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<TARGET "jos" DOCINFO AUTHOR "John E. Joseph" TITLE "Pictets Du Beau (1856) and the crystallisation of Saussurean Linguistic" SUBJECT "Historiographia Linguistica XXX:3 (2003)" KEYWORDS "" SIZE HEIGHT "220" WIDTH "150" VOFFSET "4">

Historiographia Linguistica XXX:3.365388 (2003). John Benjamins B.V., Amsterdam

Not to be reproduced in any form without written permission from the publisher.

PICTETS DU BEAU (1856) AND THE CRYSTALLISATION

OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS*

JOHN E. JOSEPH
University of Edinburgh

To the memory of Rudolf Engler (19302003)

1. Introduction
The posthumously assembled Cours de linguistique gnrale (1916) of
Ferdinand de Saussure (18571913) cites few predecessors for its key ideas.
Had Saussure prepared anything on the general theory of language for print,
he would no doubt have indicated sources. But except for two extended
review articles in the Journal de Genve, one of which will be discussed
below, his 25 published books and articles are focussed on specialised problems
in Indo-European historical linguistics. None treats language as such.
Precedents for some aspects of Saussures system have long since been
suggested. The distinction between langue, a language system, and parole,
the utterances produced using the system, is anticipated in certain handbooks
of historical linguistics, such as Hermann Pauls, and Saussures remarks on
the social nature of langue have been linked to the debate between Durkheim
and Tarde, though he never cited either (see Koerner 1973, 1988). The
conception of language as a system of signs an ancient and medieval
heritage which all but disappeared from linguistic writings in the 19th
century nevertheless is widespread in French psychological writings of the
1870s and after.

* An abridged version of this paper was presented at the 20th Annual Symposium of the Henry
Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas, Trinity College Dublin, 30 August 2003. I
am grateful to those present at the symposium who engaged in discussion of the paper and
offered helpful comments, to Ceri Crossley for kindly supplying me with a copy of his own
hard-to-nd paper on Pictet (1856), and to E. F. K. Koerner for his ever-valuable editorial
advice.
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366 JOHN E. JOSEPH

A case has even been put forward for a forerunner of Saussures whole
model. Aarsle (1978) maintains that the writings of Hippolyte Taine
(18281893) contain all [Saussures] methodological principles and linguis-
tic conceptions [] tightly locked into a single, fully articulated system
(1978: 79 [1982: 364]). Taine was a central gure on the French literary
scene in the 1860s and 70s. Aarsle claims that in Taine (1858,
18631864, 1866, 1867, 1871) one already nds the Saussurean conceptions
of value as something specic to a particular language system, of the
linguistic sign as the conjunction of a signier and signied, and an insis-
tence on system and structure, from which, Aarsle says, follow the
distinctions between langue and parole and synchrony and diachrony. As for
the arbitrariness of the linguistic sign Saussures rst and dominant
principle Aarsle remarks that Taine never had occasion to use [it], but
he obviously took [it] for granted (ibid., p. 79 [363]). He suggests that
Taine is the crucial link between Saussure and Condillac, for whom the
arbitrariness of the sign is a basic doctrine, though Saussure never cites him.
Indeed, Aarsle is quite unperturbed by the total lack of evidence that
Saussure had ever read anything by Taine. Such are the coincidences in their
views and their terminology that it would be implausible to argue that the
young French-speaking Genevan did not know Taines work (ibid., p. 74
[359]); I do not think that my analysis leaves room for doubt that Saussure []
was deeply indebted to Taine (p. 79 [364]). Aarsles rhetorical condence
has proven eective, to the point that Saussures direct debt to Taine now gets
reported as a historical fact, for example by Harpham (2002: 89).
But suppose there were a book antedating Taines, covering topics
similar to his and oering even closer Saussurean foreshadowings written
by someone who had a formative personal relationship with Saussure? And
that Saussure himself had actually written about the book in question? We
need not imagine, for such a book exists. Entitled Du beau, dans la nature,
lart et la posie: tudes esthtiques (On the Beautiful, in nature, art and
poetry: Aesthetic studies), it was published in Paris and Geneva in 1856, the
year before Saussure was born. Its author, Adolphe Pictet (17991875),1 had

1
He chose not to style himself by the aristocratic sounding Pictet de Rochemont, the
surname established by his father Charles upon marrying Adlaide Sara de Rochemont in 1786
(see preface to Pictet 1989 [1838]). Charles Pictet de Rochemont (17551824) became a Swiss
national hero at the Congress of Vienna in 1815, where he managed to keep Geneva within the
Swiss Confederation and prepared the declaration of Switzerlands permanent neutrality. For a
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 367

earned the nickname LUniversel on account of his vast range of interests,

from designing military explosives to proving that the Celtic languages form
a branch of the Indo-European family.2

2. Saussure on Pictet
Pictet had long-standing links to the Saussure family through friendship
and marriage.3 De Mauro (1972: 322) describes him as one of the tutelary
gods of Saussures childhood, and Saussure himself would write in an
autobiographical memoir of 1903:

Le vnrable Adolphe Pictet, lauteur des Origines Indo-europens, tait

le voisin de campagne de ma famille, pendant une partie de lanne,
lorsque javais lage de douze ou treize ans. Je le rencontrerais souvent
dans sa proprit de Malagny prs de Versoix, et quoique je nosasse pas
beaucoup interroger lexcellent vieillard, je nourrissais son insu une
admiration aussi profonde quenfantine pour son livre, dont javais
srieusement tudi quelques chapitres. Lide quon pouvait, laide
dune ou deux syllabes sanscrites, car telle tait lide mme du livre
et de toute la linguistique de cette poque retrouver la vie des peuples
disparus menammait dun enthousiasme sans pareil en sa navet; et je

very full biographical account of Adolphe, see Langendorf (1987). Olender (1994: 177180)
oers a much briefer one.
2
The historical provenance of the Celtic languages had long been a matter of debate, in which
religious and political motives played no small part. Arguments for CelticSemitic unity
appeared to be backed up by the verb-initial syntax which the Celtic tongues share with the
classical Semitic languages, and the initial mutations had no obvious Indo-European congeners.
Proof that they belonged to this family developed gradually, and the best claim for establishing
it solidly probably belongs to an 1831 treatise by the English physician and ethnologist James
Cowles Prichard (17861848). This appears to have been unknown to Pictet, whose 1837 book
on the subject, crowned by the Acadmie Franaise, made his name in the European linguistic
world, and was the point of departure for the 1839 treatise by Franz Bopp (17911867) which
settled the question denitively.
3
Pictet belonged to one of the relatively small number of families who had come to Geneva
as Huguenot refugees in the 16th century and had become the citys lite. The Pictets were
among the most distinguished, as were the de Saussures. Pictet was on intimate terms with
Albertine-Adrienne Necker de Saussure (17661841), celebrated writer, translator and
philosopher of progressive education, and condante to her still more celebrated cousin-by-
marriage, Germaine de Stal (17661817). Adle Pictet (18361917), a cousin to Adolphe,
married Mme Necker de Saussures nephew Thodore de Saussure (Ferdinands uncle), and it
is she whom De Mauro describes as the doyenne of the Saussure family, who devoted herself
to transmitting the ancestral tradition of scientic and literary achievement to her nephews.
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368 JOHN E. JOSEPH

nai pas de souvenirs plus exquis ou plus vrais de jouissance linguistique

que ceux qui me viennent encore aujourdhui par boues de cette lecture
denfance. (Saussure 1960[1903]: 16)4

The book by Pictet that so marked the young Saussure, Les origines indo-
europennes ou les Aryas primitifs, published in two volumes in 1859 and
1863, achieved widespread renown and is the work for which Pictet is best
remembered. While Saussures memoir makes clear that, looking back at the
age of 46, he sees his early fascination with the book as juvenile, it is just as
clear that Pictets work remains present and vivid in his mind. Near the end
of Cours he says of it that it has served as a model for many others; it is
still the most engaging of all. [] His is the most important undertaking of
its type (Saussure 1922 [1916]: 306307; 1959: 224).
From the start of their conversations about language in 1869 or 1870, a
mentoring relationship appears to have developed between them that lasted
for at least two to three years. Saussure goes on to tell of how, as soon as he
had learned a few rudiments of Greek at school:

[J]e me sentais mr pour esquisser un systme gnral du langage, destin

Adolphe Pictet. Cet enfantillage, autant que je me le rappelle, consistait
prouver que tout se ramne, dans toutes les langues possible, des
radicaux constitus immdiatement par 3 consonnes (plus anciennement
mme par 2 consonnes) []
Lexcellent savant eut la particulire bont de me faire une rponse crite,
o il me disait entre autres: Mon jeune ami, je vois que vous avez pris le
taureau par les cornes, et il me distribuait ensuite de bonnes paroles qui

4
The venerable Adolphe Pictet, author of the Indo-European Origins, was my familys
neighbour in our country home for part of the year when I was 12 or 13 years old. I would
meet him often in his grounds at Malagny near Versoix, and although I didnt dare interrogate
the excellent old gentleman much, the admiration I secretly nourished for his book, several
chapters of which I had studied seriously, was as deep as it was child-like. The idea that one
could, with the help of one or two Sanskrit syllables, for such was the idea of the book
itself and of all the linguistics of the time rediscover the life of vanished peoples enamed
me with an enthusiasm unparalleled in its navet; and I have no truer or more exquisite
memories of linguistic pleasure than those which still today wisp into my mind of this
childhood reading. A note to the text (by Robert Godel) indicates that the word srieusement
(seriously) is a doubtful reading. My translation, as are all that follow for whom no
translators name is given.
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 369

furent ecaces pour me calmer dnitivement sur tout systme universel

du langage. (Saussure 1960 [1903]:17)5

Saussure (ibid.) gives the date of 1872 for his general system of language
and Pictets reaction to it, making him barely 15 years old at the time (cf.
Candaux 1975; Saussure 1978 [1872]).
Until now no one appears to have looked at Pictets own work, least of
all Du beau, for clues to Saussures intellectual formation.6 On the face of
it, after all, the possibility that a book on aesthetics could have any direct
connection with linguistics seems far-fetched.7 Yet at least one late 19th-
century linguist is on record as proposing the link: Saussure himself. Two
years after Pictets death a second edition appeared of his book Les origines
indo-europennes ou les Aryas primitifs (rst published 18591863), and the
occasion was marked with a series of three articles by Saussure, now 20
years old, in the Journal de Genve in April 1878. Saussure (1922
[1878]: 391) speaks of Pictets supple and brilliant intelligence, and the
wealth of detail he supplies on Pictets life and career, including his studies in
Paris in the 1820s, as well the descriptions he gives of all Pictets major
writings, testies directly to his intimate knowledge of the man and his work.
Concerning Du beau, Saussure writes that it was received with great
attention by the most competent judges (ibid., p. 394). He notes that already
at the time of Pictets studies in Paris in the 1820s, where he worked as
assistant to the philosopher Victor Cousin (17921867), the theory of the
Beautiful stood at the centre of his intellectual preoccupations, and that by

5
I felt myself ready to sketch a general system of language, destined for Adolphe Pictet. This
piece of juvenalia, so far as I recall it, consisted of a proof that all goes back, in all possible
languages, to radicals immediately constituted of 3 consonants (more anciently still of 2
consonants.



The excellent scholar had the particular kindness to give me a written response, in which
he said among other things: My young friend, I see that you have taken the bull by the
horns, and he then doled out good words to me that were eective in denitively calming
me on any universal system of language.
6
The only other study of Du beau I have found is Crossley (1983), which provides a useful
summary of the book in English, and mentions Saussures admiration of Pictet but does not
explore the connection. Olender (1994), examining the invidious comparisons of Aryans and
Semites at the end of Pictet (185963), dwells at some length upon his mentoring role to the
young Saussure, but oers no comment on Saussures own work.
7
Though cf. Schmitter (1982) on Wilhelm von Humboldts aesthetics and philosophy of
language.
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370 JOHN E. JOSEPH

1822 he had put together fragments of a treatise on the subject (p. 392).
Saussure repeatedly claims that there is a direct link between Pictets
aesthetic and linguistic interests: His aesthetic and literary research thus
furnished him with the basis of his linguistic education (ibid.). Saussure
ascribes Pictets attraction to aesthetics to his tendency toward

une autre tendance du gnie de Pictet, celle qui lui a fait trouver un si puissant
attrait aux tudes esthtiques, savoir une certain conception idale des choses
qui sexalte surtout en prsence de tout ce qui est inni comme lunivers,
divin comme les principes dont il le croit rgi, ternel comme le spectacle
ancien et sans cesse renaissant de la vie humaine. Aprs le livre sur le Beau,
analyse des sensations prouves dans la contemplation de la nature, il y a
certainement, au fond des recherches sur les Aryas, dans ce peuple de
lge dor revu par la pense, le rve presque conscient dune humanit
idale: les deux tableaux se font pendant. (Saussure 1922 [1878]: 395)8

Indeed, Du beau and Les origines indo-europennes contain overlapping

passages on the intellectual and aesthetic capacities of the Aryan people and
their reections in their languages.

3. Plants, crystals and langue

Pictets book recognises, starting from its title, that aesthetics has its
starting point in a single word: beauty. The beautiful constitutes a category
of things and beings, just as words like tool or mammal do. But whereas
functionality is a dening feature of tools, and live birth etc. for mammals,
there are two fundamentally opposed views on what, if anything, denes
beauty. Is there a general and invariable principle comparable to functional-
ity behind it, or does it exist in the impression received by an observer?
Pictet begins by juxtaposing these two views and stating that each poses
diculties taken on its own.
Beautiful is not unique among words that pose this problem of where

8
another tendency of Pictets genius, the one that drew him so powerfully to aesthetic studies,
namely a certain ideal conception of things which is excited especially in the presence of
whatever is innite like the universe, divine like the principles he believes rules it, eternal like
the ancient and endlessly renascent spectacle of human life. After the book on the Beautiful, an
analysis of the sensations experienced in the contemplation of nature, there certainly lies
beneath his research on the Aryas, as his mind brings this Golden Age people into view, the
nearly conscious dream of an ideal humanity: the two portraits are drawn simultaneously.
 THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 371

their meaning is to be located. The mature Saussure would maintain in his

lectures that all words, in eect, are like beautiful in this respect. Pictet
(1856: 28) locates the principal element of natural beauty in form, and says
that the rst manifestations of such form are to be seen in crystallisation,

o elle nest plus un simple accident, mais lexpression dun principe

intrieur qui la dtermine. [] La prdominance de la force agissante se
rvle par lunit de la forme, par la disposition de toutes ses parties dans
un certain ordre. Cest ce quon appelle la rgularit []. Ainsi dans ces
magniques cavernes de stalactites dont on raconte tant de merveilles, il
semble que les gnies de la terre aient faonn [] tout un monde souterrain
de formes signicatives. On a quelque peine se persuader que toute cette
fantastique architecture, ces sculptures dlicates, ces vgtaux cristalliss,
ces statues hardiment bauches, ne soient que des caprices du hasard et
luvre de forces aveugles; et cependant il est ainsi. (Pictet 1856: 2830)9

Higher manifestations of form are to be found in organic life, starting with

plants. Pictet analyses the vegetal into three parts:

dabord son corps, ou les substances diverses qui se coordonnent dans

lunit de sa forme propre; ensuite ses fonctions, ou lactivit de ses
divers organes do rsulte le dveloppement de la forme; et enn le
principe qui sert de lien ces fonctions et de loi au jeu vari des forces
organiques. Par la matire et les forces, le vgtal appartient encore au
monde rel, mais par le troisime principe il slve dj une autre
sphre; car cette unit centrale qui domine la fois et la matire et les
forces, ne saurait tre elle-mme ni une force ni une matire; quon
lappelle loi, quon lappelle, type, ou autrement, toujours est-il certain

9
where form is no longer a simple accident, but the expression of an inner determining
principle. [] The predominance of the active force is revealed by the unity of the form, the
arrangement of all its parts in a certain order. This is what we call regularity [] Thus in the
magnicent caves of stalactites of which so many wondrous tales are told, it seems that the
geniuses of the earth have fashioned [] a whole subterranean world of meaningful forms. It
is rather dicult to persuade oneself that all this fantastic architecture, these delicate
sculptures, this crystallised vegetation, these boldly hewn statues, are only the caprices of
chance and the work of blind forces; and yet it is thus.
372 JOHN E. JOSEPH

que cest l un principe immatriel ou idal, par lequel la plante se

rattache au monde de lintelligence. (ibid., pp. 3132)10

That third principle he identies as the idea of the plant, silently expressed
through its visible forms and vegetative life. Pictet uses idea in an overtly
Platonic way, equating it with the ideal form that is the true reality of
anything (p. 66). He rejects Kants aesthetics as being grounded in the
psychological response of the individual, the feeling subject, and the
objects that provoke the feelings. So long as we dwell on what the individual
thinks the beautiful is, we are dealing with abstractions, which are not real
in the way ideas are.
The idea of the beautiful, like that of the plant, though its real existence
is strictly in the individual, is not something an individual produces, as he or
she might come up with an abstract notion of what beauty or planthood is.
Nor is it to be equated with the individuals response to particular things in
the world. The idea of the beautiful is the same for all. Moreover, ideas in
nature ne sont point isoles les unes des autres, ne sont pas jetes au milieu
de la ralit; rather, they forment une sorte de hirarchie ou comme une
vaste organisation (p.68).11
There are multiple connections with Saussures mature theory of language.
The system of langue as Saussure imagines it is very like the cave of stalactites
described by Pictet: a world of forms in which all the parts are arranged in a
certain order, revealing an underlying unity that leads one to suppose that it is
naturally meaningful. It too is not the product of simple accident, even though
brought about by the work of blind forces. As with the plant, it is not the
physical substance of language but its form that links it to human intelligence
through its idea, and in which its real existence is therefore grounded. The

10
rst, its body, or the various substances co-ordinated in the unity of its form proper; then
its functions, or the activity of its various organs, from which the development of the form
results; and nally the principle which joins these functions and regulates the interplay of the
organic forces. Through the matter and the forces, the vegetal still belongs to the real world,
but through the third principle it is already elevated to another sphere; for this central unity
which dominates both the matter and the forces could not itself be either a force or matter;
whether we call it a law, a type, or something else, what is certain is that it is an immaterial or
ideal principle, through which the plant is attached to the world of intelligence.
11
[I]deas in nature are not isolated from one another, nor tossed into the midst of reality, but
bound to one another by necessary relationships. They [] form a kind of hierarchy or vast
organisation.
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 373

language system, langue, has its real existence only within the individual yet it
is not produced by the individual, but is the same for all its speakers. Its
constituent parts make up a vast organisation with all of them bound by
necessary relations to all the rest. Indeed, the Cours refers to the social crystall-
isation whereby a language is established, constituting a sort of approximative
mean among its speakers (Saussure 1922 [1916]: 29; 1959: 13).12
A crystal, Pictet believes, possesses a kind of individual unity through
the regularity of its form, but

la force qui lui a imprim cette unit simmobilise linstant mme o

son produit sachve, et ne subsiste plus, en apparence du moins, que dans
son rsultat. (Pictet 1856: 31)13

In the plant, on the contrary,

le principe dunit se pose dj comme un centre permanent dactivit.

[L]ide est insparable de la forme, et confondue partout avec
lorganisme qui est son expression immdiate [] (ibid., pp. 31, 39)14

The situation is dierent again with the animal, where (p. 40)

ce dgagement du principe idal sopre, et celui-ci se recueille pour se

possder lui-mme et rgir la forme comme un instrument docile. Cest l
le phnomne de la volont et de la vie proprement dite.15

An exact counterpart to this trichotomy in Saussures system might be too

much to expect, but parole, the individuals wilful speech production, is

12
In the lecture on which this passage is based, Saussure said capitalisation before correcting
himself or switching metaphors to cristallisation (CLG/E 39; the rubric CLG/E refers to
Engler 196874). There is also a signicant shift between the lecture, which emphasises the
merely approximative nature of the individuals reproduction of langue, and the Cours, where
the editors have rephrased the passage to stress the reproduction process itself.
13
the force that imprinted this unity upon it is immobilised at the very moment its product is
achieved, and no longer exists, in appearance at least, except in its result.
14
the principle of unity constitutes a permanent centre of activity. [T]he idea is inseparable
from the form, and everywhere fused with the organism which is its immediate expression
[].
15
the ideal principle breaks away and coalesces to take possession of itself and control the
form like a docile instrument. This is the phenomenon of the will, and of life properly so
called.
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374 JOHN E. JOSEPH

certainly comparable to the animal. What about langue? It seems to have

features of both the crystal and the plant; though in a number of respects the
distinction Pictet draws between crystal and plant resembles the one Saussure
will draw between langue (a particular language system) and facult de langage
(the overall human language faculty). The notion of the productive force being
immobilised at the moment the product is achieved is reminiscent of Saussures
characterisation of langue as a synchronic system incapable of undergoing any
change. Pictets belief that in the plant the idea is inseparable from the form,
and everywhere fused with the organism which is its immediate expression
nds constant echoes in the notes by Saussure discovered in 1996 and published
in Saussure (2002: 1588) with the title De lessence double du langage. The
double essence in question has precisely to do with the nature of a linguistic
identity, which it is the linguists task to pin down. Because it necessitates the
analysis of things that exist on two entirely dierent planes, one of form and
the other of ideas, it is an absurd task, and the linguist, although perhaps
unaware of the absurdity, is loathe to confront it.

Il essaie dy chapper [] en partant par la tangente, cest--dire en

classant comme il semble logique les ides pour voir ensuite les formes,
ou au contraire les formes pour voir ensuite les ides; et dans les deux
cas il mconnat ce qui constitue lobjet formel de son tude et de ses
classications, savoir exclusivement le point de jonction des deux
domaines. (Saussure 2002: 18)16
[L]erreur irrmissible qui se traduira de mille faons dans chaque para-
graphe dune grammaire est de croire que le ct psychique soit lide
pendant que le ct physique est le son, la forme, le mot.
Les choses sont un peu plus compliques que cela.
Il nest pas vrai, il est profondment faux de se gurer quil y ait opposi-
tion entre le son et lide, qui sont au contraire indissolublement unis pour
notre esprit. (ibid., p. 64)17

16
He tries to escape it [] by starting o on a tangent, i.e. by classifying the ideas as seems
logical to him in order then to get sight of the forms, or on the contrary the forms in order
then to get sight of the ideas; and in both cases he fails to recognise what constitutes the formal
object of his study and classications, namely, exclusively the point of juncture of the two
domains.
17
The unpardonable error that gets translated in a thousand ways into each paragraph of a
grammar is the belief that the mental side is the idea while the physical side is the sound, the
form, the word.
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 375

Besides these parallels in content, the very way in which Pictet imagines and
describes the crystal cave and other natural realms pregures the whole
aesthetic of the structural system of langue as Saussure will describe it.
Pictet draws us backward as well, to the scientic aesthetic of natural
philosophy of the early 19th century though it would fall outside the
scope of the present article to explore the implications.

4. Pictet on the linguistic sign

A later section of Du beau, dealing with beauty in poetry, gives Pictet
occasion to turn his attention to language directly, and among his rst
concerns is to establish its semiotic and indeed its arbitrary nature.

Le langage [] nest encore en lui-mme quun signe arbitraire et

variable. (Pictet 1856: 256)18
Le son, en eet, na plus, dans le langage, de sens immdiat; il se trouve
rduit au rle de signe arbitraire, et dont la signication varie linni
suivant la diversit des langues. Cest en se combinant avec larticulation
que le son vocal simple devient susceptible de servir de signe la pense,
et de se plier toutes ses exigences. Ce caractre profondment articiel
du langage en fait, coup sr, la forme la moins matrielle qui puisse tre
employe pour la manifestation de lesprit []. (ibid., pp. 252253)19

The point about the non-materiality of language will be insisted upon

repeatedly by Saussure. That language is a form and not a substance is a
truth that could not be overstressed, says the Cours (Saussure 1922
[1916]: 169; 1959: 122),20 and this truth culminates in the radical view that

Things are a bit more complicated than that.

It is not true, it is profoundly false to suppose that there is an opposition between sound
and idea, which on the contrary are indissolubly united for our mind.
18
Language [] is in itself nothing more than an arbitrary and variable sign.
19
Sound, in eect, no longer has, in language, any immediate sense; it has been reduced to
the role of an arbitrary sign, the meaning of which varies innitely following the diversity of
languages. It is through being combined with articulation that the simple vocal sound becomes
susceptible to serving as a sign to thought, and of bending itself to all its needs. This profound-
ly articial character of language makes it, without question, the least material form that can
be employed for the manifestation of the mind [].
20
See also (1922 [1916]: 157; 1959: 113). Although these passages were stitched together by
the Cours editors from separate remarks about form and substance (see CLG/E 254, 276), they
are consistent with the spirit of much else in Saussures lectures.
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376 JOHN E. JOSEPH

the linguistic signier [] is not phonic but incorporeal constituted not

by its material substance but by the dierences that separate its sound-image
from all others (Saussure 1959[1916]: 118119).
Pictet draws a key distinction between gurative and ordinary
language that, surprisingly, ties the former more directly to objective reality
than the latter. Of the gurative language of poetry, Du beau says it must
always remain in the intermediate region which reunites and reconciles the
two extremes of material reality and abstract rational thought (Pictet
1856: 306). How does it do this?

Les objets quelle fait passer devant nos yeux ne doivent se prsenter, ni
sous la forme accidentelle de la ralit brute, ni sous celle de la pense
rchie; mais il faut que, dune seule vue, elle nous les fasse voir dans
leur ide et dans leur forme sensible, dans leur notion abstraite et dans la
plnitude de leur existence relle. Ce double problme est rsolu par
lemploi de limage [].
Leet propre de limage, cest de forcer lesprit reproduire en lui-
mme lapparence sensible de lobjet, et de lempcher ainsi de le saisir
directement par la pense seule. (Pictet 1856: 306)21

In ordinary language, on the other hand,

les mots sadressent lintelligence sans intermdiaire, lors mme quils

dsignent des choses relles, parce que la pense va droit son but, et nglige
comme un accessoire lapparence sensible de lobjet. (ibid., p.307)22

These statements by Pictet help elucidate one of the mysteries of the Cours,
namely, the nature of the signied, the part of the linguistic sign variously
described as a concept, a thought-pattern or an idea, and illustrated either as
a drawing of an object or as a written word. If we read the passage from

21
The objects it causes to pass before our eyes cannot present themselves either in the
accidental form of brute reality, or in that of reective thought; but must, in a single viewing,
make us see them in their idea and in their sensible form, in their abstract notion and in the
fullness of their real existence. This double problem is resolved by the use of the image [].



The proper eect of the image is to force the mind to reproduce in itself the sensible
appearance of the object, and thus to prevent it from being seized directly by thought alone.
22
words are addressed to the intelligence without any intermediary, even when they designate
real things, because the thought goes straight to its goal, and dismisses the sensible appearance
of its object as merely accessory.
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 377

Pictet as a gloss on his protg, it suggests that the normal condition of

language is one in which the signied is pure thought, divorced from any
visual image, perhaps like Saussures conception of it as pure dierence;
but what makes poetic and other types of gurative language special is
precisely that it calls up the visual image so directly as to trump the ordinary
pure operation. This is not to assert that Saussure would have agreed with
the dichotomy, but it does give us a way of reading his various depictions of
the signied as not necessarily contradictory.

5. Links to earlier thinkers

Earlier writers on aesthetics whose views Pictet resumes in Du beau
include Plato, Plotinus, Aristotle, Augustine, Bacon and the Anglo-Scottish
sensualist school (Locke, Hutcheson, Hume, Reid, Dugald Stewart), and the
modern rationalists Spinoza, Baumgarten, Winkelmann, Kant, Schiller,
Fichte, Schelling and Hegel. He briey mentions Diderot, Rousseau, Voltaire
and Montesquieu, and Burke gures in a chapter on the sublime. Thus in Du
beau we have a summa of ancient and modern views on the idea of the
beautiful in a context linking it to the nature of the linguistic signied.
To those Saussure scholars who have long been intrigued by the
unattributed echoes of classical thought in the Cours, I propose that Pictets
Du beau is a key missing link. As such, its status is supported by direct
documentary evidence, starting with what Saussure himself wrote about it,
and including his own belief that it was directly connected to Pictets
linguistic palaeontology. None of this is the case with Taine (see 1),
whose supposed importance for Saussure remains entirely speculative. In
fact, the closer one looks at Aarsles argumentation, the weaker the case
for Taine appears. For example, after quoting Saussures well-known
likening of language to a sheet of paper, with thought as the recto and sound
the verso, and with neither separable from the other (Saussure 1959
[1916]: 113), Aarsle states:

The linguistic sign is a psychic entity with two surfaces, intimately related
and recalling one another. Everyone knows that he called them the
signiant and the signi. This principle and the striking image that
illustrates it are also in Taines great work. (Aarsle 1978: 72
[1982: 357])
378 JOHN E. JOSEPH

The way Aarsle words this leads the reader to infer that the Saussurean
terms signiant and signi are anticipated by Taine. They are not. He does
sometimes use signi as a past participle and signiant as a present
participle or gerund, but that is normal, everyday French usage. The novelty
of Saussures usage is that he treats these two words as nouns. After giving
an example of the past participial use of signi in a quote from Taine on p.
73 ([358]), Aarsle comments (ibid.):

Fully sharing Saussures well-known fondness for dichotomies, Taine has

analyzed the sign into the purely mental signi and the invariably linked
signiant (a term Taine does not use), which, coming from the outside, to
us appears physical.

Here Aarsle admits that Taine did not use the term signiant, but does so in
a way which implies, falsely, that he did use signi in the way it is deployed
in Aarsles own sentence, as a noun. Like so many other writers in the 19th
century, including Pictet and the young Saussure, Taine uses signe for what
Saussure will later call the acoustic image, and later still the signiant.
Aarsle also implies that Taine took the signi to be invariably
linked with the signiant. But the passage Aarsle has quoted from Taine
and is commenting on, which includes the sheet of paper metaphor, is
actually about the relationship between a physical event and a mental event.
It thus has nothing to do with the signiedsignier relationship, which
involves two mental entities. The statement that the signiant to us appears
physical is a red herring; what Taine says applies to whatever links a signier
to a cerebral event, and equally to what links a signied to a cerebral event, but
not and this is the key to what links signifer to signied.
The terms signiant and signi were not introduced by Saussure until
just before the end of his third and nal course of lectures, on 19 May 1911.
He reverted without explanation to the older pair of terms concept and
image acoustique when he next reprised the topic on (probably) 30 June,
then back to the new pair for his nal lecture on 4 July (see Joseph forth-
coming a). If they really had come to him through such a profound
inuence as Aarsle imagines Taine to have been, surely he would have
brought them in earlier.
In fact Saussure could easily have encountered suggestive uses of
signiant as gerund and signi as participles in psychological literature of
considerably later date. One source of clues as to which such works were
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 379

being read and discussed by the linguists with whom he is known to have
associated in Paris in the 1880s and 1890s is Antinomies linguistiques (1896)
by Victor Henry (18501907), which has long been pointed to as sharing
relevant concerns of the Cours (see Joseph 1996). Henry does not cite Taine,
but at least two of the psychologists whose work he does cite take positions
on language that are much closer to Saussures than Taines is (see further
Joseph forthcoming b). La parole intrieure (1881) by Victor Egger
(18481909), referred to repeatedly by Henry, includes certain passages very
reminiscent of the Cours:

En eet, la convention qui attache un mot une ide peut tre, non pas
arbitraire, mais motive par un rapport plus ou moins loign entre les
deux termes que lon associe []. Mais [] le signe proprement dit, le
signe parfait, est celui qui est un signe et rien autre chose, celui qui na de
rapport avec la chose signie que par la volont arbitraire de ceux qui
sen servent. (Egger 1881: 248249)23

Henry also cites the Englisch psychologist James Sully (18421923), who
was much read in France at the time, and whose work includes passages
such as the following:

Language and Speech. [L]anguage is something more than a system of

nely dierenced auditory impressions. It has an active or motor side as
well, which aspect is marked o by the term Speech. Every element of a
language is thus two-sided, consisting of a vocal action, and a sound-
impression resulting from this. []
[L]anguage is a social phenomenon, having its origin in social relations [].
The close correlation between language and social life only becomes
apparent when we regard it in its full signicance as a system of general
signs. Particular impressions are (to a large extent at least) conned to an
individual, or at most to a few individuals: they depend on the accidents
of time and place. []
This being so, we see that speech is the medium by which a double
process is continually going on. On the one side by the use of a common

23
In eect, the convention which attaches a word to an idea can be, not arbitrary, but
motivated by a more or less distant link between the two terms it associates [] But [] the
sign proper, the perfect sign, is the one which is a sign and nothing else, the one which has no
relationship with the thing signied than through the arbitrary will of those who use it.
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380 JOHN E. JOSEPH

speech the social mind is working on the individual mind []. On the
other side, by falling in with the common speech the individual is continu-
ally adjusting (consciously or unconsciously) his intellectual habits to
these common forms. Every time he uses general speech he is virtually
stepping away from the isolated individual point of view, and adopting the
central social point of view. To employ the common speech is thus a
social act, a recognition of an authority above the individual. Not only so,
this use of the organised speech-structure by the individual implies social
co-operation. (Sully 1891: 349)

Such foreshadowings of Saussures methodological principles and linguistic

conceptions as Aarsle points to in Taine are unexceptional in mid to late
19th century psychological and linguistic writings.24 The concepts Aarsle
ascribes to Taine are ones Saussure could have picked up from any number of
sources that, unlike Taine, we have independent reason to believe he knew
starting with his mentor Pictet, who, as we have seen, makes clear statements
concerning the arbitrariness of language, rather than taking it for granted.
Taine (1871) does get cited by Sully and other psychologists later in the
century (usually in order to disagree with what they see as its rather old-
fashioned positions), and we may ultimately want to consider it as one
among many works that point the way toward Saussures mature theory of
language. But if we are to accord primacy to any such predecessors, they
must be surely be William Dwight Whitney (18271894) and Pictet, both of
whom he knew personally and both of whose works he wrote about exten-
sively and with reverence, making clear his intellectual debt to them even
while staking out his dierences from them.25

6. Pictet and the Romantic imagination: Une course Chamounix (1838)

If 21st-century disciplinary sensibilities are piqued by the suggestion
that the modern scientic study of language has some of its roots in aesthetic
enquiry, there is worse in store. Pictets aesthetic views may have received
their initial formation under Cousins tutelage in Paris in the early 1820s, but
their crystallisation occurred during a week in August 1835 which Pictet

24
On the interplay of the psychological and the social in Saussure see also Joseph (2000).
Koerner (1984) discusses other possible French inuences on Saussure. Bergounioux (1999,
2001a & b) identies key precedents to general linguistics in the French-language psychologi-
cal literature.
25
On Saussure and Whitney, see Joseph (1988), now updated as Chap. 2 of Joseph (2002).
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 381

spent in the company of George Sand, Franz Liszt and Liszts lover, Count-
ess Marie dAgoult, travelling incognito in the Alps (see Pourtals 1925: 5465).
This became the basis of Pictets fantastic story Une course Chamounix,
published in 1838.26 In his appreciation of Pictet forty years later, Saussure
deemed the story a little masterpiece and, after resuming its contents in
detail, noted that Today this exquisite little volume happily nds more
readers capable of appreciating it than in the time when it appeared under the
veil of anonymity (1922 [1878]: 393).27 It consists mainly of impassioned
discussion of various philosophical and aesthetic topics by four characters
named Franz, George, Countess Arabella and The Major (which happens to
have been Pictets rank in the Swiss federal artillery at the time). Franz is
convinced that art is a language; he explains:

Le langage est une manifestation dides sous une forme sensible; lart
peut-il tre autre chose? Seulement lart doit chercher dans le beau ses
moyens dexpression, car cest l son domaine. Je complterai donc ma
dnition en disant que lart est le langage du beau. (Pictet 1989
[1838]: 93)28

The week of fervent conversation with these arch-Romantics won Pictet over
to their view of the unfettered freedom of the imagination to create whatever
illusions it likes, without their being distinguishable from the real. [Q]ui

26
Chamounix was then the usual spelling of what is now Chamonix. George Sand (pen name
of Aurore Dupin, 18041876) published her own account of the adventure as her 10th Lettre
dun voyageur in the Revue des Deux Mondes in 1837; it aroused Pictets anger and spurred
him to respond with his own book (Crossley 1983: 51, n.2).
27
The opinion of Une course Chamounix as a neglected masterpiece is shared by Alexandre,
author of the preface to the 1989 edition of the work, who adds that Posterity has been unjust
to Adolphe Pictet, who was endowed with everything that makes a writer: a sparkling style, an
astonishing word-sense that is dead on target, an imagination that is incessantly innovative yet
always under control []. Perhaps, in the end, Adolphe Pictets principal handicap was not to
live in Paris: in 1840, as today, better to be on the banks of the Seine than the Rhne to get
recognised (pp. 25, 29).
28
Language is a manifestation of ideas in a sensible form; can art be anything else? Only art
must seek its means of expression in beauty, for that is its domain. I shall thus complete my
denition by saying that art is the language of the beautiful.
382 JOHN E. JOSEPH

sait, asks George in Pictets story, si la vrit des tres naturels est autre
chose quune illusion de ce genre? (ibid., p.94).29
Part of the storys plot, such as it is, revolves around Georges crystal,
which (s)he entrusts to the Major and which disappears and reappears.30
That crystal may or may not link up with those that gure in Du beau
twenty years later, but Georges question about truth is right at the heart of
the later book. Saussure himself asserted that Pictets aesthetics and linguis-
tics were of a piece.31 To suggest that Du beau forms a link between, on
the one hand, the Romantic liberation of the imagination from the shackles
of classicism, and on the other, Saussures conception of the linguistic
signied as purely mental, unshackled by things in the material world, is
thus merely to follow Saussures own lead. The chain of evidence is direct
enough to satisfy the most classically-trained mind. No Romantic imaginative
leap is required for us to trace this foundational concept of linguistic theory
to the passionate colloquy of a novelist and a composer-pianist amusing
themselves with a weeks slumming in the Swiss Alps, accompanied by an
aesthetician-bombmaker who, 35 years later, would become the mentor of
the adolescent Ferdinand de Saussure.

29
[W]ho knows if the truth of natural beings is anything other than an illusion of this sort?.
Nicely rounding out the connections is the fact that Sully (1895) includes a chapter on George
Sands Childhood.
30
On the confusion over Georges gender, see Alexandres preface to Pictet 1989 [1838],
especially pp. 2122.
31
So too, one might add, was his proto-racism: the idealism Saussure describes in Pictets
depiction of the Aryas played a signicant part in the rise of the Aryan myth that would have
such disastrous consequences a century later. On a dierent note, a further feature of linguistic
interest in Une Course Chamounix is its 7th chapter, in which the Major launches into a
mystical Sanskrit fantasy, reminiscent of nothing so much as the seances of Hlne Smith
(Elise Mller) in Geneva some 60 years later, which Saussure would be called in to interpret
(see Flournoy 1900 and the discussions of it in Chiss & Puech 1987, Cifali 1985, Hutton &
Joseph 1998, Lepschy 1974). The narrator of Une Course Chamounix claims that, unlike the
Major, he knows no Sanskrit, and has had to enlist the aid of Eugne Burnouf (18011852) to
translate the Majors utterances.
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THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 383

Authors address :
John E. Joseph
Theoretical & Applied Linguistics
University of Edinburgh
Adam Ferguson Building
E EH8 9LL, U. K.
e-mail: john.joseph@ed.ac.uk

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Bergounioux, Gabriel. 2001a. Le langage et le cerveau: la localisation de la facult
du langage et ltude des aphasies. History of the Language Sciences: An
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Bopp, Franz. 1839[1838]. Die Celtischen Sprachen in ihrem Verhltnisse zum Sanskrit,
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De Mauro, Tullio. 1972. See Saussure (1916).
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bulisme avec glossolalie. 3rd ed. Genve: A. Eggimann.
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Langendorf, Jean-Jacques. 1987. Introduction to Aimez-moi comme je vous aime:
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Lepschy, Giulio. 1974. Saussure e gli spiriti. Studi saussuriani per Robert Godel ed.
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Olender, Maurice. 1994[1989]. Les langues du Paradis: Aryens et Smites un couple
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match made in heaven, New York: The Other Press, 2002.)
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Pictet, Adolphe. 1837. De lanit des langues celtiques avec le sanscrit. Paris: B.
Duprat. (Repr. in Celtic Linguistics, 17001850 ed. by Daniel R. Davis, vol. 7, pt.
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(Repr., together with George Sands Xe Lettre dun Voyageur and a preface by
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& Albert Sechehaye with the collaboration of Albert Riedlinger. Paris &
Lausanne: Payot. (2nd ed., 1922. Annotated ed. by Tullio De Mauro, Paris: Payot,
1972. Critical ed. see Saussure 19681974. Engl. transl., Course in General
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et ses tudes. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure 17.1225. [Written 1903.]
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Saussure, Ferdinand de. 1978[1872]. Essai pour rduire les mots du Grec, du Latin
& de lAllemand un petit nombre de racines. Cahiers Ferdinand de Saussure
32.77101. [Preceded by an introduction by Boyd Davis (7376).]
Saussure, Ferdinand de. 2002. crits de linguistique gnrale. Ed. by Simon Bouquet
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Taine, Hippolyte. 1871. De lintelligence. 2 vols. Paris: Hachette.

SUMMARY

The key formative gure in the intellectual life of the young Ferdinand
de Saussure was Adolphe Pictet (17991875), a family friend best remem-
bered for his Les origines indo-europennes, ou Les Aryas primitifs: Essai de
palontologie linguistique (18591863). A review of its second edition
written by Saussure two years after Pictets death contains a wealth of
information about his life and work, including a description of his book Du
beau, dans la nature, lart et la posie: Etudes esthtiques (1856). In it, Pictet
makes clear that aesthetics is principally centred on the problem of the
meaning of the word beauty, and that within this problem are to be found all
the tensions between the rational and sensible, the intellectual and emotional,
the subjective and objective, and intention and reaction, that are at the heart
of the whole Enlightenment discourse on the nature of language. A number
of remarks on regularity of form in nature, for example in crystallisation,
nd echoes in Saussures later characterisation of the language system, as do
Pictets assertions about the arbitrary nature of the linguistic sign and about
the signied being not a thing but a concept. Indeed, a number of inuen-
ces on Saussure which Aarsle (1982) credited to Hippolyte Taine
(18281893) for whom we have no independent evidence of such
inuence can more convincingly be ascribed to his early mentor Pictet.
Du beau moreover provides a missing link between the Enlightenment
philosophers whose aesthetic views it details, and the traces of their philo-
sophical positions that have repeatedly been detected in the Cours de
linguistique gnrale.

RSUM

La personne la plus inuente au cours du dvelopement de la vie

intellectuelle du jeune Ferdinand de Saussure fut Adolphe Pictet
(17991875), un ami de la famille dont loeuvre la plus connue demeure Les
origines indo-europennes, ou Les Aryas primitifs: Essai de palontologie
linguistique (18591863). Un compte-rendu de la seconde dition de la main
 THE CRYSTALLISATION OF SAUSSUREAN LINGUISTICS 387

de Saussure quelques annes aprs la mort de Pictet contient une foule de

renseignements portant sur sa vie et son oeuvre, y compris une description
de son livre Du beau, dans la nature, lart et la posie: tudes esthtiques
(1856). Pictet y explique que lesthtique se proccupe essentiellement du
problme du sens du mot beaut, et quau sein de ce problme se trouvent
toutes les tensions entre raison et sens, intellect et motion, subjectif et
objectif, intention et raction, qui sont au coeur de tous les propos de
lpoque des Lumires sur la nature de la langue. Un nombre de remarques
sur la rgularit des formes dans la nature, par exemple lors de la formation
de cristaux, seront reprises plus tard par la description que fera Saussure du
systme langagier, comme les propositions de Pictet sur la nature arbitraire
du signe linguistique et sur le fait que le signi est un concept plutt
quune chose. En fait, plusieurs des inuences sur Saussure quattribuait
Aarsle (1982) Hippolyte Taine (18281893) dont rien ne prouve quil
ait ainsi inuenc Saussure sexpliquent mieux par linuence de son
mentor de la premire heure, Pictet. En plus, Du beau fait le lien entre les
philosophes des Lumires, dont il dcrit les ides sur lesthtique, et les
traces de leurs prises de position que lon a dtectes multiples reprises
dans le Cours de linguistique gnrale.

ZUSAMMENFASSUNG

Der vorliegende Aufsatz legt den Nachweis vor, da Adolphe Pictet

(17991875), ein Freund der Familie, am besten bekannt durch sein Werk
Les origines indo-europennes, ou Les Aryas primitifs: Essai de palontologie
linguistique (18591863) eine Schlsselrgur in der geistigen Entwicklung
des jungen Ferdinand de Saussure war. Eine Rezension der 2. Auage dieses
Werks, von Saussure zwei Jahre nach dem Tode Pictets verfat, enthlt
wertvolle Informationen ber dessen Leben und Werk, u.a. auch eine
Beschreibung von Pictets Du beau, dans la nature, lart et la posie: Etudes
esthtiques (1856). Darin machte Pictet klar, da sthetik vornehmlich auf
das Problem der Bedeutung des Wortes schn gerichtet ist und da darin
alle Spannungen zwischen Vernunft und Gefhl, Intellekt und Emotion, dem
Subjektiven und dem Objektiven, Intention und Reaktion zu nden sind, die
alle zum Herzstck des Diskurses der Aufklrung ber die Natur der Sprache
gehren. Bemerkungen ber die Regelhaftigkeit der Form in der Natur, z.B. die
ber die Kristallisation, nden spter ein Echo in Saussures Characterisierung
</TARGET "jos">

388 JOHN E. JOSEPH

des Sprachsystems wie auch Pictets Feststellungen ber die arbitrre Natur
des sprachlichen Zeichens und ber das Bezeichnete als ein Konzept und
kein Ding. In der Tat knnen eine Reihe von Einssen auf Saussure, die
Aarsle (1982) bei Hippolyte Taine (18281893) als Quelle ausmacht
werden fr den es brigens keinen unabhngigen Hinweis gibt die mit
mehr berzeugungskraft seinen frhen Mentor Pictet zugeschrieben werden
knnen. Du beau stellt darber hinaus die bisher fehlende Verbindung
zwischen den Philosophen der Aufklrung dar, deren sthetische Ansichten
das Werk ausgebreitet, und Spuren philosophischer Positionen, die des
fteren im Cours de linguistique gnrale ausgemacht worden sind.