Cymro a'r Celt Llundain

THE IMPORTANCE OF NATIONAL LANGUAGES PSYCHOLOGICALLY CONSIDERED. At the present day, when the status of the national language of Ireland in the new Universities is the subject of such heated controversy, it may be interesting to consider for a moment the general significance and importance of national language. Language fulfils two important functions. In the first place, it is necessary (in fact almost indispensable) to the individual thinker in ordering and developing his thoughts about any particular subject. Thought is impossible save through concep- tions or notions. It is by means of such notions that the "manifold of sense" is classified and ordered, and assumes sufficient stability to make its manipulation by thought feasible. Things continually change, but these notions, through which they are thought, are, for practical purposes and within certain limits, unchanging; and hence thought assumes a generality which is altogether impossible on lower planes of mental action as e.g. in sense perception. In other words, notions (which may be con- sidered as the language of the mind) are indispensable to the higher grades of mental action known as thought. But if notions are indispensable to thought, language, in the ordinary sense, is almost equally indispensable to notions Almost all advance in knowledge involves the formation of new conceptions. These are, at first, necessarily vague and indeterminate. They gradually become more and more determined; but it is only when they become wedded to terms that they acquire the crisp and accu- rate determinateness of scientific notions. Such notions, or the terms that represent them, become strongholds on the frontiers of knowledge. Secondly, language serves, and is abso- lutely necessary, for the transmission of thought from one person to another. Such transmission of thought may take place between two persons viva voce, or, by the symbolical representations of written lan- guage, a person may communicate his thoughts, not only to persons hic et nunc, but also to persons most remote both as regards time and space. This power of overcoming temporal limits constitutes the great superi- ority of written language. Bearing in mind the above remarks, which apply to language in general, or in other words, to every language, we may see (1) how differences in particular languages arise, and (2) that the characteristics of any language are relative to the characteristics of the people by whom it is and has been spoken. There are certain notions, which, from the nature of the case, are common to almost all languages. Broadly speaking, notions referring to things of sensible ex- perience are common to and identical in the languages of all people who experience these things—e.g. there is a term representative of the conception corresponding to horse in the language of every country where horses are to be found. But, when we leave the world of sense and deal with things above and beyond the realm of sensible experience, we find no such agreement. In this most im- portant realm (the region of Art, Ethics, Religion, &c.), we find an infinite diversity of conceptions as varied as are the different characteristics, temperament and degree of culture of the people by whom they are entertained. A language is no arbitrary set of symbols rather, it is the representation, the accumulated mass, of the wisdom, culture and experience of the people by whom it has been made what it is. The history of a language is the history of the spirit of a people gradually and laboriously realising itself. Every new advance in knowledge involves new conceptions or the greater and more accurate determination of old ones. Every onward struggle towards greater culture involves a similar conceptional advance. But nowhere is this so true as in the region of Art, Morals, and Religion. Here the material and sensible grounds of the determination of our notions are almost entirely lacking, and we are driven to account for differences chiefly on subjective grounds; though these are, undoubtedly, in their turn objectively determined as e.g. by climate, methods of livelihood, etc. The latter consideration does not affect the main argument that the mental stock-in-trade, the conceptional asset of a people, are the reflex of the mental life and character of the people. Now, the language of each people is gradu- ally made to represent this mental life. Through many ages, they act and re act upon one another. They must both be considered as living, growing, organisms rather than static completed entities. This microcosmic mental growth, which continually and eternally struggles to express, more and more accurately, the macrocosm to which it is opposed, is attended by a parallel growth in the language which exhibits an ever- growing tendency to adapt itself as a more fitting instrument for the expression of this mental life. We are now in a position to see what the adoption of a people's language really in- volves. I have above referred to the accu- mulated conceptional mass of a people as its mental stock-in-trade. When a child is born into the community, the first years of his life are spent in endeavouring to assimi- late this mass of latent knowledge to be found in the language and literature of the people. In all education we try to place the student abreast of his time. The majority never reach this stage: some of the well- educated do; whilst a few forge their way ahead and open up new fields of study- but, generally speaking, there is a continual advance both as regards the top-water mark and also as regards the average standard attained. This constitutes the great advan- tage of being born into a civilised and educated community: there is a great amount of latent knowledge to be assimilated and hence, standing on the shoulders of our ancestors, we can start our mental flight from a higher platform, and consequently may be expected to rise to greater heights. Now, the mental lives of two distinct peoples are quite as different as the personal lives of two individual men, and a person cannot become the heir of one by taking over the stock-in-trade of the other-as well might the son of a cobbler try to continue in his father's footsteps by taking over and working the stock-in-trade of his neighbour a weaver. The languages of different peoples are the outcome and reflex of the mental lives of these peoples. They are what they are, because the peoples, by whom they were developed, were what they were. The principle is implicitly relied upon in modern research into the customs and degree of civilisation of ancient peoples. Here language is the chief, sometimes indeed the only, guide. By means of its habitual con- ceptions, inflection, &c., we gain sufficient insight to render a reconstruction, not only of the mental life, but even of the physical life of the people possible. The exhaustive philosophical terminology to be found in the German language is a safe index to the high standard which the study of Philosophy has attained amongst the meditative people of Germany; just as the precise legal termin- ology of the Roman language reflects the mind of a people who built up the science of law to such a pitch of perfection. If, now, the people of any country re- linquishes the language of its fathers and adopts the language of another people, it thereby cuts itself off from its natural in- heritance and becomes the heir of the people, whose language it has adopted, to a far greater extent than it can be said to be the heir of its lineal (physical) ancestors. It will, undoubtedly, in the course of time, again mould this foreign language so as to make it a fit mode for the expression of its mentality, but the progress is slow. It suffers the ordinary effects of transplanta- tion its mental growth is arrested and may be permanently retarded. SEAGHAN UA BROIN.