Mr. Max Muller argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in
favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old
proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words?
'This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been
boldly answered' (i. 297). Mr. Max Muller cannot have forgotten that
Curtius answered boldly--in the negative. 'Without such rigour all
attempts at etymology are impossible. For this very reason ethnologists
and mythologists should make themselves acquainted with the simple
principles of comparative philology.' {109}
But it is not for us to settle such disputes of scholars. Meanwhile
their evidence is derived from their private interpretations of old
proper names, and they differ among themselves as to whether, in such
interpretations, they should or should not be governed strictly by
phonetic laws. Then what Mr. Max Muller calls 'the usual bickerings'
begin among scholars (i. 416). And Mr. Max Muller connects Ouranos with
Vedic Varuna, while Wackernagel prefers to derive it from [Greek], urine,
and this from [Greek]=Sk. Varshayami, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it
goes on for years with a glorious uncertainty. If Mr. Max Muller's
equations are scientifically correct, the scholars who accept them not
must all be unscientific. Or else, this is not science at all.