UNIVERSITY
In order to enable me to go to the University, my mother and sister
moved to Leipzig and kept house for me during all the time I was
there—that is, for two years and a half. In spite of the _res angusta
domi_, I enjoyed my student-life thoroughly, while my home was made
very agreeable by my mother and sister. My mother was full of
resource, and she was wise enough not to interfere with my freedom. My
sister, who was about two years older than myself, was most
kind-hearted and devoted both to me and to our mother. There was
nothing selfish in her, and we three lived together in perfect love,
peace, and harmony. My sister enjoyed what little there was of
society, whereas I kept sternly aloof from it. She was much admired,
and soon became engaged to a young doctor, Dr. A. Krug, the son of the
famous professor of philosophy at Leipzig, whose works, particularly
his _Dictionary of Philosophy_, hold a distinguished place in the
history of German philosophy. He was a thorough patriot, and so public
spirited that he thought it right to leave a considerable sum of money
to the University, without making sufficient provision for his
children. However, the young married couple lived happily at Chemnitz,
and my sister was proud in the possession of her children. It was the
sudden death of several of these children that broke her heart and
ruined her health; she died very young. Standing by the grave of her
children, she said to me shortly before her death, “Half of me is dead
already, and lies buried there; the other half will soon follow.”
Of society, in the ordinary sense of the word, I saw hardly anything.
I am afraid I was rather a bear, and declined even to invest in
evening dress. I joined a student club which formed part of the
_Burschenschaft_, but which in order to escape prosecution adopted the
title of _Gemeinschaft_. I went there in the evening to drink beer and
smoke, and I made some delightful acquaintances and friendships. What
fine characters were there, often behind a very rough exterior! My
dearest friend was Prowe, of Thorn in East Prussia—so honest, so
true, so straightforward, so over-conscientious in the smallest
things. He was a classical scholar, and later on entered the Prussian
educational service. As a master at the principal school at Thorn his
time was fully occupied, and of course he was cut off there from the
enlivening influences of literary society. Still he kept up his
interest in higher questions, and published some extremely valuable
books on Copernicus, a native of Thorn, for which he received the
thanks of astronomers and historians, and flattering testimonials
from learned societies. We met but seldom later in life, and my own
life in England was so busy and full that even our correspondence was
not regular. But I met him once more at Ems with a charming wife, and
decidedly happy in his own sphere of activity. These early friendships
form the distant landscape of life on which we like to dwell when the
present ceases to absorb all our thoughts. Our memory dwells on them
as a golden horizon, and there remains a constant yearning which makes
us feel the incompleteness of this life. After all, the number of our
true friends is small; and yet how few even of that small number
remain with us for life. There are other faces and other names that
rise from beyond the clouds which more and more divide us from our
early years.
There were some wild spirits among us who fretted at the narrow-minded
policy which went by the name of the Metternich system. Repression was
the panacea which Metternich recommended to all the governments of
Germany, large and small. No doubt the system of keeping things quiet
secured to Germany and to Europe at large a thirty years’ peace, but
it could not prevent the accumulation of inflammable material which,
after several threatenings, burst forth at last in the conflagration
of 1848. Among my friends I remember several who were ready for the
wildest schemes in order to have Germany united, respected abroad,
and under constitutional government at home. Splendid fellows they
were, but they either ended their days within the walls of a prison,
or had to throw up everything and migrate to America. What has become
of them? Some have risen to the surface in America, others have
yielded to the inevitable and become peaceful citizens at home; nay, I
am grieved to say, have even accepted service under Government to spy
on their former friends and fellow-dreamers. But not a few saw the
whole of their life wrecked either in prison or in poverty, though
they had done no wrong, and in many cases were the finest characters
it has been my good fortune to know. They were before their time, the
fruit was not ripe as it was in 1871, but Germany certainly lost some
of her best sons in those miserable years; and if my father escaped
this political persecution, it was probably due to the influence of
the reigning Duke and the Duchess, a Princess of Prussia, who knew
that he was not a dangerous man, and not likely to blow up the German
Diet.
I myself got a taste of prison life for the offence of wearing the
ribbon of a club which the police regarded with disfavour. I cannot
say that either the disgrace or the discomfort of my two days’ durance
vile weighed much with me, as my friends were allowed free access to
me, and came and drank beer and smoked cigars in my cell—of course at
my expense—but what I dreaded was the loss of my stipendium or
scholarship, which alone enabled me to continue my studies at
Leipzig, and which, as a rule, was forfeited for political offences.
On my release from prison I went to the Rector of the University and
explained to him the circumstances of the case—how I had been
arrested simply for membership of a suspected club. I assured him that
I was innocent of any political propaganda, and that the loss of my
stipendium would entail my leaving the University. Much to my relief,
the old gentleman replied: “I have heard nothing about this; and if I
do, how am I to know that it refers to you, there are many Müllers in
the University?” Fortunately the distinctive prefix Max had not yet
been added to my name.
I must confess that I and my boon companions were sometimes guilty of
practices which in more modern days, and certainly at Oxford or
Cambridge, would be far more likely to bring the culprits into
collision with the authorities than mere membership of societies in
which comparatively harmless political talk was indulged in.
Duelling was then, as it is now, a favourite pastime among the
students; and though not by nature a brawler, I find that in my
student days at Leipzig I fought three duels, of two of which I carry
the marks to the present day.
I remember that on one occasion before the introduction of cabs we
hired all the sedan-chairs in Leipzig, with their yellow-coated
porters, and went in procession through the streets, much to the
astonishment of the good citizens, and annoyance also, as they were
unable to hire any means of conveyance till a peremptory stop was put
to our fun. Not content with this exploit, when the first cabs were
introduced into Leipzig, thirty or forty being put on the street at
first, I and my friends secured the use of all of them for the day,
and proceeded out into the country. The inhabitants who were eagerly
looking forward to a drive in one of the new conveyances were
naturally annoyed at finding themselves forestalled, and the result
was that a stop was put to such freaks in future by the issue of a
police regulation that nobody was allowed to hire more than two cabs
at a time.
Very innocent amusements, if perhaps foolish, but very happy days all
the same; and it must be remembered that we had just emerged from the
strict discipline of a German school into the unrestricted liberty of
German university life.
It is in every respect a great jump from a German school to a German
university. At school a boy even in the highest form, has little
choice. All his lessons are laid down for him; he has to learn what he
is told, whether he likes it or not. Few only venture on books outside
the prescribed curriculum. There is an examination at the end of every
half-year, and a boy must pass it well in order to get into a higher
form. Boys at a public school (gymnasium), if they cannot pass their
examination at the proper time, are advised to go to another school,
and to prepare for a career in which classical languages are of less
importance.
I must say at once that when I matriculated at Leipzig, in the summer
of 1841, I was still very young and very immature. I had determined to
study philology, chiefly Greek and Latin, but the fare spread out by
the professors was much too tempting. I read Greek and Latin without
difficulty; I often read classical authors without ever attempting to
translate them; I also wrote and spoke Latin easily. Some of the
professors lectured in Latin, and at our academic societies Latin was
always spoken. I soon became a member of the classical seminary under
Gottfried Hermann, and of the Latin Society under Professor Haupt.
Admission to these seminaries and societies was obtained by submitting
essays, and it was no doubt a distinction to belong to them. It was
also useful, for not only had we to write essays and discuss them with
the other members, generally teachers, and with the professor, but we
could also get some useful advice from the professor for our private
studies. In that respect the German universities do very little for
the students, unless one has the good fortune to belong to one of
these societies. The young men are let loose, and they can choose
whatever lectures they want. I still have my _Collegien-Buch_, in
which every professor has to attest what lectures one has attended.
The number of lectures on various subjects which I attended is quite
amazing, and I should have attended still more if the honorarium had
not frightened me away. Every professor lectured _publice_ and
_privatim_, and for the more important courses, four lectures a week,
he charged ten shillings, for more special courses less or nothing.
This seems little, but it was often too much for me; and if one added
these honoraria to the salary of a popular professor, his income was
considerable, and was more than the income of most public servants. I
have known professors who had four or five hundred auditors. This gave
them £250 twice a year, and that, added to their salary, was
considered a good income at that time. All this has been much changed.
Salaries have been raised, and likewise the honoraria, so that I well
remember the case of Professor von Savigny, who, when he was chosen
Minister of Justice at Berlin, declared that he would gladly accept if
only his salary was raised to what his income had been as Professor of
Law. Of course, professors of Arabic or Sanskrit were badly off, and
_Privatdocenten_ (tutors) fared still worse, but the _professores
ordinarii_, particularly if they lectured on an obligatory subject and
were likewise examiners, were very well off. In fact, it struck me
sometimes as very unworthy of them to keep a _famulus_, a student who
had to tell every one who wished to hear a distinguished professor
once or twice, that he would not allow him to come a third time.
One great drawback of the professorial system is certainly the small
measure of personal advice that a student may get from the professors.
Unless he is known to them personally, or has gained admission to
their societies or seminaries, the young student or freshman is quite
bewildered by the rich fare in the shape of lectures that is placed
before him. Some students, no doubt, particularly in their early
terms, solve this difficulty by attending none at all, and there is no
force to make them do so, except the examinations looming in the
distance. But there are many young men most anxious to learn, only
they do not know where to begin. I open my old _Collegien-Buch_ and I
find that in the first term or Semester I attended the following
lectures, and I may say I attended them regularly, took careful notes,
and read such books as were recommended by the professors. I find
1. The first book of Thucydides Gottfried Hermann.
2. On Scenic Antiquities The same.
3. On Propertius P. M. Haupt.
4. History of German Literature The same.
5. The Ranae of Aristophanes Stallbaum.
6. Disputatorium (in Latin) Nobbe.
7. Aesthetics Weisse.
8. Anthropology Lotze.
9. Systems of Harmonic Composition Fink.
10. Hebrew Grammar Fürst.
11. Demosthenes Westermann.
12. Psychology Heinroth.
This was enough for the summer half-year. Except Greek and Latin, the
other subjects were entirely new to me, and what I wanted was to get
an idea of what I should like to study. It may be interesting to add
the other Semesters as far as I have them in my _Collegien-Buch_.
13. Aeschyli Persae Hermann.
14. On Criticism The same.
15. German Grammar Haupt.
16. Walther von der Vogelweide The same.
17. Tacitus, Agricola, and De Oratoribus The same.
18. On Hegel Weisse.
19. Disputatorium (Latin) Nobbe.
20. Modern History Wachsmuth.
21. Sanskrit Grammar Brockhaus.
22. Latin Society Haupt.
Then follows the summer term of 1842.
23. Pindar Hermann.
24. Nibelungen Haupt.
25. Nala Brockhaus.
26. History of Oriental Literature The same.
27. Arabic Grammar Fleischer.
28. Latin Society Haupt.
29. Plauti Trinumus Becker.
Winter term, 1842.
30. Prabodha Chandrodaya Brockhaus.
31. History of Indian Literature The same.
32. Aristophanes’ Vespae Hermann.
33. Plauti Rudens The same.
34. Greek Syntax The same.
35. Juvenal Becker.
36. Metaphysics and Logic Weisse.
37. Philosophy of History The same.
38. Greek and Latin Seminary Hermann & Klotze.
39. Latin Society Haupt.
40. Philosophical Society Weisse.
41. Philosophical Society Drobisch.
Summer term, 1843.
42. Greek and Latin Seminary Hermann & Klotze.
43. Philosophical Society Drobisch.
44. Philosophical Society Weisse.
45. Soma-deva Brockhaus.
46. Hitopadesa The same.
47. History of Greeks and Romans Wachsmuth.
48. History of Civilization The same.
49. History after the Fifteenth Century Flathe.
50. History of Ancient Philosophy Niedner.
Winter term, 1843-4.
51. Rig-veda Brockhaus.
52. Elementa Persica Fleischer.
53. Greek and Latin Seminary Hermann & Klotze.
Here my _Collegien-Buch_ breaks off, the fact being that I was
preparing to go to Berlin to hear the lectures of Bopp and Schelling.
It will be clear from the above list that I certainly attempted too
much. I ought either to have devoted all my time to classical studies
exclusively, or carried on my philosophical studies more
systematically. I confess that, delighted as I was with Gottfried
Hermann and Haupt as my guides and teachers in classics, I found
little that could rouse my enthusiasm for Greek and Latin literature,
and I always required a dose of that to make me work hard. Everything
seemed to me to have been done, and there was no virgin soil left to
the plough, no ruins on which to try one’s own spade. Hermann and
Haupt gave me work to do, but it was all in the critical line—the
genealogical relation of various MSS., or, again, the peculiarities of
certain poets, long before I had fully grasped their general
character. What Latin vowels could or could not form elision in
Horace, Propertius, or Ovid, was a subject that cost me much labour,
and yet left very small results as far as I was personally concerned.
One clever conjecture, or one indication to show that one MS. was
dependent on the other, was rewarded with a Doctissime or
Excellentissime, but a paper on Aeschylus and his view of a divine
government of the world received but a nodding approval.
They certainly taught their pupils what accuracy meant; they gave us
the new idea that MSS. are not everything, unless their real value has
been discovered first by finding the place which they occupy in the
pedigree of the MSS. of every author. They also taught us that there
are mistakes in MSS. which are inevitable, and may safely be left to
conjectural emendation; that MSS. of modern date may be and often are
more valuable than more ancient MSS., for the simple reason that they
were copied from a still more ancient MS., and that often a badly
written and hardly legible MS. proves more helpful than others
written by a calligraphist, because it is the work of a scholar who
copied for himself and not for the market. All these things we learnt
and learnt by practical experience under Hermann and Haupt, but what
we failed to acquire was a large knowledge of Greek and Latin
literature, of the character of each author and of the spirit which
pervaded their works. I ought to have read in Latin, Cicero, Tacitus,
and Lucretius; in Greek, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle;
but as I read only portions of them, my knowledge of the men
themselves and their objects in life remained very fragmentary. For
instance, my real acquaintance with Plato and Aristotle was confined
to a few dialogues of the former and some of the logical works of the
latter. The rest I learnt from such works as Ritter and Preller’s
_Historia Philosophiae Graecae et Romanae ex fontium locis contexta_,
and from the very useful lectures of Niedner on the history of ancient
philosophy. However, I thought I had to do what my professors told me,
and shaped my reading so that they should approve of my work.
This must not be understood as in any way disparaging my teachers.
Such an idea never entered my head at the time. People have no idea in
England what kind of worship is paid by German students to their
professors. To find fault with them or to doubt their _ipse dixit_
never entered our minds. What they said of other classical scholars
from whom they differed, as Hermann did from Otfried Müller, or Haupt
from Orelli, was gospel, and remained engraved on our memory for a
long time. Once when attending Hermann’s lectures, another student who
was sitting at the same table with me made disrespectful remarks about
old Hermann. I asked him to be quiet, and when he went on with his
foolish remarks, I could only stop him by calling him out. As soon as
the challenge was accepted he had of course to be quiet, and a few
days after we fought our duel without much damage to either of us. I
only mention this because it shows what respect and admiration we felt
for our professor, also because it exemplifies the usefulness of
duelling in a German university, where after a challenge not another
word can be said or violence be threatened even by the rudest
undergraduate. A duel for a Greek conjecture may seem very absurd, but
in duels of this kind all that is wanted is really a certain knowledge
of fencing, care being taken that nothing serious shall happen. And
yet, though that is so, the feeling of a possible danger is there, and
keeps up a certain etiquette and a certain proper behaviour among men
taken from all strata of society. Nor can I quite deny that when I
went in the morning to a beautiful wood in the neighbourhood of
Leipzig, certain misgivings were difficult to suppress. I saw myself
severely wounded, possibly killed, by my antagonist, and carried to a
house where my mother and sister were looking for me. This went off
when I met the large assembly of students, beautifully attired in
their club uniforms, the beer barrels pushed up on one side, the
surgeon and his instruments waiting on the other. There were ever so
many, thirty or forty couples I think, waiting to fight their duels
that morning. Some fenced extremely well, and it was a pleasure to
look on; and when one’s own turn came, all one thought of was how to
stand one’s ground boldly, and how to fence well. Some of the
combatants came on horseback or in carriages, and there was a small
river close by to enable us to escape if the police should have heard
of our meeting. For popular as these duels are, they are forbidden and
punished, and the severest punishment seemed always to be the loss of
our uniforms, our arms, our flags, and our barrels of beer. However,
we escaped all interference this time, and enjoyed our breakfast in
the forest thoroughly, nothing happening to disturb the hilarity of
the morning.
Not being satisfied with what seemed to me a mere chewing of the cud
in Greek and Latin, I betook myself to systematic philosophy, and even
during the first terms read more of that than of Plato and Aristotle.
I belonged to the philosophical societies of Weisse, of Drobisch, and
of Lotze, a membership in each of which societies entailed a
considerable amount of reading and writing.
At Leipzig, Professor Drobisch represented the school of Herbart,
which prided itself on its clearness and logical accuracy, but was
naturally less attractive to the young spirits at the University who
had heard of Hegel’s Idea and looked to the dialectic process as the
solution of all difficulties. I wished to know what it all meant, for
I was not satisfied with mere words. There is hardly a word that has
so many meanings as Idea, and I doubt whether any of the raw recruits,
just escaped from school, and unacquainted with the history of
philosophy, could have had any idea of what Hegel’s Idea was meant
for. Yet they talked about it very eloquently and very positively over
their glasses of beer; and anybody who came from Berlin and could
speak mysteriously or rapturously about the Idea and its evolution by
the dialectic process, was listened to with silent wonder by the young
Saxons, who had been brought up on Kant and Krug. The Hegelian fever
was still very high at that time. It is true Hegel himself was dead
(1831), and though he was supposed to have declared on his deathbed
that he left only one true disciple, and that that disciple had
misunderstood him, to be a Hegelian was considered a _sine qua non_,
not only among philosophers, but quite as much among theologians, men
of science, lawyers, artists, in fact, in every branch of human
knowledge, at least in Prussia. If Christianity in its Protestant form
was the state-religion of the kingdom, Hegelianism was its
state-philosophy. Beginning with the Minister of Instruction down to
the village schoolmaster, everybody claimed to be a Hegelian, and
this was supposed to be the best road to advancement. Though
Altenstein, who was then at the head of the Ministry of Instruction,
began to waver in his allegiance to Hegel, even he could not resist
the rush of public and of official opinion. It was he who, when a new
professor of philosophy was recommended to him either by Hegel himself
or by some of his followers, is reported to have said: “Gentlemen, I
have read some of the young man’s books, and I cannot understand a
word of them. However, you are the best judges, only allow me to say
that you remind me a little of the French officer who told his tailor
to make his breeches as tight as possible, and dismissed him with the
words: ‘Enfin, si je peux y entrer, je ne les prendrai pas.’ This
seems to me very much what you say of your young philosopher. If I can
understand his books, I am not to take him.” This Hegelian fever was
very much like what we have passed through ourselves at the time of
the Darwinian fever; Darwin’s natural evolution was looked upon very
much like Hegel’s dialectic process, as the general solvent of all
difficulties. The most egregious nonsense was passed under that name,
as it was under the name of evolution. Hegel knew very well what he
meant, so did Darwin. But the empty enthusiasm of his followers became
so wild that Darwin himself, the most humble of all men, became quite
ashamed of it. The master, of course, was not responsible for the
folly of his so-called disciples, but the result was inevitable.
After the bow had been stretched to the utmost, a reaction followed,
and in the case of Hegelianism, a complete collapse. Even at Berlin
the popularity of Hegelianism came suddenly to an end, and after a
time no truly scientific man liked to be called a Hegelian. These
sudden collapses in Germany are very instructive. As long as a German
professor is at the head of affairs and can do something for his
pupils, his pupils are very loud in their encomiums, both in public
and in private. They not only exalt him, but help to belittle all who
differ from him. So it was with Hegel, so it was at a later time with
Bopp, and Curtius, and other professors, particularly if they had the
ear of the Minister of Education. But soon after the death of these
men, particularly if another influential star was rising, the change
of tone was most sudden and most surprising; even the sale of their
books dwindled down, and they were referred to only as landmarks,
showing the rapid advance made by living celebrities. Perhaps all this
cannot be helped, as long as human nature is what it is, but it is
nevertheless painful to observe.
I had the good fortune of becoming acquainted with Hegelianism through
Professor Christian Weisse at Leipzig, who, though he was considered a
Hegelian, was a very sober Hegelian, a critic quite as much as an
admirer of Hegel. He had a very small audience, because his manner of
lecturing was certainly most trying and tantalizing. But by being
brought into personal contact with him one was able to get help from
him wherever he could give it. Though Weisse was convinced of the
truth of Hegel’s Dialectic Method, he often differed from him in its
application. This Dialectic Method consisted in showing how thought is
constantly and irresistibly driven from an affirmative to a negative
position, then reconciles the two opposites, and from that point
starts afresh, repeating once more the same process. Pure being, for
instance, from which Hegel’s ideal evolution starts, was shown to be
the same as empty being, that is to say, nothing, and both were
presented as identical, and in their identity giving us the new
concept of Becoming (_Werden_), which is being and not-being at the
same time. All this may appear to the lay reader rather obscure, but
could not well be passed over.
So far Weisse followed the great thinker, and I possess still, in his
own writing, the picture of a ladder on which the intellect is
represented as climbing higher and higher from the lowest concept to
the highest—a kind of Jacob’s ladder on which the categories, like
angels of God, ascend and descend from heaven to earth. We must
remember that the true Hegelian regarded the Ideas as the thoughts of
God. Hegel looked upon this evolution of thought as at the same time
the evolution of Being, the Idea being the only thing that could be
said to be truly real. In order to understand this, we must remember
that the historical key to Hegel’s Idea was really the Neo-Platonic
or Alexandrian Logos. But of this Logos we ignorant undergraduates,
sitting at the feet of Prof. Weisse, knew absolutely nothing, and even
if the Idea was sometimes placed before us as the Absolute, the
Infinite, or the Divine, it was to us, at least to most of us, myself
included, _vox et praeterea nihil_. We watched the wonderful
evolutions and convolutions of the Idea in its Dialectic development,
but of the Idea itself or himself we had no idea whatever. It was all
darkness, a vast abyss, and we sat patiently and wrote down what we
could catch and comprehend of the Professor’s explanations, but the
Idea itself we never could lay hold of. It would not have been so
difficult if the Professor had spoken out more boldly. But whenever he
came to the relation of the Idea to what we mean by God, there was
always even with him, who was a very honest man, a certain theological
hesitation. Hegel himself seems to shrink occasionally from the
consequence that the Idea really stands in the place of God, and that
it is in the self-conscious spirit of humanity that the ideal God
becomes first conscious of himself. Still, that is the last word of
Hegel’s philosophy, though others maintain that the Idea with Hegel
was the thought of God, and that human thought was but a repetition of
that divine thought. With Hegel there is first the evolution of the
Idea in the pure ether of logic from the simplest to the highest
category. Then follows Hegel’s Philosophy of Nature, that is, the
evolution of the Idea in nature, the Idea having by the usual
dialectic process negatived itself and entered into its opposite
(_Anderssein_), passing through a new process of space and time, and
ending in the self-conscious human soul. Thus nature and spirit were
represented as dominated by the Idea in its logical development.
Nature was one manifestation of the Idea, History the other, and it
became the task of the philosopher to discover its traces both in the
progress of nature and in the historical progress of thought.
And here it was where the strongest protests began to be heard.
Physical Science revolted, and Historical Research soon joined the
rebellion. Professor Weisse also, in spite of his great admiration for
Hegel, protested in his Lectures against this idealization of history,
and showed how often Hegel, if he could not find the traces he was
looking for in the historical development of the Idea, was misled by
his imperfect knowledge of facts, and discovered what was not there,
but what he felt convinced ought to have been there. Nowhere has this
become so evident as in Hegel’s _Philosophy of Religion_. The
conception was grand of seeing in the historical development of
religion a repetition of the Dialectic Progress of the Idea. But facts
are stubborn things, and do not yield even to the supreme command of
the Idea. Besides, if the historical facts of religion were really
such as the Dialectic Process of the Idea required, these facts are
no longer what they were before 1831, and what would become then of
the Idea which, as he wrote in his preface to his _Metaphysics_, could
not possibly be changed to please the new facts? It was this part of
Weisse’s lectures, it was the protest of the historical conscience
against the demands of the Idea, that interested me most. I see as
clearly the formal truth as the material untruth of Hegel’s
philosophy. The thorough excellence of its method and the desperate
baldness of its results, strike me with equal force. Though I did not
yet know what kind of thing or person the Idea was really meant for, I
knew myself enough of ancient Greek philosophy and of Oriental
religions to venture to criticize Hegel’s representation and
disposition of the facts themselves. I could not accept the answer of
my more determined Hegelian friends, _Tant pis pour les faits_, but
felt more and more the old antagonism between what ought to be and
what is, between the reasonableness of the Idea, and the
unreasonableness of facts. I found a strong supporter in a young
Privat-Docent who at that time began his brilliant career at Leipzig,
Dr. Lotze. He had made a special study of mathematics and physical
science, and felt the same disagreement between facts and theories in
Hegel’s _Philosophy of Nature_ which had struck me so much in reading
his _Philosophy of Religion_. I joined his philosophical society, and
I lately found among my old papers several essays which I had written
for our meetings. They amused me very much, but I should be sorry to
see them published now. It is curious that after many years I, as a
Delegate of the University Press at Oxford, was instrumental in
getting the first English translation of Lotze’s _Metaphysics_
published in England; and it is still more curious that Mark Pattison,
the late Rector of Lincoln, should have opposed it with might and main
as a useless book which would never pay its expenses. I stood up for
my old teacher, and I am glad to say to the honour of English
philosophers, that the translation passed through several editions,
and helped not a little to establish Lotze’s position in England and
America. He died in 1881.
It is extraordinary how the young minds in German universities survive
the storms and fogs through which they have to pass in their academic
career. I confess I myself felt quite bewildered for a time, and began
to despair altogether of my reasoning powers. Why should I not be able
to understand, I asked myself, what other people seemed to understand
without any effort? We speak the same language, why should we not be
able to think the same thought? I took refuge for a time in
history—the history of language, of religion, and of philosophy.
There was a very learned professor at Leipzig, Dr. Niedner, who
lectured on the History of Greek Philosophy, and whose _Manual for the
History of Philosophy_ has been of use to me through the whole of my
life. Socrates said of Heraclitus: “What I have understood of his
book is excellent, and I suppose therefore that even what I have not
understood is so too; but one must be a Delian swimmer not to be
drowned in it.” I tried for a long time to follow this advice with
regard to Hegel and Weisse, and though disheartened did not despair. I
understood some of it, why should not the rest follow in time? Thus, I
never gave up the study of philosophy at Leipzig and afterwards at
Berlin, and my first contributions to philosophical journals date from
that early time, when I was a student in the University of Leipzig. My
very earliest, though very unsuccessful, struggles to find an entrance
into the mysteries of philosophy date even from my school-days.
I remember some years before, when I was quite young, perhaps no more
than fifteen years of age, listening with bated breath to some
professors at Leipzig who were talking very excitedly about philosophy
in my presence. I had no idea what was meant by philosophy, still less
could I follow when they began to discuss Kant’s _Kritik der reinen
Vernunft_. One of my friends, whom I looked up to as a great
authority, confessed that he had read the book again and again, but
could not understand the whole of it. My curiosity was much excited,
and once, while he was taking a walk with me, I asked him very timidly
what Kant’s book was about, and how a man could write a book that
other men could not understand. He tried to explain what Kant’s book
was about, but it was all perfect darkness before my eyes; I was
trying to lay hold of a word here and there, but it all floated before
my mind like mist, without a single ray of light, without any way out
of all that maze of words. But when at last he said he would lend me
the book, I fell on it and pored over it hour after hour. The result
was the same. My little brain could not take in the simplest ideas of
the first chapters—that space and time were nothing by themselves;
that we ourselves gave the form of space and time to what was given us
by the senses. But though defeated I would not give in; I tried again
and again, but of course it was all in vain. The words were here and I
could construe them, but there was nothing in my mind which the words
could have laid hold on. It was like rain on hard soil, it all ran
off, or remained standing in puddles and muddles on my poor brain.
At last I gave it up in despair, but I had fully made up my mind that
as soon as I went to the University I would find out what philosophy
really was, and what Kant meant by saying that space and time were
forms of our sensuous intuition. I see that, accordingly, in the
summer of 1841, I attended lectures on Aesthetics by Professor Weisse,
on Anthropology by Lotze, and on Psychology by Professor Heinroth, and
I slowly learnt to distinguish between what was going on within me,
and what I had been led to imagine existed outside me, or at least
quite independent of me. But before I had got a firm grasp of Kant,
of his forms of intuition, and the categories of the understanding, I
was thrown into Hegelianism. This, too, was at first entire darkness,
but I was not disheartened. I attended Professor Weisse’s lectures on
Hegel in the winter of 1841-2, and again in the winter of 1842-3 I
attended his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, and on the Philosophy
of History. He took an interest in me, and I felt most strongly
attracted by him. Soon after I joined his Philosophical Society, and
likewise that of Professor Drobisch. In these societies every member,
when his turn came, had to write an essay and defend it against the
professor and the other members of the society. All this was very
helpful, but it was not till I had heard a course of lectures on the
History of Philosophy, by Professor Niedner, that my interest in
Philosophy became strong and healthy. While Weisse was a leading
Hegelian philosopher, and Drobisch represented the opposite philosophy
of Herbart, Niedner was purely historical, and this appealed most to
my taste. Still, my philosophical studies remained very disjointed. At
last I was admitted to Lotze’s Philosophical Society also, and here we
chiefly read and discussed Kant’s _Kritik_. Lotze was then quite a
young man, undecided as yet himself between physical science and pure
philosophy.
Weisse was certainly the most stirring lecturer, but his delivery was
fearful. He did not read his lectures, as many professors did, but
would deliver them _extempore_. He had no command of language, and
there was a pause after almost every sentence. He was really thinking
out the problem while he was lecturing; he was constantly repeating
his sentences, and any new thought that crossed his mind would carry
him miles away from his subject. It happened sometimes in these
rhapsodies that he contradicted himself, but when I walked home with
him after his lecture to a village near Leipzig where he lived, he
would readily explain how it happened, how he meant something quite
different from what he had said, or what I had understood. In fact he
would give the whole lecture over again, only much more freely and
more intelligibly. I was fully convinced at that time that Hegel’s
philosophy was the final solution of all problems; I only hesitated
about his philosophy of history as applied to the history of religion.
I could not bring myself to admit that the history of religion, nor
even the history of philosophy as we know it from Thales to Kant, was
really running side by side with his Logic, showing how the leading
concepts of the human mind, as elaborated in the Logic, had found
successive expression in the history and development of the schools of
philosophy as known to us. Weisse was strong both in his analysis of
concepts and in his knowledge of history, and though he taught Hegel
as a faithful interpreter, he always warned us against trusting too
much in the parallelism between Logic and History. Study the writings
of the good philosophers, he would say, and then see whether they will
or will not fit into the Procrustean bed of Hegel’s Logic. And this
was the best lesson he could have given to young men. How well founded
and necessary the warning was I found out myself, the more I studied
the religion and philosophies of the East, and then compared what I
saw in the original documents with the account given by Hegel in his
_Philosophy of Religion_. It is quite true that Hegel at the time when
he wrote, could not have gained a direct or accurate knowledge of the
principal religions of the East. But what I could not help seeing was
that what Hegel represented as the necessity in the growth of
religious thought, was far away from the real growth, as I had watched
it in some of the sacred books of these religions. This shook my
belief in the correctness of Hegel’s fundamental principles more than
anything else.
At that time Herbart’s philosophy, as taught by Drobisch at Leipzig,
came to me as a most useful antidote. The chief object of that
philosophy is, as is well known, the analysing and clearing, so to
speak, of our concepts. This was exactly what I wanted, only that
occupied as I was with the problems of language, I at once translated
the object of his philosophy into a definition of words. Henceforth
the object of my own philosophical occupations was the accurate
definition of every word. All words, such as reason, pure reason,
mind, thought, were carefully taken to pieces and traced back, if
possible, to their first birth, and then through their further
developments. My interest in this analytical process soon took an
historical, that is etymological, character in so far as I tried to
find out why any words should now mean exactly what, according to our
definition, they ought to mean. For instance, in examining such words
as _Vernunft_ or _Verstand_, a little historical retrospect showed
that their distinction as reason and understanding was quite modern,
and chiefly due to a scientific definition given and maintained by the
Kantian school of philosophy. Of course every generation has a right
to define its philosophical terms, but from an historical point of
view Kant might have used with equal right _Vernunft_ for _Verstand_,
and _Verstand_ for _Vernunft_. Etymologically or historically both
words have much the same meaning. _Vernunft_, from _Vernehmen_, meant
originally no more than perception, while _Verstand_ meant likewise
perception, but soon came to imply a kind of understanding, even a
kind of technical knowledge, though from a purely etymological
standpoint it had nothing that fitted it more for carrying the
meaning, which is now assigned to it in German in distinction to
_Vernunft_, than understanding had as distinguished from reason. It
requires, of course, a very minute historical research to trace the
steps by which such words as reason and understanding diverge in
different directions, in the language of the people and in
philosophical parlance. This teaches us a very important distinction,
namely that between the popular development of the meaning of a word,
and its meaning as defined and asserted by a philosopher or by a poet
in the plenitude of his power. Etymological definition is very useful
for the first stages in the history of a word. It is useful to know,
for instance, that _deus_, God, meant originally bright, bright
whether applied to sky, sun, moon, stars, dawn, morning, dayspring,
spring of the year, and many other bright objects in nature, that it
thus assumed a meaning common to them all, splendid, or heavenly,
beneficent, powerful, so that when in the Veda already we find a
number of heavenly bodies, or of terrestrial bodies, or even of
periods of time called Devas, this word has assumed a more general,
more comprehensive, and more exalted meaning. It did not yet mean what
the Greeks called θεοἱ or gods, but it meant something common to all
these θεοἱ, and thus could naturally rise to express what the Greeks
wanted to express by that word. There was as yet no necessity for
defining deva or θεὁς, when applied to what was meant by gods, but of
course the most opposite meanings had clustered round it. While a
philosophical Greek would maintain that θεὁς meant what was one and
never many, a poetical Greek or an ordinary Greek would hold that it
meant what was by nature many. But while in such a case philosophical
analysis and historical genealogy would support each other, there are
ever so many cases where etymological analysis is as hopeless as
logical analysis. Who is to define _romantic_, in such expressions as
romantic literature. Etymologically we know that romantic goes back
finally to Rome, but the mass of incongruous meanings that have been
thrown at random into the caldron of that word, is so great that no
definition could be contrived to comprehend them all. And how should
we define _Gothic_ or _Romanic_ architecture, remembering that as no
Goths had anything to do with pointed arches, neither were any Romans
responsible for the flat roofs of the German churches of the Saxon
emperors.
Enough to show what I meant when I said that Professor Drobisch, in
his Lectures on Herbart, gave one great encouragement in the special
work in which I was already engaged as a mere student, the Science of
Language and Etymology. If Herbart declared philosophy to consist in a
thorough examination (_Bearbeitung_) of concepts, or conceptual
knowledge, my answer was, Only let it be historical, nay, in the
beginning, etymological; I was not so foolish as to imagine that a
word as used at present, meant what it meant etymologically. _Deus_ no
longer meant brilliant, but it should be the object of the true
historian of language to prove how _Deus_, having meant originally
brilliant, came to mean what it means now.
For a time I thought of becoming a philosopher, and that sounded so
grand that the idea of preparing for a mere schoolmaster, teaching
Greek and Latin, seemed to me more and more too narrow a sphere. Soon,
however, while dreaming of a chair of philosophy at a German
University, I began to feel that I must know something special,
something that no other philosopher knew, and that induced me to learn
Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian. I had only heard what we call in German
the chiming, not the striking of the bells of Indian philosophy; I had
read Frederick Schlegel’s explanatory book _Über die Sprache und
Weisheit der Indier_ (1808), and looked into Windischmann’s _Die
Philosophie im Fortgange der Weltgeschichte_ (1827-1834). These books
are hardly opened now—they are antiquated, and more than antiquated;
they are full of mistakes as to facts, and mistakes as to the
conclusions drawn from them. But they had ushered new ideas into the
world of thought, and they left on many, as they did on me, that
feeling which the digger who prospects for minerals is said to have,
that there must be gold beneath the surface, if people would only dig.
That feeling was very vague as yet, and might have been entirely
deceptive, nor did I see my way to go beyond the point reached by
these two dreamers or explorers. The thought remained in the
rubbish-chamber of my mind, and though forgotten at the time, broke
forth again when there was an opportunity. It was a fortunate
coincidence that at that very time, in the winter of 1841, a new
professorship was founded at Leipzig and given to Professor Brockhaus.
Uncertain as I was about the course I had to follow in my studies, I
determined to see what there was to be learnt in Sanskrit. There was a
charm in the unknown, and, I must confess, a charm also in studying
something which my friends and fellow students did not know. I called
on Professor Brockhaus, and found that there were only two other
students to attend his lectures, one Spiegel, who already knew the
elements of Sanskrit, and who is still alive in Erlangen,[9] as a
famous professor of Sanskrit and Zend, though no longer lecturing, and
another, Klengel; both several years my seniors, but both extremely
amiable to their younger fellow student. Klengel was a scholar, a
philosopher, and a musician, and though after a term or two he had to
give up his study of Sanskrit, he was very useful to me by his good
advice. He encouraged me and praised me for my progress in Sanskrit,
which was no doubt more rapid than his own, and he confirmed me in my
conviction that something might be made of Sanskrit by the philologist
and by the philosopher. It should not be forgotten that at that time
there was a strong prejudice against Sanskrit among classical
scholars. The number of men who stood up for it, though it included
names such as W. von Humboldt, F. and A. W. von Schlegel, was still
very small. Even Herder’s and Goethe’s prophetic words produced
little effect. It is said that when the Government had been persuaded,
chiefly by the two Humboldts, to found a chair of Sanskrit at the
University of Würzburg, and had nominated Bopp as its first occupant,
the philological faculty of the University protested against such a
desecration, and the appointment fell through. It is true, no doubt,
that in their first enthusiasm the students of Sanskrit had uttered
many exaggerated opinions. Sanskrit was represented as the mother of
all languages, instead of being the elder sister of the Aryan family.
The beginning of all language, of all thought, of all religion was
traced back to India, and when Greek scholars were told that Zeus
existed in the Veda under the name of Dyaus, there was a great flutter
in the dovecots of classical scholarship. Many of these enthusiastic
utterances had afterwards to be toned down. How we did enjoy those
enthusiastic days, which even in their exaggerated hopes were not
without some use. Problems such as the beginning of language, of
thought, of mythology and religion, were started with youthful hope
that the Veda would solve them all, as if the Vedic Rishis had been
present at the first outburst of roots, of concepts, nay, that like
Pelops and other descendants of Zeus, those Vedic poets had enjoyed
daily intercourse with the gods, and had been present at the
mutilation of Ouranos, or at the over-eating of Kronos. We may be
ashamed to-day of some of the dreams of the early spring of man’s
sojourn on earth, but they were enchanting dreams, and all our
thoughts of man’s nature and destiny on earth were tinged with the
colours of a morning that threw light over the grey darkness which
preceded it. It was delightful to see that Dyaus meant originally the
bright sky, something actually seen, but something that had to become
something unseen. All knowledge, whether individual or possessed by
mankind at large, must have begun with what the senses can perceive,
before it could rise to signify something unperceived by the senses.
Only after the blue aether had been perceived and named, was it
possible to conceive and speak of the sky as active, as an agent, as a
god. Dyaus or Zeus might thus be called the most sublime, he who
resides in the aether, αἰθἑρι ναἱων ὑψἱζυγος, the heavenly one, or
οὐρἁνιος ὕπατος and ὕψιστος, the highest, and at last _Iupiter Optimus
Maximus_, a name applied even to the true God. When Zeus had once
become like the sky, all seeing or omniscient (ἐπὁψιος), would he not
naturally be supposed to see, not only the good, but the evil deeds of
men also, nay, their very thoughts, whether pure or criminal? And if
so, would he not be the avenger of evil, the watcher of oaths
(ὅρκιος), the protector of the helpless (ἱκἑσιος)? Yet, if conceived,
as for a long time all the gods were conceived and could only be
conceived, namely, as human in their shape, should we not necessarily
get that strange amalgamation of a human being doing superhuman
work—hurling the thunderbolt, shouting in thunder, hidden by dark
clouds, and smiling in the serene blue of the sky with its brilliant
scintillations? All this and much more became perfectly intelligible,
the step from the visible to the invisible, from the perceived to the
conceived, from nature to nature’s gods, and from nature’s god to a
more sublime unseen and spiritual power. All this seemed to pass
before our very eyes in the Veda, and then to be reflected in Homer
and Pindar.
[9] Herr Geheimrath von Spiegel now lives at Munich.
Some details of this restored picture of the world of gods and men in
early times, nay, in the very spring of time, may have to be altered,
but the picture, the eidyllion remained, and nothing could curb the
adventurous spirit and keep it from pushing forward and trying to do
what seemed to others almost impossible, namely, to watch the growth
of the human mind as reflected in the petrifactions of language.
Language itself spoke to us with a different voice, and a formerly
unsuspected meaning.
We knew, for instance, that _ewig_ meant eternal, but whence eternal.
Nothing eternal was ever seen, and it seemed to the philosopher that
eternal could be expressed by a negation only, by a negation of what
was temporary. But we now learnt that _ewig_ was derived in word and
therefore in thought from the Gothic _aiwar_, time. _Ewigkeit_ was
therefore originally time, and “for all time” came naturally to mean
“for all eternity.” Eternity also came from _aeternus_, that is
_aeviternus_, for time, i. e. for all time, and thus for eternity,
while _aevum_ meant life, lifetime, age. But now came the question, if
_aevum_ shows the growth of this word, and its origin, and how it
arrives in the end at the very opposite pole, life and time coming to
mean eternity, could we not by the same process discover the origin
and growth of such short Greek words as ἀεἱ and aἰeἱ? It seems almost
impossible, yet remembering that _aevum_ meant originally life, we
find in Vedic Sanskrit _eva_, course, way, life, the same as _aevum_,
while the Sanskrit _âyush_, likewise derived from _i_, to go, forms
its locative _âyushi_. _Âyushi_, or originally _âyasi_, would mean “in
life, in time,” and turned into Greek would regularly become then
aἰeἱ, lifelong, or ever. It was not difficult to find fault with this
and other etymologies, and to ask for an explanation of αἰἑν and αἰἑς,
as derived from the same word _âyus_. It is curious that people will
not see that etymologies, and particularly the gradual development in
the form and meaning of words, can hardly ever be a matter of
mathematical certainty.
Historical, nay, even individual, influences come in which prevent the
science of language from becoming purely mechanical. Pott, and
Curtius, and others stood up against Bopp and Grimm, maintaining that
there could be nothing irregular in language, particularly in phonetic
changes. If this means no more than that under the same circumstances
the same changes will always take place, it would be of course a mere
truism. The question is only whether we can ever know all the
circumstances, and whether there are not some of these circumstances
which cause what we are apt to call irregularities. When Bopp said
that Sanskrit _d_ corresponds to a Greek δ, but often also to a Greek
θ, I doubt whether this is often the case. All I say is, if _deva_
corresponds to θεὁς, we must try to find the reason or the
circumstances which caused so unusual a correspondence. If no more is
meant than that there must be a reason for all that seems irregular,
no one would gainsay that, neither Bopp nor Grimm, and no one ever
doubted that as a principle. But to establish these reasons is the
very difficulty with which the Science of Language has to deal.
There is no word that has not an etymology, only if we consider the
distance of time that separates us from the historical facts we are
trying to account for, we should sometimes be satisfied with
probabilities and not always stipulate for absolute certainty. Many of
Bopp’s, Grimm’s, and Pott’s etymologies have had to be surrendered,
and yet our suzerainty over that distant country which they conquered,
over the Aryan home, remains. If there is an etymology containing
something irregular, and for which no reason has as yet been found, we
must wait till some better etymology can be suggested, or a reason be
found for that apparent irregularity. If the etymological meaning of
_duhitar_, daughter, as milkmaid, is doubted, let us have a better
explanation, not a worse; but the general picture of the early family
among the Aryans “somewhere in Asia” is not thereby destroyed. The
father, Sk. _pitar_, remains the protector or nourisher, though the
_i_ for _a_ in _pater_ and πατἡρ is irregular. The mother, _mâtar_,
remains the bearer of children, though _mâ_ is no longer used in that
sense in any of the Aryan languages. _Pati_ is the lord, the strong
one—therefore the husband; _vadhû_, the yoke-fellow, or the wife as
brought home, possibly as carried off by force. _Vis_ or _vesa_ is the
home, οἰκος or _vicus_, what was entered for shelter. _Svasura_,
ἑκυρὁς, _Socer_, the father-in-law, is the old man of the _svas_, the
_famuli_, or the family, or the clients, though the first _s_ is
irregular, and can be defended only on the ground of mistaken analogy.
_Bhrâtar_, _frater_, brother, was the supporter; _svastar_, _soror_,
sister, the comforter, &c.
What do a few objections signify? The whole picture remains, as if we
could look into the _vesa_, the οἰκος the _veih_, the home, the
village of the ancient Aryans, and watch them, the _svas_, the people,
in their mutual relations. Even compound words, such as _vis-pati_,
lord of a family or a village, have been preserved to the present day
in the Lithuanian _Veszpats_, lord, whether King or God. It is enough
for us to see that the relationship between husband and wife, between
parents and children, between brothers and sisters, nay, even between
children-in-law and parents-in-law, had been recognized and sanctified
by names. That there are, and always will be, doubts and slight
differences of opinion on these prehistoric thoughts and words, is
easily understood. We were pleased for a long time to see in _vidua_,
widow, the Sanskrit _vidua_, i. e. without a man or a husband. We now
derive _vi-dhavâ_, widow, from _vidh_, to be separated, to be without
(cf. _vido_ in _divido_, and Sk. _vidh_), but the picture of the Aryan
family remains much the same.
When these and similar antiquities were for the first time brought to
light by Bopp, Grimm, and Pott, what wonder that we young men should
have jumped at them, and shouted with delight, more even than the
diggers who dug up Babylonian palaces or Egyptian temples! No one did
more for these antiquarian finds and restorations than A. Kuhn, a
simple schoolmaster, but afterwards a most distinguished member of the
Berlin Academy. How often did I sit with him in his study as he
worked, surrounded by his Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit books. In later
times also, when I had made some discoveries myself as to the
mythological names or beings identical in Vedic and Greek writings,
how pleasant was it to see him rub his hands or shake his head. Long
before I had published my identifications they were submitted to him,
and he communicated to me his own guesses as I communicated mine to
him. Kuhn would never appropriate what belonged to anybody else, and
even in cases where we agreed, he would always make it clear that we
had both arrived independently at the same result.
It is in the nature of things that every new generation of scholars
should perfect their tools, and with these discover flaws in the work
left by their predecessors. Still, what is the refined chiselling of
later scholars compared with the rough-hewn stones of men like Bopp or
Grimm? If the Cyclopean stones of the Pelasgians are not like the
finished works of art by Phidias, what would the Parthenon be without
the walls ascribed to the Cyclops? It is the same in all sciences, and
we must try to be just, both to the genius of those who created, and
to the diligence of those who polished and refined.
For all this, however, I met with but small sympathy and encouragement
at Leipzig; nay, I had to be very careful in uttering what were
supposed to be heretical or unscholarlike opinions in the seminary of
Gottfried Hermann, or in the Latin society of Haupt. The latter
particularly, though he knew very well how much light had been spread
on the growth of language by the researches of Bopp, Grimm, and Pott,
and though Grimm was his intimate friend of whom he always spoke with
real veneration, could not bear his own pupils dabbling in this
subject. And of course at that time my knowledge of comparative
philology was a mere dabbling. If he could discover a false quantity
in any etymology, great was his delight, and his sarcasm truly
withering, particularly as it was poured out in very classical Latin.
Gottfried Hermann was a different character. He saw there was a new
light and he would not turn his back to it. He knew how lightly his
antagonist, Otfried Müller, valued Sanskrit in his mythological
essays, and he set to work, and in one of his last academical programs
actually gave the paradigms of Sanskrit verbs as compared with those
of Greek. He saw that the coincidences between the two could not be
casual, and if they were so overwhelming in the mere termination of
verbs, what might we not expect in words and names, even in
mythological names? He by no means discouraged me, nay, he was sorry
to lose me, when in my third year I went to Berlin. He showed me great
kindness on several occasions, and when the time came to take my
degree of M.A. and Ph.D., he, as Dean of the Faculty, invited me to
return to Leipzig, offering me an exhibition to cover the expenses of
the Degree.
[Illustration: F. MAX MÜLLER _Aged Twenty_]
My wish to go to Berlin arose partly from a desire to hear Bopp, but
yet more from a desire to make the acquaintance of Schelling. My
inclination towards philosophy had become stronger and stronger; I had
my own ideas about the mythological as a necessary form of ancient
philosophy, and when I saw that the old philosopher had advertised his
lectures or lecture on mythology, I could not resist, and went to
Berlin in 1844. I must say at once that Professor Bopp, though he was
extremely kind to me, was at that time, if not old—he was only
fifty-three—very infirm. In his lectures he simply read his
_Comparative Grammar_ with a magnifying glass, and added very little
that was new. He lent me some manuscripts which he had copied in Latin
in his younger days, but I could not get much help from him when I
came to really difficult passages. This, I confess, puzzled me at the
time, for I looked on every professor as omniscient. The time comes,
however, when we learn that even at fifty-three a man may have
forgotten certain things, nay, may have let many books and new
discoveries even in his own subject pass by, because he has plenty to
do with his own particular studies. We remember the old story of the
professor who, when charged by a young and rather impertinent student
with not knowing this or that, replied: “Sir, I have forgotten more
than you ever knew.” And so it is indeed. Human nature and human
memory are very strong during youth and manhood, but even at fifty
there is with many people a certain decline of mental vigour that
tells chiefly on the memory. Things are not exactly forgotten, but
they do not turn up at the right time. They just leave a certain
knowledge of where the missing information can be found; they leave
also a kind of feeling that the ground is not quite safe and that we
must no longer trust entirely to our memory. In one respect this
feeling is very useful, for instead of writing down anything, trusting
to our memory as we used to do, we feel it necessary to verify many
things which formerly were perfectly clear and certain in our memory
without such reference to books.
I remember being struck with the same thing in the case of Professor
Wilson, the well-known Oxford Professor of Sanskrit. He was kind
enough to read with me, and I certainly was often puzzled, not only by
what he knew, but also by what he had forgotten. I feel now that I
misjudged him, and that his open declaration, “I don’t know, let us
look it up,” really did him great honour. I still have in my
possession a portion of Pânini’s Vedic grammar translated by him. I
put by the side of it my own translation, and he openly acknowledged
that mine, with the passages taken from the Veda, was right. There was
no humbug about Wilson. He never posed as a scholar; nay, I remember
his saying to me more than once, “You see, I am not a scholar, I am a
gentleman who likes Sanskrit, and that is all.” He certainly did like
Sanskrit, and he knew it better than many a professor, but in his own
way. He had enjoyed the assistance of really learned Pandits, and he
never forgot to record their services. But he had himself cleared the
ground—he had really done original work. In fact, he had done nothing
but original work, and then he was abused for not having always found
at the first trial what others discovered when standing on his
shoulders. Again, he was found fault with for not having had a
classical education. His education was, I believe, medical, but when
once in the Indian Civil Service, he made himself useful in many ways,
educational and otherwise. When he left India he was Master of the
Mint. Such a man might not know Greek and Latin like F. A. von
Schlegel, or any other professor, but he knew his own subject, and it
is simply absurd if classical scholars imagine that anybody can carry
on his Greek and Latin and at the same time make himself a perfect
scholar in Sanskrit. Such a feeling is natural among small
schoolmasters, but it is dying out at last among real scholars. I have
known very good Sanskrit scholars who knew no Greek at all, and very
little Latin. And I have also known Greek scholars who knew no
Sanskrit and yet attempted comparisons between the two. When Lepsius
was made a Member of the Berlin Academy, Lachmann, who ought to have
known better, used to say of him: “He knows many things which nobody
knows, but he also is ignorant of many things which everybody knows.”
Such remarks never speak well for the man who makes them.
Another disadvantage from which the aged scholar suffers is that he is
blamed for not having known in his youth what has been discovered in
his old age, and is still violently assailed for opinions he may have
uttered fifty years ago. When quite a young man I wrote, at Baron
Bunsen’s request, a long letter on the Turanian Languages. It was
published in 1854, but it still continues to be criticized as if it
had been published last year. Of course, considering the rapid advance
of linguistic studies, a great part of that letter became antiquated
long ago; but at the time of its first appearance it contained nearly
all that could then be known on these allophylian, that is, non-Aryan
and non-Semitic languages; and I may, perhaps, quote the opinion of
Professor Pott, no mean authority at that time, who, after severely
criticizing my letter, declared that it belonged to the most important
publications that had appeared on linguistic subjects for many years.
And yet, though I have again and again protested that I could not
possibly have known in 1854 what has been discovered since as to a
number of these Turanian languages, everybody who writes on any of
them seems to be most anxious to show that in 1894 he knows more than
I did in 1854. No astronomer is blamed for not having known the planet
Neptune before its discovery in 1846, or for having been wrong in
accounting for the irregularities of Saturn. But let that pass; I only
share the fate of others who have lived too long.
After all, all our knowledge, whatever show we may make of it, is very
imperfect, and the more we know the better we learn how little it is
that we do know, and how much of unexplored country there is beyond
the country which we have explored. We must judge a man by what he has
done—by his own original work. There are many scholars, and very
useful they are in their own way, but if their books are examined, one
easily finds the stores from which they borrowed their materials. They
may add some notes of their own and even some corrections,
particularly corrections of the authors from whom they have borrowed
most; but at the end where is the fresh ore that they have raised;
where is the gold they have extracted and coined? There are cases
where the original worker is quite forgotten, whereas the retailers
flourish. Well, facts are facts, whether known or not known, and the
triumphal chariot of truth has to be dragged along by many hands and
many shoulders.