The Magic of Language: Prelogical Thought, Logic, and Ways of Seeing • HUYIFAN

The French anthropologist Lévy-Bruhl distinguishes logical thought from prelogical thought in How Natives Think. Logical thought distinguishes things and establishes boundaries, thereby extending the range consciousness can grasp. Prelogical thought coexists with it and reorganizes into a whole the world that logical thought has fragmented.

Lévy-Bruhl writes in the preface that among human beings there are no two forms of thought separated by an impassable wall, but that within the same society, and often, perhaps always, within the same consciousness, different structures of thought exist together.

Prelogical thought allows meaning to retain a degree of ambiguity and tension within the same container, so that contradiction need not immediately be adjudicated as either this or that, leaving the subject room to bear, to circle back, and to transform. When declining an invitation, for instance, people often say next time, or let me see, or we will be in touch. Such phrases do not close the exchange with an explicit yes or no. They place refusal within a particular relationship, leaving both sides room and dignity.

Language and thought shape one another. Chinese, and the modes of expression carried by Chinese characters, can be regarded as one manifestation of a prelogical orientation within the world of consciousness. Chinese is not incapable of expressing logic, but in a great deal of everyday expression it relies less on explicit logical connectives and formal marking and more on context, juxtaposition, and implicit relational organization.

In concrete interactions, this habit of expression more readily delays and cushions conflict, or turns it toward repairing a relationship rather than immediately adjudicating who is right. When a conflict escalates and demands an immediate position or an assignment of blame, for instance, people often resort to expressions such as leaving each other a way down, or harmony above all, converting the conflict from a hard opposition over who is right into something that can be softened and improved.

Language not only shapes the relation between consciousness and world, it also supplies consciousness with a way of existing in the world. If different languages are different lineages of magic, expression that emphasizes context, juxtaposition, and relational continuity resembles an inward, defensive magic that helps the subject maintain psychological stability and wholeness in a chaotic world. Expression that emphasizes decomposition, naming, and analysis resembles an outward, exploratory magic that helps the subject clearly grasp the external world.

This difference in orientation between aggregation and analysis can likewise be glimpsed at the level of the writing system.

Among the major writing systems in use today, Chinese characters are one of the few morphosyllabic systems still in wide use. Many characters can directly carry morphemic meaning in writing. The character for water, for example, is both a character and a direct reference to the corresponding concept.

In a phonographic system such as English, the smallest written unit is closer to the phoneme, generally represented by a letter or combination of letters. These phonemes carry no specific meaning in themselves. They are units of sound that compose words. The letters a, b, and c mean nothing in isolation, but combined they can form a meaningful word such as cat.

When a Chinese reader sees the phrase for water and fire cannot coexist, the characters for water and for fire each carry their complete meaning, and their opposition is already present visually. When an English reader sees incompatible, its meaning depends more on rules of word formation, such as the negative prefix in-. The comparison shows two ways meaning is organized in writing: the form of a Chinese character commonly bears a direct relation to morphemic meaning, while the meaning of an English word is more often formed through letter combinations and word-formation rules.

This difference appears not only in the writing system but also extends into grammatical structure. In introducing how people are related, for instance, Chinese commonly locates a person along a chain of relations, as in my cousin's classmate, or the son of Auntie Wang downstairs. English can also give the name first and add the relation afterward, as in this is David, a friend from college. The former reveals the relational chain more openly, the latter gives the individual identifier first and then supplies the relation through an appositive.

In chapter fifty of Journey to the West, Sun Wukong draws a circle for Tang Sanzang and says that the circle he has drawn is stronger than a wall of bronze and iron, that no tiger, wolf, or demon will dare approach, that they must not step outside it but sit calmly within, and that he guarantees their safety, while if they leave the circle they will surely meet a cruel hand.

Chinese is like the circle Sun Wukong drew, letting us resist inner division and outer danger. English is like Sun Wukong's fiery eyes, letting us to some degree strip away the mystery of things. Looked at again from the angle of language and orientation of thought, the notion Zhang Zhidong proposed in the Exhortation to Study, that Chinese learning should be the substance and Western learning the function, still has explanatory force. Substance has more to do with the stability and bearing capacity of the subject, and function has more to do with the analysis and knowledge of objects.

Each of these two magics has its price. The circle Sun Wukong draws does provide safety, but its position is fixed and cannot be moved, and once you step outside it the protection fails. This means that excessive reliance on defensive integration may limit the subject's room for exploration and freedom of action. The fiery eyes can perceive the truth, but they can also place the user in the position of being seen through.

When the path of decomposition, discrimination, and naming is continually reinforced, the subject is also forced to treat itself in the same way in the course of that process. In order to know, explain, and control more clearly, experience is broken into describable concepts and meanings, and in return the self is simultaneously objectified into something manageable. This is the reification of the human. As the knowability of the world grows, the continuity and wholeness within the subject are weakened at the same time.

The price of knowing the world is that we ourselves are dissociated, and the world we know is only a fragment of ourselves.

Perhaps what we need is not to choose between these two modes of thought, but to let them remain in dynamic balance within a unified consciousness. We need both the capacity to analyze and know, and the capacity to integrate and bear. We need both the ability to explore outward and the wisdom to protect the self.