An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4 — John Locke — John Shaqi
An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume 2: MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books 3 and 4
John Locke · en
mother and daughter are so differently treated, in reference to the idea
of killing, that the one is joined with it to make a distinct abstract
idea with a name, and so a distinct species, and the other not; yet, in
respect of carnal knowledge, they are both taken in under INCEST: and
that still for the same convenience of expressing under one name, and
reckoning of one species, such unclean mixtures as have a peculiar
turpitude beyond others; and this to avoid circumlocutions and tedious
descriptions.
8. Whereof the intranslatable Words of divers Languages are a Proof.
A moderate skill in different languages will easily satisfy one of the
truth of this, it being so obvious to observe great store of words in
one language which have not any that answer them in another. Which
plainly shows that those of one country, by their customs and manner of
life, have found occasion to make several complex ideas, and given names
to them, which others never collected into specific ideas. This could
not have happened if these species were the steady workmanship of
nature, and not collections made and abstracted by the mind, in order to
naming, and for the convenience of communication. The terms of our law,
which are not empty sounds, will hardly find words that answer them in
the Spanish or Italian, no scanty languages; much less, I think, could
any one translate them into the Caribbee or Westoe tongues: and the
VERSURA of the Romans, or CORBAN of the Jews, have no words in other
languages to answer them; the reason whereof is plain, from what has
been said. Nay, if we look a little more nearly into this matter, and
exactly compare different languages, we shall find that, though they
have words which in translations and dictionaries are supposed to answer
one another, yet there is scarce one often amongst the names of complex
ideas, especially of mixed modes, that stands for the same precise idea
which the word does that in dictionaries it is rendered by. There are
no ideas more common and less compounded than the measures of time,
extension, and weight; and the Latin names, HORA, PES, LIBRA, are
without difficulty rendered by the English names, HOUR, FOOT, and POUND:
but yet there is nothing more evident than that the ideas a Roman
annexed to these Latin names, were very far different from those which
an Englishman expresses by those English ones. And if either of these
should make use of the measures that those of the other language
designed by their names, he would be quite out in his account. These are
too sensible proofs to be doubted; and we shall find this much more so
in the names of more abstract and compounded ideas, such as are the
greatest part of those which make up moral discourses: whose names, when
men come curiously to compare with those they are translated into, in
other languages, they will find very few of them exactly to correspond
in the whole extent of their significations.
9. This shows Species to be made for Communication.