Notes and Queries, Number 193, July 9, 1853 A Medium of Inter-communication for Literary Men, Artists, Antiquaries, Genealogists, etc

Excerpt

THE EYE: ITS PRIMARY IDEA.

I do not remember to have remarked that any writer notices how uniformly, in almost all languages, the same primary idea has been attached to the eye. This universal consent is the more remarkable, inasmuch as the connexion in question, though of course most appropriate and significant in itself, hardly seems to indicate the most prominent characteristic, or what we should deem to be par excellence the obvious qualities of the eye; in a word, we should scarcely expect a term derived from a physical attribute or property.

The eye is suggestive of life, of divinity, of intellect, piercing acuteness (acies); and again, of truth, of joy, of love: but these seem to have been disregarded, as being mere indistinctive accidents, and the primary idea which, by the common consent of almost all nations, has been thought most properly to symbolise this organ is a spring—fons, πηγá½µ.

Thus, from , fons aquarum et lacrimarum, h. e. oculus. This word however, in its simple form, seems to have almost lost its primary signification, being used most generally in its secondary—oculus. (Old Testament Hebrew version, passim.) In the sense of fons, its derivative is usually substituted.

Precisely the same connexion of ideas is to be found in the Syriac, the Ethiopic, and the Arabic.

Again, in the Greek we find the rarely-used word á½€πá½µ, a fountain, or more properly the eye, whence it wells out,—the same form as á½€πá½µ, oculus; á½¢ψ, ὄψις, ὄπτομαι. Thus, in St. James his Epistle, cap. iii. 11.: μá½µτι ἡ πηγá½´ ἐκ τῆς αὐτῆς á½€πῆς βρá½»ει τὸ γλυκὺ καὶ τὸ πικρá½¹ν.

In the Welsh, likewise, a parallel case occurs: Llygad, an eye, signifies also the spring from which water flows, as in the same passage of St. James: a ydyw ffynnon o'r un llygad (from one spring or eye) yn rhoi dwfr melus a chwerw?

On arriving at the Teutonic or old German tongue, we find the same connexion still existing: Avg, auga,—oculus; whence ougen ostendere—Gothis augo; and awe, auge, ave, campus ad amnem. (Vid. Schilteri, Thes., vol. iii. ad voc.) And here we cannot help noticing the similarity between these words and the Hebrew , which (as well as the Coptic iaro) means primarily a river or stream from a spring; but, according to Professor Lee, is allied to , light, the enlightenment of the mind, the opening of the eyes; and he adds, "the application of the term to water, as running, translucid, &c., is easy." Here, then, is a similar connexion of ideas with a change in the metaphor.

In the dialects which descended from the Teutonic in the Saxon branch, the connexion between these two distinct objects is also singularly preserved. It is to be found in the Low German, the Friesic, and the Anglo-Saxon. In the latter we have eá, eah, eagor, a welling, flowing stream; eah, ægh, eage, an eye, which might be abundantly illustrated....