Lectures on
The Science of Language
Delivered At The
Royal Institution of Great Britain
In
April, May, and June, 1861.
By Max Müller, M. A.
Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; Correspondence Member of the Imperial
Institute of France.
From the Second London Edition, Revised.
New York:
Charles Scribner, 124 Grand Street.
1862
CONTENTS
Dedication
Preface.
Lecture I. The Science Of Language One Of The Physical Sciences.
Lecture II. The Growth Of Language In Contradistinction To The History Of
Language.
Lecture III. The Empirical Stage.
Lecture IV. The Classificatory Stage.
Lecture V. Genealogical Classification Of Languages.
Lecture VI. Comparative Grammar.
Lecture VII. The Constituent Elements Of Language.
Lecture VIII. Morphological Classification.
Lecture IX. The Theoretical Stage, And The Origin Of Language.
Appendix.
Index.
Footnotes
DEDICATION
Dedicated
To
The Members Of The University Of Oxford,
Both Resident And Non-Resident,
To Whom I Am Indebted
For Numerous Proofs Of Sympathy And Kindness
During The Last Twelve Years,
In Grateful Acknowledgment Of Their Generous Support
On The
7th Of December, 1860.
PREFACE.
My Lectures on the Science of Language are here printed as I had prepared
them in manuscript for the Royal Institution. When I came to deliver them,
a considerable portion of what I had written had to be omitted; and, in
now placing them before the public in a more complete form, I have gladly
complied with a wish expressed by many of my hearers. As they are, they
only form a short abstract of several Courses delivered from time to time
in Oxford, and they do not pretend to be more than an introduction to a
science far too comprehensive to be treated successfully in so small a
compass.
My object, however, will have been attained, if I should succeed in
attracting the attention, not only of the scholar, but of the philosopher,
the historian, and the theologian, to a science which concerns them all,
and which, though it professes to treat of words only, teaches us that
there is more in words than is dreamt of in our philosophy. I quote from
Bacon: “Men believe that their reason is lord over their words, but it
happens, too, that words exercise a reciprocal and reactionary power over
our intellect. Words, as a Tartar’s bow, shoot back upon the understanding
of the wisest, and mightily entangle and pervert the judgment.”
MAX MÜLLER.
_Oxford_, June 11, 1861.
LECTURE I. THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE ONE OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.
When I was asked some time ago to deliver a course of lectures on
Comparative Philology in this Institution, I at once expressed my
readiness to do so. I had lived long enough in England to know that the
peculiar difficulties arising from my imperfect knowledge of the language
would be more than balanced by the forbearance of an English audience, and
I had such perfect faith in my subject that I thought it might be trusted
even in the hands of a less skilful expositor. I felt convinced that the
researches into the history of languages and into the nature of human
speech which have been carried on for the last fifty years in England,
France, and Germany, deserved a larger share of public sympathy than they
had hitherto received; and it seemed to me, as far as I could judge, that
the discoveries in this newly-opened mine of scientific inquiry were not
inferior, whether in novelty or importance, to the most brilliant
discoveries of our age.
It was not till I began to write my lectures that I became aware of the
difficulties of the task I had undertaken. The dimensions of the science
of language are so vast that it is impossible in a course of nine lectures
to give more than a very general survey of it; and as one of the greatest
charms of this science consists in the minuteness of the analysis by which
each language, each dialect, each word, each grammatical form is tested, I
felt that it was almost impossible to do full justice to my subject, or to
place the achievements of those who founded and fostered the science of
language in their true light. Another difficulty arises from the dryness
of many of the problems which I shall have to discuss. Declensions and
conjugations cannot be made amusing, nor can I avail myself of the
advantages possessed by most lecturers, who enliven their discussions by
experiments and diagrams. If, with all these difficulties and drawbacks, I
do not shrink from opening to-day this course of lectures on mere words,
on nouns and verbs and particles,—if I venture to address an audience
accustomed to listen, in this place, to the wonderful tales of the natural
historian, the chemist, and geologist, and wont to see the novel results
of inductive reasoning invested by native eloquence, with all the charms
of poetry and romance,—it is because, though mistrusting myself, I cannot
mistrust my subject. The study of words may be tedious to the school-boy,
as breaking of stones is to the wayside laborer; but to the thoughtful eye
of the geologist these stones are full of interest;—he sees miracles on
the high-road, and reads chronicles in every ditch. Language, too, has
marvels of her own, which she unveils to the inquiring glance of the
patient student. There are chronicles below her surface; there are sermons
in every word. Language has been called sacred ground, because it is the
deposit of thought. We cannot tell as yet what language is. It may be a
production of nature, a work of human art, or a divine gift. But to
whatever sphere it belongs, it would seem to stand unsurpassed—nay,
unequalled in it—by anything else. If it be a production of nature, it is
her last and crowning production which she reserved for man alone. If it
be a work of human art, it would seem to lift the human artist almost to
the level of a divine creator. If it be the gift of God, it is God’s
greatest gift; for through it God spake to man and man speaks to God in
worship, prayer, and meditation.
Although the way which is before us may be long and tedious, the point to
which it tends would seem to be full of interest; and I believe I may
promise that the view opened before our eyes from the summit of our
science, will fully repay the patient travellers, and perhaps secure a
free pardon to their venturous guide.
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐
The Science of Language is a science of very modern date. We cannot trace
its lineage much beyond the beginning of our century, and it is scarcely
received as yet on a footing of equality by the elder branches of
learning. Its very name is still unsettled, and the various titles that
have been given to it in England, France, and Germany are so vague and
varying that they have led to the most confused ideas among the public at
large as to the real objects of this new science. We hear it spoken of as
Comparative Philology, Scientific Etymology, Phonology, and Glossology. In
France it has received the convenient, but somewhat barbarous, name of
_Linguistique_. If we must have a Greek title for our science, we might
derive it either from _mythos_, word, or from _logos_, speech. But the
title of _Mythology_ is already occupied, and _Logology_ would jar too
much on classical ears. We need not waste our time in criticising these
names, as none of them has as yet received that universal sanction which
belongs to the titles of other modern sciences, such as Geology or
Comparative Anatomy; nor will there be much difficulty in christening our
young science after we have once ascertained its birth, its parentage, and
its character. I myself prefer the simple designation of the Science of
Language, though in these days of high-sounding titles, this plain name
will hardly meet with general acceptance.
From the name we now turn to the meaning of our science. But before we
enter upon a definition of its subject-matter, and determine the method
which ought to be followed in our researches, it will be useful to cast a
glance at the history of the other sciences, among which the science of
language now, for the first time, claims her place; and examine their
origin, their gradual progress, and definite settlement. The history of a
science is, as it were, its biography, and as we buy experience cheapest
in studying the lives of others, we may, perhaps, guard our young science
from some of the follies and extravagances inherent in youth by learning a
lesson for which other branches of human knowledge have had to pay more
dearly.
There is a certain uniformity in the history of most sciences. If we read
such works as Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences or Humboldt’s
Cosmos, we find that the origin, the progress, the causes of failure and
success have been the same for almost every branch of human knowledge.
There are three marked periods or stages in the history of every one of
them, which we may call the _Empirical_, the _Classificatory_, and the
_Theoretical_. However humiliating it may sound, every one of our
sciences, however grand their present titles, can be traced back to the
most humble and homely occupations of half-savage tribes. It was not the
true, the good, and the beautiful which spurred the early philosophers to
deep researches and bold discoveries. The foundation-stone of the most
glorious structures of human ingenuity in ages to come was supplied by the
pressing wants of a patriarchal and semi-barbarous society. The names of
some of the most ancient departments of human knowledge tell their own
tale. Geometry, which at present declares itself free from all sensuous
impressions, and treats of its points and lines and planes as purely ideal
conceptions, not to be confounded with those coarse and imperfect
representations as they appear on paper to the human eye; geometry, as its
very name declares, began with measuring a garden or a field. It is
derived from the Greek _gē_, land, ground, earth, and _metron_, measure.
Botany, the science of plants, was originally the science of _botanē_,
which in Greek does not mean a plant in general, but fodder, from
_boskein_, to feed. The science of plants would have been called
Phytology, from the Greek _phyton_, a plant.(1) The founders of Astronomy
were not the poet or the philosopher, but the sailor and the farmer. The
early poet may have admired “the mazy dance of planets,” and the
philosopher may have speculated on the heavenly harmonies; but it was to
the sailor alone that a knowledge of the glittering guides of heaven
became a question of life and death. It was he who calculated their
risings and settings with the accuracy of a merchant and the shrewdness of
an adventurer; and the names that were given to single stars or
constellations clearly show that they were invented by the ploughers of
the sea and of the land. The moon, for instance, the golden hand on the
dark dial of heaven, was called by them the Measurer,—the measurer of
time; for time was measured by nights, and moons, and winters, long before
it was reckoned by days, and suns, and years. Moon(2) is a very old word.
It was _môna_ in Anglo-Saxon, and was used there, not as a feminine, but
as a masculine; for the moon was a masculine in all Teutonic languages,
and it is only through the influence of classical models that in English
moon has been changed into a feminine, and sun into a masculine. It was a
most unlucky assertion which Mr. Harris made in his _Hermes_, that all
nations ascribe to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a feminine
gender.(3) In Gothic moon is _mena_, which is a masculine. For month we
have in A.-S. _mónâdh_, in Gothic _menoth_, both masculine. In Greek we
find _mēn_, a masculine, for month, and _mēnē_, a feminine, for moon. In
Latin we have the derivative _mensis_, month, and in Sanskrit we find
_mâs_ for moon, and _mâsa_ for month, both masculine.(4) Now this _mâs_ in
Sanskrit is clearly derived from a root _mâ_, to measure, to mete. In
Sanskrit, I measure is _mâ-mi_; thou measurest, _mâ-si_; he measures,
_mâ-ti_ (or _mimî-te_). An instrument of measuring is called in Sanskrit
_mâ-tram_, the Greek _metron_, our metre. Now if the moon was originally
called by the farmer the measurer, the ruler of days, and weeks, and
seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord of their festivals, and the
herald of their public assemblies, it is but natural that he should have
been conceived as a man, and not as the love-sick maiden which our modern
sentimental poetry has put in his place.
It was the sailor who, before intrusting his life and goods to the winds
and the waves of the ocean, watched for the rising of those stars which he
called the Sailing-stars or _Pleiades_, from _plein_, to sail. Navigation
in the Greek waters was considered safe after the return of the Pleiades;
and it closed when they disappeared. The Latin name for the _Pleiades_ is
_Vergiliæ_, from _virga_, a sprout or twig. This name was given to them by
the Italian husbandman, because in Italy, where they became visible about
May, they marked the return of summer.(5) Another constellation, the seven
stars in the head of Taurus, received the name of _Hyades_ or _Pluviæ_ in
Latin, because at the time when they rose with the sun they were supposed
to announce rain. The astronomer retains these and many other names; he
still speaks of the pole of heaven, of wandering and fixed stars,(6) but
he is apt to forget that these terms were not the result of scientific
observation and classification, but were borrowed from the language of
those who themselves were wanderers on the sea or in the desert, and to
whom the fixed stars were in full reality what their name implies, stars
driven in and fixed, by which they might hold fast on the deep, as by
heavenly anchors.
But although historically we are justified in saying that the first
geometrician was a ploughman, the first botanist a gardener, the first
mineralogist a miner, it may reasonably be objected that in this early
stage a science is hardly a science yet: that measuring a field is not
geometry, that growing cabbages is very far from botany, and that a
butcher has no claim to the title of comparative anatomist. This is
perfectly true, yet it is but right that each science should be reminded
of these its more humble beginnings, and of the practical requirements
which it was originally intended to answer. A science, as Bacon says,
should be a rich storehouse for the glory of God, and the relief of man’s
estate. Now, although it may seem as if in the present high state of our
society students were enabled to devote their time to the investigation of
the facts and laws of nature, or to the contemplation of the mysteries of
the world of thought, without any side-glance at the practical result of
their labors, no science and no art have long prospered and flourished
among us, unless they were in some way subservient to the practical
interests of society. It is true that a Lyell collects and arranges, a
Faraday weighs and analyzes, an Owen dissects and compares, a Herschel
observes and calculates, without any thought of the immediate marketable
results of their labors. But there is a general interest which supports
and enlivens their researches, and that interest depends on the practical
advantages which society at large derives from their scientific studies.
Let it be known that the successive strata of the geologist are a
deception to the miner, that the astronomical tables are useless to the
navigator, that chemistry is nothing but an expensive amusement, of no use
to the manufacturer and the farmer—and astronomy, chemistry, and geology
would soon share the fate of alchemy and astrology. As long as the
Egyptian science excited the hopes of the invalid by mysterious
prescriptions (I may observe by the way that the hieroglyphic signs of our
modern prescriptions have been traced back by Champollion to the real
hieroglyphics of Egypt(7))—and as long as it instigated the avarice of its
patrons by the promise of the discovery of gold, it enjoyed a liberal
support at the courts of princes, and under the roofs of monasteries.
Though alchemy did not lead to the discovery of gold, it prepared the way
to discoveries more valuable. The same with astrology. Astrology was not
such mere imposition as it is generally supposed to have been. It is
counted as a science by so sound and sober a scholar as Melancthon, and
even Bacon allows it a place among the sciences, though admitting that “it
had better intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of man than
with his reason.” In spite of the strong condemnation which Luther
pronounced against astrology, astrology continued to sway the destinies of
Europe; and a hundred years after Luther, the astrologer was the
counsellor of princes and generals, while the founder of modern astronomy
died in poverty and despair. In our time the very rudiments of astrology
are lost and forgotten.(8) Even real and useful arts, as soon as they
cease to be useful, die away, and their secrets are sometimes lost beyond
the hope of recovery. When after the Reformation our churches and chapels
were divested of their artistic ornaments, in order to restore, in outward
appearance also, the simplicity and purity of the Christian church, the
colors of the painted windows began to fade away, and have never regained
their former depth and harmony. The invention of printing gave the
death-blow to the art of ornamental writing and of miniature-painting
employed in the illumination of manuscripts; and the best artists of the
present day despair of rivalling the minuteness, softness, and brilliancy
combined by the humble manufacturer of the mediæval missal.
I speak somewhat feelingly on the necessity that every science should
answer some practical purpose, because I am aware that the science of
language has but little to offer to the utilitarian spirit of our age. It
does not profess to help us in learning languages more expeditiously, nor
does it hold out any hope of ever realizing the dream of one universal
language. It simply professes to teach what language is, and this would
hardly seem sufficient to secure for a new science the sympathy and
support of the public at large. There are problems, however, which, though
apparently of an abstruse and merely speculative character, have exercised
a powerful influence for good or evil in the history of mankind. Men
before now have fought for an idea, and have laid down their lives for a
word; and many of these problems which have agitated the world from the
earliest to our own times, belong properly to the science of language.
Mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease
of language. A myth means a word, but a word which, from being a name or
an attribute, has been allowed to assume a more substantial existence.
Most of the Greek, the Roman, the Indian, and other heathen gods are
nothing but poetical names, which were gradually allowed to assume a
divine personality never contemplated by their original inventors. _Eos_
was a name of the dawn before she became a goddess, the wife of
_Tithonos_, or the dying day. _Fatum_, or fate, meant originally what had
been spoken; and before Fate became a power, even greater than Jupiter, it
meant that which had once been spoken by Jupiter, and could never be
changed,—not even by Jupiter himself. _Zeus_ originally meant the bright
heaven, in Sanskrit _Dyaus_; and many of the stories told of him as the
supreme god, had a meaning only as told originally of the bright heaven,
whose rays, like golden rain, descend on the lap of the earth, the _Danae_
of old, kept by her father in the dark prison of winter. No one doubts
that _Luna_ was simply a name of the moon; but so was likewise _Lucina_,
both derived from _lucere_, to shine. _Hecate_, too, was an old name of
the moon, the feminine of _Hekatos_ and _Hekatebolos_, the far-darting
sun; and _Pyrrha_, the Eve of the Greeks, was nothing but a name of the
red earth, and in particular of Thessaly. This mythological disease,
though less virulent in modern languages, is by no means extinct.
During the Middle Ages the controversy between Nominalism and Realism,
which agitated the church for centuries, and finally prepared the way for
the Reformation, was again, as its very name shows, a controversy on
names, on the nature of language, and on the relation of words to our
conceptions on one side, and to the realities of the outer world on the
other. Men were called heretics for believing that words such as _justice_
or _truth_ expressed only conceptions of our mind, not real things walking
about in broad daylight.
In modern times the science of language has been called in to settle some
of the most perplexing political and social questions. “Nations and
languages against dynasties and treaties,” this is what has remodelled,
and will remodel still more, the map of Europe; and in America comparative
philologists have been encouraged to prove the impossibility of a common
origin of languages and races, in order to justify, by scientific
arguments, the unhallowed theory of slavery. Never do I remember to have
seen science more degraded than on the title-page of an American
publication in which, among the profiles of the different races of man,
the profile of the ape was made to look more human than that of the negro.
Lastly, the problem of the position of man on the threshold between the
worlds of matter and spirit has of late assumed a very marked prominence
among the problems of the physical and mental sciences. It has absorbed
the thoughts of men who, after a long life spent in collecting, observing,
and analyzing, have brought to its solution qualifications unrivalled in
any previous age; and if we may judge from the greater warmth displayed in
discussions ordinarily conducted with the calmness of judges and not with
the passion of pleaders, it might seem, after all, as if the great
problems of our being, of the true nobility of our blood, of our descent
from heaven or earth, though unconnected with anything that is commonly
called practical, have still retained a charm of their own—a charm that
will never lose its power on the mind, and on the heart of man. Now,
however much the frontiers of the animal kingdom have been pushed forward,
so that at one time the line of demarcation between animal and man seemed
to depend on a mere fold in the brain, there is _one_ barrier which no one
has yet ventured to touch—the barrier of language. Even those philosophers
with whom _penser c’est sentir_,(9) who reduce all thought to feeling, and
maintain that we share the faculties which are the productive causes of
thought in common with beasts, are bound to confess that _as yet_ no race
of animals has produced a language. Lord Monboddo, for instance, admits
that as yet no animal has been discovered in the possession of language,
“not even the beaver, who of all the animals we know, that are not, like
the orang-outangs, of our own species, comes nearest to us in sagacity.”
Locke, who is generally classed together with these materialistic
philosophers, and who certainly vindicated a large share of what had been
claimed for the intellect as the property of the senses, recognized most
fully the barrier which language, as such, placed between man and brutes.
“This I may be positive in,” he writes, “that the power of abstracting is
not at all in brutes, and that the having of general ideas is that which
puts a perfect distinction between man and brutes. For it is evident we
observe no footsteps in these of making use of general signs for universal
ideas; from which we have reason to imagine that they have not the faculty
of abstracting or making general ideas, since they have no use of _words_
or any other general signs.”
If, therefore, the science of language gives us an insight into that
which, by common consent, distinguishes man from all other living beings;
if it establishes a frontier between man and the brute, which can never be
removed, it would seem to possess at the present moment peculiar claims on
the attention of all who, while watching with sincere admiration the
progress of comparative physiology, yet consider it their duty to enter
their manly protest against a revival of the shallow theories of Lord
Monboddo.
But to return to our survey of the history of the physical sciences. We
had examined the empirical stage through which every science has to pass.
We saw that, for instance, in botany, a man who has travelled through
distant countries, who has collected a vast number of plants, who knows
their names, their peculiarities, and their medicinal qualities, is not
yet a botanist, but only a herbalist, a lover of plants, or what the
Italians call a _dilettante_, from _dilettare_, to delight. The real
science of plants, like every other science, begins with the work of
classification. An empirical acquaintance with facts rises to a scientific
knowledge of facts as soon as the mind discovers beneath the multiplicity
of single productions the unity of an organic system. This discovery is
made by means of comparison and classification. We cease to study each
flower for its own sake; and by continually enlarging the sphere of our
observation, we try to discover what is common to many and offers those
essential points on which groups or natural classes may be established.
These classes again, in their more general features, are mutually
compared; new points of difference, or of similarity of a more general and
higher character, spring to view, and enable us to discover classes of
classes, or families. And when the whole kingdom of plants has thus been
surveyed, and a simple tissue of names been thrown over the garden of
nature; when we can lift it up, as it were, and view it in our mind as a
whole, as a system well defined and complete, we then speak of the science
of plants, or botany. We have entered into altogether a new sphere of
knowledge where the individual is subject to the general, fact to law; we
discover thought, order, and purpose pervading the whole realm of nature,
and we perceive the dark chaos of matter lighted up by the reflection of a
divine mind. Such views may be right or wrong. Too hasty comparisons, or
too narrow distinctions, may have prevented the eye of the observer from
discovering the broad outlines of nature’s plan. Yet every system, however
insufficient it may prove hereafter, is a step in advance. If the mind of
man is once impressed with the conviction that there must be order and law
everywhere, it never rests again until all that seems irregular has been
eliminated, until the full beauty and harmony of nature has been
perceived, and the eye of man has caught the eye of God beaming out from
the midst of all His works. The failures of the past prepare the triumphs
of the future.
Thus, to recur to our former illustration, the systematic arrangement of
plants which bears the name of Linnæus, and which is founded on the number
and character of the reproductive organs, failed to bring out the natural
order which pervades all that grows and blossoms. Broad lines of
demarcation which unite or divide large tribes and families of plants were
invisible from his point of view. But in spite of this, his work was not
in vain. The fact that plants in every part of the world belonged to one
great system was established once for all; and even in later systems most
of his classes and divisions have been preserved, because the conformation
of the reproductive organs of plants happened to run parallel with other
more characteristic marks of true affinity.(10) It is the same in the
history of astronomy. Although the Ptolemæan system was a wrong one, yet
even from its eccentric point of view, laws were discovered determining
the true movements of the heavenly bodies. The conviction that there
remains something unexplained is sure to lead to the discovery of our
error. There can be no error in nature; the error must be with us. This
conviction lived in the heart of Aristotle when, in spite of his imperfect
knowledge of nature, he declared “that there is in nature nothing
interpolated or without connection, as in a bad tragedy;” and from his
time forward every new fact and every new system have confirmed his faith.
The object of classification is clear. We understand things if we can
comprehend them; that is to say, if we can grasp and hold together single
facts, connect isolated impressions, distinguish between what is essential
and what is merely accidental, and thus predicate the general of the
individual, and class the individual under the general. This is the secret
of all scientific knowledge. Many sciences, while passing through this
second or classificatory stage, assume the title of comparative. When the
anatomist has finished the dissection of numerous bodies, when he has
given names to each organ, and discovered the distinctive functions of
each, he is led to perceive similarity where at first he saw dissimilarity
only. He discovers in the lower animals rudimentary indications of the
more perfect organization of the higher; and he becomes impressed with the
conviction that there is in the animal kingdom the same order and purpose
which pervades the endless variety of plants or any other realm of nature.
He learns, if he did not know it before, that things were not created at
random or in a lump, but that there is a scale which leads, by
imperceptible degrees, from the lowest infusoria to the crowning work of
nature,—man; that all is the manifestation of one and the same unbroken
chain of creative thought, the work of one and the same all-wise Creator.
In this way the second or classificatory leads us naturally to the third
or final stage—the theoretical, or metaphysical. If the work of
classification is properly carried out, it teaches us that nothing exists
in nature by accident; that each individual belongs to a species, each
species to a genus; and that there are laws which underlie the apparent
freedom and variety of all created things. These laws indicate to us the
presence of a purpose in the mind of the Creator; and whereas the material
world was looked upon by ancient philosophers as a mere illusion, as an
agglomerate of atoms, or as the work of an evil principle, we now read and
interpret its pages as the revelation of a divine power, and wisdom, and
love. This has given to the study of nature a new character. After the
observer has collected his facts, and after the classifier has placed them
in order, the student asks what is the origin and what is the meaning of
all this? and he tries to soar, by means of induction, or sometimes even
of divination, into regions not accessible to the mere collector. In this
attempt the mind of man no doubt has frequently met with the fate of
Phaeton; but, undismayed by failure, he asks again and again for his
father’s steeds. It has been said that this so-called philosophy of nature
has never achieved anything; that it has done nothing but prove that
things must be exactly as they had been found to be by the observer and
collector. Physical science, however, would never have been what it is
without the impulses which it received from the philosopher, nay even from
the poet. “At the limits of exact knowledge” (I quote the words of
Humboldt), “as from a lofty island-shore, the eye loves to glance towards
distant regions. The images which it sees may be illusive; but, like the
illusive images which people imagined they had seen from the Canaries or
the Azores, long before the time of Columbus, they may lead to the
discovery of a new world.”
Copernicus, in the dedication of his work to Pope Paul III. (it was
commenced in 1517, finished 1530, published 1543), confesses that he was
brought to the discovery of the sun’s central position, and of the diurnal
motion of the earth, not by observation or analysis, but by what he calls
the feeling of a want of symmetry in the Ptolemaic system. But who had
told him that there _must_ be symmetry in all the movements of the
celestial bodies, or that complication was not more sublime than
simplicity? Symmetry and simplicity, before they were discovered by the
observer, were postulated by the philosopher. The first idea of
revolutionizing the heavens was suggested to Copernicus, as he tells us
himself, by an ancient Greek philosopher, by Philolaus, the Pythagorean.
No doubt with Philolaus the motion of the earth was only a guess, or, if
you like, a happy intuition. Nevertheless, if we may trust the words of
Copernicus, it is quite possible that without that guess we should never
have heard of the Copernican system. Truth is not found by addition and
multiplication only. When speaking of Kepler, whose method of reasoning
has been considered as unsafe and fantastic by his contemporaries as well
as by later astronomers, Sir David Brewster remarks very truly, “that, as
an instrument of research, the influence of imagination has been much
overlooked by those who have ventured to give laws to philosophy.” The
torch of imagination is as necessary to him who looks for truth, as the
lamp of study. Kepler held both, and more than that, he had the star of
faith to guide him in all things from darkness to light.
In the history of the physical sciences, the three stages which we have
just described as the empirical, the classificatory, and the theoretical,
appear generally in chronological order. I say, generally, for there have
been instances, as in the case just quoted of Philolaus, where the results
properly belonging to the third have been anticipated in the first stage.
To the quick eye of genius one case may be like a thousand, and one
experiment, well chosen, may lead to the discovery of an absolute law.
Besides, there are great chasms in the history of science. The tradition
of generations is broken by political or ethnic earthquakes, and the work
that was nearly finished has frequently had to be done again from the
beginning, when a new surface had been formed for the growth of a new
civilization. The succession, however, of these three stages is no doubt
the natural one, and it is very properly observed in the study of every
science. The student of botany begins as a collector of plants. Taking
each plant by itself, he observes its peculiar character, its habitat, its
proper season, its popular or unscientific name. He learns to distinguish
between the roots, the stem, the leaves, the flower, the calyx, the
stamina, and pistils. He learns, so to say, the practical grammar of the
plant before he can begin to compare, to arrange, and classify.
Again, no one can enter with advantage on the third stage of any physical
science without having passed through the second. No one can study _the_
plant, no one can understand the bearing of such a work as, for instance,
Professor Schleiden’s “Life of the Plant,”(11) who has not studied the
life of plants in the wonderful variety, and in the still more wonderful
order, of nature. These last and highest achievements of inductive
philosophy are possible only after the way has been cleared by previous
classification. The philosopher must command his classes like regiments
which obey the order of their general. Thus alone can the battle be fought
and truth be conquered.
After this rapid glance at the history of the other physical sciences, we
now return to our own, the science of language, in order to see whether it
really is a science, and whether it can be brought back to the standard of
the inductive sciences. We want to know whether it has passed, or is still
passing, through the three phases of physical research; whether its
progress has been systematic or desultory, whether its method has been
appropriate or not. But before we do this, we shall, I think, have to do
something else. You may have observed that I always took it for granted
that the science of language, which is best known in this country by the
name of comparative philology, is one of the physical sciences, and that
therefore its method ought to be the same as that which has been followed
with so much success in botany, geology, anatomy, and other branches of
the study of nature. In the history of the physical sciences, however, we
look in vain for a place assigned to comparative philology, and its very
name would seem to show that it belongs to quite a different sphere of
human knowledge. There are two great divisions of human knowledge, which,
according to their subject-matter, are called _physical_ and _historical_.
Physical science deals with the works of God, historical science with the
works of man. Now if we were to judge by its name, comparative philology,
like classical philology, would seem to take rank, not as a physical, but
as an historical science, and the proper method to be applied to it would
be that which is followed in the history of art, of law, of politics, and
religion. However, the title of comparative philology must not be allowed
to mislead us. It is difficult to say by whom that title was invented; but
all that can be said in defence of it is, that the founders of the science
of language were chiefly scholars or philologists, and that they based
their inquiries into the nature and laws of language on a comparison of as
many facts as they could collect within their own special spheres of
study. Neither in Germany, which may well be called the birthplace of this
science, nor in France, where it has been cultivated with brilliant
success, has that title been adopted. It will not be difficult to show
that, although the science of language owes much to the classical scholar,
and though in return it has proved of great use to him, yet comparative
philology has really nothing whatever in common with philology in the
usual meaning of the word. Philology, whether classical or oriental,
whether treating of ancient or modern, of cultivated or barbarous
languages, is an historical science. Language is here treated simply as a
means. The classical scholar uses Greek or Latin, the oriental scholar
Hebrew or Sanskrit, or any other language, as a key to an understanding of
the literary monuments which by-gone ages have bequeathed to us, as a
spell to raise from the tomb of time the thoughts of great men in
different ages and different countries, and as a means ultimately to trace
the social, moral, intellectual, and religious progress of the human race.
In the same manner, if we study living languages, it is not for their own
sake that we acquire grammars and vocabularies. We do so on account of
their practical usefulness. We use them as letters of introduction to the
best society or to the best literature of the leading nations of Europe.
In comparative philology the case is totally different. In the science of
language, languages are not treated as a means; language itself becomes
the sole object of scientific inquiry. Dialects which have never produced
any literature at all, the jargons of savage tribes, the clicks of the
Hottentots, and the vocal modulations of the Indo-Chinese are as
important, nay, for the solution of some of our problems, more important,
than the poetry of Homer, or the prose of Cicero. We do not want to know
languages, we want to know language; what language is, how it can form a
vehicle or an organ of thought; we want to know its origin, its nature,
its laws; and it is only in order to arrive at that knowledge that we
collect, arrange, and classify all the facts of language that are within
our reach.
And here I must protest, at the very outset of these lectures, against the
supposition that the student of language must necessarily be a great
linguist. I shall have to speak to you in the course of these lectures of
hundreds of languages, some of which, perhaps, you may never have heard
mentioned even by name. Do not suppose that I know these languages as you
know Greek or Latin, French or German. In that sense I know indeed very
few languages, and I never aspired to the fame of a Mithridates or a
Mezzofanti. It is impossible for a student of language to acquire a
practical knowledge of all tongues with which he has to deal. He does not
wish to speak the Kachikal language, of which a professorship was lately
founded in the University of Guatemala,(12) or to acquire the elegancies
of the idiom of the Tcheremissians; nor is it his ambition to explore the
literature of the Samoyedes, or the New-Zealanders. It is the grammar and
the dictionary which form the subject of his inquiries. These he consults
and subjects to a careful analysis, but he does not encumber his memory
with paradigms of nouns and verbs, or with long lists of words which have
never been used in any work of literature. It is true, no doubt, that no
language will unveil the whole of its wonderful structure except to the
scholar who has studied it thoroughly and critically in a number of
literary works representing the various periods of its growth.
Nevertheless, short lists of vocables, and imperfect sketches of a
grammar, are in many instances all that the student can expect to obtain,
or can hope to master and to use for the purposes he has in view. He must
learn to make the best of this fragmentary information, like the
comparative anatomist, who frequently learns his lessons from the smallest
fragments of fossil bones, or the vague pictures of animals brought home
by unscientific travellers. If it were necessary for the comparative
philologist to acquire a critical or practical acquaintance with all the
languages which form the subject of his inquiries, the science of language
would simply be an impossibility. But we do not expect the botanist to be
an experienced gardener, or the geologist a miner, or the ichthyologist a
practical fisherman. Nor would it be reasonable to object in the science
of language to the same division of labor which is necessary for the
successful cultivation of subjects much less comprehensive. Though much of
what we might call the realm of language is lost to us forever, though
whole periods in the history of language are by necessity withdrawn from
our observation, yet the mass of human speech that lies before us, whether
in the petrified strata of ancient literature or in the countless variety
of living languages and dialects, offers a field as large, if not larger,
than any other branch of physical research. It is impossible to fix the
exact number of known languages, but their number can hardly be less than
nine hundred. That this vast field should never have excited the curiosity
of the natural philosopher before the beginning of our century may seem
surprising, more surprising even than the indifference with which former
generations treated the lessons which even the stones seemed to teach of
the life still throbbing in the veins and on the very surface of the
earth. The saying that "familiarity breeds contempt" would seem applicable
to the subjects of both these sciences. The gravel of our walks hardly
seemed to deserve a scientific treatment, and the language which every
plough-boy can speak could not be raised without an effort to the dignity
of a scientific problem. Man had studied every part of nature, the mineral
treasures in the bowels of the earth, the flowers of each season, the
animals of every continent, the laws of storms, and the movements of the
heavenly bodies; he had analyzed every substance, dissected every
organism, he knew every bone and muscle, every nerve and fibre of his own
body to the ultimate elements which compose his flesh and blood; he had
meditated on the nature of his soul, on the laws of his mind, and tried to
penetrate into the last causes of all being—and yet language, without the
aid of which not even the first step in this glorious career could have
been made, remained unnoticed. Like a veil that hung too close over the
eye of the human mind, it was hardly perceived. In an age when the study
of antiquity attracted the most energetic minds, when the ashes of Pompeii
were sifted for the playthings of Roman life; when parchments were made to
disclose, by chemical means, the erased thoughts of Grecian thinkers; when
the tombs of Egypt were ransacked for their sacred contents, and the
palaces of Babylon and Nineveh forced to surrender the clay diaries of
Nebuchadnezzar; when everything, in fact, that seemed to contain a vestige
of the early life of man was anxiously searched for and carefully
preserved in our libraries and museums,—language, which in itself carries
us back far beyond the cuneiform literature of Assyria and Babylonia, and
the hieroglyphic documents of Egypt; which connects ourselves, through an
unbroken chain of speech, with the very ancestors of our race, and still
draws its life from the first utterances of the human mind,—language, the
living and speaking witness of the whole history of our race, was never
cross-examined by the student of history, was never made to disclose its
secrets until questioned and, so to say, brought back to itself within the
last fifty years, by the genius of a Humboldt, Bopp, Grimm, Bunsen, and
others. If you consider that, whatever view we take of the origin and
dispersion of language, nothing new has ever been added to the substance
of language, that all its changes have been changes of form, that no new
root or radical has ever been invented by later generations, as little as
one single element has ever been added to the material world in which we
live; if you bear in mind that in one sense, and in a very just sense, we
may be said to handle the very words which issued from the mouth of the
son of God, when he gave names to “all cattle, and to the fowl of the air,
and to every beast of the field,” you will see, I believe, that the
science of language has claims on your attention, such as few sciences can
rival or excel.
Having thus explained the manner in which I intend to treat the science of
language, I hope in my next lecture to examine the objections of those
philosophers who see in language nothing but a contrivance devised by
human skill for the more expeditious communication of our thoughts, and
who would wish to see it treated, not as a production of nature, but as a
work of human art.
LECTURE II. THE GROWTH OF LANGUAGE IN CONTRADISTINCTION TO THE HISTORY OF
LANGUAGE.
In claiming for the science of language a place among the physical
sciences, I was prepared to meet with many objections. The circle of the
physical sciences seemed closed, and it was not likely that a new claimant
should at once be welcomed among the established branches and scions of
the ancient aristocracy of learning.(13)