entirely in the ideational or cognitive sphere. It is time that we
amplified the picture. The volitional aspect of consciousness also is to
some extent explicitly provided for in language. Nearly all languages
have special means for the expression of commands (in the imperative
forms of the verb, for example) and of desires, unattained or
unattainable (_Would he might come!_ or _Would he were here!_) The
emotions, on the whole, seem to be given a less adequate outlet.
Emotion, indeed, is proverbially inclined to speechlessness. Most, if
not all, the interjections are to be put to the credit of emotional
expression, also, it may be, a number of linguistic elements expressing
certain modalities, such as dubitative or potential forms, which may be
interpreted as reflecting the emotional states of hesitation or
doubt--attenuated fear. On the whole, it must be admitted that ideation
reigns supreme in language, that volition and emotion come in as
distinctly secondary factors. This, after all, is perfectly
intelligible. The world of image and concept, the endless and
ever-shifting picture of objective reality, is the unavoidable
subject-matter of human communication, for it is only, or mainly, in
terms of this world that effective action is possible. Desire, purpose,
emotion are the personal color of the objective world; they are applied
privately by the individual soul and are of relatively little importance
to the neighboring one. All this does not mean that volition and emotion
are not expressed. They are, strictly speaking, never absent from normal
speech, but their expression is not of a truly linguistic nature. The
nuances of emphasis, tone, and phrasing, the varying speed and
continuity of utterance, the accompanying bodily movements, all these
express something of the inner life of impulse and feeling, but as these
means of expression are, at last analysis, but modified forms of the
instinctive utterance that man shares with the lower animals, they
cannot be considered as forming part of the essential cultural
conception of language, however much they may be inseparable from its
actual life. And this instinctive expression of volition and emotion is,
for the most part, sufficient, often more than sufficient, for the
purposes of communication.
There are, it is true, certain writers on the psychology of language[9]
who deny its prevailingly cognitive character but attempt, on the
contrary, to demonstrate the origin of most linguistic elements within
the domain of feeling. I confess that I am utterly unable to follow
them. What there is of truth in their contentions may be summed up, it
seems to me, by saying that most words, like practically all elements of
consciousness, have an associated feeling-tone, a mild, yet none the
less real and at times insidiously powerful, derivative of pleasure or
pain. This feeling-tone, however, is not as a rule an inherent value in
the word itself; it is rather a sentimental growth on the word's true
body, on its conceptual kernel. Not only may the feeling-tone change
from one age to another (this, of course, is true of the conceptual
content as well), but it varies remarkably from individual to individual
according to the personal associations of each, varies, indeed, from
time to time in a single individual's consciousness as his experiences
mold him and his moods change. To be sure, there are socially accepted
feeling-tones, or ranges of feeling-tone, for many words over and above
the force of individual association, but they are exceedingly variable
and elusive things at best. They rarely have the rigidity of the
central, primary fact. We all grant, for instance, that _storm_,
_tempest_, and _hurricane_, quite aside from their slight differences of
actual meaning, have distinct feeling-tones, tones that are felt by all
sensitive speakers and readers of English in a roughly equivalent
fashion. _Storm_, we feel, is a more general and a decidedly less