The laws of the conversion of sounds of the one organ into those of another have not yet been discovered; but the above examples, which are by no means isolated ones, serve to admonish us that the phonetic elements of primitive speech probably had no fixedness.
There is another oddity about some of these consonantal sounds which I may notice in passing. Some of them are not true elementary sounds; they cannot stand alone, but must always have another consonant associated with them. Thus, the labial B is common in Guarani; but it must always be preceded by an M. In Nahuatl the liquid L is frequent; but it is the initial of no word in that language. The Nahuas apparently could not pronounce it, unless some other articulate sound preceded it.
Albornoz, in his Grammar of the Chapanec Tongue,[342] states that the natives cannot pronounce an initial B, G, Y, or D, without uttering an N sound before it.
The third point in the phonology of these tongues to which I alluded is the frequency with which the phonetic elements, as graphically expressed, are inadequate to convey the idea. I may quote a remark by Howse in his Cree Grammar, which is true probably of all primitive speech, “Emphasis, accent and modifications of vocal expression; which are inadequately expressed in writing, seem to constitute an essential, perhaps the vital part of Indian language.” In such modifications I include tone, accent, stress, vocal inflection, quantity and pause. These are with much difficulty or not at all includable in a graphic method, and yet are frequently significant. Take the pause or hiatus. I have already mentioned that in Tinné it correlates a whole series of ideas. M. Belcourt, in his Grammar of the Sauteux, an Algonkin dialect, states that the pause may completely change the meaning of a word and place it in another class; it is also essential in that language in the formation of the tenses.[343] This is the case in the Guarani of South America. Montoya illustrates it by the example: Peru o’u, Peter ate it; but Peru ou, Peter came; quite another thing, you will observe.[344]
The stress laid on a vowel-sound often alters its meaning. In the Sauteux, Belcourt points out that this constitutes the only distinction between the first and second persons in participles. In the Nahuatl this alone distinguishes many plural forms from their singulars; and many similar examples could be cited.
With difficulties of this nature to encounter, a person accustomed to the definite phonology of European tongues is naturally at a loss. The Spanish scholar Uricoechea expresses this in relating his efforts to learn the Chibcha of New Granada, a tongue also characterized by these fluctuating phonetics. He visited the region where it is still spoken with a grammar and phrase-book in his hand, and found to his disappointment that they could not understand one word he said. He then employed a native who spoke Spanish, and with him practiced some phrases until he believed he had them perfect. Another disappointment—not one of them was understood. He returned to his teacher and again repeated them; but what was his dismay when not even his teacher recognized a single word! After that Uricoechea gave up the attempt.[345]
Leaving now the domain of phonology and turning to that of lexicography, I will point out to you a very curious phenomenon in primitive speech. I have already alluded to it in quoting M. Petitot’s remark that in Tinné a sound often means both a notion and its opposite; that, for instance, the same word may express good and bad, and another both high and low. To use M. Petitot’s own words, “a certain number of consonants have the power of expressing a given order of ideas or things, and also the contradictory of this order.” In Tinné, a great many words for opposite ideas are the same or nearly the same, derived from the same significant elements. Thus, son good, sona bad; tezo, sweet, tezon bitter; ya immense, ya very small; inla one time, inlasin every time; and so on.
This union of opposite significations reappears in the ultimate radicals of the Cree language. These, says Mr. Howse,[346] whose Grammar I again quote, express Being in its positive and negative modes: “These opposite modes are expressed by modifications of the same element, furnishing two classes of terms widely different from each other in signification.” In Cree the leading substantive radical is eth, which originally meant both Being and Not-Being. In the present language eth remains as the current positive, ith as the current privative. It means within, ut without; and like parallelisms run through many expressions, indicating that numerous series of opposite ideas are developments from the same original sounds.
I have found a number of such examples in the Nahuatl of Mexico, and I am persuaded that they are very usual in American tongues. Dr. Carl Abel has pointed out many in the ancient Coptic, and I doubt not they were characteristic of all primitive speech.
To explain their presence we must reflect on the nature of the human mind, and the ascertained laws of thought. One of these fundamental and necessary laws of thought, that usually called the second, was expressed by the older logicians in the phrase Omnis determinatio est negatio, and by their modern followers in the formula, “A is not not-A;” in other words, a quality, an idea, an element of knowledge, can rise into cognition only by being limited by that which it is not. That by which it is limited is known in logic as its privative. In a work published some years ago I pointed out that this privative is not an independent thought, as some have maintained, but that the positive and its privative are really two aspects of the same thought.[347] This highly important distinction explains how in primitive speech, before the idea had risen into clear cognition, both it and its privative were expressed by the same sound; and when it did rise into such cognition, and then into expression, the original unity is exhibited by the identity of the radical. Thus it happens that from such an unexpected quarter as an analysis of Cree grammar do we obtain a confirmation of the starting point of the logic of Hegel in his proposition that the identity of the Being and the Not-being is the ultimate equation of thought.
The gradual development of grammar is strikingly illustrated in these languages. Their most prominent trait is what is called incorporation. Subject, verb, direct object and remote object, are all expressed in one word. Some have claimed that there are American languages of which this is not true; but I think I have shown in an essay published some time ago,[348] that this opinion arises from our insufficient knowledge of the alleged exceptions. At any rate, this incorporation was undoubtedly a trait of primitive speech in America and elsewhere. Primitive man, said Herder, was like a baby; he wanted to say all at once. He condensed his whole sentence into a single word. Archdeacon Hunter, in his Lecture on the Cree Language, gives as an example the scriptural phrase, “I shall have you for my disciples,” which, in that tongue, is expressed by one word.[349]
So far as I have been able to analyze these primitive sentence-words, they always express being in relation; and hence they partake of the nature of verbs rather than nouns. In this conclusion I am obliged to differ with the eminent linguist Professor Steinthal, who, in his profound exposition of the relations of psychology to grammar, maintains that while the primitive sentence was a single word, that word was a noun, a name.[350]
It is evident that the primitive man did not connect his sentences. One followed the other disjointedly, unconnectedly. This is so plainly marked in American tongues that the machinery for connecting sentences is absent. This machinery consists properly of the relative pronoun and the conjunction. You will be surprised to hear that there is no American language, none that I know, which possesses either of these parts of speech. That which does duty for the conjunction in the Maya and Nahuatl, for instance, is a noun meaning associate or companion, with a prefixed possessive.[351]
Equally foreign to primitive speech was any expression of time in connection with verbal forms; in other words, there was no such thing as tenses. We are so accustomed to link actions to time, past, present, or future, that it is a little difficult to understand how this accessory can be omitted in intelligible discourse. It is perfectly evident, however, from the study of many American tongues, that at one period of their growth they possessed for a long interval only one tense, which served indifferently for past, present, and future;[352] and even yet most of them form the past and future by purely material means, as the addition of an adverb of time, by accent, quantity or repetition, and in others the tense relation is still unknown.[353]
In some tongues, the Omagua of the upper Orinoco for example, there is no sort of connection between the verbal stem and its signs of tense, mode or person. They have not even any fixed order. In such languages there is no difference in sound between the words for “I marry,” and “my wife;” “I eat,” and “my food;” between “Paul dies,” “Paul died,” “Paul will die,” and “Paul is dead.”[354] Through such tongues we can distinctly perceive a time when the verb had neither tense, mode, nor person; when it was not even a verb nor yet a verbal, but an epicene sound which could be adapted to any service of speech.
It is also evident that things were not thought of, or talked of, out of their natural relations. There are still in most American tongues large classes of words, such as the parts of the body and terms of kinship, which cannot stand alone. They must always be accompanied by a pronoun expressing relation.
Few American tongues have any adjectives, the Cree, for instance, not a dozen in all. Prepositions are equally rare, and articles are not found. These facts testify that what are called “the grammatical categories” were wholly absent in the primitive speech of man.
So also were those adjectives which are called numerals. There are American tongues which have no words for any numerals whatever. The numerical concepts one, two, three, four, cannot be expressed in these languages for lack of terms with any such meaning.[355] This was a great puzzle to the missionaries when they undertook to expound to their flocks the doctrine of the Trinity. They were in worse case even than the missionary to an Oregon tribe, who, to convey the notion of soul to his hearers, could find no word in their language nearer to it than one which meant “the lower gut.”
A very interesting chapter in the study of these tongues is that which reveals the evolution of specific distinctions, those inductive generalizations under which primitive man classified the objects of the universe about him. These distinctions were either grammatical or logical, that is, either formal or material. That most widely seen in America is a division of all existence into those which are considered living and those considered not living. This constitutes the second great generalization of the primitive mind, the first, as I have said, having been that into Being and Not-being. The distinctions of Living and Not-living gave rise to the animate and inanimate conjugations. A grammatical sex distinction, which is the prevailing one in the grammars of the Aryan tongues, does not exist in any American dialect known to me.[356]
It is true that abstract general terms are absent or rare in the most primitive tongues. On the other hand, we find in them a great many classificatory particles. These correspond only remotely to anything known in Aryan speech, and seem far more abstract than generic nouns. I will illustrate what they are by an example taken from the Hidatsa, a dialect of the Dakota.
The word for sled in that dialect is midu-maidutsada. The first part of this compound, midu, means anything of wood or into which wood enters. Fire is midé because it is kept up with wood. With the phonetic laxity which I have before noted, the first syllable mi may as correctly be pronounced bi or wi. It is a common nominal prefix, of vague significance, but seems to classify objects as distinctives. Ma designates objects whose immediate use is not expressed; i denotes instrument or material; du, conveys that the cause of the action is not specified; tsa intimates the action is that of separating; da, that this is done quickly (tsa-da, to slide).[357]
Thus by the juxtaposition of one classificatory particle after another, seven in number, all of them logical universals, the savage makes up the name of the specific object.
This system was probably the first adopted by man when he began to set in order his perceptions within the categories of his understanding, with the aim of giving them vocal expression. It is a plan which we find most highly developed in the rudest languages, and therefore we may reasonably believe that it characterized prehistoric speech.
The question has been put by psychological grammarians, which one of the senses most helped man in the creation of language—or to express it in modern scientific parlance, was primitive man a visuaire or an auditaire? Did he model his sounds after what he heard, or what he saw? The former opinion has been the more popular, and has given rise to the imitative or “onomatopoetic” theory of language. No doubt there is a certain degree of truth in this, but the analysis of American tongues leans decidedly toward classing primitive man among the visuaires. His earliest significant sounds seem to have been expressive of motion and rest, energy and its absence, space and direction, color and form, and the like. A different opinion has been maintained by Darwin and by many who have studied the problems presented by the origin of words from a merely physical or physiological standpoint, but a careful investigation shows that it was the sense of sight rather than of hearing which was the prompter to vocal utterance. But the consideration of the source of primitive significant sounds lies without the bounds of my present study.
It will be seen from these remarks that the primitive speech of man was far more rudimentary than any language known to us. It had no grammatical form; so fluctuating were its phonetics, and so much depended on gesture, tone, and stress, that its words could not have been reduced to writing, nor arranged in alphabetic sequence; these words often signified logical contradictories, and which of the antithetic meanings was intended could be guessed only from the accent or sign; it possessed no prepositions nor conjunctions, no numerals, no pronouns of any kind, no forms to express singular or plural, male or female, past or present; the different vowel-sounds and the different consonantal groups conveyed specific significance, and were of more import than the syllables which they formed. The concept of time came much later than that of space, and for a long while was absent.
THE CONCEPTION OF LOVE IN SOME AMERICAN LANGUAGES.[358]
“The words which denote love, describing a sentiment at once powerful and delicate, reveal the inmost heart of those who created them. The vital importance attached to this sentiment renders these beautiful words especially adapted to point out the exceeding value of language as a true autobiography of nations.”
This quotation is from an essay by a thoughtful writer, Dr. Carl Abel, in which he has gathered from four languages, the Latin, English, Hebrew and Russian, their expressions for this sweet emotion, and subjected them to a careful analysis.[359] The perusal of his article has led me to make some similar examinations of American languages; but with this difference in method, that while Dr. Abel takes the languages named in the fullness of their development and does not occupy himself with the genesis of the terms of affection, I shall give more particular attention to their history and derivation as furnishing illustrations of the origin and growth of those altruistic sentiments which are revealed in their strongest expression in the emotions of friendship and love.
Upon these sentiments are based those acts which unite man to man in amicable fellowship and mutual interchange of kindly offices, thus creating a nobler social compact than that which rests merely on increased power of defence or aggression. These sentiments are those which bind parent to child and child to parent, and thus supply the foundation upon which the family in the true significance of the term should rest. These are they which, directed toward the ruler or the state, find expression in personal loyalty and patriotic devotion. Surpassing all in fervor and potency, these sentiments, when exhibited in love between the sexes, direct the greater part of the activity of each individual life, mould the forms of the social relations, and control the perpetuation of the species. Finally, in their last and highest manifestations, these sentiments are those which have suggested to the purest and clearest intellects both the most exalted intellectual condition of man, and the most sublime definition of divinity.[360] These are good reasons, therefore, why we should scan with more than usual closeness the terms for the conception of love in the languages of nations.
Another purpose which I shall have in view will be to illustrate by these words the wonderful parallelism which everywhere presents itself in the operations of the human mind, and to show how it is governed by the same associations of ideas both in the new and the old worlds.
As a preparation for the latter object, let us take a glance at the derivation of the principal words expressing love in the Aryan languages. The most prominent of them may be traced back to one of two ruling ideas, the one intimating a similarity or likeness between the persons loving, the other a wish or desire. The former conveys the notion that the feeling is mutual, the latter that it is stronger on one side than on the other.
These diverse origins are well illustrated by the French aimer and the English love. Aimer, from the Latin amare, brings us to the Greek αμα, ομος, both of which spring from the Sanscrit som; from which in turn the Germans get their words sammt, along with, and zusammen, together; while we obtain from this root almost without change our words similar and same. Etymologically, therefore, those who love are alike; they are the same in such respects that they are attracted to one another, on the proverbial principle that “birds of a feather flock together.”
Now turning to the word love, German liebe, Russian lubov, lubity, we find that it leads us quite a different road. It is traced back without any material change to the Sanscrit lobha, covetousness, the ancient Coptic λἰβε, to want, to desire. In this origin we see the passion portrayed as a yearning to possess the loved object; and in the higher sense to enjoy the presence and sympathy of the beloved, to hold sweet communion with him or her.
A class of ideas closely akin to this are conveyed in such words as “attached to,” “attraction,” “affection,” and the like, which make use of the figure of speech that the lover is fastened to, drawn toward, or bound up with the beloved object. We often express this metaphor in full in such phrases as “the bonds of friendship,” etc.
This third class of words, although in the history of language they are frequently of later growth than the two former, probably express the sentiment which underlies both these, and that is a dim, unconscious sense of the unity which is revealed to man most perfectly in the purest and highest love, which at its sublimest height does away with the antagonism of independent personality, and blends the I and the thou in a oneness of existence.
Although in this, its completest expression, we must seek examples solely between persons of opposite sex, it will be well to consider in an examination like the present the love between men, which is called friendship, that between parents and children, and that toward the gods, the givers of all good things. The words conveying such sentiments will illustrate many features of the religious and social life of the nations using them.
I. The Algonkin.
I begin with this group of dialects, once widely spread throughout the St. Lawrence valley and the regions adjoining; and among them I select especially the Cree and the Chipeway, partly because we know more about them, and partly because they probably represent the common tongue in its oldest and purest type. They are closely allied, the same roots appearing in both with slight phonetic variations.
In both of them the ordinary words for love and friendship are derived from the same monosyllabic root, sak. On this, according to the inflectional laws of the dialects, are built up the terms for the love of man to woman, a lover, love in the abstract, friend, friendship, and the like. It is also occasionally used by the missionaries for the love of man to God and of God to man.[361]
In the Chipeway this root has but one form, sagi; but in Cree it has two, a weak and a strong form, saki and sakk. The meaning of the latter is more particularly to fasten to, to attach to. From it are derived the words for string or cord, the verbs “to tie,” “to fasten,” etc.; and also some of the coarsest words to express the sexual relation.[362] Both these roots are traced back to the primary element of the Algonkin language expressed by the letters sak or s—k. This conveys the generic notion of force or power exerted by one over another,[363] and is apparently precisely identical with the fundamental meaning of the Latin afficio, “to affect one in some manner by active agency,”[364] from which word, I need hardly add, were derived affectus and affectio and our “affection;” thus we at once meet with an absolute parallelism in the working of the Aryan Italic and the American Algonkin mind.
The Cree has several words which are confined to parental and filial love and that which the gods have for men. These are built up on the disyllabic radical espi or aspi, which is an instrumental particle signifying “by means of, with the aid of.”[365] Toward the gods, such words refer to those who aid us; toward children those whom their parents aid; and from children toward parents, again, those from whom aid is received.
For love between men, friendship, the Cree employs some words from the radical sâki; but more frequently those compounded with the root wit or witch, which means “in company with,”[366] and is the precise analogue of the syllable com (Latin, con) in the English words companion, comrade, compeer, confederate, etc.; it conveys the idea of association in life and action, and that association a voluntary and pleasure-giving one.
In the Chipeway there is a series of expressions for family love and friendship which in their origin carry us back to the same psychological process which developed the Latin amare from the Sanscrit sam (see above). They may be illustrated by the melodious term, which in that dialect means both friendship and relationship, inawendawin. This is an abstract verbal noun from the theme ni inawa, I resemble him, which is built up from the radicle in. This particle denotes a certain prevailing way or manner, and appears both in Cree and Chipeway in a variety of words.[367] The principle of similarity is thus fully expressed as the basis of friendship. To see how apparent this is we have but to remember the English, “I like him,” i. e., there is something in him like me.
The feebler sentiment of merely liking a person or thing is expressed in the Chipeway by a derivative from the adjective mino, good, well, and signifies that he or it seems good to me.[368]
The highest form of love, however, that which embraces all men and all beings, that whose conception is conveyed in the Greek ἀγἀπη, we find expressed in both the dialects by derivation from a root different from any I have mentioned. It is in its dialectic forms kis, keche, or kiji, and in its origin it is an intensive interjectional expression of pleasure, indicative of what gives joy.[369] Concretely it signifies what is completed, permanent, powerful, perfected, perfect. As friendship and love yield the most exalted pleasure, from this root the natives drew a fund of words to express fondness, attachment, hospitality, charity; and from the same worthy source they selected that adjective which they applied to the greatest and most benevolent divinity.[370]
II. The Nahuatl.
The Nahuatl, Mexican or Aztec language was spoken extensively throughout Mexico and Central America, and every tribe who used it could boast of a degree of culture considerably above that of any of the Algonkin communities. Such being the case, it is rather surprising to note how extremely poor in comparison is the Nahuatl in independent radicals denoting love or affection. In fact, there is only one word in the language which positively has this signification, and it, with its derivatives, is called upon to express every variety of love, human and divine, carnal and chaste, between men and between the sexes, and by human beings toward inanimate things.
This word is tlazótla, he loves. It is no easy matter to trace its history. By well known laws of Nahuatl etymology we know that the root is zo. We have from this same root several other words of curiously diverse meanings. Thus, izo, to bleed, to draw blood, either for health, or, as was the custom of those nations, as a sacrifice before idols; izolini, to grow old, to wear out, applied to garments; tlazoti, to offer for sale at a high price; and zozo, to string together, as the natives did flowers, peppers, beads, etc. Now, what idea served as the common starting-point of all these expressions? The answer is that we find it in the word zo as applied to a sharp-pointed instrument, a thorn, or a bone or stone awl, used in the earliest times for puncturing or transfixing objects. From this came zozo, to transfix with such an instrument, and string on a cord; izoliui, to be full of holes, as if repeatedly punctured, and thus worn out; and izo, to bleed, because that was done by puncturing the flesh with the thorns of the maguey or sharp obsidian points.[371]
But how do we bring these into connection with the sentiment of love and its verbal expression? We might indeed seek an illustration of the transfer from classical mythology, and adduce the keen-pointed arrows of Cupid, the darts of love, as pointing out the connection. But I fear this would be crediting the ancient Nahuas with finer feelings than they deserve. I gravely doubt that they felt the shafts of the tender passion with any such susceptibility as to employ this metaphor. Much more likely is it that tlazótla, to love, is derived directly from the noun tlazótl, which means something strung with or fastened to another. This brings us directly back to the sense of “attached to” in English, and to that of the root saki in Algonkin, the idea of being bound to another by ties of emotion and affection.
But there is one feature in this derivation which tells seriously against the national psychology of the Nahuas; this, their only word for love, is not derived, as is the Algonkin, from the primary meaning of the root, but from a secondary and later signification. This hints ominously at the probability that the ancient tongue had for a long time no word at all to express this, the highest and noblest emotion of the human heart, and that consequently this emotion itself had not risen to consciousness in the national mind.
But the omissions of the fathers were more than atoned for by the efforts of their children. I know no more instructive instance in the history of language to illustrate how original defects are amended in periods of higher culture by the linguistic faculty, than this precise point in the genesis of the Nahuatl tongue. The Nahuas, when they approached the upper levels of emotional development, found their tongue singularly poor in radicals conveying such conceptions. As the literal and material portions of their speech offered them such inadequate means of expression, they turned toward its tropical and formal portions, and in those realms reached a degree of development in this direction which far surpasses that in any other language known to me.
In the formal portion of the language they were not satisfied with one, but adopted a variety of devices to this end. Thus: all verbs expressing emotion may have an intensive termination suffixed, imparting to them additional force; again, certain prefixes indicating civility, respect and affection may be employed in the imperative and optative moods; again, a higher synthetic construction may be employed in the sentence, by which the idea expressed is emphasized, a device in constant use in their poetry; and especially the strength of emotion is indicated by suffixing a series of terminations expressing contempt, reverence or love. The latter are wonderfully characteristic of Nahuatl speech. They are not confined to verbs and nouns, but may be added to adjectives, pronouns, participles, and even to adverbs and postpositions. Thus every word in the sentence is made to carry its burden of affection to the ear of the beloved object!
Add to these facilities the remarkable power of the Nahuatl to impart tropical and figurative senses to words by the employment of rhetorical resources, and to present them as one idea by means of the peculiarities of its construction, and we shall not consider as overdrawn the expression of Professor De la Rosa when he writes: “There can be no question but that in the manifestation in words of the various emotions, the Nahuatl finds no rival, not only among the languages of modern Europe, but in the Greek itself.”[372]
The Nahuatl word for friendship is icniuhtli. This is a compound of the preposition ic, with; the noun-ending tli; and the adverbial yuh, or noyuh, which means “of the same kind.” The word, therefore, has the same fundamental conception as the Latin amicus and the Cree inawema, but it was not developed into a verbal to express the suffering of the passion itself.[373]
III. The Maya.
The whole peninsula of Yucatan was inhabited by the Mayas, and tribes speaking related dialects of their tongue lived in Guatemala, Chipapas, and on the Gulf Shore north of Vera Cruz. All these depended chiefly on agriculture for subsistence, were builders of stone houses, and made use of a system of written records. Their tongue, therefore, deserves special consideration as that of a nation with strong natural tendencies to development.
In turning to the word for love in the Maya vocabulary, we are at once struck with the presence of a connected series of words expressing this emotion, while at the same time they, or others closely akin to them and from the same root, mean pain, injury, difficulty, suffering, wounds and misery. Both are formed by the usual rules from the monosyllable ya.[374]
Were the ancient Mayas so sensitive to love’s wounds and the pangs of passion as to derive their very words for suffering from the name of this sentiment?
No; that solution is too unlikely for our acceptance. More probable is it that we have here an illustration of the development of language from interjectional cries. In fact, we may be said to have the proof of it, for we discover that this monosyllable ya is still retained in the language as a verb, with the signification “to feel anything deeply, whether as a pain or as a pleasure.”[375] Its derivatives were developed with both meanings, and as love and friendship are the highest forms of pleasure, the word ya in its happier senses became confined to them.
It seems to have sufficed to express the conception in all its forms, for the writers in the language apply it to the love of the sexes, to that between parents and children, that among friends, also to that which men feel toward God, and that which He is asserted to feel toward men.[376]
The Mayas, therefore, were superior to the Nahuas in possessing a radical word which expressed the joy of love; and they must be placed above even the early Aryans in that this radical was in significance purely psychical, referring strictly to a mental state, and neither to similarity nor desire.
It is noteworthy that this interjectional root, although belonging to the substructure of the language, does not appear with the meaning of love in the dialects of the Maya stock. In them the words for this sentiment are derived from other roots.
Thus among the Huastecas, residing on the Gulf of Mexico, north of Vera Cruz, the word for love is canezal. It is employed for both human and divine love, and also means anything precious and to be carefully guarded as of advantage to the possessor.[377] There is no difficulty in following its development when we turn to the Maya, which preserves the most numerous ancient forms and meanings of any dialect of this stock. In it we discover that the verb can means “to affect another in some way, to give another either by physical contact or example a virtue, vice, disease or attribute.”[378] Here again we come upon the precise correlative of the Latin afficio, from which proceeds our “affection,” etc.
The Guatemalan tribes, the principal of which were and are the Quiches and Cakchiquels, did not accept either ya or can as the root from which to build their expressions for the sentiment of love. In both these dialects the word for to love is logoh. It also means “to buy,” and this has led a recent writer to hold up to ridicule the Spanish missionaries who chose this word to express both human and divine love. Dr. Stoll, the writer referred to, intimates that it had no other meaning than “to buy” in the pure original tongue, and that the only word for the passion is ah, to want, to desire.[379] In this he does not display his usual accuracy, for we find logoh used in the sense “to like,” “to love,” in the Annals of the Cakchiquels, written by a native who had grown to manhood before the Spaniards first entered his country.[380]
That the verb logoh means, both in origin and later use, “to buy,” as well as “to love,” is undoubtedly true. Its root logh is identical with the Maya loh, which has the meanings “to exchange, to buy, to redeem, to emancipate.” It was the word selected by the Franciscan missionaries to express the redemption of the world by Christ, and was applied to the redemption of captives and slaves. It might be suggested that it bears a reference to “marriage by purchase;” but I think that “to buy,” and “to love,” may be construed as developments of the same idea of prizing highly. When we say that a person is appreciated, we really say that he has had a proper price put upon him. The Latin carus, which Cicero calls ipsum verbum amoris,[381] means costly in price as well as beloved; and the tender English “dear” means quite as often that the object is expensive to buy, as that we dote very much upon it. Nor need we go outside of American languages for illustrations; in Nahuatl tlazóti means to offer for sale at a high price; and in Huasteca canel, from the same root as canezal, to love, means something precious in a pecuniary sense, as well as an object of the affections. Other instances will present themselves when we come to examine some of the South American tongues. But from what I have already given, it is evident that there is nothing contradictory in the double meaning of the verb logoh.
IV. The Qquichua.
The ancient Peruvians who spoke the Qquichua language had organized a system of government and a complex social fabric unsurpassed by any on the continent. The numerous specimens of their arts which have been preserved testify strongly to the licentiousness of their manners, standing in this respect in marked contrast to the Aztecs, whose art was pure. It must be regarded as distinctly in connection with this that we find a similar contrast in their languages. We have seen that in the Nahuatl there appears to have been no word with a primary signification “to love” or any such conception. The Qquichua, on the contrary, is probably the richest language on the continent, not only in separate words denoting affection, but in modifications of these by imparting to them delicate shades of meaning through the addition of particles. As an evidence of the latter, it is enough to cite the fact that Dr. Anchorena, in his grammar of the tongue, sets forth nearly six hundred combinations of the word munay, to love![382]
The Qquichua is fortunate in other respects; it has some literature of its own, and its structure has been carefully studied by competent scholars; it is possible, therefore, to examine its locutions in a more satisfactory manner than is the case with most American languages. Its most celebrated literary monument is the drama of Ollanta, supposed to have been composed about the time of the conquest. It has been repeatedly edited and translated, most accurately by Pacheco Zegarra.[383] His text may be considered as the standard of the pure ancient tongue.
Of Qquichua words for the affections, that in widest use is the one above quoted, munay. It is as universal in its application as its English equivalent, being applied to filial and parental love as well as to that of the sexes, to affection between persons of the same sex, and to the love of God. No other word of the class has such a wide significance. It ranges from an expression of the warmest emotion down to that faint announcement of a preference which is conveyed in the English, “I should prefer.”[384]
On looking for its earlier and concrete sense, we find that munay expressed merely a sense of want, an appetite and the accompanying desire of satisfying it, hence the will, or the wish, not subjectively, but in the objective manifestation.[385] Therefore it is in origin nearly equivalent to the earliest meaning of “love,” as seen in the Sanscrit and the Coptic.
While munay is thus to love on reasonable grounds and with definite purpose, blind, unreasoning, absorbing passion is expressed by huaylluni. This is nearly always confined to sexual love, and conveys the idea of the sentiment showing itself in action by those sweet signs and marks of devotion which are so highly prized by the loving heart. The origin of this word indicates its sentient and spontaneous character. Its radical is the interjection huay, which among that people is an inarticulate cry of tenderness and affection.[386]
The verb lluylluy means literally to be tender or soft, as fruit, or the young of animals; and applied to the sentiments, to love with tenderness, to have as a darling, to caress lovingly. It has less of sexuality in it than the word last mentioned, and is applied by girls to each other, and as a term of family fondness. It is on a parallel with the English “dear,” “to hold dear,” etc.[387]
In the later compositions in Qquichua the favorite word for love is ccuyay. Originally this expression meant to pity, and in this sense it occurs in the drama of Ollanta; but also even there as a term signifying the passion of love apart from any idea of compassion.[388] In the later songs, those whose composition may be placed in this century, it is preferred to munay as the most appropriate term for the love between the sexes.[389] From it also is derived the word for charity and benevolence.
As munay is considered to refer to natural affection felt within the mind, mayhuay is that ostentatious sentiment which displays itself in words of tenderness and acts of endearment, but leaves it an open question whether these are anything more than simulated signs of emotion.[390]
This list is not exhaustive of the tender words in the Qquichua; but it will serve to show that the tongue was rich in them, and that the ancient Peruvians recognized many degrees and forms of this moving sentiment.
What is also noteworthy is the presence in this language of the most philosophical term for friendship in its widest sense that can be quoted from any American language. It is runaccuyay, compounded of ccuyani, mentioned above, and runa, man—the love of mankind. This compound, however, does not occur in the Ollanta drama, and it may have been manufactured by the missionaries. The usual term is maciy, which means merely “associate,” or kochomaciy, a table-companion or convive.
V. The Tupi-Guarani.
The linguistic stock which has the widest extension in South America is that which is represented in Southern Brazil by the Guarani, and in Central and Northern by the Tupi or Lingoa Geral. The latter is spoken along the Amazon and its tributaries for a distance of twenty-five hundred miles. It is by no means identical with the Guarani, but the near relationship of the two is unmistakable. The Guarani presents the simpler and more primitive forms, and may be held to present the more archaic type.
The word for love in the Guarani is aihu, in another form haihu, the initial h being dropped in composition. This expression is employed for all the varieties of the sentiment, between men, between the sexes, and for that which is regarded as divine.[391] For “a friend,” they have no other term than one which means a visitor or guest; and from this their expression for “friendship” is derived, which really means “hospitality.”[392]
Verbal combinations in Guarani are visually simple, and I do not think we can be far wrong in looking upon aihu as a union of the two primary words ai and hu. The former, ai, means self or the same; and the latter, hu, is the verb to find, or, to be present.[393] “To love,” in Guarani, therefore, would mean, “to find oneself in another,” or, less metaphysically, “to discover in another a likeness to one’s self.” This again is precisely the primary signification of the Latin amare; and if the sentiment impressed in that way the barbarous ancient Aryans, there is no reason why it would not have struck the Guaranis in the same manner.
In the Tupi or Lingua Geral the word for love is evidently but a dialectic variation of that in Guarani. It is given by some authors as çaiçu, plainly a form of haihu; and by others as çauçu.[394] These forms cannot be analyzed in the Tupi itself, which illustrates its more modern type.
There are other dialects of this widespread stem, but it would not be worth while to follow this expression further in its diverse forms. It is interesting, however, to note that which appears in the Arawack, spoken in Guiana. In that tongue to love is kanisin, in which the radical is ani or ansi. Now we find that ani means “of a kind,” peculiar to, belonging to, etc. Once more it is the notion of similarity, of “birds of a feather,” which underlies the expression for the conception of love.[395]
CONCLUSIONS.
If, now, we review the ground we have gone over, and classify the conception of love as revealed in the languages under discussion, we find that their original modes of expression were as follows:
1. Inarticulate cries of emotion (Cree, Maya, Qquichua).
2. Assertions of sameness or similarity (Cree, Nahuatl, Tupi, Arawack).
3. Assertions of conjunction or union (Cree, Nahuatl, Maya).
4. Assertions of a wish, desire or longing (Cree, Cakchiquel, Qquichua, Tupi).
These categories are not exhaustive of the words which I have brought forward, but they include most of them, and probably were this investigation extended to embrace numerous other tongues, we should find that in them all the principal expressions for the sentiment of love are drawn from one or other of these fundamental notions. A most instructive fact is that these notions are those which underlie the majority of the words for love in the great Aryan family of languages. They thus reveal the parallel paths which the human mind everywhere pursued in giving articulate expression to the passions and emotions of the soul. In this sense there is a oneness in all languages, which speaks conclusively for the oneness in the sentient and intellectual attributes of the species.
We may also investigate these categories, thus shown to be practically universal, from another point of view. We may inquire which of them comes the nearest to the correct expression of love in its highest philosophic meaning. Was this meaning apprehended, however dimly, by man in the very infancy of his speech-inventing faculty?
In another work, published some years ago, I have attempted a philosophic analysis of the sentiment of love. Quoting from some of the subtlest dissectors of human motive, I have shown that they pronounce love to be “the volition of the end,” or “the resting in an object as an end.” These rather obscure scholastic formulas I have attempted to explain by the definition: “Love is the mental impression of rational action whose end is in itself.”[396] As every end or purpose of action implies the will or wish to that end, those expressions for love are most truly philosophic which express the will, the desire, the yearning after the object. The fourth, therefore, of the above categories is that which presents the highest forms of expression of this conception. That it also expresses lower forms is true, but this merely illustrates the evolution of the human mind as expressed in language. Love is ever the wish; but while in lower races and coarser natures this wish is for an object which in turn is but a means to an end, for example, sensual gratification, in the higher this object is the end itself, beyond which the soul does not seek to go, in which it rests, and with which both reason and emotion find the satisfaction of boundless activity without incurring the danger of satiety.