ancient Times to the End of the Eighteenth Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1967) Clarence J, Clacken discussed many ancient authors who made historical conjectures. Ancient 'conjecnual histories' were usually used to explain the economic and technical development experienced by a particdar society or people. Among the many authors Glacken examined, those who used historical conjectures were Hesiod, Dicaerchus, Posidonius, Vatro, Coluxnella, and Seneca. Traces: 132, 140,118,114,32,118, One author Glacken mentioned, Vitmvius, conjectured about the origin of language: "All mankind lived like beasts in a simple state of savagery until the accidental discovery of frre made possible the establishment of society; the sounds made by individuals around the fire led to speech and language, Iater to the deliberative assembly and to social intercourse." Traces: 107-8, Emerson has also pointed out that the secular conjectural histories of the Scots philosophers echoed in many ways the history of the world as it was told in the bible, He noted that the "Genesis has a stadia1 progression which looks familiar: Adam and Eve were originally gatherers of fruit. While they were to dress and keep their garden, they were not tillers of the soil or shepherds as were Cain and Abel. In the, men becanre traders and city dweilers and the arts were invented and developed-" ''Conjectural History": 66-7- lo Emerson "Conjectural History": 75.

I' Thomas Blackwell, An Enquiry into the fifi and Wrirngsof Homer (1739, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1970): 2, Hereafter references to this work will be put in the text parenthetically as (Blackwell LWH, page number),

'' Paul B .Wood, The Aberdeen Enlightenment the Ans Curriculum in the Eighteenth Century (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1993): 60, 186.

I3 George Turnbull, The Principles of Moral Philosophy (1740). (New York: Georg Olrns Verlag, 1976): 448-9. In the preface to that work Turnbull claimed that its contents had been given in his lectures "above a dozen years" before its publication. (Principles: xii) If this was true it means that his historical outlook was 'in the air' at Marischal College before 1728; seven years before Blackwell published his Lge adWritings of Homer. l4 George Turnbull, A Treatise on Ancient Painting (1740), ed. Vincent M. Bevilacqua (Munich: Wilhem Fi197 1). lS Blackwell, LWH: 12. Blackwell discussed the effixts of politics, religion, business and art as well as language. l6 Lois Whitney, "English Primitivistic Theories of Epic Origins" in Modern Philology XXI, (1924): 3940, Also see H-Lewis Ulman, fie Minutes of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society 1758-1773, (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990): 190-8 .

I7 In opposition to both the empiricist and rationalist secular accounts of the origin of language, there were in Scotland. divine explanations put forth by James Beattie and Hugh Blair. Beattie held that if ever there was a time that man did not possess language it would have been impossible for him to invent it- Acknowledging the "authority of Scripture*'Beattie wrote that "reason, as well as history, intimates, that mankind in dl ages must have been speaking animals; the young having constantly acquired this art by imitating those who were elder. And we may warrantably suppose, that ow first parents must have received it by immediate inspiration." James Beattie. Dissertations Moral and Critical (1783). (New York: Garland Oublishing, 1971): 301-304. Hugh Blair held that language had a divine origin but qualified this statement by saying "God taught our first parents only such Language as suited their present occasions; leaving them. as he did in other things, to enlarge and improve it as their future necessities should require-" Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles &ares vol. I (1783). (New York: Garland Publishing, 1970): 126-7. After developing a fbndamentally secular account of the origin of the different tribes and languages recorded through history, Kames recalled the biblical story of the Tower of Babet, noting that "the conhsion of Babel is the only hown fact that can reconcile sacred and profane history-" Henry Home (Lord Kames), Sketches of the History of Man 4 vols, (1778), (Hildesheim: Georg OIms Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1968): 76-9-

Adam Smith, "A LJXIER to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review" 1755 in ed. J- Ralph Lindgren, The Early Writings of Adam Smith (NewYork: Sentry Press, 1967): 19- 28. Between I755 and 1764 Smith ordered seven volumes of the Encyclop6die for the University of Glasgow Library. Ian Simpson Ross, The Lye of Adam Smith (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995): 147- In me Encyclope'die in Eighteenthcentury England and other Studies (Newcastle upon Tyne: Oriel Press, 1970), John Lough argued that the Encyclop&die"aroused considerable interest in Scotland" and that its volumes were "acquired by various libraries at that time." 14. In this letter Smith also mentioned Bernard Mandeville's Fable of the Bees which contained a secular account of the origin of Ianguage. For the spread and influence of Mandeville's ideas see Frederick Benjamin Kaye, 'The Influence of Bernard Mandeviiie." Srudies in Philological History 19, (1922): 83-108.

19 Locke, Essay: "Epistle to the Reader".

20 That the Encyclope'die would explain the "origin" and the "philosophical basis of language in general" indicates that the efforts of conjectural historians and universal grammarians were part of the same philosophical effort to understand language. D' Alembert, Jean Le Rond. Preliminary Discourse to the Encyclopedia of Diderot trans. by Richard N-Schwab, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995): 120-

21 Speaking of the first social contact among primitive men, d7Alembertremarked: "The communication of ideas is the principle and support of this union, and necessarily requires the invention of signs,. .such is the someof the formation of societies, with which must have come the birth of languages." Prelirni~ryDiscourse: 1 1.

=d'~lernbert,Prelimi~ry Discourse: 33.

d' Alembert, Prefirni~ryDiscourse: 33.

24 Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, ''Etymologie" in Encyclope'die ou Dictionnuire Raisonge Des Sciences, Des Arts et Des Metiers vol6, (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt, 1967): 108.

Louis, Chevalier de Jaucowt, 'Zangage" in Encyelopidie vol9: 242.

26 Nicolas Beau*, 'Zangue" in EncyclopCdie voi. 9: 250. Beau* was born in 17 17 and died in 1789. He was interested in mathematics as well as grammar. Bartlett has - bsedthat the reason Bead's divine explanation for the origin of language made it into the EncycfopPdie of 1756 was that the man Diderot had originally asked to write the article "Langue", Dumarsais, had died in that year. Barrie E-Bartlett, Beauzt5e's Grammaire GeSle'rale: Theory and Methodology, me Hague: Mouton, 1975): 25-6- n J J. Rousseau. Second Discourse: 30.

28 For the spread of Berkeley's ideas in Scotland commencing in the late 1720's see: George Davie, '%erkeley's Impact on Scottish Phiiosophers" in A Passion for Ideas: Essays on the ScomLsh Enlightenment 2 (Edinburgh: Polygon, 1994): 2040.

" Adam Smith, Considerations Concerning the Firsf Fornterion of Languages adthe Dflerent Genius of on'gi~fand compoded Languages in J Rafph Lingren, ed, Early Writings of AdaSmith (New York: Sentry Press, 1967). Hereafter references to this work will be included parenthetically in the text as (Smith Considerations, page number).

M~damSmith. Lecnrrrs on Rhetoric and Belles Lrnres ed. J.C. Bryce, (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983): 27, The Philological Miscellany in which Smith first published his Considerations consisted of "select essays fiom the Memoirs of the Academy of Belles Lettres at Paris, and other foreign academies." It was published in England in 1761 and sold by T. Beckett and PADehandt in the Strand, (Alston 11 127 1,823.)

31 Wilbur Samuel Howell has shown that Smith's lectures treated the question of the origin of language as part of a philosophica1 understanding of rhetoric. Wilbur Samuel Howell, Eighteenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 197 1): 537-548.

32 Smith enthusiasticalIy reviewed Rousseau's Discourse on inequality and indicated that he had read Mandeville's Fable of the Bees in "A Letter to the Authors of the Edinburgh Review" 1755. in The brly Wn'rings of Adam Smith ed., J- Ralph Lindgren. (New York: Sentry Press, 1967): 23-28.

33 The Correspondence of Adam Smith eds., Ernest Campbell Mossner and Ian Simpson Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987): 88.

34 Although it is certain that Smith's library contained a 1746 edition of Condilfac's Essq on the Origin of Human Knodedge, it is unknown when Smith acquired it- James Bonar, A Catalogue of the Library of A&m Smith (New York: Augustus M. Kelly, 1966): 49.

" Smith, Correspondance: 87-88.

36 In addition to applying the conjectural historical method to language, Smith applied it to the subjects of Logic and Astronomy in his E'ssays on Philosophicaf Subjects published in 1795 but written many years before (see below note 37), and to economics and society in An Inquiry into the Nmure and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776)- '' Adam Smith, "The Principles Which Lead aad Direct Philosophical Enquiries; Illustrated by the History of the Ancient Physics" in The Early Writings of Adam Smith ed., J- Ralph Lindgren (New York: Sentry Press, 1967): 130-13 1- While the Essays were published posthumously in 1795, they had been written much earlier and were, in Smith's words, "a fragment of an intended juveniIe woe' Letter to David Hume 16 Apr. 1773- in Correspondence of Adam Smith: 168. lan Simpson Ross has conjectured that Smith possibly composed the Essays on Philosophicuf Subjects '5n part in Kirkcaldy after returning fiom Oxford" which would put their date of composition around 1746- Ross, fife of Smith: 99,

38 Smith defined the grammatid term 'cAntonomasia" as "the application of the name of an individual to a great multitude of objects, whose resembiance naturally recalls the idea of that individuai-" Considerutionx 227.

39 Dugald Stewart made this observation when he remarked that "Rousseau, who is very seldom misled by the authority of the schools, has, however, in this instance, [his consideration of the difficulty of accounting for the historical origin of absrract terms] adopted with much confidence the common language of logicians." In the same place Stewart noted approvingly that Smith's "account, in particular, of the gradual and insensible transformation of proper names into appellatives, (however obvious it may seem,) is widely different fiom that commonly given in books of logic and metaphysics - in which the formation of genera and species is represented as an intellectual process of the most mysterious and unintelligible nature. Nor has Mr-Smith been less successful in accounting for the invention of adjectives and prepositions; and in explaining the connexioc in which it stands with the previous step of cksifiing objects, and of distinguishing them by general names-" Dugald Stewart, Elements of the Philosophy of the Human Mind in Be Collected Works of Dugald Stewart vol- 4, ed- Sir WiIIiam Hamilton (Edinburgh: Thomas Constable and Co., 1854):25-6.

40 He noted that by modifLing the noun substantive to denote quality, an expression bore "a much more exact analogy to the idea or object which it denotes, than in the other. The quality appears, in nature, as a modification of the substance, and as it is thus expressed in language, by a modification of the noun substantive, which denotes that substance, the quality and the subject are, in this case, blended together, if1 may say so, in the expression in the same manner as they appear to be in the object and in the idea," Smith, Considerations: 230.

41 In his discussion of primitive man's ability to denote quality without using adjectives, Smith identified one of the fundamental assumptions of his conjectural history of Ianguage- The modification of noun substantives was an 44expedientfor denoting the different qualities of different substances, which as it requires no abstraction, nor any conceived separation of the quality from the subject, seems more natural than the invention of nouns adjective, and which, upon this account, couId hardly fail, in the first formation of language, to be thought of before them." Smith assumed that the degree of metaphysical knowledge required to be able to use a type of word determined the stage in history at which it was invented. The more simple the meaning of a word the earlier it was invented- -- - 42 Although, as noted earlier, in the Considerations Smith made proper nouns the first invented words, in the (7 Feb, 1763) letter to George Baird he put verbs before nouns. Verbs could be considered "the original parts of speech" because they were able "to express in one word a compleat event," saving primitive men from having to perform the complex mental operation of separating subject fiom attribute and object from both. Smith, Correspondence: 88.

43 Those abstract words, such as prepositions, that primitive man had avoided inventing would become inevitable "when two nations came to be mixed with one another, either by conquest or migration." In the attempt of each nations' citizenry to Ieam the language of the other, the various declensions and conjugations of each language would be the most difficult, Smith held that each nation "would endeavour, therefore, to suppIy their ignorance of these, by whatever shift the language could afford them. Their ignorance of the declensions they would naturally suppIy by the use of prepositions." Considerurionr.- 245. As the two languages combined their complex and idiosyncratic grammatical forms, these forms would be replaced by abstract words in the interest of making each more learnable for the speakers of the other.

44 Thomas Gordon: 'What is the Origin of Polytheism?" (22 March 1758); Alexander Gerard: "What is the Origin of Civil Society?" (22 April 1758); George Skene: "Whither are men become degenerative in point of size & strenth; or has the rnodern method of living increased the number of diseases or altered their nature?" (9 April 1764). Lewis UIman, The Minutes of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society 2758-1 773 (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1990): 190, 191, 194-Heteafter this work will be cited as Minutes of the A.P.S.

45 David Skene: "What are the Advantages which Mankind peculiarly derive from the use of speech?" (13 May 1766); George Campbell: "Whether it is possible, that the language of any People would continue invariably the same? And if not, from what Causes the Variations arise?" (13 Oct. 1766) and "Whether the Greek language remained invariably the same so long as is commonly thought; & to what causes the duration which it had ought to be ascribed?" (10 Nov- 1767) both David Skene and George Campbell gave papers titled: 'What are the advantages and disadvantages from the different arrangement of words, which obtain in the ancient and modern languages?" (1769 and 1772). Ulman, Minutes of A. P.S.: 195-7.

" Ulman, Minutes of the A.P.S.: 75.

47 For several recent studies of Reid's phiiosophy of Common Sense see: Thc Philosophy of Thomas Reid, ed. Melvin Dalgarno and Eric Matthews, (Boston: Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1989).

48 Uhan, Mirrutes of the A.P.S.: 30. In the ''Dedication" to the Inquiry Reid stated: "My thoughts upon this subject were, a good many years ago, put together in another form, for the use of my pupils, and afterwards were submitted to the judgment of a private philosophical society, of which I have the honour to be a member." Thomas Reid, An Inquiry Into the Human Mind ed. Derek R-Brooks (?Jniversity Pk. Penn.: Pennsylvania University Press, 1997): 5. Hereafter all citations to Reid's Inquiry will appear parenthetically in the text as (Reid Inquiry, followed by page number). After summarizing the def- of the "old system" of idea-based philosophy as developed fiom kartesto Hume, Reid restated the underlying notion behind his "new system" of philosophical "common sense": "'I'hat our thoughts, owsensations, and every thing of which we are conscious, hath a real existence, is admitted in this system as a first principle" (Reid Inquiry, 210)- In his Essays on the Intellectuai Powers of Man (1785) Reid reasserted the first principles on which he based his common sense philosophy: 'T believe no man is able to explain how we perceive external object, any more than how we are conscious of those that are internal, Perception, consciousness~ memory, imagination, are dl original and simple powers of the mind, and parts of its cmstitution. For this reason, though I have endeavoured to shew that the theories of - philosophers on this subject are ill grouaded and insufficient, I do not attempt to substitute an other theory in their place" (Reid Works, I: 309)-

"For all artificial language supposes some compact or agreement to affix a certain meaning to certain signs; therefore, there must be compacts or agreements before the use of aRLf~cialsigns; but there can be no compact or agreement without signs, nor without language before any artificial language can be invented" (Reid Inwiry, 51). Understanding the meanings of natural sounds was not man's ody original capacity with regard to the construction of language, In terms that would have been consistent with the "Grammar UniversaP', or "that Grammar, which without regarding the several Idioms of particular Languages, only respects those Principles, that are essential to them all" (Harris Hermes. 11). written by the "learned.. .Mr.Harris," Reid declared that the "uniformity in the structure of language shews a certain degree of uniformity in those notions upon which the structure of language is grounded" (Reid Works, 1: 404,233)-

5 1 Dunbar was elected to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society on 26 November 1765 and served as president for 1771, While Dunbar was not a member concurrently with Reid who left Aberdeen in 1764, he had been a student there while Reid was still a professor at the university.

"Ulman, Minutes of the A.P.S.: 42, 196.

James Dunbar, Essay on the History of Mankind in Rude and Cultivated Ages (Bristol: Thoernmes Press, 1995): 2.

54 Christopher J. Berry, "James Dunbar and the Enlightenment Debate on Language" in Aberdeen and the Enlightenment Jennifer J. Carter and Joan H- Pittock eds., (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1987), 245- Other members of the Aberdeen Philosophical Society shared Gerard's interest in associationist philosophy. Dunbar's particular version of this could have been influenced by the discussion of the principles of association made by his fellow Aberdonian, George Campbell, in mePhilosophy of Rhetoric (1776). For Campbell's discussions of association and Hume see: George Campbell, The Philosophy of Rhetoric ed., Lloyd F. Bitzer (Carbondale and Edwardsville: Southern Illinois Press, 1963): 17-8,76. As well as discussing association Campbell used signs to explain the unfolding of the powers of the mind: 'It is by means of signs that the human mind proceeds fiom particular perceptions to general truths. Thus we come not only to communicate by signs but to think by them as well." Philosophy of Rhetoric: 260. In a letter to Hum,Reid remarked that Hume's associationist philosophy was discussed regularly by the Aberdeen Philosophical Society: "A little Philosophical Society here of which alI the three are members, [George CarnpbeU, Alexander Genard, John Gregory] is much indebted to you for its entertainment-ifyo you write no more in morals, politicks or miitaphysics, I am afraid we shall be at a loss for subjects." For Reid's letter to Hume see: J.Y.T- Grieg, Tite Letters of David Hume, 2 vols. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1932): 1: 376-

" Alexander Gerard, An &say on Genius ed., Bernhard Fabian (Miinchen: Wilhelm Fik Verlag, 1966). Although An Essay on Genius was not published until 1774, Gerrard presented its contents to the Aberdeen Philosophical Society in nine dissertations on the topics of association and genius between 1764 and 1772- Ulman, Minutes of the A-P-S-: Table A-4- Discussions-

56 Gerard, Essay on Genius: 40.65.

In addition to the associationist principles used by Gerrard. Dunbar could have been influenced by those of Hume, one of which was a principle of "analogy". Hume identified analogy as a source of "unphilosophical probability-" Hume wrote: "From this principle I have accounted for that species of probability, deriv'd from analogy, where we transfer our experience in past instances to objects which are resembling, but ace not exactly the same with those concerning which we have had experience-" Hume, Treatise: (1 -3.13.)

58 Gerard, Essay on Genius: 1234

Dunbar was here quoting from Smith's Considerations: 239.

In addition to considering Latin and ancient Greek, Monboddo drew on the languages of the Huron, Galibe, Caribee, AIgonkins, Garani (Paraguans), Albinaquois, Brazilians, various and Gothic peoples. Of these only the Huron, Galibi and Caribee had dictionaries or grammars which Monboddo read. He had learned of the others through travel reports. James Burnett, (Lord Monboddo) Ofthe Origh and Progress of hnguage vol- I, (Menston: Scolar Press, 1967): Chaps- 8-1 1- Further references to this work will be made parenthetically in the text as (Monboddo OPL, volume: page)-

61 Stating the empirical aspect of his approach to explaining the origin of language, Monboddo wrote: "Not that I pretend to have discovered a priori, and from speculation merely, what I am to deliver upon this subject; for as I should have known nothing of the original state of man, without having studied the mcurners of barbarous nations; so I should have been equally ignorant of the origin and progress of language, if I had not studied the hnguage of barbarous nations." OPL 1: 348-

62 Monboddo criticized those (such as Smith) who predominantly referred to ancient Greek and Latin to the neglect of New World languages in their explanations of the origin of language. OPL 1: 333,

In a letter written to Richard Rice (15 Sept, 1780) Monboddo mentioned the metaphysical astuteness of the Cambridge Platonist, Ralph Cudworth, and then stated: "As to Plato, he was certainly a great genius, and Philosopher truly Divine," In another letter written to Samuel Horsley (1 1 Dec, 1780) Monboddo again showed his predilection for ancient and Platonic philosophy: "I think that there is in the philosophy of Plato something more noble, and truly divine, than is to be found in the philosophy of Aristotle; and particularly in the doctrine of Ideas." William Knight, Lord Monboddo and Some of His Contemporaries (London: John Murray, 1900): 125, 138.

64 Monboddo highlighted his intent not to contradict the divine account of the origin of language found in Plato's Cratyfusand the ''sacred books" of the Christian religion, To proceed with his secular explanation he noted the flood described in the Bible and "the great calamities" that had "befallen the human race" throughout history, and then remarked that "we have no warrant to believe, that another miracle would be wrought, and that language would be again revealed." Accordingly, after such disasters it must have deveIoped out of nature, In addition he remarked aat "as a philosopher and grammarian" it was unfitting for him "to inquire whether such account [divine] is to be understood alIegorically, or literally" (Monboddo OPL, 1 : 192-4)-

6s E. L. Cloyd, James Bunett, Lord MonboaVo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1972): 13- Monboddo and Harris conducted a Iengthy correspondence that was in large part filled with criticisms of Locke, Berkeley and especially David Hurne. This correspondence is collected in William Knight, Lord Monbo* and some of his Contemporaries (London: John Murray, 1900).

66 James Harris, Hems 1751 (Menston England: The Scolar Press, 1968): i.

" Of the source for this view, Monboddo wrote: ''This doctrine was fust advanced by Dr Berkeley, Bishop of Cloyne, and afterwards supported, and much enlarged upon, by a later philosopher, [Hurne] in a work intitled, A Treatise of Human Nature." OPL, 1: 1 1 1 -

For Monboddo on Plato. OPL, 1: 102-3;on Locke. OPL, 1: 37-40; on Berkeley and Hume, OPL, 1: 78,111-115.

Harris, Hems: 3567.

7L Monboddo claimed that man's "natural state is no other than that of the mere animal? OPL 1: 291, n Here, and throughout vols. 2-5 of the OPL,Monboddo emphasized this point especially in regard to the superior artistic achievements found among the ancient languages. "As to the much boasted simplicity of the modern languages, the antient are so far simpler than they, as they express the same things by fewer words." OPL 2: 115.

7, This letter is contained in Lord Teignmouth's Memoirs of the Lif, Wrirings and Correspondence of Sir William Jones in The Collected Works of Sir William Jones 13 vals., (Ikw York: New York University Press. 1993): 2: 168. AIl other references to Jones' writings will be made parenthetically in the text as (Jones Works, volume: page). - 74 In a chapter titled "Sir Wdliam Jones and the New Philology", Hans Aarsleff stated: "It is universally agreed that the decisive turn in language study occurred when the philosophical, a prioi method of the eighteenth century was abandoned in favor of the historical, a posteriori method of the nineteenth,, .This method was first introduced, clearly explained, and fully argued by Sir William Jones," Hans Aarsleff, me Study of Language in England, 1780ua1860 (Minneapolis: University of Mi-nnesotaPress, 1983): 127,

75 Jones thought of particular languages as being members of linguistic families. Jones, Work3: 34,

" In "The FiAnniversary Discourse" (1788) Jones acknowledged that he would often be required to speculate where strong evidence was unavailable: "To what conclusions these inquiries [into the history of Asian languages] will lead, I cannot yet clearly discern; but, if they lead to truth, we shall not regret our journey through this dark region of ancient history, in which, while we proceed step by step, and follow every glimmering of certain light, that presents itself, we must beware of those false cays and Iuminous vaporous." Jones, Works: 3: 102.

" In the third pact of the Elements of the Philosophy of the Hunuzn Mind (1826)- Stewart remarked: "In the hope of guarding my younger readers against lending too easy a faith to the seducing theories of etymologists, I shall subjoin the sober opinion of a writer, who, of all our contemporaries, was best entitled, from his own unpdleied acquisitions, to form a competent judgment on this subject; - I need scarcely say that I allude to Sir William Jones-" Stewart, Works: 4: 66.

" Hans Aarsleff has argued that the wide esteem Tooke received for his Diversions of Purley 2 vois., (1798, 1805) "is one of the most remarkable phenomena in the intellectual and scholarly lie of EngIand during the fmt third of the nineteenth century-" For a full discussion of Tooke's influence and reputation see: Aarsleff, Study of Language in England: chapter 3.

79 Tooke, Diversions of Purley 1: 21. All further references to this work will be made parenthetically in the text as mkeDiversions, volume: page).

" See Chapter I above for this tendency in LockersEssay.

" Aarsleff has examined Tooke's copy of Locke's Essay and noted that in relation to the communicative aspect of abbreviation Tooke underlined a passage from Locke, Essay: 3.6.32, which read: '%ut Men, in making their general Ideas, seeking more the convenience of Language and quick dispatch, by short and comprehensive signs, than the true and precise Nature of Things-" AarsIeff, Study of Language in England: 51. In Diversions Tooke made this point explicitly when he wrote: "I consider the whole of Mr, Locke's Essay as a philosophical account of the Fitsort of abbreviations." Diversions: 1: 30.

"Tooke remarked that it is 'hot ideas, but merely terms, which are general and abstract." Tooke, Diversions: 1: 37. " As Tooke believed that the pursuit of the mental principles responsible for the invention of the different parts of speech seemed to 'oe a mistaken enterprise, he was able to assert confidently that even though philosophic truth "has been improperly imagined at the bottom of a well: it lies much nearer the surface; though buried indeed at present under mountains of learned rubbish." Tooke, Diversions: 1: 10-1 1,

"Tooke held that etymology. which operates ''like a microscope,. .. is sometimes useful to discover the minuter parts of language which would otherwise escape our sight," Diversions: 1: 53 1,

85 Aarsleff, The Study of Language in England: 102, Stewart discussed Tooke's Lener to Mr. Dunning in Works 4: 35-38,

86 For Locke's notion of an 'abstract idea" see: Chapter I above.

87 Thomas Reid, Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785) in Works I: 406-7.

" Stewart included Reid among those who were mistaken on this point "Even Dr. Reid himself, cautious as he is in general, with respect to the ground on which he is to build, has repeatedly appealed to this maxim, without any qualification whatsoever; and, by thus adopting it, agreeably to its letter, rather than to its spirit, has been led, in various instances, to lay greater stress on the structure of speech, than (in my opinion) it can always bear in a philosophical argument," Stewart, Work5: 154.

89 Stewart remarked that when we attempt to unravel the complex mental operations involved in understanding the meaning of a proposition, "it will be generally found, upon an accurate examination, that the intellectual act, as far as we are able to trace it, is altogether simple, and incapable of analysis; and that the elements into which we flatter ourselves we have resolved it, are nothing more than the grammatical elements of speech;. ..These observations are general, and apply to every case in which language is employed," Stewart, Work5: 156.

* Stewart suggested that 'We effect of words bears some resemblance to the stimulus given to the memory and imagination, by an outline or a shadow, exhibiting the profile of a countenance to the Eye." Stewart, Work5: 154.

91 Stewart gave a more detailed exposition but substantially identical critique of Smith's Considerations in his Elements II, Stewart, Work4: 23-34,

92 An example of the same sort was used by Berkeley to highlight that what for him, would have been an otherwise unimaginable abstract idea, became meaningful when he considered it in the context of "the succession of my mind." Principles: par. 97.

93 The subtitle of this work was .,.Being Chiefly a Retrospecz of Lectures Delivered in the College of Edinburgh- Since Ferguson began giving these lectures in 1764 it is likely that much of what was contained in the published work was thought out and communicated to his students many years before. The Principles contain a section titled "Of the Intercourse and Communication of Animals, and of the Language of Man" in which Ferguson conducted a secular and conjectural treatment of the origin of language, In answer to the question 'Whether speech be natural to man?" he explained: "The use of his voice, in the expression of sentiment or passion, no doubt, is natural, as are dso many other modes of expression by change of colour, looks, and gestures; but that he has d~ciallyextended the catalogue of signs, no one can doubt, especially in distinguishing sounds by articulation, and in multiplying words to express the indefinite variety of things, of thoughts, sentiments, and intentions." His general view was that with regard to the origin and development of language: "Mind, or the principle of life in man, is competent to this effect." Adam Ferguson, Pn'nciples of Moral and Political Science (Edinburgh: 1792): 37-47,

94 Ferguson, Principles: 43-

95 Friedrich Schkgel, On the Lmrguage and Wisdom of the Indiansl in Aesthetic and Miscellaneous Works, trans. E. JMiIIington (London: 1900): 464,

% James H,Stam. Inquiries Into the Origin of Language: the Fate of a Question (New York: Harper & Row, 1976): 218-

" Schlegel, Language and Wisdom: 439.

98 Stamrn, Inquiries into the Origin of hguage: 224. Aarsleff waned that the nature of Bopp's importance should not be overestimated: "The typical nineteenth-century version of science and its history.. .is the view that makes it possible to accept the absurd belief, doctrinal in the history of linguistics, that with Bopp and a few Gemsthe study of language, at a stroke, became 'scientific*. ..The postulate that the study of language became 'scientific' with Bopp is equivalent to saying that there is no history of science before Newton or whomever one may choose as god." Aarsleff, From Loeke to Saussure: 3 12.

99 Bopp has been quoted from: Stam, Inquiries into the Origin of language: 224.

LOO Auguste Comte, System of Positive Polity (185 1-54), trans, Frederic Harrison (New York: Burt Franklin, 1966): 189,217,

101 Stam asserted that although few linguists and philosopher gave the origin of language much serious thought by the middle of the eighteenth century, "there was, from a sheerly quantitative standpoint, probably no period when more was written about it. Stamrn, Inquin'es into the Origin of Language: 243. Aarsleff has suggested that in Victorian England at least, the assault on Christianity wrought by such pubhcations as Sir CharIes Lyell's Principle of Geology aad Darwin's Origin of Species (1859 occasioned a new interest in the origin of language. For Christian apologists, language and its origins were "invoked as the necessary intervention of divine power." Aarsleff, Lock to Saussure: 290.

Irn"Statuts," Bulletin de &a Socie'te' de linguistique de Pa& I (1 87 1): iii, quoted in Stamm, Inquiries Into the Origin of Lunguage: 255. - Irn Alexander l. Ellis, "Second Annual Address of the President of the Philologicd Society, Delivered at the Anniversary Meeting*Friday 16~May. 1873" in Transactions of the Philological Sociery (1873): 25 1-2- Conclusion

The conjectural histories of language offered by the men of the Scottish

Enlightenment should be understood as efforts to comprehend human nature by inquiring into the origins of one of man's most characteristic attributes. The institutional natum of language led the Scots philosophers to approach language fkom a historical perspective, rather than the merely genetic method pursued by purely analytical commentators on the operations of the mind. The historical approach allowed them to draw on a wide conceptual framework that brought environmental, social and temporal contexts to bear on the science of human nature. To understand the function and significance of a mental operation, they attempted to watch it come into being by examining its corresponding linguistic development. The science of human nature could then benefit from a historical as well as an introspective procedure.

All of the Scots conjectural histories of language were premised on

Locke's central semantic thesis that words signify the ideas of the mind- For the analytical philosopher this meant that he could observe the operations of the mind by attending to the words used in the expression of its thoughts. He could discern the mental operations involved in the thoughts of someone existing far away or long ago by analyzing the record of his speech. This suggested that the history of the parts of speech was also a history of the emergence of the operations of the human mind. Condillac, Rousseau, Smith, Dunbar, Monboddo and Reid alI assumed Locke's semantic thesis and used it as the basis on which to conjecture 129 about the order in which man developed his mental faculties. The conjectural history of Language could be considered the conjectural history of mind, and thus it held the prospect of making important discoveries about human nature. Dugald

Stewart understood the importance of Locke's semantic thesis for Scots philosophers' conjectural histories of languages. When he cautioned that language did not mirror the mind's operations as closely as most of his contemporaries assumed, it had the effect of calling the entire project of a philosophical history of language into question. Without Locke's semantic thesis, the history of language became either philology or etymology, with little to offer the philosopher concerned with the science of human nature.

While none of the Scottish conjectural historians of language accepted

Locke's epistemology fully, every one assumed some version of his dictum that all knowledge related to the mind of man and to experience. An emphasis on observation and introspection led the Scots to adopt a secular approach to philosophical and historical studies. All of the Scots philosophers mentioned in chapter 3, (Blair, Beattie and Kames exchded) tacitly agreed with Condillac 's statement that conjectd histories should not employ the "extraordinary means" of postulating an act of divine intervention to explain the origin of language. The inadmissibility of divine or 'Adamic* hypotheses was a consequence of the widespread adoption of an empirical fi.ame of mind that in any of its several forms could be traced back to Locke's Essay. Wenone of Smith, Reid or Dunbar agreed on the specific lessons to be learned from the conjectural history of language, aIl three concumd on the value of such inquiries for an empirical understanding of the human mind.

Even though Scots philosophers became more secular in their epistemology and methodology as the eighteenth centwy progressed, they did not break with the systematic mode of thinking.' Each speculated about the origin of language within the context of his larger philosophical system or intellectual purpose. The organizing principles of these larger concerns often directed their conjectures. Blackwell's conjectures lent support to his aesthetic preference for ancient epic poetry over modem. Reid's explanation of the origin of language flowed out of his philosophy of Common Sense. He was able to avoid being stumped by Rousseau's conundrums by assuming that men were social and that the mind was originally endowed with principles that formed and grasped the meaning of natural signs. Monboddo's conjectures about the origin of language could only begin after he had devoted several chapters to establishing his Platonic philosophy of mind. With that established he could assert that the mind's ability to form general ideas was a necessary pre-condition of its ability to invent articulate speech. Stewart's criticism of the conjectural enterprise stemmed from the understanding of the mind that he derived from Reid, and his conviction that phiIosophica1 systems which put more emphasis on words than ideas tended to materialism.

As well as satisfying their secular philosophical program, their conjectural histories of language placed the Scots philosophers within an international intellectual context. In their conjecturaL histories of language, the Scots philosophers showed themselves to be well acquainted with the most advanced 13 1 linguistic speculations that French writers could offer in the period between L740 and 1760. While the empirical philosophies of hke,Berkeley and Hume were

the decisive in£luences in determining the epistemological preoccupations that set the Scots conjecturing about the history of language, the writings of Condiuac and

Rousseau showed them how to make such conjectures fruitfid. References to

CondiUac and especially to Rousseau turn up repeatedly in the Scottish literature on the origin of language- Where they were not cited directly, the problems that

Condillac and Rousseau had set the conjechud historian of language often formed the central themes mund which the Scots philosophers organized their own theories. The textual as well as conceptual evidence for the influence of French thinkers on the Scottish conjectural histories of language can be seen as an indication that these two groups were part of what couid be termed an

Enlightenment This family shared an ambitious and loose philosophical program that included empiricism and secularism among its general tenets.

When attempting to establish the internal geographical context of Scottish conjectural histories of language, Peter Gay's farnilial metaphor is again useful.

The conjectural history of language was written about and discussed in each of eighteenth century Scotland's three main cities. Smith lectured on the origin of language while in Glasgow up to 1761. Reid developed his conjectural notions about the origin of language while a member of the Aberdeen Philosophical

Society in Aberdeen, and then published them in An hquiry Into the Himan Mind on the Princip1e.c of Common Sense in the same year he moved to Glasgow, 1764.

In and around Edinburgh, the cmjectural history of language was discussed and 132 contemplated by Adam Smith, Lord Monboddo, Lord Kames, Adam Ferguson, and Dugdd Stewart. Among Aberdeen residents, Thomas Reid, James Dunbar,

George Campbell, Hugh Blair, Alexander Gerard and David Skene, wrote or spoke about the conjectural history of language. Finally, at St. hdrews Robert

Watson delivered lectures that contained speculations on the origin of language some time after 1756: The conjectural approach to the study of language, with its empirical and secular presuppositions, found willing practitioners in all the major centers of Scotland, Given these facts, Nicholas Phillipson's statement that "there is an important sense in which the history of the Scottish enlightenment is the history of ~dinbur~h,~would seem to be an oversimpiification of the geographic distribution of the intellectual efforts of Scottish Enlightenment. After the late

17403, the conjectural history of language was the topic of lectures and publications in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdtxn, indicating that some in each of these cities shared an element of the enlightenment mentality that was necessary for the pursuit of these secular projects.

The List of names engaged in these often sophisticated historical and mezaphysical speculations would seem to challenge Hugh Trevor-Roper's wrd

Dacre's] narrow conception of who counted as participants in the Scottish

Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper judged Francis Hutcheson, David Hume, Adam

Ferguson, William Robertson, Adam Smith, and John Millar, as the "real intellectual pioneers" of the Scottish Enlightenment. In his view, men such as

"Stewart and Beatty and Reid and Hamilton" were merely "camp-followers" and did not warrant the historian's or philosopher's attention.' John Robertson, with 133 some qualifications, agreed with his teacher, Trevor-Roper, in dividing the men of the Scottish Enlightenment into pioneers and camp-foIIowers- Robertson conceded that the lesser-known philosophers contributed to "the enIightening of

Scotland," but only the pioneers made up &'theScottish ~nli~htenment-"~Based on these distinctions, Robertson recommended that only the pioneers should "be considered in the broader setting of European thought arid experience.'"

The notion that only Hume, Ferguson, Robertson, Smith and Millar were original thinkers and are worthy of serious historical and philosophical study needs to be corrected. Blackwell wrote a sort of conjectwal history of national customs and manners over a decade before Montesquieu published his immensely influential Spirit of the Laws (1748). More important for the Enlightenment understanding of language, the common sense perspective that Reid brought to this topic, with its emphasis on context, was original, and led to an observation of the kind that W.V. Quiw has called one of empiricism's '%um[s] for the better."

The contextual definition of terms advocated by Reid and Stewart was of a sort that, in Quine's words: "precipitated a revolution in semantics" so that "the primary vehicle of meaning is seen no longer as the word but as the sentence.. .Terms. Iike grammatical particIes. mean by contributing to the meaning of the sentences that contain them."' The originality of Reid's views surely warrants the close attention of modem philosophers and historians, His close comection with the Aberdeen Philosophical Society indicates that serious study of his lesser-known but energetic fellow Aberdonians could also be fruitful.

When their works are given adequate attention, it becomes clear that even lesser 134 known but original thinkers like James Dunbar and Lord Monboddo were influenced by the ideas of Condillac and Rousseau. Nearly all the Scots philosophers should be seen as contributing to the general enlightenment project of establishing a secular science of hwnan nature. For the philosophers of Pan's and London, and of Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen, the conjectural history of language held the prospect of uncovering the origin of society and the nature of man. Endnotes

1Roger Emerson, "The religious, the secular and the worldly; Scotland 1680-1800" in- Religion, Secularimtion and Political Thought ed, James E-Crirnmins, (New York: RoutIedge 1989): 80. z This term is borrowed fiom Peter Gay who used to it to group the "coalition of cultural critics, religious skeptics, and political reformers from Edinburgh to Naples, Paris to Berlin, Boston to Philadelphia" Peter Gay, The Enlightenment: An Interpretation, The Rise of Modem Paganism (New Yo&- Viitage Books, 1968): 34-

3 Wilbur Samuel Howell, Eighi-eenth-Century British Logic and Rhetoric, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I97 1): 544-

4. Nicholas PhiUipson, "The Problem of the Scottish Enlightenment" in City and Society in the Eighteenth Century ed., Paui Fritz (Toronto: Hakkert, 1973): 125.

" Hugh Trevor-Roper, "The Scottish Enlightenment9' in Studies on Voltaire ond the eighteenth century, 58 (1967): 1639. For Robertson's similar interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment see: John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia hue (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers, 1985): chapter I

6 John Robertson, The Scottish Enlightenment and the Militia Issue (Edinburgh: John Donald Publishers. 1985): 17.

7 Roberston, Militia Issue: 17 .

8 W.V. Quine, "Five Milestones of Empiricism," in Theories and Things (Cambridge Mass.: Harvard University Press, 198 1): 67-9. Without giving any references to support his claim, Quine attributes the first record of this observation to Jeremy Bentham's Theory of Fictions." While Bentham's theory of fictions, involving pariphrasis. did stress the importance of context for understanding the meaning of a term, he did not begin to write on this topic until 1814-15. C.K. Ogden, Bentham's Theory of Fictions, (London: Kegan Pual, Trench, Trubner, 1932): '?ntroductiori'~: xxxii-xxxiii, For Bentham's own explanation of "pariphrasis" see: Ogden, Theory of Fictions: 86-89. Reid's reflections on the importance of context for the understanding of tenns were compiete by 1785, the year he published his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man. See above Chapter 3. Bibliography

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