A language, in effect, is a potential philosophy. Platonism is the Greek
language which discourses in Plato, unfolding its secular metaphors;
scholasticism is the philosophy of the dead Latin of the Middle Ages
wrestling with the popular tongues; the French language discourses in
Descartes, the German in Kant and in Hegel, and the English in Hume and
in Stuart Mill. For the truth is that the logical starting-point of all
philosophical speculation is not the I, neither is it representation
(_Vorstellung_), nor the world as it presents itself immediately to the
senses; but it is mediate or historical representation, humanly
elaborated and such as it is given to us principally in the language by
means of which we know the world; it is not psychical but spiritual
representation. When we think, we are obliged to set out, whether we
know it not and whether we will or not, from what has been thought by
others who came before us and who environ us. Thought is an inheritance.
Kant thought in German, and into German he translated Hume and Rousseau,
who thought in English and French respectively. And did not Spinoza
think in Judeo-Portuguese, obstructed by and contending with Dutch?
Thought rests upon prejudgements, and prejudgements pass into language.
To language Bacon rightly ascribed not a few of the errors of the _idola
fori_. But is it possible to philosophize in pure algebra or even in
Esperanto? In order to see the result of such an attempt one has only to
read the work of Avenarius on the criticism of pure experience (_reine
Erfahrung_), of this prehuman or inhuman experience.
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