But, as in
general Aesthetic, error begins when It is wished to return from the
logical to the aesthetical, and it is asked what is the expression of
movement, action, matter, being, of the general, of the individual,
etc.; thus in like manner with language, error begins when motion or
action are called verb, being, or matter, noun or substantive, and when
linguistic categories, or _parts of speech_, are made of all these, noun
and verb and so on. The theory of parts of speech is at bottom
altogether the same as that of artistic and literary classes, already
criticized in the Aesthetic.
It is false to say that the verb or the noun is expressed in definite
words, truly distinguishable from others. Expression is an indivisible
whole. Noun and verb do not exist in themselves, but are abstractions
made by our destroying the sole linguistic reality, which is _the
proposition_. This last is to be understood, not in the usual mode of
grammarians, but as an organism expressive of a complete meaning, from
an exclamation to a poem. This sounds paradoxical, but is nevertheless a
most simple truth.
And as in Aesthetic, the artistic productions of certain peoples have
been looked upon as imperfect, owing to the error above mentioned,
because the supposed kinds have seemed still to be indiscriminate or
absent with them; so, in Linguistic, the theory of the parts of speech
has caused the analogous error of dividing languages into formed and
unformed, according to whether there appear in them or not some of those
supposed parts of speech; for example, the verb.
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