FALSE PHILOSOPHY

The Tyranny of Words. By Stuart Chase. (Methuen. ins. 6d.) WHEN we speak or write, if it is our aim to convince or prove, or merely to communicate our thoughts, it is of the first

importance that we should know what it is that we mean and choose words which, by reason of their accepted significance, arc apt to express it. If, on the other hand, our object in speaking or writing is to persuade or to charm, or merely to give pleasure, other considerations than meaning will influence us in our choice of words ; but even then that may be an important consideration.

Failure to communicate our thoughts is often due, not to ignorance or stupidity on the part of our auditors or readers, but to the fact that the words that we have used are inadequate or inappropriate to the ideas that we wish to express. And this failure on our part may be our own fault, or it may not. If we are slipshod in our choice of words, and say (for instance) " infer " when we mean " imply," the fault is our own. Again, if before speaking we do not think out clearly what we mean, we often discover, on reflecting upon what we have said, that it does not express what we meant (in which case we should probably have done better to use different words), or that we really meant nothing, or nothing worth saying (in which case we should have done better to remain silent) ; here, too, we are ourselves responsible if we fail to communicate.

On the other hand, that failure may be due to the fact that language offers us no exact equivalent for the meaning that is in our minds. In this case the fault is not ours ; circum- stances compel us to choose between keeping silent and doing the best we can with the words at our disposal. To a certain degree, this is the case with almost all speech : for almost all its purposes, language is but a makeshift.

Some glimmerings of these simple truths have filtered into the swelled head of Dr. Chase, and led him to produce his book. He observes that writers and speakers are prone to use terms loosely, and to base arguments on statements containing terms so used. Their thinking, or their expression of their thought, (or both), is "woolly," and their reasoning

is often in consequence unsound, and this is particularly likely to be the case where they use words which refer to

abstract ideas. False use of such words engenders delusions, and may inflame dangerous passions in politics and other spheres of life. Dr. Chase urges, therefore, that people should not use words of which they are not prepared to state the meaning, or attempt to express ideas which are not clear in their own minds.

So far, so good. All that is sound or useful in Dr. Chase's book is said (and said much better and more clearly than he says it) above. But Dr. Chase is not content with that simple and salutary message ; he believes that he has made a discovery about language itself, a discovery of profound philosophical importance—and he thinks that by publishing it (together with a quack remedy which is called " Semantics ") he can be of great service to the modem world. He attacks not merely the " woolly " use of words by modern journalists and politicians, but the way in which thinkers, writers, and orators, from Plato to the present day, have employed language.

All are guilty of the illegitimate use of abstract terms. The vice, the canker, is age-old, and its roots go deep ; the benefits promised as a result of its removal, and the adoption of " Semantics," are correspondingly striking and important.

It appears from his book that Dr. Chase cannot read Latin, cannot read Greek, and cannot write English. These are serious handicaps to one who undertakes a task like his ; but Dr. Chase is not the man to be deterred by consciousness of his own deficiencies : " I strove to understand Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Herbert Spencer, Schopenhauer " —all to no purpose. Clearly there was something wrong, on one side or the other. Dr. Chase decided that it was with Plato, Aristotle, Spinoza, Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Herbert Spencer and Schopenhauer that something was wrong, and not with Dr. Chase.

Plato is easily dismissed : " Plato was frankly an idea man." So is Aristotle, who " sought knowledge primarily with his head and disdained to use his hands." They and all succeeding philosophers were guilty of using freely such words as Beauty, Truth, God, Fascism. To Dr. Chase such words, literally, " mean nothing." He spends half his time att3cking their

use because they refer to abstract things (as opposed to what he quaintly calls " tangible happenings ") : " I never saw an -ism," he says, like the man in Plato who said : " I can see a horse, but I cannot see horseness "—and the answer " That is because you have eyes but not intelligence " seems never to have occurred to him. The other half of his time is spent in showing that some abstract ideas have no generally accepted definition and deducing that abstract ideas therefore lack " meaningful content." For instance, he took the trouble to ask too people what Fascism meant to them, and he exhibits their differing answers as evidence that the term Fascism " by itself obviously lacks meaning." On the other hand, Dr. Chase thinks that the word " dog " is " meaningful " because a dog can be touched and seen. He fails to observe that "a dog is just as abstract a concept as " Fascism", and that if you asked a hundred people what " a dog " meant to them you would, as likely as not, get a hundred different answers.

Similar confusion infects Dr. Chase's treatment of " facts." " Factual matter," for the " semanticist," consists of " material objects, or collections of objects, or happenings, at given places and dates, and processes verified scientifically " ; " a fact," says Dr. Chase, " is an event subject to operational verification." Hence " The Divine is rightly so called," if subjected to " seman- tic analysis," has no meaning : " no referents can be found for it ; no operations are possible to prove its validity as a concept." It is otherwise, according to Dr. Chase, with the statement : " Water is at its maximum density at 4' C." : " Go into the laboratory and prove it with your hands and eyes. . . . The operational approach is conclusive, and meaning is found in its most precise form."

It never occurs to Dr. Chase that nothing can be proved with

the hands and eyes ; or that all that one can learn from attending to a particular vessel of water is that that water is at its maximum density at 4' C. Other water might be different. To prove anything about water universally entails the concept " water," which cannot be touched or seen any more than Fascism or truth or beauty. If you confine yourself to the " operational approach " you must give up making statements and confine

yourself to a sort of verbal pointing.

Moreover, the statement that " meaning is to be found in its most precise form " (so far as that statement itself can be said to have any meaning) in statements concerning concrete objects is precisely the opposite of true words which refer to " factual matter "—pieces (for instance) of physical matter like Napoleon I or Dr. Chase—are just those which " mean " the greatest variety of things " to " different people : the more narrowly a word denotes, the more abundantly it connotes, and the more difficult it is to communicate to another precisely what we mean when we use it. If we wish to communicate with precision, we must go to the most abstract world of all, the world of mathematics. " The angles of every triangle are equal to two right angles " is a purely " abstract " statement ; no one has ever seen or touched a triangle. Yet the terms arc capable of precise definition ; and the statement conveys a precise and unambiguous meaning and is capable of demonstration.

These are but a few of the large loose bricks in the foundations of Dr. Chase's shoddy structure of " semantics." He is said to be accepted as a philosopher in America, and it is therefore more important to point out such fundamental defects than to

call attention to the glaring vulgarity and cheapness of his mind and style. He is not a good advertisement for his own " semantics," for he can neither think clearly nor write well. But he has a flashy, vulgar humour ; he offers a brand of philosophy which sounds " practical " and up to date ; he rejoices in tilting at the classics, " intellectuals " and estab- lished reputations ; so it is not surprising if he and Semantics

sell well. A typical passage will indicate the quality of the cheapjack and of his wares :

" Suppose we try to describe a trained semanticist a decade or more hence. I picture a good-humoured young man with quick eyes and a slow tongue. You doubtless know the type and perhaps belong to it yourself. (For ' young man ' also read ' young woman '.) Sensible and tolerant to start with, he has developed these qualities and others until he can make a clear judgment as skilfully as a trained pattern maker stamps a die . . . He will be extremely conscious of high- order abstractions, constantly on the search for referents, with the operational approach always in his cartridge belt."

One supposes that even in America this kind of thing is seen through eventually, and that Dr. Chase, like that other lord of language, Humpty Dumpty, is, sooner or later, in for a "great

JOHN SPARROW.