SECT. II.] LITTLE DELIBERATION AND CHOICE. Lithuanian the subject precedes the verb (ibid. 196), and in Slavonic. In Armenian there is no rule (ibid. 244). In Bask, subject, verb, and object may take any order (ibid. Bask, 3). 7. Now it appears from this review that the more careful races tend to leave the subject in its natural place before the verb, meaning by the subject, the substantive or pronoun, which as a separate word is nominative to the verb. Such are the nomad races of Central and Northern Asia and Northern Europe, the Dravidians, the Chinese group of races, the Malay, and the Indo-European, except the Celtic, who all give careful attention to production or to search. The hunting races of America, who give no heed to industry, and have game without careful search, tend to place the subject after the verb. The Hungarian, who was both nomad and hunter, places it before or after. The Polynesian and Tagala agree with the American hunter in this respect, that nature supplies their wants with little care on their part; and with them the subject follows the verb. Hunting indeed requires attention. But when the game is present the pursuit is suggested without deliberation. And where there is plenty of game the life of the hunter, like that of the Polynesian and the native of the Philippine Islands, is not guided by thought and deliberation, as the necessity for these is dispensed with by the bounty of nature. Where production or search receives attention, choice of ways and means is needed. The general fact, therefore, seems to be that the absence of thoughtful choice and deliberation characterises the races which put the subject after the verb, while habits of more deliberate action characterise those which leave it before the verb. 8. Now, when thus analysed, the presence of the mental habit as condition of the linguistic fact may be traced even in those cases which seem to be exceptions. The Melanesian islanders are perhaps as well supplied by nature as the Polynesians. But they are akin to the dark races of Borneo, New Guinea, and Australia, who amid the difficulties of the interior of those countries had to exercise more care to gain their subsistence. The Fijian is intermediate between the Polynesian and the Melanesian. The Kafir has more game, and is more of a hunter than the industrial trafficking Negro; so that the latter leaves the subject before the verb, while the Kafir often puts the subject after the verb, his industrial development being at the same time such as leads him often to put it before the verb. The Hottentot, as a nomad following, however indolently, an industrial life, leaves the subject in its natural position; as also does the Galla, whose original life was nomadic. The Australian has no industry, but he has to search for his subsistence, and in his speech the place of the subject is indeterminate. The Egyptian in the fertility of Egypt could live without care. His industry was the fruit of civil organisation; for the great works of Egypt could be accomplished only by the organisation of combined labour under the direction of strong authority. And the native character of the Egyptian corresponding to an easy life in a fertile region, appears in the original position of the subject after the verb. LITTLE DELIBERATION AND CHOICE. [SECT. II. The industry of the Peruvians also, and of the Mexicans, like that of the Egyptians, bears the impress of civil organisation, and sprang from this source rather than from native tendency. And as they were originally American hunters, they placed their subject like the others. The Chilians, however, lived in a lower temperature than the Peruvians, and therefore probably in a region where subsistence was more difficult and required more care; and they placed the subject sometimes before and sometimes after the verb. The Eskimo in his frozen region could not subsist without a careful outlook for what he needs, and careful adaptation of means for its attainment. And the timid and agricultural Guarani of Brazil is of necessity careful and deliberate. And both these races place the sub ject before the verb. So The prairies and fertile lands on which dwell the Dakota or Sioux and the Choctaw races, rendered unnecessary the ardour for the chase which was required where the means of subsistence were less abundant, and drew the attention of those races towards agriculture. that the Sioux, though they could take buffaloes at will, not only lived partly on wild oats,1 but also cultivated large tracts of land;2 and the Choctaws were quite agricultural in their tendencies (Gram. Sk., II. 47). The Yakama, who lived by catching fish in the season and storing them for future use, exercise a certain degree of careful search in providing for their subsistence, and are exempt from the habits of the hunter's life. And all these races show the weakness of the hunting impulse by leaving the subject in its natural place before the verb. Of the native condition of the Pima, the Otomi, and the Chiapaneca, information is wanting. 9. There is little room for industry in Arabia, and what the Arab gets at all, he gets without care in the fertile oases. He accordingly places the subject after the verb. This, too, is the normal tendency in Tamachek, and in a less degree in Ethiopic. But Amharic was altered in this respect, probably by Galla influence, and Haussa by Negro influence. The Hebrew, dwelling outside the desert, and the Syrian still more so, had more industry, and with them the subject tended more to hold its natural place. The Greek and the Latin exercised the choice and deliberation involved in inventive industry, but they were sufficiently masters of the conditions of their life to be free also to follow impulse, so that they readily thought the verb as undetermined by the subject, and could put the subject after it as well as before it, when emphasis or the course of thought strengthened it into an independent conception. The Teuton had more of deliberate purpose in the selection of his ends, and with him the subject had stronger precedence. But it is most striking that the Celt alone of Indo-Europeans put the subject as a rule after the verb, and that he, perhaps owing to the favourable nature of his region, is naturally the least devoted to 1 Charlevoix's Letters from Canada, &c., p. 110; Keating's Narrative, p. 395. 2 Prichard's Researches, vol. v. p. 410. SECT. III.] SELF-DIRECTING VOLITION IN ACTION. industry or subject to care. This is a remarkable confirmation of what results from this entire review, that where action is guided habitually with deliberation and choice the subject retains its natural position before the verb; where action is habitually more impulsive the subject tends to follow the verb. And this is the theoretical deduction of Book I., chap. iii., 2. III.-The sense of the personality of the subject in the verb is proportional to the guidance of action by self-directing volition in the mode of life to which the race has been adapted. 1. The difference between the proper subjective person in the verb, and the nominative which is subject to the verb, is, that the person is part of the verb, expressing a sense of the inner life or subjectivity of the subject in which the fact is realised, while the nominative is distinct from the verb, and expresses the subject thought as the seat of that inner life or subjectivity. This difference of meaning, however, between the two is not always perfectly maintained. The person, in expressing the inner life of the subject, often suggests the subject itself with sufficient strength to dispense with the separate expression of the subject. And often the subject when expressed separately suggests sufficiently its own inner life in the verb, so as to dispense with the expression of the person. But when there is at the same time the subject separate from the verb, and the subjective person element corresponding to it in the verb, the difference between the two is that which has been stated. The person element, however, in the verb is sometimes not truly subjective, but possessive. In that case the verb is not thought properly as realised in the person, but rather as an emanation from the person, or a possession acquired by the person; and the realisation is more or less outside the person, abstracted from it and involved in the act or state itself. The person then as possessive partakes of the nature of a predicate, the rest of the verb being subject and copula, as if, instead of saying, I loved, we were to say, Mine was the loving. That the verb should take this form, in which the person is the same as when possessive of a noun, and in which its meaning approaches to this construction, it is evident that the person must be thought with very weak subjectivity. Another evidence of weak subjectivity of the person is when the same person elements which are used in the verb are used also in participial forms. For these involve no subjective realisation (Def. 13), and the sense of this must be weak in the verb when it prompts no expression proper to itself. 2. It is remarkable that generally in the Polynesian, Tagala, and Malay languages there is no person element in the verb, and in Polynesian the elements which express the succession of being or doing are sometimes not assertive, but only participial. So also it is in the Melanesian Loyalty Islands, in Maré, and Lifu (Gram. Sk., III. 6, 34, 37, 46, 53, 76). SELF-DIRECTING VOLITION IN ACTION. [SECT. III. In Dayak the three personal possessive suffixes, which may be plural in their personality as well as singular, may also be suffixed as the person singular or plural of the most subjective verbs, such as those which mean to know, to see, to say, to find (ibid. 74); and also in Australian (Adelaide), and in the languages of the New Hebrides and of other Melanesian islands, person elements appear in the verbs (ibid. 21, 24, 28, 31, 42, 44, 84). In none of these languages has the verbal stem enough sense of the subject to be specialised as verbal (ibid. 5, 17, 3; 21, 37, 41, 46, 75). Now, while in the Polynesian and Philippine islands by the favour of nature the conditions of life are such that man realises his ends with little self-directing thoughtfulness of action, and on the ocean he trusts himself in proportion to his boldness to the guidance of external indications (this chap. IV. 1), the dark race acts with more care (this chap., Introd. 3; II. 8). And the use of the person in the verb corresponds to the self-directing volition in action. As one race mixes with another, it partially takes up the characteristics of that other. The care which the Malay exercises, whether as a fisherman or on the land, is care in search; and it consists in watching and following external indications. Once he has chosen his action, his guidance in performing it is not from within, but from without; and except in Borneo, where he is affected by the dark race, he has no person elements, as he has little self-directing volition. 3. Throughout the Chinese group of languages also there is an absence of person elements from the verb (Gram. Sk., V. 4, 13, 18, 27, 36, 45), and of any sense of subjectivity from the verbal stem, as well as a strange deficiency of personal pronouns, which strikingly corresponds to the absence of spiritual subjective elements from the mental habits of those races, and to the utterly material character of their development and civilisation. These races have been referred to in the last section as careful; and therefore as habitually exercising a sufficient degree of deliberation and choice to maintain the nominative in its natural place before the verb. But though this much must be necessarily involved in the careful adoption of useful actions, how little there is of self-directing volition in carrying out those actions in China may be seen from the following testimony: "A firm purpose of abiding by everything once acknowledged as useful and proper is the leading feature of Chinese industry. The nation excels in that which is to be effected in the beaten track, but it is wretchedly deficient in everything that requires thought and judgment."1 "Determined unwearied industry remedies all defects" (of division of labour and of machinery and implements).2 "There is an instinctive propensity for work.” 3 "All articles, the making of which requires more than mere mechanical skill, are beyond Chinese ingenuity." "Whenever they have a very good pattern, the natives of Canton will 2 Ibid. p. 3. 3 Ibid. p. 4. 1 Gutzlaff's China, vol. ii. p. 2. SECT. III.] SELF-DIRECTING VOLITION IN ACTION. endeavour to imitate it, but they attempt nothing further." 1 "The minute work and finish of all their industry is remarkable." 2 This gives a full and clear idea of the nature of the industry of the Chinese; and the other races of this group partake of the same character. The intense devotion of the Chinese to industry implies a keen outlook for profitable modes of employment. And this involves, in a proportional degree, choice and deliberation. But the course of work once entered on is guided by an external rule. And when the mode of carrying it on has been learned, it proceeds thenceforward by habit. Even before it has been learned, the volition of adopting an external rule dispenses with volition in the process of following it, the copying of each step coming by suggestion from the rule. An industrial life of this kind is occupied by such processes of imitation or by processes of routine which have become habitual, and are carried on by mere association. In the habitual process, the end to be attained being kept in view, the stage which the operation has reached suggests the next step, or the end itself suggests all or many of the successive steps of the process of attainment; and in both the habitual and the imitative the attention is given up to the external process, and to the end at which it aims, or to the end as the principal object. With such thought of external objects and external aims the Chinese are quite engrossed, without either martial enterprise or industrial originality to call into play self-directing volition. And the absence of this from their life corresponds to the absence of person elements and of subjectivity from their verb. 4. The nomad races of Central and Northern Asia follow an industry which, though it requires care in ordering it according to its conditions, is in its details a traditional routine, but whose necessary condition has often to be secured by vigilant enterprise, which affects the habits of life. For though the care of flocks and herds follows old methods, the acquisition and the continued possession of the requisite range of pastures demands determined energy in proportion to the severity of the struggle for possession. Now the pasture-grounds of Asia are distinguished by their natural conditions into three principal divisions. Mongolia is the most elevated region of the high plain of Eastern Asia,3 and as it includes the great wilderness of Gobi, in parts of which are wide plains affording pasture in summer, the pastures are more scattered as well as less productive than in the other two divisions. These are the comparatively fertile region of the Turkish or Tartar race to the west of Mongolia, and the less fertile region of the Tungusian race to the east and north of it. One fragment, however, of the former race, the Yakuts, has got separated from the remainder, and dwell in the extreme north. Now the struggle for pasture must be less keen, and life must have less enterprise in the Mongolian region where the communities are most scattered, than in the other two where they are within easier reach of one another. And, accordingly, while 1 Gutzlaff's China, p. 144. 3 Prichard's Researches, vol. iv. p. 297. 2 Ibid. p. 142. ♦ Ibid. p. 290. |