Part 1 (1/2)

Lectures on The Science of Language

by Max Muller

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 o theladly 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 theh 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 ment”

MAX MuLLER

_Oxford_, June 11, 1861

LECTURE I THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE ONE OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES

When I was asked soo to deliver a course of lectures on Coy in this Institution, I at once expressed land to know that the peculiar difficulties arising froe would be lish audience, and I had such perfect faith in ht 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 Gerer share of public sympathy than they had hitherto received; and it seee, that the discoveries in this newly-opened mine of scientific inquiry were not inferior, whether in novelty or ie

It was not till I began to write my lectures that I became aware of the difficulties of the task I had undertaken The die are so vast that it is iive reatest charms of this science consists in the e, 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 achievee in their true light Another difficulty arises from the dryness of many of the probleations cannot be es possessed by most lecturers, who enliven their discussions by experirams If, with all these difficulties and drawbacks, I do not shrink fro 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 cheist, and wont to see the novel results of inductive reasoning invested by native eloquence, with all the char myself, I cannot mistrust my subject The study of wordsof stones is to the wayside laborer; but to the thoughtful eye of the geologist these stones are full of interest;-he sees h-road, and reads chronicles in every ditch Language, too, has lance of the patient student There are chronicles below her surface; there are serround, 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 hus, it would see 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 alift of God, it is God's greatest gift; for through it God spake to man and man speaks to God in worshi+p, prayer, and h the hich is before usand 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 inning 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 Ger that they have led to the e as to the real objects of this new science We hear it spoken of as Coy, and Glossology In France it has received the convenient, but souistique_ If we ht derive it either froos_, speech But the title of _Mythology_ is already occupied, and _Logology_ would jar too much on classical ears We need not waste our ti these names, as none of thes to the titles of other y or Comparative Anato science after we have once ascertained its birth, its parentage, and its character I e, though in these days of high-sounding titles, this plain naeneral acceptance

Fro of our science But before we enter upon a definition of its subject-ht to be followed in our researches, it will be useful to cast a glance at the history of the other sciences, ae now, for the first tiradual progress, and definite settleraphy, and as we buy experience cheapest in studying the lives of others, wescience froances inherent in youth by learning a lesson for which other branches of hue 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 Huress, the causes of failure and success have been the sae

There are three es in the history of every one of them, which we may call the _Empirical_, the _Classificatory_, and the _Theoretical_ However hurand their present titles, can be traced back to the e 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 es to co wants of a patriarchal and semi-barbarous society The nae 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 huan with e_, land, ground, earth, and _metron_, inally the science of _botane_, which in Greek does not eneral, 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 hare 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 nale stars or constellations clearly show that they were invented by the ploughers of the sea and of the land The olden hand on the dark dial of heaven, was called by them the Measurer,-the hts, andbefore it was reckoned by days, and suns, and years Moon(2) is a very old word

It was _lo-Saxon, and was used there, not as a feminine, but as a uages, and it is only through the influence of classical ed 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 ender(3) In Gothic moon is _mena_, which is a masculine For month we have in A-S _monadh_, in Gothic _menoth_, both masculine In Greek we find _men_, a masculine, for month, and _mene_, a feminine, for moon In Latin we have the derivative _mensis_, month, and in Sanskrit we find _mas_ for moon, and _masa_ for month, both masculine(4) Now this _mas_ in Sanskrit is clearly derived from a root _ma_, to measure, to mete In Sanskrit, I measure is _ma-mi_; thou measurest, _ma-si_; heis called in Sanskrit _ma-trainally called by the farmer the ulator 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_, froation in the Greek waters was considered safe after the return of the Pleiades; and it closed when they disappeared The Latin naa_, a sprout or twig This naiven 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 _Pluviae_ 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 na 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 froe of those who themselves anderers on the sea or in the desert, and to whom the fixed stars were in full reality what their naht hold fast on the deep, as by heavenly anchors

But although historically we are justified in saying that the first geoardener, the first ist a e a science is hardly a science yet: that es is very far from botany, and that a butcher has no claim to the title of coht that each science should be res, and of the practical requireinally intended to answer A science, as Bacon says, should be a rich storehouse for the glory of God, and the relief of h it h state of our society students were enabled to devote their tiation of the facts and laws of nature, or to the conteht, without any side-glance at the practical result of their labors, no science and no art have long prospered and flourished a 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 coht of the ieneral 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 ator, that che but an expensive amusement, of no use to the eology would soon share the fate of alcheyptian science excited the hopes of the invalid by mysterious prescriptions (I ns of our modern prescriptions have been traced back by Cha as it instigated the avarice of its patrons by the proold, it enjoyed a liberal support at the courts of princes, and under the roofs of h alcheold, it prepared the way to discoveries y was not such enerally 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 a that ”it had better intelligence and confederacy with the iination ofcondey 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 tiotten(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 s began to fade away, and have never regained their forave the death-blow to the art of orna 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 ly on the necessity that every science should answer some practical purpose, because I ae 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 dreae It sie is, and this would hardly seem sufficient to secure for a new science the sye There are probleh apparently of an abstruse and merely speculative character, have exercised a powerful influence for good or evil in the history of ht for an idea, and have laid down their lives for a word; and itated the world fro properly to the science of language

Mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease of language Aa name or an attribute, has been allowed to assume a more substantial existence

Most of the Greek, the Ro but poetical naradually allowed to assuinal inventors _Eos_ was a name of the dawn before she beca day _Fatuinally what had been spoken; and before Fate becareater than Jupiter, it meant that which had once been spoken by Jupiter, and could never be changed,-not even by Jupiter hiht heaven, in Sanskrit _Dyaus_; and many of the stories told of hiinally 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 shi+ne _Hecate_, too, was an old name of the moon, the fe sun; and _Pyrrha_, the Eve of the Greeks, was nothing but a name of the red earth, and in particular of Thessaly This es, is by no es the controversy between Noitated the church for centuries, and finally prepared the way for the Reforain, as its very nae, 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 ht

In e has been called in to settle so political and social questions ”Nations and languages against dynasties and treaties,” this is what has remodelled, and will remodel still ists have been encouraged to prove the ies and races, in order to justify, by scientific arguments, the unhallowed theory of slavery Never do I reraded than on the title-page of an A the profiles of the different races of man, the profile of the ape was ro

Lastly, the problem of the position of man on the threshold between the worlds of matter and spirit has of late assu the problems of the physical and hts of , and analyzing, have brought to its solution qualifications unrivalled in any previous age; and if we reater warmth displayed in discussions ordinarily conducted with the calht see, of the true nobility of our blood, of our descent fro 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 dom 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 ho, 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 anie Lord Monboddo, for instance, admits that as yet no anie, ”not even the beaver, who of all the anis, of our own species, coenerally classed together with these materialistic philosophers, and who certainly vindicated a large share of what had been clainized e, as such, placed between man and brutes