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On Material and Form in Language

On Material and Form in Language.

The distinction of material and form in language is a current and familiar one. Yet, like other distinctions of an abstract character, it is liable to be unclearly, or even erroneously apprehended; and I have therefore thought that a summary discussion and illustration of it (although perhaps appearing to some uncalled for) might not, upon the whole, be without value. I propose to carry on the discussion in a manner as unpretending and as little abstruse as possible, and to look for illustration among the phenomena of language most familiar to us all, with the view of arriving at certain general conclusions of a practical nature as to the characteristics and history of the family of languages of which our English speech is a member.

The formal distinctions which lie nearest at hand in English are those of number and case in nouns and pronouns, and of tense and person in verbs. Thus, by a change of form in the words employed, we have from house a plural houses; and in like manner men from man. We give also a particular form to a noun in order to mark its value as indicating the possessor of anything: thus man’s, men’s, from man and men; and, in most pronouns, we make a change of form to signify the objective relation as distinguished from that of subject: thus, me, us, him, her, them, whom, as compared with I, we, he, she, they, who. The formal distinction of three persons is complete in at least the present singular of the verb: thus, I love, thou lovest, he loves; and we make a clear separation of past time from present in such forms as love and loved, deal and dealt, lead and led, give and gave.

We see already, from these examples (leaving out of view at present the use, as correlative forms, of words apparently unconnected with one another, as in those highly “irregular” parts of speech the pronouns, the substantive verb, and their like), that the leading means of formal distinction in our language are twofold: external addition, as in houses, its, loves, loved; and internal modification, as in men, gave. The same, as every one knows, is true to a very wide extent, or almost universally, among the languages akin with ours.

Again, such words as give, man, although in one sense mere crude-forms, unmodified root or base, are nevertheless in a truer sense forms. Man is clearly marked as nominative (or accusative) singular by the absence of the modifications which would make it possessive or plural; give is distinctly present, because we know that the preterit is gave; and the unconscious presence before our minds of givest and gives characterizes it at least partially in respect to person also. The presence, then, of a formal or formative element in a word is not indispensably necessary in order to make of it a form.

But there is another way in which formal distinctions are kept up in a language without aid from external signs. Pennæ, in Latin, is properly regarded as now genitive singular, now dative singular, now nominative or vocative plural, because in other words the distinction of those forms is perfectly made, and the mind seeks and apprehends it here as well. The Latin has a dative case and an ablative, although universally in the plural, and most often in the singular, dative and ablative have the same form; there are words enough in which the two are different to keep alive everywhere the conception of their separateness. Greek and Latin neuters have both a nominative and an accusative case, in spite of the fact that the two are always alike, by virtue of a mentally recognized parallelism with masculines and feminines, which distinguish the accusative from the nominative. And, coming to our own tongue again, the grammatical distinction of subject and object is so constantly and clearly brought home to us in the pronouns, that we cannot well help transferring it to the nouns, and crediting them also with the possession of a nominative and an objective case. If we had no such pairs of correlatives as I and me, he and him, we should no more think of an objective in connection with our nouns than of a dative or a locative. Indeed, even the occurrence of distinct dative constructions like give the book, he does his  credit, does not make us recognize a dative case of pronouns and nouns, because there is not a word in the language which has a dative separate in form from the objective. Again, let our scheme of verbal inflection be as imperfect as it may, so long as we continue to say I love, thou lovest, he loves, and to set you love against thou lovest, and they love against he loves, so long shall we continue to attribute person and number to our verbs, through their whole conjugation. Once more, although the formal apparatus which used to serve for the expression of grammatical gender in our nouns and adjectives has gone out of employment and been forgotten, yet the ever-recurring use of he, she, and it in reference to all the subjects of thought classifies them in our minds as masculine, feminine, and neuter, and puts the distinctions of the two sexes, or the want of sex, before us as calling for constant notice and designation; thus giving to gender, after all, a formal and pervading recognition, very different from the oblivion which has come over it in the Persian, for example, where the distinction of sex has been effaced even in the pronoun, and the speaker no more heeds whether his subject of thought is male or female than whether it is large or small, adult or young. And we almost feel as if that great majority of human languages in which sex, like size and age, is ignored as a ground of formal grammatical distinction, were guilty of neglecting one of the natural and essential characteristics of things, one of which the expression, in some way and measure, was necessary to the completeness of a language.

We see further, then, that a formal character may be given by association and analogy, as well as by inference, to words in which it is not indicated by a formative element.

Our past tense loved, a pure and undoubted form, is by comparative philology clearly shown to be a contraction of love-did. With this last, now, is logically equivalent its common substitute did love. In the verbal phrase (as we may call it) did love, the word did performs precisely the same office as the formative element d in the verbal form loved; it is a mere indicator of relation. In the one case as in the other, it has abandoned its former more material value as designating the action of making or effecting (still earlier, the yet more material one of putting, placing, furnishing), and become a tense-sign. Such a vocable we call usually, and very properly, a “form-word.” Form-words are found in all or nearly all languages, constituting in some a much larger and more important part of the formative apparatus than in others; the prevalence of their use over that of formative elements in actual combination with radical elements in a given tongue gives to that tongue, as we say, an analytic rather than a synthetic character. Such a character, as every one knows, belongs in an extreme degree to the English; we speakers of English express by form-words a host of relations which in Greek or Sanskrit, for example, are denoted by suffixes that constitute integral parts of the forms of inflection and derivation. Thus, in verbal conjugation, have stands by the side of do as a tense-auxiliary, and shall and will as indicators of future action. In noun-declension, in like manner, the possessive relation may be intimated by an auxiliary or form-word, the preposition of, instead of the possessive case-sign: thus, the house of my neighbor, instead of my neighbor’s house. And other case-relations, apprehended and synthetically expressed as such in the classical languages, are signified by us through the means of other prepositions.

In fact, as a part of speech, the preposition is a form-word, having for its office the expression of a relation. A relation, to be sure, possessing in some cases a more material tinge than in others: for there are degrees in the purity of formal character; and off, for example, as it implies sensible substantial removal in space, is less absolutely formal than its differentiated derivative of. Nor is the preposition the only part of speech filling a formal office. Another is the conjunction, which shows the relation between clauses, and by the aid of which are brought clearly to light in more developed languages a host of nice relations which in those of simpler structure are left to inference. Yet another is the article, of which the bearing is so subtle that it hardly admits of definition. And then there is the pronoun, which is of far greater importance and higher antiquity in the history of language than either of the others. The pronoun, as its name hints, designates by their relational aspect the same objects which the noun has come to designate by their characteristic qualities; and, long before there were articles, or conjunctions, or prepositions in our family of languages, the pronoun and its derivative, the pronominal adverb, performed a very essential part in the formal development of expression.

For mainly by the help of the pronoun, as the comparative philologists claim to have proved, was worked out even the most fundamental of all formal distinctions, that of the parts of speech themselves. That one combination of sounds should be used only as a verb, another only as a noun, an adjective, or the like, is a difference essentially analogous with that by which one is used as a singular and another as a plural, one as a present and another as a past, and so on. And, in the latter cases as in the former, the differentiation is effected, the separate office established, by means of formative elements, prefixes and suffixes. There are languages, too, in which the distinction of parts of speech is almost or wholly wanting, just as in others we find no distinction of gender or of case.

Yet even such languages—as for example the Chinese—are far from being absolutely destitute of the means of formal distinction. Besides their possession of auxiliary or form-words—“empty words,” as the Chinese grammarians call them, as opposed to the fullness and solidity of the more material resources of expression—they have yet one method which it remains for us to take note of; a syntactical one, consisting in the order in which the constituents of the sentence are arranged. If, in a given tongue, an epithet placed before a name, as good man, is always understood as attributive, and, placed after it, as man good, is predicative, so that the phrase means ‘the man is good,’ then the formal relations of attribute and predicate are, at least in an imperfect way, distinguished and brought to the cognizance of the speakers. Here, as in many other similar cases, our own highly analytic language is able to illustrate the peculiarities of an uninflected tongue; we also have no other way to distinguish in nouns the object from the subject: thus, in father loves son and son loves father, a change of position effects a change of logical office. Indeed, so bound are we to this method of indicating relation that, when we come to read or use languages more liberally provided with other methods, we are a little surprised and puzzled by their freedom of syntactical arrangement. But I think we can also see in our own experience that the relations indicated by position are more dimly brought before the mind than those exhibited by a change of form. Were it not for our pronouns I and me and their like, as already noticed, nominative and objective would never make their appearance as categories in English grammar.

It appears clearly, therefore, that the apparatus of formal designation is of great variety, and that some kind of it is not wanting in any dialect of human speech, however rude and undeveloped this may be: there is no language which fails altogether to signify the modifications and relations of its more material conceptions.

We have no reason to doubt that the main subjects of thought, the leading conceptions which enter into an act of judgment, and of which the expressions form the members of an assertion, are present to all human minds, in an essentially accordant manner, as standing in certain relations, belonging in certain classes, invested with certain general qualities. But different languages differ greatly as regards the notice which they take of these accessory matters. There is gender, for example. Our own mental apprehension of the diverse sex of objects having conspicuous sex is not less complete than that of the Roman, who intimated it by a difference in the ending and mode of declension of their names; especially, when the predication which we are making involves in any manner as a condition the distinction of sex. The same is unquestionably true of the Turk; only with him the apprehension is still more purely implicit; his language does not at all force it upon his notice—excepting, indeed, in the use of such words as man and woman, son and daughter, bull and cow, which are wanting in no language upon earth as names of creatures whose sex is so important a characteristic that it cannot be ignored. And the Turk might with no small show of reason claim that this is enough: why should he be called on to take formal note of the sex or the non-sexuality of everything he finds occasion to mention, any more than of its size, or shape, or age, or distance? He might even be bold enough to go farther, and claim that the Latin system of grammatical gender was false and burdensome, a real caricature of natural relations; that it were better to leave altogether out of sight a genuine distinction than to rear upon it an immense artificial fabric, recognizing it in numberless cases where it does not exist, extending it through all creation, classifying objects as male or female, or neither, on grounds which no mortal is wise enough now to discover; and even sometimes denying or falsifying actual sex. And I do not quite see what we Indo-Europeans should have to say in reply to him, save that this imaginativeness and this tendency to the multiplication of formal distinctions are, after all, valuable qualities; qualities of which, notwithstanding the exaggeration of their action in certain directions, the desirable effects are to be seen through the whole structure of Indo-European language. I certainly should not presume to boast of the possession of grammatical gender, or to plume myself upon the fact that my ancestors revelled in it, and that most of my relatives have not yet let it go. The general suffrage of the nations is against the practical value of our particular variety of gender distinctions. It is travestied, as it were, in the generic classifications of the South-African languages, the foundation of which is even more problematical; or in the classifying numerals of Polynesian tongues, which compel from the mind constant recognition of resemblances and differences mainly of shape and value. The American Indian distinction of animate and inanimate objects, or that of persons and non-persons, which we ourselves imperfectly intimate in our use of who and what, is at least equally philosophical and equally useful with that which is founded on sex.

Take as another example the element of tense in verbal expression. The time of any stated action, with reference to the present or any other point from which it is contemplated, and its duration, as momentary or more or less continued, is unavoidably contemplated by the mind that states it; yet how exceedingly different is the treatment of the element of time, in the systems of verbal conjugation of different languages! Some leave the whole determination of this relation to be inferred from the connection of the sentence, or intimate it, when necessary, by auxiliary particles; some, like the Semitic, have a quasi-temporal distinction founded on the idea of complete or incomplete action; forming a conjugational scheme which to us, with our habits of thought, appears strange and unmanageable. Even very near home, we meet with peculiarities of this character. Our own tongue, a thousand years ago, had no formal means of distinguishing future action from present. The French double past, “imperfect” and “past definite,” makes a distinction apprehensible enough in the main, but with the minor details of whose application the English student has long to vex himself; indeed, it is only the advanced and perfected scholar, English, French, or German, who can in every given case employ the form of past time (including the perfect) required by the idiom of another than his own among those three languages. In our shall and will, too, as future auxiliaries, we have a subtlety of combined tense and mood distinction which is almost a match for anything in the Greek or Latin subjunctive. Our different forms of the present—I love, I am loving, I do love—by their incessant use and the necessity constantly imposed upon us of choosing between them, call up plainly before our minds distinctions which are comparatively unnoticed in French and German. Nor is the case different as regards mood. There are infinite shades of doubt and contingency, of hope and fear, of supplication and exaction, in our mental acts and cognitions, which all the resources of Greek synthesis or English analysis are but rude and awkward means of signifying. All the peculiarities and varieties, too, of verbal expression in our Indo-European dialects are as nothing when compared with those which surprise us in tongues of a radically diverse structure—such, for instance, as the Basque and the American Indian.

Amid all the infinity of possible relations and modifications of a central idea, there are some of so obviously practical a character, so naturally suggested, that they are met with very generally, or almost universally, even among languages of ruder and scantier structure. To quote a prominent example or two—such is the plural of a noun, as formally distinguished from its singular; while, on the other hand, a dual, though tried by many languages, has been very generally abandoned again; and a special ternal, or threefold form, though not absolutely unknown, is one of the rarest items of grammar. Such, again, is the distinction of person in verbs and pronouns, or in pronouns alone; the speaker, the one addressed, the one spoken of, have their unfailing representatives in human speech. The variations here are of minor importance: there is the Semitic, which distinguishes masculine and feminine gender in the second and third persons of its verbs; and the languages are not few which have a double first person plural, one including and the other excluding the party addressed—one we made up of I’s and you’s, the other of I’s and he’s, without any you’s. Further illustration is furnished by some of the cases which have already been cited for other purposes. It may be said, in general, that there is hardly any formal distinction, however apparently fundamental, which is not ignored in some known language; and, on the contrary, there is certainly no known language which does not present some subtlety of expression, some nice and delicate shade of difference of meaning incorporated in a grammatical form, belonging to itself alone and shared with no other.

It seems evident, therefore, that if a language is to be morphologically estimated and compared with others, it must be judged by the number of the formal distinctions which it succeeds in conveying, by the character of those distinctions, and by the means through which it conveys them. No one of these three tests—number, character, means—maybe left out of account. The third is perhaps of the most decisive weight in fixing position in a morphological classification; yet it must not be applied alone; and especially not, if we are determining the general value of the language as a system of expression. The deficiencies brought to light by one test may be counterbalanced by the advantages which the others exhibit. That the quality or relation or circumstance apprehended as a form be a valuable one, and that it be distinctly brought to consciousness—that is the main thing; the particular instrumentality used is of minor consequence. There may be an abundance or a superfluity of inflective machinery which shall do poor work, cumbering the movements of thought; and there may be a scantiness of formative apparatus so well adapted to its purpose and so dexterously administered as to be virtually wealth. The mind, in language as elsewhere, is superior to the instruments it employs; it can do excellent work with tools apparently inadequate. As to the character of the tool, we are exceedingly liable to be swayed, in judging it, by our own habits. There are highly respectable students of language, speaking English as their native speech, who look upon Greek synthetic inflection as something to be contemned and apologized for, as characteristic of an inferior intellectual development, and burdensome to the minds that had to master and wield it; there are many more, probably, who commit the equally gross error of holding English analysis to be a mere corruption and degradation of a nobler original. The awkwardness of the agglomeration of auxiliary words in languages like those of Farther India is a common theme of illustration and reprehension; but it might not be hard for a Burman to retort by casting equal reproach upon us, on account of such phrases as that which will have been set, calling attention to the radical meaning of the vocables and the absence of inflective character in all but one (been), and giving as a paraphrase something like that whatsort desire possess grown deposited. And yet we know by experience that this last is in no degree or manner an equivalent for our phrase, in which each auxiliary is so strictly subordinated to its principal that it attracts no more of the mind’s separate attention than a formative syllable, a prefix or suffix, would do; the phrase is almost as integral as a simple word, and the impression of awkwardness is a subjective one; the end aimed at is completely and conveniently attained. So as regards the kind of form incorporated. A language might take special notice of the colors of sensible objects, classifying together those of kindred hue, and marking each class by a formal sign, so that color would thus be raised to the rank of a grammatical category; and the same might be done with brightness or dullness, with smoothness or roughness, with shape, with presence or absence before the sight, with distance, or other the like. And if such grossness of distinction, such materiality of form, constituted the staple of the grammar of a language, we should be justified in ranking that language very low in the morphological scale. Yet some of our own most valuable forms had an origin as gross as this; color, shape, and distance are capable of being made the basis of an analogical classification that shall run through the world of mind as well as matter, and lend itself to the best uses of thought. It is extremely convenient to adopt a single definite test, and by its application to arrange all languages on a linear scale, each having its precise place between two others; but such a scale is worth little after it is made.

Nor is there any fixed and definite line to be drawn between the linguistic expression of material and that of form. There is rather a shading off from purely formal elements, synthetically expressed, through auxiliaries and relational words, into independent vocables belonging to parts of speech usually ranked as material. The same word has its more material and its more formal meanings and uses. Intellectual and moral terms have a less material aspect than physical. Adjectives are more akin with form than nouns, and adverbs than adjectives. Many relations whose synthetic expression constitutes an important part of the grammar of one language are in another left to the mere collocations of the phrase: thus, for example, the categories of caused or induced action, of attempted, of repeated, of intensified action, and so on, which suggest the conjugational distinctions of Semitic and other tongues, are with us not thought to deserve even auxiliaries. No concrete name is really other than an appellation for a complex of qualities; no conception, or practically as good as none, is simple and incapable of analysis; and of the combined elements any one may be set apart and treated as an accessory to the rest, its expression thus assuming a formal value. The variety of possible relation and circumstance is infinite; nor is its style of incorporation in speech a restricted one.

Once more, through all the history of language, so far as we can trace it, the constant and normal tendency has been toward the reduction of the expression of material to that of form. It appears in every department of speech, and in every degree. Our have, for example, of which the formal applications now include past time, obligation, and causation, indicates earlier the comparatively material idea of ‘possession;’ and if we followed it up beyond this, we should find its origin in something still more physical. Do was once ‘set, place,’ and so has been partially formalized even in its most material present signification; in do love and love-d it is yet more purely formal. If there be one word more eminently formal than the rest, it is the substantive verb, the copula, be, which represents only the relation of mental combination between subject and predicate; yet it comes demonstrably from material roots, which first expressed such physical acts as sitting, standing, abiding, growing. So also among the parts of speech, it is the more formal that appear last, and appear by development out of the more material: this has been the history of the adverbs, the prepositions, the conjunctions, the articles; and if the pronouns still have to be looked upon as original in Indo-European speech, many linguists are confident of being able some day to trace their genesis to roots of material import. Among them, too, at any rate, the most material class, the demonstratives, is the earliest, and the most formal, the relatives, of very recent growth. All this is analogous with the development of language in other respects: coarser and grosser stuff is continually applied to finer purpose; intellectual and moral expressions are made by conversion from very different uses. This is so obviously and confessedly the way things go on in human speech, that further time spent in pointing it out and illustrating it would be wasted.

Some, indeed, may incline to regard the whole time spent in our discussion as wasted, and the points made in it as mere commonplaces of the linguistic science of the day, with which even beginners ought to be familiar. Perhaps they would be right. But I may plead in my excuse that there are still those who deny and oppose the doctrines I have laid down, and would fain build up linguistic science on a very different foundation from that here implied. I have had in view throughout an essay by Professor Friedrich Müller of Vienna, entitled “Beiträge zur Morphologie und Entwicklungsgeschichte der Sprachen, I.,” presented to the Vienna Academy in January, 1871, and printed in the Sitzungsberichte of its philosophico-historical class (vol. lxvii., pp. 139-156). Professor Müller is a scholar of very high rank, widely and deeply learned, enterprising and productive. His two volumes on the results, linguistic and anthropological, of the Novara expedition are admirable résumés of the present state of knowledge in their respective departments, and are also rich in new facts and new combinations and inferences. Apart from these, he has produced chiefly essays and monographs, on a great variety of linguistic topics, in the same series which contains the one we have now especially in view. In matters of linguistic theory and the history of grammatical forms, his views are at variance with those of the now dominant school of comparative philologists; some of them have been recently elaborately combated by Georg Curtius (in his Studien z. Gr. u. Lat. Gr., iv. 211 ff.) but nothing of his has gone more flatly counter to the prevailing doctrines on points of fundamental importance than this particular paper; if its doctrines are true, the existing science of language is in need of thorough reformation.

First, Professor Müller rejects and contemns the current threefold division of language into isolating, agglutinative, and inflectional; not at all for the reasons which led me formerly to regard its merits as greatly overestimated, but because “the morphological distinction of languages does not lie in the looser or closer mode of connection of the single parts—for this is something merely external—but in the separation (Scheidung) of material and form.” Now this phrase, “separation of material and form,” which Professor Müller insists upon and repeats again and again, as expressing the gist of his peculiar view, is to me well-nigh unintelligible. Perhaps the fault is in my apprehension, but I cannot help thinking that it is also unintelligent and meaningless. Its author certainly owed us a comment, to show what he meant to have his readers understand by it. In the first place, material and form are not separable from one another; everything has its characteristics and relations, belonging necessarily to it in a given situation; when we come, indeed, to test our knowledge to the bottom, we find that we know nothing but relations, and that we have no power to cognize the absolute. Then, in the second place, language is no separator of quality from substance, or of quality from quality; it does nothing but incorporate and express the results of mental action. The mind may contemplate the more external and accidental relations of a thing apart from those more constant and essential ones which to our ordinary apprehension constitute the thing itself; and the former, as we have seen, may find expression, with varying degrees of distinctness and by varying means. If we may interpret the “separation of material and form” to signify merely the distinction of form from material by separate expression, it has a meaning; but then, unfortunately, the doctrine becomes coincident with that which it is brought forward to oppose and put down; we are just brought back again to the old familiar view, that the morphological difference of languages consists in the forms which they respectively embody in expression, and the way in which these forms are embodied; and that hence the characteristics of isolation and the rest are real determining elements of prime importance in morphological classification. Since “form” is an essentially external characteristic, it is hard to see why a classification by form is to be reproached for dealing with externals. One might as well object to classing temples morphologically together as Grecian, Gothic, Egyptian, and so on, because this is noting only their external characteristics, without regard to such deeper differences as uilder, time, and purpose.

In a marginal note on this paragraph, Professor Müller thinks it a result of the superficiality pointed out by him that many scholars discover no really essential difference between the three classes mentioned. He is not quite sure whether they would go so far as to hold that an isolating language may become agglutinative, and an agglutinative inflecting, but cannot help inferring it from their doctrine that the IndoEuropean tongue itself was once monosyllabic. And he exclaims: “See in what vacillating (schwankende) and absurd views those become involved who found themselves on externalities, and leave the root of the matter unheeded!” Now Professor Müller has a perfect right to call his opponents’ views “absurd,” if they really appear so to him—there are those to whom the doctrine that the earth revolves on its axis and circles about the sun seems absurd, and no one blames them for frankly saying as much—but why he should fling at those views the epithet “vacillating” I do not at all understand. They are held, so far as I can discover, with the utmost distinctness and the most unwavering confidence, as an essential constituent part of a consistent linguistic system, which finds abundant support from the recorded facts of language-history. If the isolating phrase lead did could become the agglutination lead-did and lead-de, and finally the internally inflected lĕd, a large class of linguists cannot see why the same process may not have gone on upon a scale vast enough to characterize a whole linguistic formation; and they even think that the burden of proof rests upon those who maintain the contrary.

Our author closes his note with the assertion that “languages which from the very beginning have lacked the feeling for form will never develop themselves into form-languages.” Now, in the first place, I do not believe that any language ever had either a feeling or a lack of such; the expression is one of those purely figurative ones which have a wonderful facility at leading men’s minds astray. The users of language are the only feeling agents, and they are the developers of language; they have, always and everywhere, as has been abundantly shown above, more or less consciously forms in their apprehension, and it depends only on their aptitude as mental analysts and linguistic constructors which of these they shall incorporate in distinct expression, and by what means. And that the aptitudes of different communities are different appears not in language only, but also in every other human production. In the second place, there is no real reason, no scientific accuracy, in calling certain languages, as distinguished from others, “form-languages,” as if the possession of forms were other than universal, or as if a part of human speech possessed “true forms,” while the rest had only apparent or ungenuine forms. For, as we have seen, a form in language is simply the incorporate expression of an idea which is regarded as subordinate to a class of ideas, as their modification or the determinant of their relation; and wherever that end is attained, there is form. And it is attained everywhere, only in varying extent, and by discordant means; it is impossible to conceive of a language not in its absolutely incipient stage which should be destitute of form. There is difference enough between languages as regards this element of their structure, but it is only a difference of degree; to make it otherwise is to distort and misrepresent the facts of language.

Although tempted to go through all the last few pages of Professor Müller’s essay, criticising their statements and reasonings, I will quote only one other paragraph. He has been pointing out that some would parallel the primitive Indo-European language with the now existing monosyllabic tongues, but that this would imply the existence in the former of that non-separation of material and form which we see to characterize the latter; and he then proceeds: “Now, however, the Indo-European tongues belong confessedly (bekanntermassen) to those which have carried through on principle a separation of material and form.” This “confessedly,” we may remark in passing, is hardly consistent with his plea, a page or two back, that his opponents—that is to say, nearly the whole body of comparative philologists—make no account of the separation in question. And even if these languages have “carried through” such a separation, they need not have been at the outset unlike those which never have succeeded in carrying it through. But this is an objection which the next sentence endeavors to dispose of: “As one nevertheless does not comprehend how material can have suddenly become form, how material elements can have transformed themselves to formal, the assumption that in primitive Indo-European speech there was found only material (expression of significance), and no form (expression of relation), cannot possibly be correct.” It here appears clearly that the discordance of view between Professor Müller and the rest of the philologists is total, and probably hopeless of removal. To us, as has been pointed out above, the whole history of language seems to prove, not only that elements of material expression can and do become transmuted into formal, but even that formal expression is won in no other way. We are filled with wonder and expectation as to what can possibly be brought forward to oppose, much more to nullify and overthrow, the immense mass of facts exhibiting the transfer which is here so dogmatically denied. The author fairly owed it to his readers to support his assumption, by illustration and argument. All that he gives us in this direction is a new assumption, with which he winds up the paragraph: “Notwithstanding its isolating structure, the primitive Indo-European language also must have distinguished material and form, and in the ma of the two combinations i-ma, as-ma [the originals of Greek εἶμι, εἰμί] there must have resided a form-making function.” These are necessities which I cannot appreciate. Indeed, it is to me little short of nonsense to talk of a function as residing in a word, as inherent in its structure. I can see nothing in a word but the significance which its speakers put and keep there, and this significance is changeable according to their convenience and choice. The word is merely the instrument of the mind, and can be turned to new and wholly diverse uses by the agent that wields it. The capacity of i-ma, or of i ma, to become a form is really the capacity of those who said the one or the other to convert it into a form—as they actually did, and as their descendants have done in a host of cases since. There is perhaps a “form-making function” lurking to-day in many an innocent-looking vocable, which we use without a suspicion of its pregnancy of meaning. No Roman who said habeo and mente, doubtless, knew or conjectured that they contained form-making functions which would some day transmute the one into a future tense-sign and the other into an adverbial suffix (as in aimer-ai, i.e. amare habeo; and bonnement, i.e. bonâ mente). And there have been plenty of other functions, of a very portentous character, residing in our words. What shall we call that, for example, which has developed the Italian word for a ‘bench,’ banco, into a name for great moneyed institutions, throughout the civilized world? Compared with this, the change of i-ma to εἶμι is surely one of very small account.

The matter here involved is of the most fundamental importance. If language is a direct emanation of the mind, or an organic product, a sort of excretion, of the bodily organs, so that a word, in any one’s mouth, is an entity having a natural and necessary significance, and can even involve powers which may lie indefinitely dormant and finally come forth into action, then one set of opinions on all theoretic points in linguistics will follow; but another and a very different one, if words are only signs for ideas, instruments with which the mind works, and every language therefore an institution, of historic growth. Till this question is settled, there will be no harmony among students of language, even as there is none at present. To urge the direct examination of it, and on grounds of common sense, by sober observation and strictly scientific deduction, is a main object of this paper. The true scientific basis of linguistic investigation is far from being as yet universally understood and accepted. To show that this is so, I will here refer briefly to a single fact. Westphal, in his German and Greek grammars, puts forth and defends, in opposition to the prevalent Boppian theory of agglutination and fusion, his own view that suffixes were never independent words, but sprouted out, as it were, from the body of the roots to which we find them attached; and the leading linguistic Review of Germany (the Berlin Zeitschrift für Volkerpsychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, vol. vi., 1869, p. 483 seq.) impartially reports the two views, side by side, and pronounces them alike purely hypothetical and in themselves equally entitled to acceptance; the Westphalian one having, if anything, a greater plausibility than the other. On the contrary, there is an essential and world-wide difference between them: the one is a guess, the other an induction: the Boppian view is founded on a mass of facts well established in the observed history of language; the other is opposed to these facts, and has no basis except conjecture. The starting-point of science, in this as in other branches, is the facts that lie nearest, within reach of our objective and unbiassed observation; and the scientific method consists in carrying backward existing and observed processes, modifying them only so far as the changed conditions require their modification, and calling in no new force to account for what the old forces can possibly be made to explain. There are those who profess to accept this method, and are yet in practice untrue to it: more often than in any other way, by assuming that the governing forces and modes of action in ancient and primitive stages of language were and must have been diverse from those traceable in later stages. Differences enough, to be sure, there are between older and newer forms of language, especially in families which have had so rich a historic development as the Indo-European; but they are the consequence of a gradual accumulation of results in a single unbroken line of action. So the physicist, reasoning backward from the appearances of existing nature, arrives in theory, perhaps, at a primitive condition of nebulous chaos; but he does it by strict inductive processes, and never thinks of postulating for the nebulous period other physical forces than those which now work, under changed conditions, with different result. To do otherwise is to abandon the scientific basis, and place one’s self at the mercy of every arbitrary assumption.

I will only remark farther, in conclusion, that the whole substance of Professor Müller’s paper appears to me to show the same regrettable tendency toward dogmatic assumption, as opposed to sound and circumspect induction. His leading idea is, that there has been in the career of every language a period of ascending and one of descending development, first of growth toward completeness of structure, then of internal expansion but external or phonetic decay; the former period being pre-historic, the latter historic. Now, as a fact, something like this is incontestably true of most languages; but he puts it forward rather as a law, the dominion of which is to be illustrated; and anything of the nature of a law or principle I am quite unable to see in it. As regards, indeed, each separate and individual formation in language, each vocable, it is a law; the agglutination and fusion that makes a word is only the first step of a process of wearing down and wearing out; and this is equally true of the earliest and of the latest formations. So long, then, as more new formations are made than old ones worn out, the general growth of a language is upward; when the contrary begins to be the case, the growth is downward. And there is no law that determines the turning-point in this grander process—or, if there be one, it has not yet been worked out and established. Just so in the life of every human being there is a clearly recognizable law of youth and growth and decay and death; but a community grows so long as births are in excess of deaths, and decays when deaths are in excess of births: and for this there is no law; it depends upon a variety of determining influences so great and so heterogeneous that they defy reduction to a law. To ascertain what causes, internal or external, or both, produce this climax and anti-climax of language, and whether the descending grade has everywhere been reached, and, if so, when and how, would be a grand and worthy undertaking. But it is one which Professor Müller does not attempt; and his exposition furnishes occasion throughout for unfavorable criticism, and is nearly or quite barren of valuable result.

title: On Material and Form in Language


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Rhapsody

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Rhapsody


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Victory

title: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Victory


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 BROOKE, RICHARD (1791–1861), antiquary, was a native of Liverpool, where he was born in 1791. His father, also named Richard, was a Cheshire man, who settled in Liverpool early in life, and died there on 15 June 1852, at the age of 91. Richard Brooke the younger practised as a solicitor in Liverpool, and devoted his leisure time to investigations into the history and antiquities of his county, and into certain branches of natural history. One of the favourite occupations of his life was to visit and explore the several fields of battle in England, especially those which were the scenes of conflict between the rival houses of York and Lancaster. The great object he had in view was to compare the statements of the historians with such relics as had survived, and with the traditions of the neighbourhoods where the respective battles had been fought. He was led to this line of research at a comparatively early age during visits to his brother, Mr. Peter Brooke, who resided near Stoke Field. In 1825 he published 'Observations illustrative of the Accounts given by the Ancient Historical Writers of the Battle of Stoke Field, between King Henry the Seventh and John De la Pole, Earl of Lincoln, in 1487, the last that was fought in the Civil Wars of York and Lancaster; to which are added some interesting particulars of the Illustrious Houses of Plantagenet and Neville' (Liverpool, 1825, roy. 8vo). In later years he carried on his researches, and communicated the result to the Society of Antiquaries, of which he was a member, and to the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, in papers which were subsequently published in a volume in 1857, entitled 'Visits to Fields of Battle in England in the Fifteenth Century. To which are added some Miscellaneous Tracts and Papers upon Archæological Subjects' (8vo). The battlefields described are Shrewsbury, Blore Heath, Northampton, Wakefield, Mortimer's Cross, Towton, Tewkesbury, Bosworth, Stoke, Evesham, and Barnet. The additional papers are: 1. 'On the Use of Firearms by the English in the 15th Century.' 2. 'The Family of Wyche, or De la Wyche, in Cheshire.' 3. 'Wilmslow Church in Cheshire.' 4. 'Handford Hall and Cheadle Church in Cheshire.' 5. The Office of Keeper of the Royal Menagerie in the Reign of Edward IV.' 6. 'The Period of the Extinction of Wolves in England.'

He was a member of the council of the Liverpool Literary and Philosophical Society, and read many papers at the meetings of the society. The following, in addition to some of those named above, are printed in its 'Proceedings:' In the 'Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire' he published 'Observations on the Inscription of the Common Seal of Liverpool' (i. 76), besides the three Cheshire papers reprinted in the volume of 'visits.' In 1853 he published 'Liverpool as it was during the Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century, 1775 to 1800' (Liverpool, roy. 8vo, pp. 558). In this he has gathered a body of interesting facts relating to the history of the great port during that period, much of the information being derived from his father. He died at Liverpool on 14 June 1861, in the seventieth year of his age.
 * 1) 'Upon the extraordinary and abrupt Changes of Fortune of Jasper, earl of Pembroke,' vol. x.
 * 2) 'Life of Richard Neville, the Great Earl of Warwick and Salisbury, called the King Maker,' xii.
 * 3) 'Life and Character of Margaret of Anjou,' xiii.
 * 4) 'Visit to Fotheringay Church and Castle,' xiii.
 * 5) 'Migration of the Swallow,' xiii.
 * 6) 'On the Elephants used in War by the Carthaginians,' xiv.
 * 7) 'On the Common or Fallow Deer of Great Britain,' xiv.

 BROOKE, ROBERT (d. 1802?), of Prosperous, county Kildare, governor of St. Helena from 1787 to 1801, was youngest son of Robert Brooke, and grandson of the Rev. William Brooke of Rantavan House, county Cavan ( Landed Gentry, see Brooke of Drumvana). He entered the service of the East India Company on 14 Aug. 1764 as ensign on the Bengal establishment, became lieutenant on 25 Aug. 1765, and substantive captain on 10 Dec. 1767. He signalised himself on several occasions in the operations against Cossim Ali and Soojah Dowlah under Lord Clive, during which time he served with the 8th sepoys. Detached to Madras with two companies of Bengal sepoy grenadiers, he served through the campaigns of 1768-9 against Hyder Ali, with General Joseph Smith, and was subsequently chief engineer of Colonel Wood's force. On one occasion he was sent as envoy to Hyder Ali. Returning to Bengal he was given command of two battalions lent as guards to the Mogul. While so employed he put down a formidable revolt in the province of Corah, for which service he was rewarded with the collectorship of the province, together with a commission of 2 per cent, on its revenues while in command of the troops on the frontier. He raised the Bengal native light infantry, and commanded that battalion in two campaigns against the


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Song : "If Love Were Not, the Wilding Rose"


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50 moral lever, by which, like Archimedes of old, we may seek to raise the world.

There is at the present time a very gratifying circumstance in connection with the extension of machinery; namely, the large remuneration which operatives who work machines actually receive compared with those who perform hand labour without the help of machinery. I would here mention, with reference to the amount of wages paid to the operative, that it does not depend solely on the master manufacturers of this country, but is governed in some measure by what is paid by the manufacturers of other countries who are in competition with our own. When I was in America in 1853, I found that the American operatives received somewhat more wages than are paid in this country; but they worked much longer hours, although the climate, during some parts of the year, is so unfavourable. These longer hours enable the American manufacturer to turn over his capital more frequently.

This question of increased production, with which we, as mechanical engineers, are so identified, is so entirely dependent upon the power of the people to consume, that I hope I shall be excused in adverting to it. Our yearly exports now amount to about a hundred millions sterling, having doubled in a short time, while our home


text: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Inviolable

title: Poems (Coates 1916)/Volume I/Inviolable


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Rh productions have been greatly increased from the same cause, namely, the increased ability of our people to consume. As a general principle it would seem to be far better to levy a small impost on the entire wealth of an individual rather than to fasten a tax on particular objects, which if produced would constitute wealth, but which are not made because of the threatened impost. The remaining duty on carriages seems to me to be one of this description. Were there no tax, almost every one who keeps one carriage would keep more, while large numbers would have one who now have none. By their use locomotion would be increased threefold, and hence much valuable time would be saved. Besides, a large number of the best description of artisans would be called into existence for their manufacture—a class, too, who are well able to turn their hand, in cases of necessity, to other employment. If, therefore, it is desirable for a nation to possess wealth in carriages, it is a mistake for legislation to prevent it.

Formerly, when the wealth of a nation was produced, as it were, by hand labour, a different state of things existed to that of the present day. As I have shown, our means of production are now increased in some cases more than a hundred and in others more than a thousand fold; and this will go on, just in proportion as the masses of Rh


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52 our people are able to consume larger quantities of everything that they require. When the farm labourer pays less for his sugar and tea, more meat will be consumed (which again goes to improve the land); also more wool for our manufactures.

In this wonderful power of producing wealth which now exists, none can be more interested and benefited than the proprietors of the land. A striking proof of this is given by its increased value in the manufacturing counties, and for miles adjoining our manufacturing towns. The competition, too, of our manufacturers and merchants to become possessors of land is shown by the small rate of interest with which they are satisfied, for the outlay of their capital on the soil. The proprietors of land may rest assured that, in the future development of mechanical improvements, none will be more benefited than themselves. I do not hesitate to say that all harvest operations on land, properly laid down, will very shortly be performed in one-fourth the time required with the hand labour now expended, by the farther application of machines worked by horse-power. This is my conviction, based upon the experience I have had in the successful working of the machine I constructed for sweeping the streets, and at the same time filling the cart, by horse-power. By the combined aid of


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  about Rajmahal, in which he distinguished himself by his lenity and humanity no less than by the success of his operations. He also rendered good service against the Mahrattas and in the Rohilla war. His services were acknowledged by the court of directors on 19 April 1771, and again on 30 March 1774, in terms almost unprecedented in the case of an officer of junior rank. He returned home on furlough in 1774, and invested the fortune he had realised by his collectorship at Corah in an attempt to develope the cotton manufacture in Ireland, with which object he erected the industrial village of Prosperous, in the barony of Clane, county Kildare. About the same time he married Mrs. Wynne, née Mapletoft, who bore him several children. The enterprise at Prosperous met with patronage and support in distinguished quarters, and in 1776 Brooke received the thanks of parliament for his patriotic endeavours. The manufacturing processes cotton-printing excepted are stated to have been carried to some perfection, but in a commercial sense the undertaking proved a failure, and after many vicissitudes the works, counting some 1,400 looms, in 1787 had to be given up for the benefit of the creditors. They were eventually burned by the rebels in 1798. His own fortune and that of his wife having thus been sacrificed, and an elder brother, who was partner in the enterprise, and others having become involved in the ruin, Brooke applied to the court of directors to reinstate him in his former rank, for, having overstayed his leave, he had been struck off the rolls from 14 April 1775. The directors declined to accede to the request, but immediately afterwards appointed him to the governorship of the island of St. Helena, in succession to Governor Corneille. There he displayed much energy. He improved the buildings, strengthened the defences, and established a code of signals. The island became a depot for the company's European troops, and during his governorship over 12,000 recruits were drilled in its valleys. His spirited measures for seizing the Cape of Good Hope with a small naval squadron carrying a landing-force of 600 light infantry, blue-jackets, marines, and seamen-volunteers, though anticipated by the expedition from home under General Craig and Admiral Keith, won for him the special thanks of the home government. The court of directors recognised his exertions by the gift of a diamond-hilted sword, presented to him in 1799 at St. Helena, at the head of a garrison parade, Brooke then holding local rank as colonel. A serious illness compelled him to embark for England on 10 March 1801, and he died soon after.

Particulars and certificates of his public services in India and in Ireland will be found in the 'British Museum Collection of Political Tracts,' under the heading: 'Brooke, Robt. A Letter from Mr. Brooke to an Honourable Member of the House of Commons (Dublin, 1787).' A notice of his governorship appears in the 'History of St. Helena,' compiled by Thomas Digby Brooke, who was for many years colonial secretary on the island, and was a nephew of Governor Brooke, being a son of the elder brother who was partner in the concern at Prosperous. A few unpublished letters to Warren Hastings in 1773, and from the Marquis Wellesley, are among ' Add. MSS.,' British Museum.

 BROOKE, Lord. [See Greville, Fulke (DNB00).]

 BROOKE, SAMUEL (d. 1632), master of Trinity College, Cambridge, and archdeacon of Coventry, was the son of Robert Brooke, a rich citizen of York, and was brother of, the poet [q. v.] In 1596 he was admitted to Trinity College, Cambridge; he proceeded M.A. 1604, B.D. 1607, and D.D. 1615. Shortly afterwards he was sent to prison, by the agency of Sir George More, for secretly celebrating the marriage of Dr. John Donne with More's daughter, but was soon afterwards released. He was promoted to the office of chaplain to Henry, prince of Wales, who recommended him (26 Sept. 1612) for the divinity chair at Gresham College. He was afterwards chaplain to both James I and Charles I. He was elected proctor at Cambridge in 1613, and in 1614 he wrote three Latin plays, which were performed before James I on his visit to the university in that year. The names of the plays appear to have been 'Scyros,' 'Adelphe,' and 'Melanthe,' and the 'Adelphe' was described as so witty 'ut vel ipsi Catoni risum excuteret.' On 13 June 1618 he became rector of St. Margaret's, Lothbury, London, and 10 July 1621 was incorporated D.D. at Oxford. He was elected master of Trinity College, Cambridge, 5 Sept. 1629, and on 17 Nov. resigned his Gresham professorship. Prynne, in his 'Canterburie's Doome' p. 157, abuses Brooke as a disciple of Laud, and states that in 1630 Brooke was engaged in 'An Arminian Treatise of Predestination.'


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Rh mechanical improvements and the science of chemistry, together with the greater skill of our modern agriculturists, the culture of the land throughout Great Britain must more and more approximate to that of a garden.

We have seen the effect of the repeal of the duties on glass and bricks, in the improved appearance and reduced cost of residences, and a still further benefit may be expected to result from the removal of the remaining duty on timber. While, therefore, we congratulate ourselves on the great results which the mechanical arts have achieved, we have every reason to be thankful that our legislators have removed so many impediments to our progress. The glorious fruits of the legislative labours of that great and good man, Sir R. Peel, may give us hope that the time is not far distant when all remaining obstacles of this kind will be swept away. When that period has arrived, and when the industry of this country has been systematised upon sound principles of economical science, and in each department carried nearer to those standards which, in the case of mechanics, I have endeavoured to indicate, we shall have less reason than at present to doubt the stability of our manufacturing pre-eminence.


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 A PAPER

ON STANDARD DECIMAL MEASURES OF LENGTH,

READ AT THE

MEETING OF THE INSTITUTION OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERS, MANCHESTER, 1857.


text: Miscellaneous Papers on Mechanical Subjects/Address delivered to the Institution of Mechanical Engineers


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text: Author talk:Thomas Digby Brooke

title: Author talk:Thomas Digby Brooke


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 STANDARD DECIMAL MEASURES OF LENGTH. the address which I had the honour of delivering before the Members of this Institution at the Glasgow Meeting last year, I briefly alluded to the beneficial results which would follow the application of the decimal system to our weights and measures, referring more particularly to the latter. In compliance with the wish expressed by several members of the Council, I propose in the present paper to bring this important subject more prominently under the notice of the members, confining myself, however, to its practical bearing on mechanical operations, without discussing different systems of notation, which I leave to other and abler hands.

I have long been convinced that great and rapid progress would be made in many branches of the mechanical arts if the decimal system of


text: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Brooke, Robert


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58 measures could be generally introduced. To state the case broadly, instead of our engineers and machinists thinking in eighths, sixteenths and thirty-seconds of an inch, it is desirable that they should think and speak in tenths, hundredths, and thousandths. I can assure those who have been accustomed to the fractional system that the change to the more perfect decimal one is easy of attainment, and, when once made, it will from its usefulness and convenience amply repay any trouble which may have attended its acquirement. In the manufacture of my standard gauges of size, the workmen measure to the 1-20,000th of an inch, and these measures are as familiar and appreciable as those of any larger dimensions. It will therefore be at once conceded that the only scale of measurement which can be used for such small sizes and proportionally small differences must be a decimal one, as any other would be productive of insurmountable difficulty, if not of utter confusion.

When the sizes of the fitting parts of machines are determined by sight from the lines on a scale or a two-foot rule, such nicety of measurement is out of the question; and as long as they are made on that system, the progress of improvement will be retarded. My experience has satisfied me that no system of measurement depending on the power of sight is suitable for


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 Freedom Pamphlet.

PRICE ONE PENNY.

BY

HERBERT SPENCER.

(Reprinted from "Social Statics" 1850 Edition.)

.

1913.


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Author:Thomas Digby Brooke

Works

 * History of St. Helena
 * The Exemplary Life of the Pious Lady Guion

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 [It is only fair to the memory of Mr. Herbert Spencer that we should warn the reader of the following chapter from the original edition of Mr. Spencer's "Social Statics," written in 1850, that it was omitted by the author from the revised edition, published in 1892. We may legitimately infer that this omission indicates a change of view. But to repudiate is not to answer, and Mr. Spencer never answered his arguments for the right to ignore the State. It is the belief of the Anarchists that these arguments are unanswerable.]


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Rh obtaining the size of the working parts of machines. Where exact size or good fitting is required, the sense of touch is far more to be depended upon. I make standards of size by a system of measurement depending for its accuracy upon the sense of touch; and use an instrument provided with a mechanical multiplier, by which a space is presented to the eye many thousand times greater in extent than is the case where the distance is directly measured by sight only.

With truth of surface, that never-failing element of success, as the basis of operation, we are enabled to measure with exactitude; and there is no difficulty in making parts of machines to fit one another with any degree of nicety: but, when we wish to express correctly by the common fractional system very minute measurements, our ideas are cramped and hampered by an inconvenient and often confused system of notation. What exact motion can any man have of such a size as “a bare sixteenth” or “a full thirty-second;” and what inconvenient results may ensue from the different notions of different workmen as to the value of these terms. A scale of notation that may have suited the old system of manufacture has been left behind, I am happy to say, as the present age has improved on the past; and our improvement has created a want


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§1. As a corollary to the proposition that all institutions must be subordinated to the law of equal freedom, we cannot choose but admit the right of the citizen to adopt a condition of voluntary outlawry. If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the State,—to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying towards its support. It is self-evident that in so behaving he in no way trenches upon the liberty of others; for his position is a passive one, and, whilst passive, he cannot become an aggressor. It is equally self-evident that he cannot be compelled to continue one of a political corporation without a breach of the moral law, seeing that citizenship involves payment of taxes; and the taking away of a man's property against his will is an infringement of his rights. Government being simply an agent employed in common by a number of individuals to secure to them certain advantages, the very nature of the connection implies that it is for each to say whether he will employ such an agent or not. If any one of them determines to ignore this mutual-safety confederation, nothing can be said, except that he loses all claim to its good offices, and exposes himself to the danger of maltreatment,—a thing he is quite at liberty to do if he likes. He cannot be coerced into political combination without a breach of the law of equal freedom; he can withdraw from it without committing any such breach; and he has therefore a right so to withdraw.

§2. "No human laws are of any validity if contrary to the law of nature: and such of them as are valid derive all their force and all their authority mediately or immediately from this 3


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60 which necessity urges us to supply without delay. In the production of duplicate parts of machinery, correct measurement is indispensable to ensure good work: and if, as is the case, we are able to measure with all the accuracy and nicety that can be required, we surely ought at once to adopt a system of notation which will properly represent our measurements.

As an illustration of the importance of very small differences of size, I have brought an internal gauge having a cylindrical aperture ·5770 inch diameter, and two external gauges or solid cylinders, one being ·5769 inch, and the other ·5770 inch diameter. The latter is 1-10,000th of an inch larger than the former, and fits tightly in the internal gauge when both are clean and dry; while the smaller ·5769 inch gauge is so loose in it as to appear not to fit at all These gauges are finished with great care, and are made true after being casehardened. They are so hard that nothing but the diamond will cut them, except the grinding process to which they have been subjected. The effect of applying a drop of fine oil to the surfaces of these gauges is very remarkable. It will be observed that the fit of the larger cylinder becomes more easy, while that of the smaller becomes more tight. These results show the necessity of proper lubrication. In the case of the external gauge ·5770


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 original." Thus writes Blackstone, to whom let all honour be given for having so far outseen the ideas of his time,—and, indeed, we may say of our time. A good antidote, this, for those political superstitions which so widely prevail. A good check upon that sentiment of power-worship which still misleads us by magnifying the prerogatives of constitutional governments as it once did those of monarchs. Let men learn that a legislature is not "our God upon earth," though, by the authority they ascribe to it and the things they expect from it, they would seem to think it is. Let them learn rather that it is an institution serving a purely temporary purpose, whose power, when not stolen, is, at the best, borrowed.

Nay, indeed, have we not seen that government is essentially immoral? Is it not the offspring of evil, bearing about it all the marks of its parentage? Does it not exist because crime exists? Is it not strong, or, as we say, despotic, when crime is great? Is there not more liberty—that is, less government—as crime diminishes? And must not government cease when crime ceases, for very lack of objects on which to perform its function? Not only does magisterial power exist because of evil, but it exists by evil. Violence is employed to maintain it; and all violence involves criminality. Soldiers, policemen, and gaolers; swords, batons, and fetters,—are instruments for inflicting pain; and all infliction of pain is, in the abstract, wrong. The State employs evil weapons to subjugate evil, and is alike contaminated by the objects with which it deals and the means by which it works. Morality cannot recognise it; for morality, being simply a statement of the perfect law, can give no countenance to anything growing out of, and living by, breaches of that law. Wherefore legislative authority can never be ethical—must always be conventional merely.

Hence there is a certain inconsistency in the attempt to determine the right position, structure, and conduct of a government by appeal to the first principles of rectitude. For, as just pointed out, the acts of an institution which is, in both nature and origin, imperfect cannot be made to square with the perfect law. All that we can do is to ascertain, firstly, in what attitude


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Rh inch diameter, the external and internal gauges are so near in size that the one does not go through the other when dry, and if pressed in, there would be danger of the surface particles of the one becoming imbedded in or among those of the other, which I have seen happen, and then no amount of force will separate them: but with a small quantity of oil on their surfaces, they move easily and smoothly. In the case of the external gauge ·5769 inch diameter, which is 1-10,000th of an inch smaller in diameter than the internal gauge, a space of half that quantity is left between the surfaces; this becomes filled with the oil, and hence the tighter fitting which is experienced.

It is therefore obvious both to the eye and the touch, that the difference between these two cylinders of 1-10,000th of an inch is an appreciable and important quantity; and what is now required is a method which shall express systematically and without confusion a scale applicable to such minute differences and measurements: it should be based on a uniform principle which will accustom the workman to speak of his measures as aggregates of very small differences; and when a good workman becomes familiar with such sizes as 1-1000th and 1-10,000th of an inch, he will not rest satisfied until he can work with corresponding accuracy. He will also be


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 Laud encouraged him to complete this book, but afterwards declined to sanction its publication on account of its excessive violence. On 13 May 1631 Brooke was admitted archdeacon of Coventry, and died 16 Sept. 1632. His will (99 St. John) was made 16 Sept. 1631 and proved 20 Sept. He was buried without monument or epitaph in Trinity College Chapel. None of Brooke's works appear to have been printed. Besides the treatise already mentioned, he wrote a tract on the Thirty-nine Articles, and a discourse, dedicated to the Earl of Pembroke, entitled 'De Auxilio Divinæ Gratiæ Exercitatio theologica, nimirum: An possibile sit duos eandem habere Gratiæ Mensuram, et tamen unus convertatur et credat; alter non: e Johan. xi. 45, 46.' The manuscript of this discourse is in Trinity College Library.

 BROOKE, WILLIAM HENRY (d. 1860), satirical draughtsman and portrait-painter, was a nephew of (1703?-1783) [q. v.], the author of 'A Fool of Quality.' He was placed when young in a banker's office. Preferring the studio to the desk, he became the pupil of Samuel Drummond, A.R.A. He made rapid progress, and soon established himself as a portrait-painter in the Adelphi. In 1810 he first exhibited in the Academy. His early works, according to Redgrave, were mere sketches; their subjects: 'Anacreon,' 'Murder of Thomas à Becket,' and 'Musidora.' Between 1813 and 1823 he did not exhibit. In the latter year he sent three pictures, a portrait, and two Irish landscapes with figures. In 1826 he exhibited 'Chastity.' This was the last work which he sent to the Academy. In 1812 he undertook to make drawings for the 'Satirist,' a monthly publication which changed hands several times in its short career, and collapsed finally in 1814. There is little of style or of wit to redeem the pure vulgarity of Brooke's work as a satirist. He contributed to this paper till September 1813, and was then succeeded by George Cruikshank. His drawings for this periodical seem to have brought him some notice, and he illustrated a good many popular books of the day. Among these may be mentioned Moore's 'Irish Melodies,' 1822; Major's edition of Izaak Walton, to which he supplied some vignettes; Keightley's 'Greek and Roman Mythology,' 1831; 'Persian and Turkish Tales;' 'Gulliver's Travels;' Nathaniel Cotton's 'Visions in Verse;' and 'Fables for the Female Sex,' by E. Moore and his uncle, H. Brooke. The last three are undated and published by Walker. None of Brooke's embellishments appear to have had much merit. His best designs, however, are said to have been well drawn. He shows a certain feeling for grace in his delineation of women, though little knowledge. He died at Chichester 12 Jan. 1860.

[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists of the English School; British Museum Catalogues.]  BROOKE, ZACHARY (1716–1788), divine, the son of Zachary Brooke, of Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge (B.A. 1693-4, and M. A. 1697), at one time vicar of Hawkston-cum-Newton, near Cambridge, was born in 1716 at Hamerton, Huntingdonshire. He was educated at Stamford school, was admitted sizar of St. John's College, Cambridge, 28 June 1734, was afterwards elected a fellow, proceeded B.A. in 1737, M.A. in 1741, B.D. in 1748, and D.D. in 1753. He was elected to the Margaret professorship of divinity at Cambridge in 1765, and was at the same time a candidate for the mastership of St. John's College; was chaplain to the king from 1758, and was vicar of Ickleton, Cambridgeshire, and rector of Forncett St. Mary and St. Peter, Suffolk. He died at Forncett on 7 Aug. 1788. He married the daughter of W. Hanchet. He attacked Dr. Middleton's 'Free Inquiry' in his 'Defensio miraculorum quæ in ecclesia christiana facta esse perhibentur post tempora Apostolorum,' Cambridge, 1748, which appeared in English in 1750. This work called forth several 'Letters' in reply. Brooke was also the author of a collection of sermons, issued in 1763.

 BROOKES, JOSHUA (1754–1821), eccentric divine, was born at Cheadle-Hulme, near Stockport, and baptised on 19 May 1754. His father, a shoemaker, who removed soon after his son's birth to Manchester, was a cripple of violent temper, known by the name of 'Pontius Pilate.' He had, however, a genuine affection for his boy, who was; educated at the Manchester grammar school, where he attracted the notice of the Rev. Thomas Aynscough, M.A., who obtained the aid which, with a school exhibition, enabled him to proceed to Brasenose College, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. on 17 June 1778 and M.A. on 21 June 1781. In the following year he became curate of Chorlton Chapel, and in December 1790 was appointed chaplain of the collegiate church of Manchester, a


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62 able to judge of their effect under different circumstances, and know how much to allow in the fitting parts of a machine, according to their relative importance and the treatment they are likely to receive at the hands of the attendant. For instance, the cylinder of the moving headstock of a lathe requires as good a fit as possible; but in practice it is found that the cylinder must be ·0005 inch or 1-2000th of an inch too small, because it frequently happens that machinery is not kept in a proper state of cleanliness, or from motives of false economy is lubricated with bad oil. These are two evils which are productive of great mischief. The abrasion caused by accumulated dust and grit produces increased wear and tear, and soon injures the surfaces in contact; while bad oil becomes sticky and rancid, and spoils the working of a good fit.

And here let me state what I think is the proper definition of a good fit. A tight fit is not necessarily a good one; but when the surfaces are true, and a proper allowance is made in the size of the parts working together, then a good fit is obtained. What constitutes a proper allowance or difference in size depends on the nature of the case, and the treatment which the machinery will meet with. In machinery supplied to establishments using rape oil


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 a legislature must stand to the community to avoid being by its mere existence an embodied wrong; secondly, in what manner it must be constituted so as to exhibit the least incongruity with the moral law; and, thirdly, to what sphere its actions must be limited to prevent it from multiplying those breaches of equity it is set up to prevent.

The first condition to be conformed to before a legislature can be established without violating the law of equal freedom is the acknowledgment of the right now under discussion—the right to ignore the State.

§3. Upholders of pure despotism may fitly believe State-control to be unlimited and unconditional. They who assert that men are made for governments and not governments for men may consistently hold that no one can remove himself beyond the pale of political organisation. But they who maintain that the people are the only legitimate source of power—that legislative authority is not original, but deputed—cannot deny the right to ignore the State without entangling themselves in an absurdity.

For, if legislative authority is deputed, it follows that those from whom it proceeds are the masters of those on whom it is conferred: it follows further that as masters they confer the said authority voluntarily: and this implies that they may give or withhold it as they please. To call that deputed which is wrenched from men whether they will or not is nonsense. But what is here true of all collectively is equally true of each separately. As a government can rightly act for the people only when empowered by them, so also can it rightly act for the individual only when empowered by him. If A, B, and C debate whether they shall employ an agent to perform for them a certain service, and if, whilst A and B agree to do so, C dissents, C cannot equitably be made a party to the agreement in spite of himself. And this must be equally true of thirty as of three: and, if of thirty, why not of three hundred, or three thousand, or three millions?


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 §4. Of the political superstitions lately alluded to, none is so universally diffused as the notion that majorities are omnipotent. Under the impression that the preservation of order will ever require power to be wielded by some party, the moral sense of our time feels that such power cannot rightly be conferred on any but the largest moiety of society. It interprets literally the saying that "the voice of the people is the voice of God," and, transferring to the one the sacredness attached to the other, it concludes that from the will of the people—that is, of the majority—there can be no appeal. Yet is this belief entirely erroneous.

Suppose, for the sake of argument, that, struck by some Malthusian panic, a legislature duly representing public opinion were to enact that all children born during the next ten years should be drowned. Does any one think such an enactment would be warrantable? If not, there is evidently a limit to the power of a majority. Suppose, again, that of two races living together—Celts and Saxons, for example—the most numerous determined to make the others their slaves. Would the authority of the greatest number be in such case valid? If not, there is something to which its authority must be subordinate. Suppose, once more, that all men having incomes under £50 a year were to resolve upon reducing every income above that amount to their own standard, and appropriating the excess for public purposes. Could their resolution be justified? If not, it must be a third time confessed that there is a law to which the popular voice must defer. What, then, is that law, if not the law of pure equity—the law of equal freedom? These restraints, which all would put to the will of the majority, are exactly the restraints set up by that law. We deny the right of a majority to murder, to enslave, or to rob, simply because murder, enslaving, and robbery are violations of that law—violations too gross to be overlooked. But, if great violations of it are wrong, so also are smaller ones. If the will of the many cannot supersede the first principle of morality in these cases, neither can it in any. So that, however insignificant the minority, and


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 however trifling the proposed trespass against their rights, no such trespass is permissible.

When we have made our constitution purely democratic, thinks to himself the earnest reformer, we shall have brought government into harmony with absolute justice. Such a faith, though perhaps needful for the age, is a very erroneous one. By no process can coercion be made equitable. The freest form of government is only the least objectionable form. The rule of the many by the few we call tyranny: the rule of the few by the many is tyranny also, only of a less intense kind. "You shall do as we will, and not as you will," is in either case the declaration; and, if the hundred make it to ninety-nine, instead of the ninety-nine to the hundred, it is only a fraction less immoral. Of two such parties, whichever fulfils this declaration necessarily breaks the law of equal freedom: the only difference being that by the one it is broken in the persons of ninety-nine, whilst by the other it is broken in the persons of a hundred. And the merit of the democratic form of government consists solely in this,—that it trespasses against the smallest number.

The very existence of majorities and minorities is indicative of an immoral state. The man whose character harmonises with the moral law, we found to be one who can obtain complete happiness without diminishing the happiness of his fellows. But the enactment of public arrangements by vote implies a society consisting of men otherwise constituted—implies that the desires of some cannot be satisfied without sacrificing the desires of others—implies that in the pursuit of their happiness the majority inflict a certain amount of unhappiness on the minority—implies, therefore, organic immorality. Thus, from another point of view, we again perceive that even in its most equitable form it is impossible for government to dissociate itself from evil; and further, that, unless the right to ignore the State is recognised, its acts must be essentially criminal.

§5. That a man is free to abandon the benefits and throw off the burdens of citizenship, may indeed be inferred from the admissions of existing authorities and of current opinion.


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 as they probably are for so extreme a doctrine as the one here maintained, the Radicals of our day yet unwittingly profess their belief in a maxim which obviously embodies this doctrine. Do we not continually hear them quote Blackstone's assertion that "no subject of England can be constrained to pay any aids or taxes even for the defence of the realm or the support of government, but such as are imposed by his own consent, or that of his representative in Parliament"? And what does this mean? It means, say they, that every man should have a vote. True: but it means much more. If there is any sense in words, it is a distinct enunciation of the very right now contended for. In affirming that a man may not be taxed unless he has directly or indirectly given his consent, it affirms that he may refuse to be so taxed; and to refuse to be taxed is to cut all connection with the State. Perhaps it will be said that this consent is not a specific, but a general, one, and that the citizen is understood to have assented to every thing his representative may do, when he voted for him. But suppose he did not vote for him; and on the contrary did all in his power to get elected some one holding opposite views—what then? The reply will probably be that by taking part in such an election, he tacitly agreed to abide by the decision of the majority. And how if he did not vote at all? Why then he cannot justly complain of any tax, seeing that he made no protest against its imposition. So, curiously enough, it seems that he gave his consent in whatever way he acted—whether he said "Yes," whether he said "No," or whether he remained neuter! A rather awkward doctrine, this. Here stands an unfortunate citizen who is asked if he will pay money for a certain proffered advantage; and, whether he employs the only means of expressing his refusal or does not employ it, we are told that he practically agrees, if only the number of others who agree is greater than the number of those who dissent. And thus we are introduced to the novel principle that A's consent to a thing is not determined by what A says, but by what B may happen to say!

It is for those who quote Blackstone to choose between this


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 absurdity and the doctrine above set forth. Either his maxim implies the right to ignore the State, or it is sheer nonsense.

§6. There is a strange heterogeneity in our political faiths. Systems that have had their day, and are beginning here and there to let the daylight through, are patched with modern notions utterly unlike in quality and colour; and men gravely display these systems, wear them, and walk about in them, quite unconscious of their grotesqueness. This transition state of ours, partaking as it does equally of the past and the future, breeds hybrid theories exhibiting the oddest union of bygone despotism and coming freedom. Here are types of the old organisation curiously disguised by germs of the new—peculiarities showing adaptation to a preceding state modified by rudiments that prophesy of something to come—making altogether so chaotic a mixture of relationships that there is no saying to what class these births of the age should be referred.

As ideas must of necessity bear the stamp of the time, it is useless to lament the contentment with which these incongruous beliefs are held. Otherwise it would seem unfortunate that men do not pursue to the end the trains of reasoning which have led to these partial modifications. In the present case, for example, consistency would force them to admit that, on other points besides the one just noticed, they hold opinions and use arguments in which the right to ignore the State is involved.

For what is the meaning of Dissent? The time was when a man's faith and his mode of worship were as much determinable by law as his secular acts; and, according to provisions extant in our statute-book, are so still. Thanks to the growth of a Protestant spirit, however, we have ignored the State in this matter—wholly in theory, and partly in practice. But how have we done so? By assuming an attitude which, if consistently maintained, implies a right to ignore the State entirely. Observe the positions of the two parties. "This is your creed," says the legislator; "you must believe and openly profess what is here set down for you." "I shall not do anything of the kind," answers the Nonconformist; "I will go to prison rather."


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 "Your religious ordinances," pursues the legislator, "shall be such as we have prescribed. You shall attend the churches we have endowed, and adopt the ceremonies used in them." "Nothing shall induce me to do so," is the reply; "I altogether deny your power to dictate to me in such matters, and mean to resist to the uttermost." "Lastly," adds the legislator, "we shall require you to pay such sums of money toward the support of these religious institutions as we may see fit to ask." "Not a farthing will you have from me," exclaims our sturdy Independent; "even did I believe in the doctrines of your church (which I do not), I should still rebel against your interference; and, if you take my property, it shall be by force and under protest."

What now does this proceeding amount to when regarded in the abstract? It amounts to an assertion by the individual of the right to exercise one of his faculties—the religious sentiment—without let or hindrance, and with no limit save that set up by the equal claims of others. And what is meant by ignoring the State? Simply an assertion of the right similarly to exercise all the faculties. The one is just an expansion of the other—rests on the same footing with the other—must stand or fall with the other. Men do indeed speak of civil and religious liberty as different things: but the distinction is quite arbitrary. They are parts of the same whole, and cannot philosophically be separated.

"Yes they can," interposes an objector; "assertion of the one is imperative as being a religious duty. The liberty to worship God in the way that seems to him right, is a liberty without which a man cannot fulfil what he believes to be divine commands, and therefore conscience requires him to maintain it." True enough; but how if the same can be asserted of all other liberty? How if maintenance of this also turns out to be a matter of conscience? Have we not seen that human happiness is the divine will—that only by exercising our faculties is this happiness obtainable—and that it is impossible to exercise them without freedom? And, if this freedom for the exercise of faculties is a condition without which the


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 divine will cannot be fulfilled, the preservation of it is, by our objector's own showing, a duty. Or, in other words, it appears not only that the maintenance of liberty of action may be a point of conscience, but that it ought to be one. And thus we are clearly shown that the claims to ignore the State in religious and in secular matters are in essence identical.

The other reason commonly assigned for nonconformity admits of similar treatment. Besides resisting State dictation in the abstract, the Dissenter resists it from disapprobation of the doctrines taught. No legislative injunction will make him adopt what he considers an erroneous belief; and, bearing in mind his duty toward his fellow-men, he refuses to help through the medium of his purse in disseminating this erroneous belief. The position is perfectly intelligible. But it is one which either commits its adherents to civil nonconformity also, or leaves them in a dilemma. For why do they refuse to be instrumental in spreading error? Because error is adverse to human happiness. And on what ground is any piece of secular legislation disapproved? For the same reason—because thought adverse to human happiness. How then can it be shown that the State ought to be resisted in the one case and not in the other? Will any one deliberately assert that, if a government demands money from us to aid in teaching what we think ill produce evil, we ought to refuse it, but that, if the money is for the purpose of doing what we think will produce evil, we ought not to refuse it? Yet such is the hopeful proposition which those have to maintain who recognise the right to ignore the State in religious matters, but deny it in civil matters.

§7. The substance of this chapter once more reminds us of the incongruity between a perfect law and an imperfect State. The practicability of the principle here laid down varies directly as social morality. In a thoroughly vicious community its admission would be productive of anarchy. In a completely virtuous one its admission will be both innocuous and inevitable. Progress toward a condition of social health—a condition, that


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 is, in which the remedial measures of legislation will no longer be needed—is progress toward a condition in which those remedial measures will be cast aside, and the authority prescribing them disregarded. The two changes are of necessity co-ordinate. That moral sense whose supremacy will make society harmonious and government unnecessary is the same moral sense which will then make each man assert his freedom even to the extent of ignoring the State—is the same moral sense which, by deterring the majority from coercing the minority, will eventually render government impossible. And, as what are merely different manifestations of the same sentiment must bear a constant ratio to each other, the tendency to repudiate governments will increase only at the same rate that governments become needless.

Let not any be alarmed, therefore, at the promulgation of the foregoing doctrine. There are many changes yet to be passed through before it can begin to exercise much influence. Probably a long time will elapse before the right to ignore the State will be generally admitted, even in theory. It will be still longer before it receives legislative recognition. And even then there will be plenty of checks upon the premature exercise of it. A sharp experience will sufficiently instruct those who may too soon abandon legal protection. Whilst, in the majority of men, there is such a love of tried arrangements, and so great a dread of experiments, that they will probably not act upon this right until long after it is safe to do so.


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 ITS AIMS AND PRINCIPLES.

Anarchism may be briefly defined as the negation of all government and all authority of man over man; Communism as the recognition of the just claim of each to the fullest satisfaction of all his needs—physical, moral, and intellectual. The Anarchist, therefore, whilst resisting as far as possible all forms of coercion and authority, repudiates just as firmly even the suggestion that he should impose himself upon others, realising as he does that this fatal propensity in the majority of mankind has been the cause of nearly all the misery and bloodshed in the world. He understands just as clearly that to satisfy his needs without contributing, to the best of his ability, his share of labour in maintaining the general well-being, would be to live at the expense of others—to become an exploiter and live as the rich drones live to-day. Obviously, then, government on the one hand and private ownership of the means of production on the other, complete the vicious circle—the present social system—which keeps mankind degraded and enslaved.

There will be no need to justify the Anarchist's attack upon all forms of government: history teaches the lesson he has learned on every page. But that lesson being concealed from the mass of the people by interested advocates of "law and order," and even by many Social Democrats, the Anarchist deals


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 his hardest blows at the sophisms that uphold the State, and urges workers in striving for their emancipation to confine their efforts to the economic field.

It follows, therefore, that politically and economically his attitude is purely revolutionary; and hence arises the vilification and misrepresentation that Anarchism, which denounces all forms of social injustice, meets with in the press and from public speakers.

Rightly conceived, Anarchism is no mere abstract ideal theory of human society. It views life and social relations with eyes disillusioned. Making an end of all superstitions, prejudices, and false sentiments, it tries to see things as they really are; and without building castles in the air, it finds by the simple correlation of established facts that the grandest possibilities of a full and free life can be placed within the reach of all, once that monstrous bulwark of all our social iniquities—the State—has been destroyed, and common property declared.

By education, by free organisation, by individual and associated resistance to political and economic tyranny, the Anarchist hopes to achieve his aim. The task may seem impossible to many, but it should be remembered that in science, in literature, in art, the highest minds are with the Anarchists or are imbued with distinct Anarchist tendencies. Even our bitterest opponents admit the beauty of our "dream," and reluctantly confess that it would be well for humanity if it were "possible." Anarchist Communist propaganda is the intelligent, organised, determined effort to realise the "dream," and to ensure that freedom and well-being for all shall be possible.