A COMMENT BY PROF. F. MAX MÜLLER CONCERNING THE DISCUSSION ON EVOLUTION
AND LANGUAGE.
_To the Editor of The Monist:_
I must thank you and Professor Romanes for the frank and searching
criticism to which you have both subjected my article on “Thought and
Language,” published in _The Monist_. You have shown that you care for
truth and not for victory, and you have carefully abstained from any
personal remarks which are so apt to embitter scientific controversy
and in consequence to render its chief object, the discovery of more
truth, illusory. We all have the same object, we all want to know what
is true—why then should we not all work together, listen to friendly
criticism, accept useful advice, confess our mistakes, and work as hard
as we can in the special field allotted to each of us.
As soon as I find a little more leisure, I shall not fail to reply fully
to both your articles. At present I only write to you to defend myself
against an undeserved charge brought against me by Professor Romanes.
I had said that Professor Romanes had no right to speak of men like
Noiré, Huxley, Herbert Spencer, to say nothing of Hobbes, with an air
of superiority. Professor Romanes replies that he never mentioned Mr.
Herbert Spencer at all, that it would have been well for me, if, before
condemning his supposed treatment of Herbert Spencer, Huxley, and Noiré,
I had looked at his Index. This is a serious charge. It would show a
want of accuracy unpardonable in a scholar. It is true, Mr. Herbert
Spencer’s name does not occur in the Index. But on p. 230 we read: “So
here again we meet with additional proof, were any required, of the folly
of regarding the copula as an essential ingredient of a proposition.” Now
it is well known that it is Mr. Herbert Spencer who regards the copula
as an essential ingredient of a proposition. I have shown that the facts
of language are against Mr. Herbert Spencer, but I should not therefore
think it right to charge him with folly. This will show that if I wrote
without Index, I did not write without book.
Yours truly,