JB_101_422.xml

Title: [29 July 1814 Logic 1]

Description: 29 July 1814

Logic

1

Ch. Language

20

7

'.2 Minds to which - modes in which application is made of these signs - {of the signs of which discourse or language is composed.}

The mind to which on any occasion application is made of these signs, is either the mind of the person /that person alone/ by whom they are employed, or the mind of some other person: in the former /latter/ case, the use made of them may be termed /stiled/ the intransitive /transitive/ use; in the other case, the transitive / intransitive/. (a)

Thus it is that, howsoever /how/ intimately /soever/ connected, designation /(simple designation)/ and discoursing are different operations: without designation, discoursing {it is true} can /could/ not have taken place; but, without discoursing, designation may, and it frequently does, at present, to a great extent, take place.

Not that, had it not been for the purpose of discourse, designation, there seems reason to think, would ever have taken place; it is, accordingly, as it should seem to its intransitive use, that discourse or language is indebted for its existence.

Note (a)

(a) By some of the grammarians whose works are in present use, verbs stand distinguished into transitive and intransitive

transitive are those which are most commonly termed active, intransitive those which are commonly termed neuter. An instance of the active or transitive verb is ferio, I strike; an instance of the neuter or intransitive verb is curro, I run. Not but that in the neuter /intransitive/ verb action /agency/ is expressed; but in this case so is passion, or say, to avoid ambiguity, patiency likewise; and so it is that in one and the same person the agent and the patient are comprised: the agent, the volitional part of his mind; the patient or patients, those parts of his bodily frame by which the action or operation called running is performed.

55

JB_101_132.xml

Title: [27 July 1814 Logic 2]

Description: 27 July 1814

Logic

2

Ch.3.III. Operations

'.7.VI. Communication

18

2

The hearing - its organ, the ear - the sight - its organ, the eye - the touch - its organ, the skin, and more particularly the skin of the hand - to all these senses has what is called discourse been made to address itself. Audible, visible, and tangible - such accordingly has respectively been the nature of the signs of which in these several cases discourse, this organ of the mind, has been composed.

Till a comparatively late point in the time[?] of human existence, of all those sorts of signs, those which address themselves to the ear were almost the only ones in actual existence: to the infinite multitude and variety of these, the few that as yet in those days addressed themselves immediately to the eye formed but a feeble supplement, and a still more feeble and inadequate succedaneum.

Through the medium of the French word Langue - a tongue, Language - in French Langage - the discourse of the tongue - is derived from the Latin, lingua, a tongue. When addressed to the ear, it is from the tongue that the discourse addresses itself. For discourse, for the product of the operation called discourse, in the form in which it addresses itself to the eye, as contradistinguished from that in which it addresses itself to the ear, neither the French, nor the Latin, nor the English, affords any proper appellative.

French or English language - French or English tongue - if applied to the contents of a manuscript or a printed book - a palpable contradiction and inconsistency will, upon consideration, be found involved in any one of these expressions.

Yet for these solicisms however palpable as they are, the demand is frequent, and so urgent, as scarcely to be resisted.

JB_101_133.xml

Title: [27 July 1814 Logic 3]

Description: 27 July 1814

Logic

3

Ch.3.III Operations

'.7.VI. Communication

19

3

Writing, including its comparatively recent improvements such as printing, engraving, &c., is in every case discourse addressed to the eye. But to this organ discourse in this form has been found capable of addressing itself in either of two ways. 1. in an unimmediate way, through the medium and intervention of discourse addressed to the ear - i.e. of articulate sounds, or in an immediate way, without the intervention of discourse in that form or any other form.

In the first case, sounds - audible signs, are the immediate signs of thought - it is of these audible signs that visible characters are the signs - and it is only in this comparatively remote way that the function of signs of thought is performed by the visible characters.

In the other case, thought is some how or other performed in an immediate way by the visible characters.

Of these two modes the former is the only one familiar to the generality of civilized nations:

The other is exemplified in the vast empire of China - in the empire of Japan, and in some of the states subject to the dominion or ascendancy of the Chinese.