Part 1 (2/2)

”This Iis 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 ns for universal ideas; froine that they have not the faculty of abstracting or eneral 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 cos; 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 clai with sincere ady, yet consider it their duty to enter their ainst a revival of the shallow theories of Lord Monboddo

But to return to our survey of the history of the physical sciences We had exah which every science has to pass

We saw that, for instance, in botany, a h 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_, froht 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 le 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 coroups or natural classes ain, in their eneral features, are mutually coeneral and higher character, spring to view, and enable us to discover classes of classes, or fadom of plants has thus been surveyed, and a siarden of nature; e 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 lae discover thought, order, and purpose pervading the whole realhted up by the reflection of a divineToo hasty comparisons, or too narrow distinctions,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 ain until all that seeular has been eliminated, until the full beauty and harht the eye of God bea out from the midst of all His works The failures of the past prepare the triumphs of the future

Thus, to recur to our forement of plants which bears the name of Linnaeus, and which is founded on the nu out the natural order which pervades all that grows and blossoe tribes and families of plants were invisible from his point of view But in spite of this, his as 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 conforans of plants happened to run parallel with other more characteristic marks of true affinity(10) It is the sah the Ptole one, yet even from its eccentric point of vieere discovered deter the true movements of the heavenly bodies The conviction that there re 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 ie 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 coether single facts, connect isolated iuish bethat is essential and what is eneral 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 nuan, 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 anianization of the higher; and he becomes idom 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 irees, fro work of nature,-man; that all is the manifestation of one and the saht, 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 lahich underlie the apparent freedos 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 lomerate of atoms, or as the work of an evil principle,read and interpret its pages as the revelation of a divine power, and wisdoiven to the study of nature a new character After the observer has collected his facts, and after the classifier has placed thein and what is theof all this? and he tries to soar, by ions not accessible to the mere collector In this attempt the mind of man no doubt has frequently met with the fate of Phaeton; but, undisain 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 froe” (I quote the words of Hulance towards distant regions The ies which it sees es which people i before the time of Columbus, they may lead to the discovery of a neorld”

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 uess, 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 andof Kepler, whosehas been considered as unsafe and fantastic by his contemporaries as well as by later astronomers, Sir David Brewster remarks very truly, ”that, as an instruination has been ive laws to philosophy” The torch of iination is as necessary to him who looks for truth, as the lamp of study Kepler held both, and uide hiht

In the history of the physical sciences, the three stages which we have just described as the eenerally 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 chasenerations is broken by political or ethnic earthquakes, and the work that was nearly finished has frequently had to be done again frorowth 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 nauish between the roots, the stem, the leaves, the flower, the calyx, the starae, 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 hest achievements of inductive philosophy are possible only after the way has been cleared by previous classification The philosopher ieneral Thus alone can the battle be fought and truth be conquered

After this rapid glance at the history of the other physical sciences,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 knohether 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 so else You ranted that the science of language, which is best known in this country by the nay, is one of the physical sciences, and that therefore its ht to be the same as that which has been folloith so y, 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 coy, and its very nas to quite a different sphere of hue, 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 y, 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 coy 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 h in return it has proved of great use to hi whatever in coy, whether classical or oriental, whether treating of ancient or es, 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 es have bequeathed to us, as a spell to raise froes and different countries, and as a means ultiious progress of the hues, 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 coy the case is totally different In the science of language, languages are not treated as a e 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 Hoes, ant to know language; what language is, how it can forin, 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 ainst the supposition that the student of language uist 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 uages as you know Greek or Latin, French or Geres, and I never aspired to the fame of a Mithridates or a Mezzofanti It is ie to acquire a practical knowledge of all tongues hich he has to deal He does not wish to speak the Kachikal language, of which a professorshi+p was lately founded in the University of Guateancies of the idiom of the Tcheremissians; nor is it his ambition to explore the literature of the Sarammar and the dictionary which form the subject of his inquiries These he consults and subjects to a careful analysis, but he does not encu 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 nu the various periods of its growth

Nevertheless, short lists of vocables, and irammar, 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 mentary information, like the comparative anatoht home by unscientific travellers If it were necessary for the coist to acquire a critical or practical acquaintance with all the languages which fore would simply be an impossibility But we do not expect the botanist to be an experienced gardener, or the geologist a ist 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 ht call the realh 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 ies, 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 centuryeven than the indifference hich forenerations treated the lessons which even the stones see in the veins and on the very surface of the earth The saying that ”familiarity breeds contempt” would seeravel of our walks hardly seee 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 -and yet language, without the aid of which not even the first step in this glorious career could have beentoo close over the eye of the hue when the study of antiquity attracted the etic s of Roman life; when parchments were hts of Grecian thinkers; when the toypt 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 seee of the early life of man was anxiously searched for and carefully preserved in our libraries and e, which in itself carries us back far beyond the cuneiforlyphic docuh an unbroken chain of speech, with the very ancestors of our race, and still draws its life fro 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 viee 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 froave 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 e, I hope in my next lecture to exae nothing but a contrivance devised by huhts, and ould 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