Lectures on Language, as Particularly Connected with English Grammar.

In the attempted destruction of the royal family and parliament of England, by what is usually called the "gunpowder plot," the arrangements were all made; two hogsheads and thirty-six barrels of powder, sufficient to blow up the house of lords and the surrounding buildings, were secreted in a vault beneath it, strown over with faggots. Guy Fawkes, a spanish officer, employed for the purpose, lay at the door, on the 5th of November, 1605, with the matches, or means, in his pocket, which should set in operation the prodigious dormant power, which would hurl to destruction James I., the royal family, and the protestant parliament, give the ascendancy to the Catholics, and change the whole political condition of the nation. The project was discovered, the means were removed, the cause taken away, and the threatened effects were prevented.

The cause of action is the immediate subject which precedes or tends to produce the action, without which it would not take place. It may result from volition, inherent tendency, or communicated impulse; and is known to exist from the effects produced by it, in the altered or new condition of the thing on which it operates; which change would not have been effected without it.

Causes are to be sought for by tracing back thro the effects which are produced by them. The factory is put in operation, and the cloth is manufactured. The careless observer would enter the building and see the spindles, looms, and wheels operated by the hands, and go away satisfied that he has seen enough, seen all. But the more careful will look farther. He will trace each band and wheel, each cog and shaft, down by the balance power, to the water race and floom; or thro the complicated machinery of the steam engine to the piston, condenser, water, wood, and fire; marking a new, more secret, and yet more efficient cause at each advancing step. But all this curiously wrought machinery is not the product of chance, operated without care. A superior cause must be sought in human skill, in the deep and active ingenuity of man. Every contrivance presupposes a contriver. Hence there must have been a power and means sufficient to combine and regulate the power of the water, or generate and direct the steam. That power is vested in man; and hence, man stands as the cause, in relation to the whole process operated by wheels, bands, spindles, and looms. Yet we may say, with propriety, that the water, or the steam; the water-wheel, or the piston; the shafts, bands, cogs, pullies, spindles, springs, treddles, harnesses, reeds, shuttles, an almost endless concatenation of instruments, are alike the causes, which tend to produce the final result; for let one of these intermediate causes be removed, and the whole power will be diverted, and all will go wrong—the effect will not be produced.

There must be a first cause to set in operation all inferior ones in the production of action; and to that first cause all action, nay, the existence of all other causes, may be traced, directly, or more distant. The intervening causes, in the consecutive order of things, may be as diversified as the links in the chain of variant beings. Yet all these causes are moved by the all-sufficient and ever present agency of the Almighty Father, the Uncaused Cause of all things and beings; who spoke into existence the universe with all its various and complicated parts and orders; who set the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament, gave the earth a place, and fixed the sea a bed; throwing around them barriers over which they can never pass. From the height of his eternal throne, his eye pervades all his works; from the tall archangel, that "adores and burns," down to the very hairs of our heads, which are all numbered, his wise, benevolent, and powerful supervision may be traced in legible lines, which may be seen and read of all men. And from effects, the most diminutive in character, may be traced back, from cause to cause, upward in the ascending scale of being, to the same unrivalled Source of all power, splendor, and perfection, the presence of Him, who spake, and it was done; who commanded, and it stood still; or, as the poet has it:

 
"Look thro nature up to nature's God."
 

The means of action are those aids which are displayed as the medium thro which existing causes are to exhibit their hidden powers in producing changes or effects. The matches in the pocket of Guy Fawkes were the direct means by which he intended to set in operation a train of causes which should terminate in the destruction of the house of lords and all its inmates. Those matches, set on fire, would convey a spark to the faggots, and thence to the powder, and means after means, and cause after cause, in the rapid succession of events, would ensue, tending to a final, inevitable, and melancholy result.

A ball shot from a cannon, receives its first impulse from the powder; but it is borne thro the air by the aid of a principle inherent in itself, which power is finally overcome by the density of the atmosphere which impedes its progress, and the law of gravitation finally attracts it to the earth. These contending principles may be known by observing the curved line in which the ball moves from the cannon's mouth to the spot where it rests. But if there is no power in the ball, why does not the ball of cork discharged from the same gun with the same momentum, travel to the same distance, at the same rate? The action commences in both cases with the same projectile force, the same exterior means are employed, but the results are widely different. The cause of this difference must be sought for in the comparative power of each substance to continue its own movements.

Every boy who has played at ball has observed these principles. He throws his ball, which, if not counteracted, will continue in a straight line, ad infinitum—without end. But the air impedes its progress, and gravitation brings it to the ground. When he throws it against a hard substance, its velocity is not only overcome, but it is sent back with great force. But if he takes a ball of wax, of snow, or any strong adhesive substance, it will not bound. How shall we account to him for this difference? He did the same with both balls. The impetus given the one was as great as the other, and the resistance of the intervening substance was as great in one case as the other; and yet, one bounds and rebounds, while the other sticks fast as a friend, to the first object it meets. The cause of this difference is to be sought for in the different capabilities of the respective balls. One possesses a strong elastic and repelling power; in the other, the attraction of cohesion is predominant.

Take another example. Let two substances of equal size and form, the one made of lead, the other of cork, be put upon the surface of a cistern of water. The external circumstances are the same, but the effects are widely different—one sinks, the other floats. We must look for the cause of this difference, not in the opposite qualities of surrounding matter, but in the things themselves. If you add to the cork another quality possessed by the lead, and give it the same form, size, and weight, it will as readily sink to the bottom. But this last property is possessed in different degrees by the two bodies, and hence, while the one floats upon the water, the other displaces its particles and sinks to the bottom. You may take another substance; say the mountain ebony, which is heavier than water, but lighter than lead, and immerse it in the water; it will not sink with the rapidity of lead, because its inherent power is not so strong.

Take still another case. Let two balls, suspended on strings, be equally, or, to use the technical term, positively electrified. Bring them within a certain distance, and they will repel each other. Let the electric fluid be extracted from one, and the other will attract it. Before, they were as enemies; now they embrace as friends. The magnet furnishes the most striking proof in favor of the theory we are laboring to establish. Let one of sufficient power be let down within the proper distance, it will overcome the power of gravitation, and attract the heavy steel to itself. What is the cause of this wonderful fact? Who can account for it? Who can trace out the hidden cause; the "primum mobile" of the Ptolmaic philosophy—the secret spring of motion? But who will dare deny that such effects do exist, and that they are produced by an efficient cause? Or who will descend into the still more dark and perplexing mazes of neuter verb grammars, and deny that matter has such a power to act?

These instances will suffice to show you what we mean when we say, every thing acts according to the ability God has given it to act. I might go into a more minute examination of the properties of matter, affinity, hardness, weight, size, color, form, mobility, &c., which even old grammars will allow it to possess; but I shall leave that work for you to perform at your leisure.

Whoever has any doubts remaining in reference to the abilities of all things to produce, continue, or prevent motion, will do well to consult the prince of philosophers, Sir Isaac Newton, who, after Gallileo, has treated largely upon the laws of motion. He asserts as a fact, full in illustration of the principles I am laboring to establish, that in ascending a hill, the trace rope pulls the horse back as much as he draws that forward, only the horse overcomes the resistance of the load, and moves it up the hill. On the old systems, no power would be requisite to move the load, for it could oppose no resistance to the horse; and the small child could move it with as much ease as the strong team.

Who has not an acquaintance sufficiently extensive to know these things? I can not believe there is a person present, who does not fully comprehend my meaning, and discover the correctness of the ground I have assumed. And it should be borne in mind, that no collection or arrangement of words can be composed into a sentence, which do not obtain their meaning from a connection of things as they exist and operate in the material and intellectual world, and that it is not in the power of man to frame a sentence, to think or speak, but in conformity with these general and exceptionless laws.

This important consideration meets us at every advancing step, as if to admonish us to abandon the vain project of seeking a knowledge of language without an acquaintance with the great principles on which it depends. To look for the leading rules of speech in set forms of expression, or in the capricious customs of any nation, however learned, is as futile as to attempt to gain a knowledge of the world by shutting ourselves up in a room, and looking at paintings and drawings which may be furnished by those who know as little of it as we do. How fallacious would be the attempt, how much worse than time thrown away, for the parent to shut up his child in a lonely room, and undertake to impress upon its mind a knowledge of man, beasts, birds, fish, insects, rivers, mountains, fields, flowers, houses, cities, &c., with no other aid than a few miserable pictures, unlike the reality, and in many respects contradictory to each other. And yet that would be adopting a course very similar to the one long employed as the only means of acquiring a knowledge of language; limited to a set of arbitrary, false, and contradictory rules, which the brightest geniuses could never understand, nor the most erudite employ in the expression of ideas. The grammars, it was thought, must be studied to acquire the use of language, and yet they were forgotten before such knowledge was put in practice.

A simple remark on the principles of relative action, and we will pass to the consideration of agents and objects, or the more immediate causes and effects of action.

We go forth at the evening hour and look upon the sun sinking beneath the horizon; we mark the varying hues of light as they appear, and change, and fade away. We see the shades of night approaching, with a gradual pace, till the beautiful landscape on which we had been gazing, the hills and the meadows; the farm house and the cultivated fields, the grove, the orchard, and the garden; the tranquil lake and the babbling brook; the dairy returning home, and the lambkins gambolling beside their dams; all recede from our view, and appear to us no longer. All this is relative action. But so far as language and ideas are concerned, it matters not whether the sun actually sinks behind the hills, or the hills interpose between it and us; whether the landscape recedes from our view, or the shades of night intercept so as to obscure our vision. The habit of thought is the same, and the form of expression must agree with it. We say the sun rises and sets, in reference to the obvious fact, without stopping to inquire whether it really moves or not. Nor is such an inquiry at all necessary, as to matter of fact, for all we mean by such expressions, is, that by some process, immaterial to the case in hand, the sun stands in a new relation to the earth, its altitude is elevated or depressed, and hence the action is strictly relative. For we should remember that rising and setting, up and down, above and below, in reference to the earth, are only relative terms.

We speak and read of the changes of the moon, and we correctly understand each other. But in truth the moon changes no more at one time than at another. The action is purely relative. One day we observe it before the sun, and the next behind it, as we understand these terms. The precise time of the change, when it will appear to us in a different relation to the sun, is computed by astronomers, and set down in our almanacs; but it changes no more at that time than at any other, for like every thing else, it is always changing.

In a case we mentioned in a former lecture, "John looks like or resembles his brother," we have an example of relative action. So in the case of two men travelling the same way, starting together, but advancing at different rates; one, we say, falls behind the other. In this manner of expression, we follow exactly the principles on which we started, and suit our language to our ideas and habits of thinking. By the law of optics things are reflected upon the retina of the eye inversely, that is, upside down; but they are always seen in a proper relation to each other, and if there is any thing wrong in the case, it is overcome by early habit; and so our language accords with things as they are manifested to our understandings.

These examples will serve to illustrate what we mean by relative action, when applied to natural philosophy or the construction of language.

I had intended in this lecture to have treated of the agents and objects of verbs, to prove, in accordance with the first and closest principles of philosophy, that every "cause must have an effect," or, in other words, that every action must terminate on some object, either expressed or necessarily understood; but I am admonished that I have occupied more than my usual quota of time in this lecture already, and hence I shall leave this work for our next.

I will conclude by the relation of an anecdote or two from the life of that wonderful man, Gallileo Gallilei, who was many years professor of mathematics at Padua. Possessed of a strong, reflecting mind, he had early given his attention to the observation of things, their motions, tendencies, and power of resistance, from which he ascended, step by step, to the sublime science of astronomy. Being of an honest and frank, as well as benevolent disposition, he shunned not to state and defend theories at war with the then received opinions. All learning was, at that time, in the hands or under the supervision of the ecclesiastics, who were content to follow blindly the aristotelian philosophy, which, in many respects, was not unlike that still embraced in our neuter verb systems of grammar. There was a sworn hostility against all improvement, or innovation as it was called, in science as well as in theology. The copernican system, to which Gallileo was inclined, if it had not been formally condemned, had been virtually denounced as false, and its advocates heretical. Hence Gallileo never dared openly to defend it, but, piece by piece, under different names, he brought it forth, which, carried out, would establish the heretical system. Dwelling as a light in the midst of surrounding darkness, he cautiously discovered the precious truths revealed to his mind, lest the flood of light should distract and destroy the mental vision, break up the elements of society, let loose the resistless powers of ignorance, prejudice and bigotry, and envelope himself and friends in a common ruin. At length having prepared in a very guarded manner his famous "Dialogues on the Ptolmaic and Copernican Systems," he obtained permission, and ventured to publish it to the world, altho an edict had been promulgated enjoining silence on the subject, and he had been personally instructed "not to believe or teach the motion of the earth in any manner."

By the false representation of his enemies, suspicions were aroused and busily circulated prejudicial to Gallileo. Pope Urban himself, his former friend, became exasperated towards him, and a sentence against him and his books was fulminated by the Cardinals, prohibiting the "sale and vending of the latter, and condemning him to the formal prison of the Holy Office for a period determined at their pleasure." The sentence of the Inquisition was in part couched in these words—"We pronounce, judge, and declare, that you, the said Gallileo, by reason of these things, which have been detailed in the course of this investigation, and which, as above, you have confessed, have rendered yourself vehemently suspected by this Holy Office, of heresy; that is to say, that you believe and hold the false doctrine, and contrary to the Holy and Divine Scriptures, namely, that the sun is the center of the world, and that it does not move from east to west, and that the earth does move, and is not the center of the world; also, that an opinion can be held and supported as probable, after it has been declared, and finally decreed contrary to the Holy Scriptures"—by the Holy See!! "From which," they continue, "it is our pleasure that you be absolved, provided that, first, with a sincere heart, and unfeigned faith, in our presence, you abjure, curse, and detest the said errors and heresies, and every other error and heresy contrary to the Catholic and Apostolic Church of Rome, in the form now shown to you."

After suffering under this anathema some time, Gallileo, by the advice of his friends, consented to make a public abjuration of his former heresies on the laws of motion. Kneeling before the "Most Eminent and Most Reverend Lords Cardinals, General Inquisitors of the universal Christian republic, against heretical depravity, having before his eyes the Holy Gospels," he swears that he always "believed, and now believes, and with the help of God, will in future believe, every article which the Holy Catholic Church of Rome holds, teaches, and preaches"—that he does altogether "abandon the false opinion which maintains that the 'sun is the center of the world, and that the earth is not the center and movable,' that with a sincere heart and unfeigned faith, he abjures, curses, and detests the said errors and heresies, and every other error and sect contrary to the said Holy Church, and that he will never more in future, say or assert any thing verbally, or in writing, which may give rise to similar suspicion." As he arose from his knees, it is said, he whispered to a friend standing near him, "E pur si muove"—it does move, tho.

In our times we are not fated to live under the terrors of the Inquisition; but prejudice, if not as strong in power to execute, has the ability to blind as truly as in other ages, and keep us from the knowledge and adoption of practical improvements. And it is the same philosophy now, which asks if inanimate matter can act, which demanded of Gallileo if this ponderous globe could fly a thousand miles in a minute, and no body feel the motion; and with Deacon Homespun, in the dialogue, "why, if this world turned upside down, the water did not spill from the mill ponds, and all the people fall headlong to the bottomless pit?"

If there are any such peripatetics in these days of light and science, who still cling to the false and degrading systems of neutrality, because they are honorable for age, or sustained by learned and good men, and who will oppose all improvement, reject without examination, or, what is still worse, refuse to adopt, after being convinced of the truth of it, any system, because it is novel, an innovation upon established forms, I can only say of them, in the language of Micanzio, the Venetian friend of Gallileo—"The efforts of such enemies to get these principles prohibited, will occasion no loss either to your reputation, or to the intelligent part of the world. As to posterity, this is just one of the surest ways to hand them down to them. But what a wretched set this must be, to whom every good thing, and all that is found in nature, necessarily appears hostile and odious."