The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the HourMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Christianity; Church history; Logos (Christian theology); Logos (Philosophy); Religion
But here I should like to call attention to the long process through which
a language must pass, before it could reduce “breathe” to “be” and form
such a sentence as “It is warm.” Even an animal feels warmth, and can in
various ways make known if it is overheated. But in all this it is only a
question of feelings, not to ideas, and still less of language. Let us
consider “warm.” Of course “warm” may represent a mere feeling, and then a
simple panting would suffice to express it. That is communication, but not
language. To think a word like warm, a root and an idea are necessary.
Probably, and in spite of a few phonetic difficulties, the root was in
this case _ghar_ (in _gharmá_, θερμός), and this meant at first to be
bright, to glitter, to shine, then to burn, to heat, to be warm; that is
to say, the observing mind of man was able to abstract brightness from the
sense-impressions produced by sun, fire, gold, and many other objects,
and, letting everything else drop, to reach the idea of shining, then of
being warm. These ideas, of course, do not exist on their own account
anywhere in the world; they must be and have been constructed by man
alone, never by an animal. Why? Because an animal does not possess what
man possesses: the faculty of grasping the many as one, so as to form an
idea and a word. Light or lighting, warmth or warming, exist nowhere in
the world, and are nowhere given in sentient experience. Every object of
sense exists individually, and is perceived as such individually, such as
the sun, a torch, a stove; but heat in general, like everything general,
is the product of our thought; its name is made by us, and is not given
us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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