And what can we say of the surprising analogies that can be noticed between languages separated by time and space to the point of never having been able to influence each other?
- Please notice that I am not to be understood to be speaking of simple conformities of words acquired simply by way of contact or communication;
- I speak only of conformities of ideas, proved by synonyms of sense, totally different in form, which excludes all idea of borrowing. I will only have you notice one very singular thing, which is that when it is a question of rendering some of those ideas whose natural expression would in some way offend delicacy, the French often chanced upon the same turns of phrase formerly employed by the Greeks in their day to save these shocking naïvetés, that must appear quite extraordinary since in this regard we acted on our own without asking anything of our intermediaries, the Latins. (52, my emphasis)
But after the assertion that every language resolves its own problems by itself, thesis 3 emerges, which sets out to prove that it is no longer a language’s autonomy but rather the existence of an original and divine force, the word, that becomes the source of every language.
If, on this point of the origin of language, as on so many others, our century has missed the truth, it is because it has a mortal fear of meeting it. Languages began, but the word never, and not even with man. The one has necessarily preceded the other, since the word is possible only through the VERB [i.e., the Word of God]. Every particular language comes into being like an animal, by birth and development, so that man never passed from a state of voicelessness to the use of the word. He has always spoken, and it is with sublime reason that the Hebrews called him a TALKING SOUL. (54)
But then, immediately afterward, and without a break, thesis 1, rejected in the first paragraph, is reproposed:
When a new language takes form, it is born in the midst of a society that is in the full possession of language; and the action or the principle that presides at this formation cannot arbitrarily invent one word. It uses those it finds around it or that it calls from farther away; it nourishes itself on them, it chews them, it digests them, and it never adopts them without modifying them to some degree. (54, my emphasis)
Finally, to underline the (always good) naturalness with which each single language, grinding or digesting previous elements, forms always suitable words, there is a gloss: “In a century passionate for every gross expression excluding order and intelligence, they have talked a lot about arbitrary symbols; but there are no arbitrary symbols, every word having its reason” (54). This negates what was previously asserted, namely, that having invented oxygen was a sign of degeneration. In fact, Maistre is biased: he thinks (from the beginning) that the modern inventors of oxygen were degenerate (inasmuch as they were modern), while the ancient inventors of cadaver were right (inasmuch as they were ancient). He is not seized by the suspicion that not even the ancient inventors of cadaver were the original Name Giver.
However, we also accept the proposition according to which languages live on borrowings; they transform and adapt, and yet their every word is natural and motivated. If Maistre returned to his example of rue passante, he would find that there is a motivation for the compound, but he would not be able to explain the motivation of rue and of passer, unless he repeated all the contortions of the classic etymologists. Thus, arriving at the crucial point, he gives up. Or, rather, he probably believes that he is not giving up, if the following passage is the expected demonstration. But the total mutual contradiction of the provided examples forces us—in the interest of the reader—to mark within the passage the various theses (all in disagreement among themselves) that it demonstrates. In our view, the theses are the following:
- Thesis of obscure borrowing. Sometimes in a language there existed a word that then somehow passed into another language, which abandoned it but passed it on to a local dialect; for this reason, we may find in an Alpine locality a word used today in the Slavic area. This thesis, however, does not explain why words must reflect the nature of things, nor does it say that they do reflect it.
- Thesis of autonomous invention. Sometimes a word is invented by analogy with a foreign term, sometimes by metaphor. Then each language invents its own terms and does so following quite different criteria.
- Thesis of original iconism. A language does not invent words; it finds them already made, in accord with nature. (No proofs follow.)
- Thesis of evident and multiple borrowing. One language borrows words from different languages, for the widest variety of reasons.
This is how, without a break, four mutually incompatible theses are affirmed.
[Thesis of obscure borrowing] Perhaps you will remember that in that country French son (in Latin furfur) is called Bren. On the other side of the Alps an owl is called Sava. If someone were to ask you why the two peoples have chosen these two arrangements of sound to express these two ideas, you would have been tempted to reply: Because they judged it appropriate; things of this sort are arbitrary. However you would have been in error; for the first of those two words is English and the second is Slavic; and from Ragusa to Kamchatka the word is used to signify in the beautiful Russian language what it signifies eight hundred leagues from here in a purely local dialect.
You will not be tempted, I hope, to tell me that men deliberating on the Thames, on the Rhine, on the Obi, or on the Po, would by chance come across the same sounds to express the same ideas. Therefore the two words already pre-existed in the two languages that presented them to the two dialects. Would you like to think that the four peoples received them from some previous people? I know nothing of it, but I admit, it: in the first place it is the consequence of the fact that these two immense families, the Teutonic and the Slavic, did not arbitrarily invent these two words, but that they received them. Then the question begins again with respect to earlier nations. Where did they get them? One must answer in the same way, they received them; and so one goes back to the origin of things. (54–55)
[Thesis of autonomous invention] The candles that are being carried in at the moment remind me of their name: at one time the French carried on a great commerce with the city of Botzia in the Kingdom of Fez; they brought from there a great quantity of wax candles that they took to naming botzies. Soon the national genius shaped this word and made bougies of it. The English retained the old expression wax-candle, and the Germans prefer to say wachslicht (light of wax); but everywhere you see the cause that determined the word. Even if I had not run across the etymology of bougie in the preface of Thomassin’s Hebrew dictionary, where I certainly would never have looked for it, would I have been less sure of some such etymology? To be in doubt on such a matter, one would have to extinguish the flame of analogy, which is to say one would have to renounce reasoning. (55)
[Thesis of original iconism] Notice, if you will, that the very word etymology is already a great proof of the prodigious talent of antiquity to run across or adopt the most perfect words, for it presupposes that each word is true, which is to say that it is not imagined arbitrarily—which is enough to lead a good mind a long way. Because of induction, what one knows in this genre demonstrates a great deal about other cases. What one does not know, on the contrary, proves nothing except the ignorance of the one who is looking. An arbitrary sound never expresses and can never express an idea.
As thought necessarily exists prior to words, which are only the physical symbols of thought, words, in their turn, exist prior to the formation of every new language, which receives them ready-made and then modifies them to its own taste. Like an animal, the genius of each language hunts every source to find what suits it. (55–56)
[Thesis of evident and multiple borrowing] In our language, for example, maison is Celtic, palais is Latin, basilique is Greek, honnir is Teutonic, rabot is Slavic, almanach is Arab, and sopha is Hebrew. Where does all this take us? It matters little to me, at least at the moment: it suffices for me to prove to you that languages are only formed from other languages, which they usually kill to nourish themselves, in the manner of carnivorous animals. (56)
The passage concludes: “So let us never speak of chance or of arbitrary symbols” (56). Yet, on the contrary, all the arguments that have gone before seem to militate in favor of a supreme arbitrariness of decisions on the part of the languages. And we are
