Aesthetics -- Early works to 1800; Music -- Philosophy and aesthetics; Poetry -- Early works to 1800
(7) A Case of a Noun or Verb is when the word means 'of or 'to' a thing,
and so forth, or for one or many (e.g. 'man' and 'men'); or it may
consist merely in the mode of utterance, e.g. in question, command, etc.
'Walked?' and 'Walk!' are Cases of the verb 'to walk' of this last kind.
(8) A Speech is a composite significant sound, some of the parts of
which have a certain significance by themselves. It may be observed that
a Speech is not always made up of Noun and Verb; it may be without a
Verb, like the definition of man; but it will always have some part with
a certain significance by itself. In the Speech 'Cleon walks', 'Cleon'
is an instance of such a part. A Speech is said to be one in two ways,
either as signifying one thing, or as a union of several Speeches made
into one by conjunction. Thus the _Iliad_ is one Speech by conjunction
of several; and the definition of man is one through its signifying one
thing.
21
Nouns are of two kinds, either (1) simple, i.e. made up of
non-significant parts, like the word ge, or (2) double; in the
latter case the word may be made up either of a significant and a
non-significant part (a distinction which disappears in the compound),
or of two significant parts. It is possible also to have triple,
quadruple or higher compounds, like most of our amplified names; e.g.'
Hermocaicoxanthus' and the like.
Whatever its structure, a Noun must always be either (1) the ordinary
word for the thing, or (2) a strange word, or (3) a metaphor, or (4) an
ornamental word, or (5) a coined word, or (6) a word lengthened out, or
(7) curtailed, or (8) altered in form. By the ordinary word I mean
that in general use in a country; and by a strange word, one in use
elsewhere. So that the same word may obviously be at once strange and
ordinary, though not in reference to the same people; _sigunos_, for
instance, is an ordinary word in Cyprus, and a strange word with us.
Metaphor consists in giving the thing a name that belongs to something
else; the transference being either from genus to species, or from
species to genus, or from species to species, or on grounds of analogy.
That from genus to species is eXemplified in 'Here stands my ship'; for
lying at anchor is the 'standing' of a particular kind of thing. That
from species to genus in 'Truly ten thousand good deeds has Ulysses
wrought', where 'ten thousand', which is a particular large number,
is put in place of the generic 'a large number'. That from species to
species in 'Drawing the life with the bronze', and in 'Severing with the
enduring bronze'; where the poet uses 'draw' in the sense of 'sever' and
'sever' in that of 'draw', both words meaning to 'take away' something.
That from analogy is possible whenever there are four terms so related
that the second (B) is to the first (A), as the fourth (D) to the third
(C); for one may then metaphorically put B in lieu of D, and D in lieu
of B. Now and then, too, they qualify the metaphor by adding on to it
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