"In the beginning was the word, for with it man became man. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
"[...] Without words as class names one might think of this man, or that man, or that man; one could not think of Man, for the eye sees not Man but only men, not classes but particular things. The beginning of humanity came when some freak or crank, half animal and half man, squatted in a cave or in a tree, cracking his brain to invent the first common noun, the first sound-sign that would signify a group of like objects: house that would mean all houses, man that would mean all men, light that would mean every light that ever shone on land or sea. From that moment the mental development of the race opened upon a new and endless road. For words are to thought what tools are to work; the product depends largely on the growth of the tools."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
"Since all origins are guesses, and de fontibus non disputandum, the imagination has free play in picturing the beginnings of speech. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
"[...] Nearly all primitive tongues, however, limit themselves to the sensual and particular, and are uniformly poor in general or abstract terms. So the Australian natives had a name for a dog’s tail, and an- other name for a cow’s tail; but they had no name for tail in general. The Tasmanians had separate names for specific trees, but no general name for tree; the Choctaw Indians had names for the black oak, the white oak and the red oak, but no name for oak, much less for tree. Doubtless many generations passed before the proper noun ended in the common noun. In many tribes there are no separate words for the color as distinct from the colored object; no words for such abstractions as tone, sex, species, space, spirit, instinct, reason, quantity, hope, fear, matter, consciousness, etc. Such abstract terms seem to grow in a reciprocal relation of cause and effect with the development of thought; they become the tools of subtlety and the symbols of civilization. [...] They made not only for clearer thinking, but for better social organization; they cemented the generations mentally, by providing a better medium for education and the transmission of knowledge and the arts; they created a new organ of communication, by which one doctrine or belief could mold a people into homogeneous unity. They opened new roads for the transport and traffic of ideas, and immensely accelerated the tempo, and enlarged the range and content, of life. Has any other invention ever equaled, in power and glory, the common noun?"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935 (italics added)
"[...] Civilization is an accumulation, a treasure-house of arts and wisdom, manners and morals, from which the individual, in his development, draws nourishment for his mental life; without that periodical reacquisition of the racial heritage by each generation, civilization would die a sudden death. It owes its life to education."
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
"The environment of the natural man was comparatively permanent; it called not for mental agility but for courage and character. The primitive father put his trust in character, as modern education has put its trust in intellect; he was concerned to make not scholars but men. Hence the initiation rites which, among nature peoples, ordinarily marked the arrival of the youth at maturity and membership in the tribe, were designed to test courage rather than knowledge; their function was to prepare the young for the hardships of war and the responsibilities of marriage. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
"Little or no use was made of writing in primitive education. Nothing surprises the natural man so much as the ability of Europeans to communicate with one another, over great distances, by making black scratches upon a piece of paper. Many tribes have learned to write by imitating their civilized exploiters; but some, as in northern Africa, have remained letterless despite five thousand years of intermittent contact with literate nations. Simple tribes living for the most part in comparative isolation, and knowing the happiness of having no history, felt little need for writing. Their memories were all the stronger for having no written aids; they learned and retained, and passed on to their children by recitation, whatever seemed necessary in the way of historical record and cultural trans- mission. It was probably by committing such oral traditions and folk-lore to writing that literature began.
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935 (italics added)
"In general, writing is a sign of civilization, the least uncertain of the pre- carious distinctions between civilized and primitive men. [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
"Literature is at first words rather than letters, despite its name; it arises as clerical chants or magic charms, recited usually by the priests, and trans- mitted orally from memory to memory. [...] Gradually, out of these sacerdotal origins, the poet, the orator and the historian were differentiated and secularized: the orator as the official lauder of the king or solicitor of the deity; the historian as the recorder of the royal deeds; the poet as the singer of originally sacred chants, the formulator and preserver of heroic legends, and the musician who put his tales to music for the instruction of populace and kings. So the Fijians, the Tahitians and the New Caledonians had official orators and narrators to make addresses on occasions of ceremony, and to incite the warriors of the tribe by recounting the deeds of their forefathers and exalting the unequaled glories of the nation’s past: how little do some recent historians differ from these! [...]"
Will Durant, Story of Civilization, Vol.1: Our Oriental Heritage, Ch.5, Section I, 1935
No comments:
Post a Comment