The Theory of Moral Sentiments (67 page)

It is in this manner that language becomes more simple in its rudiments and principles, just in proportion as it grows more complex in its composition, and the same thing has happened in it, which commonly happens with regard to mechanical engines. All machines are generally, when first invented, extremely complex in their principles, and there is often a particular principle of motion for every particular movement which it is intended they should perform. Succeeding improvers observe, that one principle may be so applied as to produce several of those movements; and thus the machine becomes gradually more and more simple, and produces its effects with fewer wheels, and fewer principles of motion. In language, in the same manner, every case of every noun, and every tense of every verb, was originally expressed by a particular distinct word, which served for this purpose and for no other. But succeeding observation discovered, that one set of words was capable of supplying the place of all that infinite number, and that four or five prepositions, and half a dozen auxiliary verbs, were capable of answering the end of all the declensions, and of all the conjugations in the ancient languages.

But this simplification of languages, though it arises, perhaps, from similar causes, has by no means similar effects with the correspondent simplification of machines. The simplification of machines renders them more and more perfect, but this simplification of the rudiments of languages renders them more and more imperfect, and less proper for many of the purposes of language: and this for the following reasons.
⁹

First of all, languages are by this simplification rendered more prolix, several words having become necessary to express what could have been expressed by a single word before. Thus the words,
Dei
and
Deo
, in the Latin, sufficiently show, without any addition, what relation the object signified is understood to stand in to the objects expressed by the other words in the sentence. But to express the same relation in English, and in all other modern languages, we must make use of, at least, two words, and say,
of God, to God
. So far as the declensions are concerned, therefore, the modern languages are much more prolix than the ancient. The difference is still greater with regard to the conjugations. What a Roman expressed by the single word,
amavissem
, an Englishman is obliged to express by four different words,
I should have loved
. It is unnecessary to take any pains to show how much this prolixness must enervate the eloquence of all modern languages. How much the beauty of any expression depends upon its conciseness, is well known to those who have any experience in composition.

Secondly, this simplification of the principles of languages renders them less agreeable to the ear. The variety of termination in the Greek and Latin, occasioned by their declensions and conjugations, gives a sweetness to their language altogether unknown to ours, and a variety unknown to any other modern language. In point of sweetness, the Italian, perhaps, may surpass the Latin, and almost equal the Greek; but in point of variety, it is greatly inferior to both.

Thirdly, this simplification, not only renders the sounds of our language less agreeable to the ear, but it also restrains us from disposing such sounds as we have, in the manner that might be most agreeable. It ties down many words to a particular situation, though they might often be placed in another with much more beauty. In the Greek and Latin, though the adjective and substantive were separated from one another, the correspondence of their terminations still showed their mutual reference, and the separation did not necessarily occasion any sort of confusion. Thus in the first line of Virgil,

Tityre tu patulæ recubans sub tegmine fagi;

we easily see that
tu
refers to
recubans
, and
patulae
to
fagi
; though the related words are separated from one another by the intervention of several others; because the terminations, showing the correspondence of their cases, determine their mutual reference. But if we were to translate this line literally into English, and say,
Tityrus, thou of spreading reclining under the shade beech
, Œdipus himself could not make sense of it; because there is here no difference of termination, to determine which substantive each adjective belongs to. It is the same case with regard to verbs. In Latin the verb may often be placed, without any inconveniency or ambiguity, in any part of the sentence. But in English its place is almost always precisely determined. It must follow the subjective and precede the objective member of the phrase in almost all cases. Thus in Latin whether you say,
Joannem verberavit Robertus
, or
Robertus verberavit Joannem
, the meaning is precisely the same, and the termination fixes John to be the sufferer in both cases. But in English
John beat Robert
, and
Robert beat John
, have by no means the same signification. The place therefore of the three principal members of the phrase is in the English, and for the same reason in the French and Italian languages, almost always precisely determined; whereas in the ancient languages a greater latitude is allowed, and the place of those members is often, in a great measure, indifferent. We must have recourse to Horace, in order to interpret some parts of Milton’s literal translation;

Who now enjoys thee credulous all gold,
Who always vacant, always amiable
Hopes thee; of flattering gales
Unmindful—
¹⁰

are verses which it is impossible to interpret by any rules of our language. There are no rules in our language, by which any man could discover, that, in the first line,
credulous
referred to
who
, and not to
thee;
or that
all gold
referred to any thing; or, that in the fourth line,
unmindful,
referred to
who,
in the second, and not to
thee
in the third; or, on the contrary, that, in the second line,
always vacant, always amiable
, referred to
thee
in the third, and not to
who
in the same line with it. In the Latin, indeed, all this is abundantly plain.

Qui nunc te fruitur credulus aureâ,
Qui semper vacuam, semper amabilem
Sperat te; nescius auræ fallacis.

Because the terminations in the Latin determine the reference of each adjective to its proper substantive, which it is impossible for any thing in the English to do: How much this power of transposing the order of their words must have facilitated the composition of the ancients, both in verse and prose, can hardly be imagined. That it must greatly have facilitated their versification it is needless to observe; and in prose, whatever beauty depends upon the arrangement and construction of the several members of the period, must to them have been acquirable with much more ease, and to much greater perfection, than it can be to those whose expression is constantly confined by the prolixness, constraint, and monotony of modern languages.
¹¹

FINIS.

Biographical Notes

Addison, Joseph
(1672-1719), English essayist and Whig politician; author of the popular tragedy
Cato
(1713) and editor of
The Spectator
(1711-1712), each of which were influential contributions to defining Enlightenment conceptions of virtue and politeness.

Ajax,
Greek hero renowned for his strength; his exploits at Troy were chronicled in Homer’s
Iliad
, and his reputed suicide, committed in anger at having been passed over for the honor of bearing the arms of Achilles, was dramatized by Sophocles.

Alembert, Jean Le Rond d’
(1717-1783), French mathematician, philosopher, and, with Denis Diderot, editor of the monumental
Encyclopédie
; his writings include the
Preliminary Discourse
and several articles for the
Encyclopédie
, numerous scientific essays, a treatise on music, and a collection of
éloges
of his fellow members of the Académie Française.

Alexander the Great
(356-323 BC), son of Philip II of Macedon, student of Aristotle, and king of the Macedonian Empire; his military genius enabled him to extend his empire as far as India, but his reign was marked by ruthless and violent persecution of those who opposed his imperial ambitions and his grandiose conception of his own divinity.

Anne
(1665-1714), queen of Great Britain and Ireland from 1702 until her death; her first ministry witnessed the beginning of the string of victories earned by her principal military commander, the Duke of Marlborough, in the War of Spanish Succession.

Antigonus
(ca. 382-301 BC), Macedonian general and governor of Asian provinces; after Alexander’s death he was among the foremost of the ambitious successors vying for supremacy, but ultimately proved unsuccessful despite besting Eumenes.

Antoninus
: See Marcus Antoninus.

Apollonius of Tyre
(mid-1st c. BC), Stoic philosopher reported to have authored a lost commentary on Zeno.

Aristides
(5th c. BC), Athenian commander and politician; renowned for his righteousness and often contrasted with the opportunism of Themistocles, he played a prominent military role in the Persian Wars.

Aristippus
(5th c. BC), Greek philosopher from Cyrene and student of Socrates; notable for having ostensibly founded the Cyrenaic school, for having advocated a hedonism that challenged Athenian propriety, and for being the first of Socrates’ students to charge his own students fees.

Aristomenes
(7th c. BC), Messian warrior and subject of a patriotic hero-cult that regarded him as a symbol of resistance to the Spartans.

Aristotle
(384-322 BC), Greek philosopher who studied in the Academy of Athens and founded the Peripatetic school; his extant writings cover a tremendous range from aesthetics to zoology, but he is principally discussed in
TMS
as a moral philosopher and author of
Nicomachean Ethics
.

Arrian
(Lucius Flavius Arrianus; ca. AD 86-160), Greek philosopher and historian; author of a celebratory historical account of Alexander’s military achievements and transcriber of the teachings of Epictetus.

Arundel, Thomas Howard, Earl of
(1585-1646; also 4th Earl of Surrey and 1st Earl of Norfolk, and variously numbered as 21st or 14th or 2nd Earl of Arundel), English courtier and ambassador, chiefly remembered today as patron and collector of the arts and subject of portraits by Rubens and Van Dyck.

Attila
(406 -453), king of the Huns from 434 until his death; his eastern and central European empire was a chief rival of the Roman Empire, but came to be regarded as a symbol of barbarism and brutal violence.

Augustine, Saint
(354-430), Bishop of Hippo and one of the principal Doctors of the Church; his principal works include his autobiographical
Confessions
, which tells the story of his conversion, and
City of God
, which exercised a lasting influence on Western conceptions of human nature, sin, and divine redemption.

Augustus Caesar
(Gaius Julius Caesar Octavianus; 63 BC-AD 14), Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death.

Avaux, Claude de Mesmes, Comte d’
(1595-1650), French statesman and ambassador; among his achievements was his participation in the French delegation to Münster in 1648 that negotiated and ratified the treaty that established the Peace of Westphalia, ending the Thirty Years’ War.

Avidius Cassius
(Gaius Avidius Cassius; ca. 130-175 AD), Roman consul, governor of Syria, and for three months acting Roman emperor in the east in the wake of a false report of the death of Marcus Aurelius.

Barbeyrac, Jean
(1674-1744), French scholar of natural jurisprudence, chiefly known for his French translations of Latin works by Grotius and Pufendorf, which featured extensive and essential textual notes and commentaries.

Berkeley, George
(1685-1753), Irish philosopher and clergyman, remembered today for his challenges to materialism and atheism (
Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge
, 1710); for Smith he is a theorist of vision (
Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision
, 1709), an opponent of Mandeville (
Alciphron
, 1732), and a proponent of Irish economic reform (
The Querist
, 1735-37).

Birch, Thomas
(1705-1766), historian and secretary to the Royal Society from 1752 to 1765, and recipient of a presentation copy of the first edition of TMS; among the many projects he edited was
The Heads of Illustrious Persons of Great Britain
(1743, with second volume in 1752), which featured short biographical sketches and engraved portraits by Jacobus Houbraken and George Vertue.

Biron, Charles de Gontaut, first Duc de
(1562-1602), French military commander under Henri IV, executed for treason stemming from his efforts to secure favors from French enemies abroad.

Boileau-Despréaux, Nicolas
(1636-1711), French author, courtier, and member of the Académie Française; known for his translation of and commentary on Longinus, his contributions on behalf of the ancients to the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns, his poetic epistles, and several satires.