#wiktionary calls it a defective verb

[tallbluelady]

I... I don't think that's quite my style...

[kabane52]

Etymology and Ontology

Peter Leithart’s chapter in “Deep Exegesis” on etymology and its significance is earth-shattering. Contrary to those who argue that a word’s history is essentially irrelevant to its meaning in any given text, Leithart follows the biblical authors (who often gave etymologies) in seeing its history as an intrinsic quality of its essence and thus significant in giving a comprehensive account of a text’s meaning. Authorial intent plays a governing role in the meaning of a text, but no text’s meaning is limited to the conscious intent of the author.

This raises the question of what language is. I think we tend to assume that language is a mere tool or instrument- it is meant to facilitate communication between rational subjects. Those who consider it at greater length will realize that it is also an instrument of thinking in a single rational subject. The grammar of the world around us is made internally intelligible through language. But what if language was more than this? What if language itself was one of the ends for which God created the world and Man in relation to the world? I think

Consider notion of magic (which I am not here using to identify unlawful sorcery) and recall the deep connection in creation between music and ontology. At the birth of Narnia, the Deep Magic which the Emperor puts into Narnia is placed therein through Aslan’s *song.* That song has different rhythms according to the different things being created. Each creature has its unique qualities on account of its different mode of being. Etymology provides many interesting windows into the inner logic of these concepts. Yet I do not think the relation of two similar words conceptually depends, necessarily, on a concrete historical relation. When two distinct words evolve convergently, I think this is internal to the structure of language as an exposition of the world: their convergence manifests a deeper conceptual convergence. Their similar sounds are then exploited in poetry and puns.

Here is just a sampling:

Music: Music is derived from “Muses” which is in Hellenistic thought the heavenly energy which indwells the poet or artist, granting him the ability to fashion aesthetically rich imprints of the world. The splendor of Greek history is imprinted in the Iliad through the operation of the Muses. In fact, the Apostle Paul in 1 Corinthians 12 echoes (to my mind, quite clearly) a passage in Plato’s Ion describing the diversity of gifts granted through the Muses. A better analogy than “laws of nature” is “music of nature.” The laws of nature are not prescriptive: they are *descriptive* of how things behave. The *cause* of that behavior is unstated and unknown to the naturalist. The Muses is from Heaven: it is the pattern of the harmony which makes the world what it is. The Divine Musician teaches His children how to play the music which makes the world.

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Mode- Think of what I said above about different creatures being different modes in which things exist. Well, “mode” ultimately comes from “modus” which means, among other things, *rhythm* and even *song.* It is a particular pattern in which the music of the cosmos is harmonized and played by the Almighty.

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Magic: Various words associated with magic are still in use: magistrate, for example. One thinks of the Persian-derived words for the learned priestly class: magus, magi (Latinized plural). The historical etymology has been suggested in a proto-Indo-European word signifying “to have power.” Consider how dominion over the cosmos is linked throughout Scripture with God’s having created it. God is King and Sovereign because He is Creator. Why? Because to be sovereign means that one has the capacity to realize one’s end. And God’s having created something in the first place- His ability to *make something what He wants it to be* entails His continued sovereignty.

When one *makes* something, one has sovereignty over it. Even if one makes something for someone else, it is given to them because one has contracted to use one’s labor for that end. A king has sovereignty over subject lands by right of conquest (or compare Josh 18: “the whole land lay subdued”, used in an allusion to Gen 1.26-28, the dominion mandate) because he has exerted his will to successfully make the land what he wishes it. This is why technological development and conquest in scripture are closely bound together as distinct vibes on the same conceptual key. Joseph, Daniel, and Solomon are superior to the sorcerers because they have received from God the *true* divine wisdom which undergirds the natures of things. Knowing natures as they are, they are successful in exercising dominion. Through the Spirit of God, Joseph is the *true* magistrate who overcomes the sorcery of their magicians. Priests study the Holy Torah, the disclosure of the Words of God which undergird nature. They are the true Magi, granting true Wisdom.

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Enchanted- from the Latin incantare. In is a preposition meaning “within” and “cantare” is an infinitive of “canto.” The word “canto” is the word “cano” with what Wiktionary calls a “frequentative suffix” (t), indicating a repeated action. “Cano” means “I sing.” The repeition contained in its suffix indicates the ongoing, rhythmic nature of that music. So we have the notion of an ongoing regular piece of music combined with “within.” I think we can see here the intertwining network of concepts giving meaning to “enchantment.” It refers to the *inner essence* of an ongoing song. To put something under an enchantment is to alter its ongoing existence and endow it with new causative and receptive relations. If one enchants a ring to make another fall asleep, one knows the essence of the ring well enough to thread that nature together with a new quality, the quality of making someone fall asleep. So in Narnia ,the Deep Magic is the Deep Music.

Aslan endows his world with a particular sort of existence and a particular network of qualities. The overarching Music is a harmony of many songs or modes, individual rhythms corresponding to particular creatures- all existing in relation to all others and to the Whole  Symphony. The magician, in Narnia, is the one who knows the Deep Magic well enough to alter the world by singing out one’s own tune in relation to the preexisting tune. This is done both for good and for ill- there is the White Witch who knows the essence of the world and the essence of snow well enough to bind snow to Narnia in perpetuity. But there is also Coriakin, who governs the Dufflepuds by altering their qualities according to the needs of the moment. When Lucy takes his book of magic and says the incantation to make invisible things visible, Aslan appears, saying that he will certainly obey his own rules. The patterns of nature are the constantly sung divine Music endowing nature with its qualities. In present primitive terms, the so called “laws of nature.”

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Words are pronounced with breath and air. It is air which carries sound from speaker to hearer, and the speaker always breathes out air as he speaks. Air, breath, these qualities are the corporeal reality most closely bound together in association with “life.” God created Man not only as an instrument for the glorification of the world, not only as a tool, but as an end. Glorified Man is one of the great ends for which God created the world. And I think we can say that language is like this, too. Language itself is a sacramental beauty, it is something not only to be used, but also to be reveled in. It is not a mere tool to comment upon and understand creation, it is one of the great splendors of creation itself. Language, in a sense, is the very life of Man, whose existence is in the Image and Likeness of God. And God created Man to grow, to develop, to multiply from a single individual into a vast, many-branched family (the link between a “tree” and a “family” is no accident: the righteous is like a “tree planted by streams” and the Kingdom of God is like a cosmic “tree”) through whom the Cosmos is glorious in the resurrection of the World to Come.

Language, the life and breath of Man, is also a cumulative reality. If a language acquires in a single social context two words from two different mother languages representing the same concept, then the only way in which both words survive in the same environment is if they develop a subtle distinction in meaning. And this subtlety simply cannot be reduced to a definition. One word might give away one’s desire to alter a relationship to become less or more formal. Little signals and cues become available as a language flowers and bursts and buds. This is why English is such a beautiful and rich language.

[PS: Let me just say that our “defective” verbal system is one of the wonders of the linguistic world. With the death of th conjugated verb a whole new life gloriously is born. Suddenly, the helping word permits English to specify a vaster range of verbal tenses than had been used in ancestral languages for centuries or even millennia. Greek is not, contrary to the cliche, a more precise language than English. English permits specification of ongoing or simple aspect (i.e. “doing” and “do”) no matter the time. Greek and Latin cannot elegantly distinguish “I am doing” and “I do.” But English allows for more than this. It permits the existence of the perfect progressive: “I have been doing.”]