Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/164

152 H. STEINTHAL'S ABRISS DER SPRACHWISSENSCHAFT, i. " Thus stated, as the suggested analogy required, the question contains the important apprehension as regards the essence and origin of language that speaking rests upon understanding, that it is in itself understanding of one's own sound, that mutual comprehension is the creative act, the source of language. To speak is essentially and before all to understand oneself, to hear one's perception or desire from one's own sound. But since the percept, the subject-matter, understood from the sound is already consciousness, the beginning of language is the germ of self-consciousness. It is true there is not yet a self-conscious subject, but there stands some- thing subjective as object in consciousness." The link connecting sound and percept is feeling. That is to say, in so far as it is a reflex, there is attached to every simple, as to each more compound, sound-form a feeling which stands related to the feeling which is given with the reflected perception of the object. And this leads our author to accept as the basis of language onomatopoeia, which he defines as follows : " Onomatopoeia is a certain likeness existing between the sound and the percept indicated by it. Only the thought that it is an intentional sound- painting must be put on one side or not be allowed to arise. We must never lose sight of the fact that it is a reflex, first of feeling, then mediately of perception, and finally, by means of this, also of the object ; it is there- fore a reflex of the effect of the object upon the subject. The influence of the object upon the subject is in the sound, sent back from the subject outwards. So that onomatopoeia may also be sound-imitation, if it is the reflex of sound-waves which impinge upon consciousness." The onomatopoetic feeling never dies out : it is a psycho- physical fact. No sensation carries with it so great an amount of feeling as that of hearing. Sight is nothing like so emotionally powerful. There are impure colours, and unharmonious colours : they are unpleasant. But only noises and discords are really painful. The ear is adapted to take in excitations which occur together as one total impression and to refer to each other those which follow in the sequence of time and thus to form an ideal whole. In so far as it abolishes space and time, the ear is more ideal than the eye. Hence, when Lazar Geiger says against the present theory : " Language has sprung not from the ear, from sound, but from the eye and light. It was not the lowing animal which, demanding a name, went forth to meet the man of early days ; but the world with its riches reveals itself in forms and colours to the soul which is gradually maturing to apprehend its beauty." We may answer : the two phenomena are not excluding anti- theses, nay, from the very evidence of language itself we find facts of sight and facts of sound named from the same onoma- topoetic root. For instance, from Jb'l we get bloom (Blume), Ixirk (0Xoi-o's), blood, and flow, flood (fluctus), fetus, 0e'w>?, <fioifffiuv, etc. Similarly in Hebrew JsaRak means both to shim- and to laugli. And it is not only or indeed so much in single words as in