THEORY OF LANGUAGE
"There can be no exercise in the whole business of instruction more useful to the mind than the analysis of sentences in the concentrated light of grammar and logic. It brings one into the sanctuary of human thought. All else is but standing in the outer court. He who is without may indeed offer incense, but he who penetrates within, worships and adores. It is here that the man of science, trained to close thought and clear vision, surveys the various objects of his study with a more expanded view, and a more discriminating mind. It is here that the interpreter, accustomed to the force and freshness of natural language, is prepared to explain God's revealed word with more power and accuracy. It is here that the orator learns to wield with a heavier arm the weapons of his warfare. It is here that every one who loves to think beholds the deep things of the human spirit, and learns to regard with holy reverence the sacred symbols of human thought." - Professor JOSIAH WILLARD GIBBS, Christian Spectator, 1837, vol. ix. p. 120.
NEARLY every undertaking of Bushnell in theology was an effort to escape some sort of restriction. He found himself in a very narrow world, - strong and intense in its piety, not without considerable learning, seeing far on certain lines but blind on others. It was shut off from the larger currents of thought by its wide separation from the old world. Its great men were solitary thinkers, who spun their systems with but little mutual criticism or consultation, dominated by one great master. The dialectic habit with such men necessarily led to a hard and rigid use of language. Their strength lay in definition and logic, which were often used in such a way as to suggest a corral rather than a teaching.1
The thing insisted on in their frequent controversies was definition. The closer it was made the sharper grew the debate, since one or the other
1 The pupils of Dr. N. W. Taylor remember nothing in his lectures more clearly than his scorn of those writers on theology who were "too lazy to make definitions," which he declared to be " the severest labor of the human mind." This is undoubtedly the case if the definitions are expected to compass the truths of theology. It was chiefly at this point that Bushnell revolted against this master in dialectics.
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of the combatants was sure to discover, through some unguarded loophole, truth lying outside of the definition that called for re-definition. Thus an endless process was established, consisting in efforts to bring the infinite within the finite. It was given to Bushnell to have a clear sight of the truth beyond the finite boundaries. He saw that the greater part of theology lay in that region, and that it could not be reached or expressed except by breaking through or overleaping these verbal limitations. In his opinion there could be no justification of definition without first entering into an analysis of language itself, with a view of finding out its function and scope as a medium between the mind and the world of sense. He could not advance one step in the discussion of theological themes with the expectation of being understood, unless he could in some way break up or get over this hard literalism and make his readers feel the meaning that really lies in and behind the words. Had he lived a half century later, he would have had comparatively little need to explain himself. Language is regarded to-day very much as he conceived it, while Biblical criticism and a more rational theory of inspiration have removed from the field of debate certain parts of Scripture that were then chief factors in it. But Bushnell did not have the advantage of the later criticism, and himself needed a personal deliverance from interpretations that were intolerable to him. He chose what seemed to him the only thor-
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ough method; namely, an examination of the nature of language itself.1
But there were still stronger reasons, which will appear in the following quotations : -
"We find, then, that every language contains two distinct departments: the physical department,- that which provides names for things; and the intellectual department, - that which provides names for thought and spirit. In the former, names are simple representatives of things, which even the animals may learn. In the latter,
1 "It is remarkable that Dr. Bushnell, whose studies kept him wholly
ignorant of Kant, is nevertheless dealing with Kant's problem in his rather
diffuse Dissertation on Language, and in his far clearer, compactor, and finer
production, Our Gospel a Gift to the Imagination. He saw, and it is a
remarkable witness to his genius, that thought is inseparable from sense-forms,
and so-called abstract thinking is but thought with the sensuous accompaniment
attenuated to the last degree." (Dr. George A. Gordon, The Christ of
To-day, p. 287.)
Kant says the difficulty in reaching a purely non-sensuous theory of the universe lies in the constitution of the human mind as compounded of sense and intellect. Bushnell says the difficulty lies in language, - the instrument of the mind. They face the same problem, but Bushnell escapes from it by contending that the constitution of the mind is given in language as no-where else, and that though it is a sense-form, it represents a spiritual meaning to which it is essentially allied. The usual criticism of Bushnell is that he puts the limitation in language rather than in the power of the mind to conceive the infinite realities of religion, - in utterance rather than in conception. Had the point occurred to him, it is possible that he would have hesitated to place the limitation in the unchanging nature of mind, when it could justly be put upon the instrument of expression that can be made fuller and more exact, as the world, which is but a symbol of thought, becomes more clearly understood. One seems like a barring of the gate; the other only some difficulty in getting to it.
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the names of things are used as representatives of thought, and cannot, therefore, he learned save by beings of intelligence (intus lego) that is, beings who can read the inner sense, or receive the inner contents of words; beings in whom the Logos of the creation finds a correspondent logos, or reason, to receive and employ the types it offers in their true power (p. 24). ... In this view, which it is not rash to believe will some time be fully established, the outer world is seen to be a vast menstruum of thought or intelligence. There is a logos in the forms of things, by which they are prepared to serve as types or images of what is inmost in our souls; and then there is a logos of construction in the relations of space, the position, qualities, connections, and predicates of things, by which they are framed into grammar. In one word, the outer world, which envelops our being, is itself language, the power of all language." 1
... "Since all words, but such as relate to necessary truths, are inexact representations of thought, mere types or analogies, or, where the types are lost beyond recovery, only proximate expressions of the thoughts named; it follows that language will be ever trying to mend its own deficiencies, by multiplying its forms of re-
1 Bushnell is throughout this essay greatly indebted to Professor Josiah W. Gibbs, the instructor in Biblical literature in the Yale Divinity School while he was a student. He recognizes the indebtedness in a tone of gratitude and reverence shown to no other writer except Coleridge. The article from which he quotes is in The Christian Spectator, vol. ix.
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presentation. As, too, the words made use of generally carry something false with them, as well as something true, associating form with the truths represented, when really there is no form; it will also be necessary, on this account, to multiply words or figures, and thus to present the subject on opposite sides or many sides. Thus, as form battles form, and one form neutralizes another, all the insufficiencies of words are filled out, the contrarieties liquidated, and the mind settles into a full and just apprehension of the pure spiritual truth. Accordingly we never come so near to a truly well-rounded view of any truth as when if is offered paradoxically; that is, under contradictions; that is, under two or more dictions, which, taken as dictions, are contrary one to the other" (p. 55).
"The views of language and interpretation I have here offered suggest the very great difficulty, if not impossibility, of mental science and religious dogmatism. In all such uses, or attempted uses, the effort is to make language answer a purpose that is against its nature. The 'winged words' are required to serve as beasts of burden; or, what is no better, to forget their poetic life as messengers of the air, and stand still, fixed upon the ground, as wooden statues of truths. . . .
"Can there be produced, in human language, a complete and proper Christian theology; can the Christian truth be offered in the moulds of any dogmatic statement? What is the Christian
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truth? Preeminently and principally, it is the expression of God, God coming into expression through histories and rites, through an incarnation, and through language, - in one syllable, by the WORD. The endeavor is, by means of expression, and under the laws of expression, to set forth God, his providence and his government, and what is more and higher than all, God's own feeling, his truth, love, justice, compassion. . . .
"There is, however, one hope for mental and religious truth and their final settlement, which I confess I see but dimly, and can but faintly express or indicate. It is that physical science, leading the way, setting outward things in their true proportions, opening up their true contents, revealing their genesis and final causes and laws, and weaving all into the unity of a real universe, will so perfect our knowledge and conceptions of them that we can use them, in the second department of language, with more exactness. . . . And then language will be as much more full and intelligent, as it has more of God's intelligence, in the system of nature, imparted to its symbols. For undoubtedly the whole universe of nature is a perfect analogon of the whole universe of thought or spirit. Therefore, as nature becomes truly a universe only through science revealing its universal laws, the true universe of thought and spirit cannot sooner be conceived " 1 (p. 78).
1 Bushnell here anticipates with striking accuracy the fourth chapter of Mr. John Fiske's Through Nature to God, on "The Dramatic Unity of Nature."
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We have made this quotation not only because it illustrates Bushnell's range in a high realm of thought, but because it is, as his biographer says, "the key to Horace Bushnell."
It was not a theory brought from without and adopted as best suited to his purpose, but was a reflection of the natural play of his mind. It is not only the key, but it shows in what a natural way he fell in with the Greek use of the Logos, from which he never wholly departed, however heavy the stress of criticism.
His theory seems fatal to theology as an exact science, and he presses it to that conclusion. We shall let him make his explanation in his own words. His friend, Dr. William W. Patton, gives this account of a conversation with him, at the time when he was under heavy criticism for the theological opinions of the book "God in Christ: "
"Dr. Bushnell and myself were riding together to a meeting of the Hartford Central Association, and the conversation turned on theological discussions. 'Why is it,' said I, 'that you complain that you are so generally misunderstood? Where you are criticized you say that the critics misapprehend your positions; and they reply that you ought to express yourself more clearly. Why can you not do so?' His answer was substantially this: 'It is because of the different views which they and I take of the human soul and of the relation of language to spiritual truth. They succeed easily in so expressing their ideas as to be understood by
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their readers; but it is because they deal with subjects mechanically, and not according to nature. There for instance, is Dr. ---, my customary assailant. He writes about the human spirit as if it were a machine under the laws of mechanics; and, of course, what he says is perfectly intelligible, like any other treatise on matter; only what he says is not true! But I conceive of the soul in its living nature, - as free, and intelligent, and sensitive; as under vital and not mechanical laws. Language, too, for that reason, is not so much descriptive as suggestive, being figurative throughout, even where it deals with spiritual truth. Therefore, an experience is needed to interpret words.'"
It was by this gate that he went out from the world about him into the world of spiritual reality and freedom where his work lay. It must not be supposed that he abjured theology as a science because he refused to be bound by definition, nor that he slighted reason because he set aside the forms of logic. He simply refused to put infinite things into finite forms as wholly containing them. He protested against treating thought and spirit as measurable by sense; he asserted that spiritual and moral realities lie behind language, and that words have their origin in these realities, though they do not define them, but only suggest their scope and significance. It is under such a conception of language that he explains his use of creeds. He likes them so well that he says he is
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"ready to accept as great a number as fall in my way."
If a fundamental criticism were to be made of his entire work in theology, it would be made at the point of this theory, for it covers the whole of it. He may at times disagree with himself, and he often goes far a field, but he always comes back to this conception of language for explanation or defense. Whether true or false, it runs throughout his theology, and makes it substantially a unit. Stated briefly, it was an exchange of definition for expression. His entrance into the company of New England theologians with such a theory was like Copernicus appearing among the Ptolemaists.