Still it might be supposed that the verb “to be,” predicating as it does the quality of existence, a conception so abstract that the profoundest metaphysicians and physiologists have been as yet wholly unable to find for it any tolerable definition, would resist all attempts at a reduction to any sensational root. If we are to look to a definition of “life” as being either undiscoverable, or else a discovery which can only be expected from the ultimate triumphs of science, surely we might suppose that here at least it is impossible to find a sensible idea as the root of the sublime verbs which are the means of representing life as an attribute. But we are all liable to the error of forming far too[137] high an estimate of the intrinsic vitality (the supposed _occulta vis_) of verbs in general. They contain no inherent powers which separate them from nouns, and their supposed distinctive character arises entirely out of their combination with a subject. The fancy (for instance) that “the root _can_ ‘sing’ differs from _can_ ‘song’ in the same degree that a magnetised steel bar differs from an ordinary one, or a charged Leyden jar from a discharged one,” is proved by minute analysis to be totally groundless. And the importance of the verb “to be” in particular has been greatly exaggerated, as though it were a necessary ingredient of every logical proposition. For in many languages the verb is wanting altogether, and its mere _implication_ is quite sufficient for all logical purposes. “The verb-substantive,” observes Mr. Garnett (from whose most valuable Essay on the nature and analysis of the verb we have borrowed these suggestions), “if considered as necessary to vivify all connected speech and bind together the terms of every logical proposition, is much upon a footing with the phlogiston of the chemists of the last generation, regarded as a necessary pabulum of combustion--that is to say, _Vox et præterea nihil_.”
Whatever our _à priori_ estimate of the power of the verb-substantive may be, its origin is traced by philology to very humble and material sources. The Hebrew verbs הָוָה (houa), or הָיָה (haia), may very probably be derived from an onomatopœia of respiration. The verb _kama_, which has the same sense, means primitively “to stand out,” and the verb _koum_,[138] to stand, passes into the sense of “being.” In Sanskrit, _as-mi_ (from which all the verbs-substantive in the Indo-European languages are derived, as εἰμὶ, _sum_, am; Zend, _ahmi_; Lithuanic, _esmi_; Icelandic, _em_, &c.), is, properly speaking, no verbal root, but “a formation on the demonstrative pronoun _sa_, the idea meant to be conveyed being simply that of local presence.” And of the two other roots used for the same purpose, viz. _bhu_ (φύω, _fui_, &c.), and _sthâ_ (_stare_, &c.),[139] the first is probably an imitation of breathing, and the second notoriously a physical verb, meaning “to stand up.” May we not, then, ask with Bunsen, “What is ‘_to be_’ in all languages but the spiritualisation of _walking_ or _standing_ or _eating_?”