From my observations on the necessary variety of languages [→Z 955, 1022, 1045], it follows that not only were languages many and diverse from the start—because of the [1066] impressions that the same things make on different people, the different imitative capacities or different modes of imitation used by the first creators and inventors of speech, the different parts, forms, kinds, and accidents of one and the same thing taken by different men to imitate and to express with a word meaning that thing (see Scelta di opuscoli interessanti, Milan, Vol. 4, pp. 56–57 and p. 44 note)1—but also that once a single language, that is, a single system of meaningful sounds, uniform within and common to one and the same society, has been introduced and fixed, the language once again inevitably diversifies and gradually divides into different languages. (19 May 1821.)
Lampa, lampo, lampare, lampante, as indeed lampeggio, lampeggiare, lampeggiamento manifestly derive from the Greek λάμπειν [give light], etc., together with its derivatives, etc., of which in either case there remains no other trace (so far as I know) in written Latin but the word lampas [a light]—Gk. λαμπὰς, Ital. lampada, lampade, lampana—along with its derivatives, lampada ae, lampadion, lampadias, lampadarius. See Forcellini and Du Cange. (20 May 1821.)
Just how superior the Italians are in their aptitude for knowing and appreciating the Latin language may be gauged, proportionately, by their acknowledged superiority in reproducing the finest Latin style, that is, in the imitation [1067] of Latin writers as regards the true, characteristic, and very best Latin language. And to be sure, whoever is better at imitating, better at manipulating and using the original must also be better at knowing and appreciating it, and the former superiority presupposes the latter. Now, regarding this superiority of the Italians in writing Latin from Petrarch up to the present, see Andrés, tome 3, pp. 247–48 and Loschi’s notes ibid., pp. 89–92, pp. 99–102; tome 4, p. 16, and Vannetti’s Letters to Giorgi.1 (20 May 1821.)
Varro, and after him Gellius, calls words of whatever kind (that is, particles, such as re, prepositions, such as ad, etc., nouns, etc.), that are placed before verbs in forming compounds, praeverbia. See Forcellini.2 (20 May 1821.)
The reasons why the fully formed Greek language was utterly free in character and in practice by contrast with Latin, are:
(1) That its formation occurred in very ancient times, whether they are thought of as those of Homer or those of Pindar, Herodotus, etc., or even those of Plato, etc., times which, even though they were very cultured and civilized (I mean the more recent), indeed, the flower of Greek civilization, nonetheless still retained a fair amount of nature. By contrast with the Latin language, formed in a period of complete [1068] adult and mature, indeed, corrupted civilization that was universal in the nation, in the last days of Rome, in its moral decadence, in a period in which the servitude of Roman minds had already begun, in the final epoch of antiquity.1
(2) The Latin language, too, was formed very gradually and it had good and illustrious writers before its golden age. But the Greek language did not have what might properly be called a golden age. Its most ancient writers were not inferior to modern ones, nor the moderns to the ancients. From Homer to Demosthenes, there is no difference in authority or fame with regard to Greek literature in general and with regard to language. This meant that no period in Greece (for so long as it amounted to something) depended on another, past period where literature was concerned. There was no golden age, since all the literate and uncorrupted ages of Greece competed with each other, both in practice and in opinion. Hence the perpetual conservation, the entrenchment of the liberty of their literature and their language. I mean liberty both of character and practice. That did not happen with the Italian language, even though it was free on account of the character of its formation. But it had its golden ages just as Latin did. Greek language and literature, on the other hand, were [1069] gradually perfected and formed and grew imperceptibly, to an almost equal extent in each period so that no age could boast of having formed it, as is the case with Italian, French, etc., and as happened with Latin. In such a manner that its progress was never thought to have ended, because it was not perceived as having all been brought together in supreme splendor and superiority in a single epoch.
(3) It is a well-known fact that rules arise when people are not doing. But Greece did not want for such people until the last phases of its political existence. And although rules and the grammatical arts, etc. etc., arose at that time among the Greeks, too (or at any rate were propagated and grew), nonetheless the long use and consolidation of their freedom with regard to language prevented the rules from doing them harm, although the same was not the case with literature. Whereas Latin literature, which had almost expired with Virgil and its classical age, and Italian literature likewise, left a broad and open field to the rules, and all their wonderful effects. For although the 16th century did not lack rules (while the 14th century lacked them altogether), these had nothing to do with the accuracy and refinement, etc., [1070] and servility of the ones that came later, and could be compared (especially in matters of language) with those which in matters of rhetoric or poetics, etc., the Greeks, too, had in their heyday. So that if the Latins had many and precise rules because they received them from the Greeks who had already become grammarians and rhetoricians, this is yet one of the causes of the limited freedom of their fully formed language, etc. etc., and it may be understood in terms of the excessive civilization of that period, which I have already adopted from the outset as the cause of this limited freedom. (20 May 1821.) See pp. 743–46, beginning.
What I have said about novelty in words drawn from one’s own language, should also be applied to novelty in the senses and meanings of a word that has already been used, to novelty in metaphors, etc. See Scelta di opuscoli interessanti, Milan, vol. 4, pp. 54, 58–61.1 These new and different meanings for one and the same word should not, however, be such as to indicate poverty and produce confusion and ambiguity, as in Hebrew. (20 May 1821.)
For p. 807, margin, Varro says that men (“in sermones non solum latinos, sed omnium hominum necessaria de causa” [“by a necessary and useful law not only in Latin but in all languages”]) “Imposita nomina esse voluerunt quam paucissima, quo citius ediscere possent” [“wished that imposed nouns be very few so that they could be learned quickly”], where by imposed nouns he means the root forms of words (Varro, De lingua latina, bk. 7). (P. 2 of De analogia’s 1st book in the 15th-century edition I have.)2 [1071] (21 May 1821.)
A very old meaning of the word inter [between], which is ordinarily a preposition, and in this case seems to have been used adverbially, a meaning not noted by the Grammarians or the Lexicographers (Forcellini makes no mention of it under the entry for Inter, though he cites many grammarians), is that of quasi [almost], mezzo [half], and the like. There is an obvious trace of such a meaning in the words intermorior [to almost die, to faint away], intermortuus, mezzo morto [half dead], and we too say tramortire [to stun], tramortito [stunned], and hence tramortigione, tramortimento. Now this very old meaning, forgotten even by Latin grammarians, of which there is no memory so far as I know in Latin writers, save for the above, was preserved in the word inter in Vulgar Latin until it passed into French that uses it in the very same sense in the forging of some compound verbs such as entr’ouvrir, entrevoir [to half open, to glimpse], etc. Alberti says of the preposition entre, which is the same as inter, that *“in the composition of some verbs this preposition also signifies a diminutive action.”* Nor should it be thought that this meaning remained in French just in a few verbs that the language had taken from Latin when they had already been compounded and formed in this way with the meaning given above. [1072] Because (1) the verbs compounded in this way, and with the sense given, are not found in Latin, unless we wanted to bring the verb interviso [to see someone now and then] into play, which really has a different meaning from the voir imparfaitement [to see imperfectly], etc., of entrevoir [to glimpse] (see Alberti). So that
because these verbs are not found in Latin writers, it would follow that they derive from Vulgar Latin usage. (2) The word entre with the meaning given may also be found in compounds combined with words that are not, in fact, Latin, as in entre-baillé, that is half-open, or ajar. Whence it is plain that this meaning passed from the very earliest Latin to French (and certainly it could only have done this by way of Vulgar Latin) as properly adhering to the word entre, if only in a compound. Reference could also be made here to our words traudire and travedere (together with their derivatives), which mean to deceive oneself in hearing or in seeing, that is, half see, see imperfectly, as if to say entrevoir, even though fixed to a meaning derived from the first of these. (21 May 1821.) See Du Cange, as to whether he has anything of relevance.
For p. 362. Suppose a primitive or savage shepherd who lacks speech or numbers and, as is only natural, wants to make a tally of his flock in the evening. He would absolutely not be able to do this except in the most concrete fashion such as placing all the sheep in a line in the [1073] morning, marking and measuring the space they occupy, drawing them up in the same place in the evening, and thus making the comparison. Or, and this is more probable, gathering, let us suppose, as many stones as there are sheep. This done, however, there is no way that he could compare them exactly with the stones on the basis of some idea of quantity. Because, being unable to count either sheep or stones, he would be still less able to form any concept of the mutual relation or the comparison between two specific numerical quantities. Indeed, he would not be familiar with a specific numerical quantity. He would have to use another very concrete method, such as putting one sheep and one stone in the first position, then another sheep and another stone, and so on until he got to the last sheep and the last stone. See p. 2186, beginning.
It is certain that the invention of numerals was one of the most difficult things to do, and one of the last inventions made by the first discoverers of language. The idea of quantity, not only absolute and indefinite (indeed, this is less difficult, the idea of more and less, and hence of indefinite quantity, being concrete and tangible), but also definite, also relating to very concrete things, properly understood, is almost wholly abstract and metaphysical. When we see the five fingers of the hand, we immediately conceive of the number [1074] because the idea of number is linked in our minds through habit and the use of speech to the idea aroused in us when we see a quantity of individuals who are easily counted or the number of which is known to us. And the idea of counting follows on from the seeing, for the reason given. Not so the man without numerals. He sees those five fingers as so many units which have no relation one to the other, or any numerical connection (as they do not, in fact, have in themselves) making up an indefinite quantity (of which he conceives merely a confused idea, as is natural when the indefinite is involved), and the idea of being able to determine it, or to count those fingers, does not even occur to him.1 The idea of sequence is less metaphysical. Since (if we continue using the example of the hand) the thumb, that is, the first finger, being at the beginning of the series, the index finger, that is, the second finger, coming after the one that is at the beginning of the hand, that is, the thumb, and the middle finger, that is, the third, following the index finger, and being separated from the thumb by an intervening finger, are things that fall within the purview of the senses, and that readily suggest the idea of first, second, third, and so on. The same could be said of a line of trees, etc.
So I do not believe that in the original languages the denomination of the ordinal numbers did not precede that of the cardinal numbers (despite how it may seem at first sight, and how it may perhaps have been in the cultured, etc., languages), and I believe that in those languages [1075] the word second was uttered before the word two. Because the word second expresses a concrete idea, one derived from the senses, natural, that is, that thing which is after the one that is at the beginning, whence the form of this idea subsists outside the intellect. Indeed, in Latin posterior means secundus ordine, loco, tempore [second in order, in place, in time] (Forcellini), and thus properly the Greek ὕστερος: “κυριώτερα τὰ ὕστερα νομίζεται καὶ βεβαιότερα τῶν πρώτων” [“the later of two {decisions or laws} is accounted the firmer and more valid”] Plutarch, Convivales disputationes, bk. 9 (Scapula),1 whatever might come afterward, or at the back, even the one that is not second. Thus indeed in Italian posteriore, etc. But the word two signifies an idea that does not subsist except in our intellect, even when there subsist outside of it the things of which this quantity is composed, with which they nevertheless have no relation that is tangible, concrete, intrinsic, or characteristic, and extrinsic to human conception. See the Encyclopédie méthodique. Métaphisique, article “Nombres,” drawn, I believe, from Locke.2
The thing that is at the beginning has its own reason for being called first, and the one that is after it has its own reason for being called second, that is, posterior: so that these ordinal nouns pertain to things. But that thing has no reason in itself for someone to call it one, and this other thing two, and these cardinal nouns do not pertain to real things but to quantity, which is only idea, and is separate from things, nor does it subsist outside the intellect. (22 May 1821.) See p. 1101, end.
People who are used to doing nothing and as a consequence have more free time, time which can be used, are ordinarily least able to find the time to [1076] perform a task even though they are anxious to carry it out, or to remember something that needs doing, a task that has been entrusted to them and which they are also anxious to carry out. Vice versa those whose days are full and who therefore have less free time and more things to remember. The cause is plain, namely, the habit of negligence in the former and diligence in the latter. (22 May 1821.) And the same contrasting outcome may also be seen in one and the same person, according to the difference over time of their habits and methods of activity and diligence, or inactivity and negligence.
For p. 761. Indeed, this capacity to create compounds from two or more words is still highly characteristic today of informal Italian (and indeed, I believe, of the informal language of all nations, especially popular language), and it has always been especially characteristic of Tuscan, and still is. The Tuscan dialect has a great deal of fluency and grace, which gives to speech a pure and elegant novelty and a singular efficacy, as with words like tagliacantoni, ammazzasette, pascibietola (used by Passavanti), frustamattoni, perdigiorno, pappalardo, and other such jokey or informal words both ancient and modern.1 So that it cannot be said that this same capacity has been lost even today (since it would be ridiculous to prevent anyone from fashioning other, similar compounds, etc.), nor that our language has no aptitude for it, and not even that they cannot be extended beyond the jokey and the informal, since the jokey or informal quality of these compounds derives not so much from the fact of composition as from the nature of the words from which they are formed. But other words, provided that they are made with sound judgment and avoid excessive [1077] length or distortion of the component parts, might very well be compounded in the same way without detracting from the gravity of a discourse or leaving any impression of the buffoonish or the plebeian. Cesarotti displayed good judgment in his fashioning of such compounds in his Iliad and also, I believe, in his Ossian. “Homer, Dante, and all the greats fashion names from things. Quintilian and all the grammarians approve the practice: when they fit perfectly, as here, where Tiberius mocks the quintuplication, as Gallus chose to put it, of magistrates.” Davanzati (Tacitus’s Annals, Bk. 2, ch. 36, note 3),1 with regard to the verb incinquare fashioned by him to render Tacitus’s Latin quinquiplicare [to quintuplicate]. (23 May 1821.) It had, however, already been used by Dante.2
The age of Louis XIV and the whole of the last century were truly the era of barbarous corruption of the most civilized parts of Europe, the corruption and barbarism that inevitably succeeds civilization, of the kind that was seen among the Persians, Romans, Sybarites, Greeks,
etc. And yet the era in question was then reckoned to be most civilized and the very opposite of barbarous, as it still is today because it is extremely recent. But the present [1078] time, which regards itself as the pinnacle of civilization, differs not a little from the one mentioned and may be considered to be the era of rebirth from barbarism. A rebirth begun in Europe through the French Revolution, a rebirth that was weak and very imperfect because it derived not from nature but from reason, indeed from philosophy, which is a very weak, false, sorry, unenduring principle of civilization. And yet it is a kind of rebirth; and note that—despite the insufficiency of means on the one hand and, on the other, the manner in which those means clash with nature—nonetheless the French Revolution (as has often been observed) and the present time have brought men closer to nature, the sole source of civilization, have set in motion great and powerful passions, have restored to formerly dead nations, I do not go so far as to say life but a certain palpitation, a certain distant impression of vitality. Even though that has been by means of half-philosophy,1 an instrument of civilization which is uncertain, inadequate, weak, and by its very nature fleeting, because half-philosophy naturally tends to grow and to become perfect philosophy, which is a source of barbarism. Apply to this observation the barbarous and utterly ridiculous fashions (monarchical and feudal) such as farthingales, men’s and women’s hairstyles, etc. etc., that held sway, at any rate in Italy, up until the final years of the last century and were destroyed at a stroke by the revolution. (See Giordani’s letter to Monti, § 4.)2 And you will see that the present century is the era of true rebirth out of a true barbarism, also in matters of taste; and here one might note as well a certain rightening of literature in Italy today. (23 May 1821.) See p. 1084.
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