The Divine Lamp

Seventh defect: Smith does not see that to know in things that which is ‘common’ is easier that to know that which is ‘proper.’

153.  The study of antiquity, then, reveals to us the fact that the invention of common nouns is of a very much earlier date than that of proper nouns; that in ancient languages common nouns were employed even when necessity compelled the naming of individual objects; and hence that for truly proper nouns we must look to modern languages only.

This mode of progression in the formation of languages may at first sight appear strange; but if we examine it attentively we shall find that it is perfectly natural-nay, the only one possible to the human mind.

In the first place, a much more difficult abstraction is required, as we have said, for noting and naming the individuality itself of beings, than for giving attention to their common qualities and naming them aaccordingly (see 150).  Now, the development of man’s faculties is gradual, and therefore must commence with the easier, and not with the more difficult, operations.

In the second place, words are only invented to supply a need.  Now, the first need which men experience is that of designating things through their more general qualities.  Then comes a time when things must be named by means of more special qualities, both to prevent a confusion and the damage or annoyance that result from it.  The, again, as experience and the use of things proceeds further and further, men fell called upon to make smaller and smaller subdivisions, and to indicate them by names less and less common; and so on until the social development reaches a stage so advanced as to necessitate the marking by proper names of the individuals themselves.  Proper names are, therefore, the very last to be invented.  They give to language its ultimate completion and perfection.

Accordingly, we find that there is not a single thing which has not a common name: not all have the name of the genus; still fewer have also that of the species; while those distinguished by a proper name form but a very insignificant fraction, and this in modern language only.

It is therefore manifest that the philosophers of whom I speak, in describing the progress of the human mind in the formation of languages, began precisely at the point where they ought to have ended; and they did this because, instead of taking the real facts for their guide, they hastily abandoned themselves to hypothetical speculations.  They imagined the invention of proper nouns to be the first step in human speech, whereas in very truth it is the last.  It, in fact, supposes the very highest degree of social culture; so much so, that even in the modern European languages, brought though they are to so great a perfection-thanks to the civilising influence which Christianity has happily been exercising for nearly two thousand years-proper nouns can still be traced to their origin, and there recognised as having, at first, been nothing but common nouns.