®I|e ^. p, ^m pbrnt^ ^0rti| Carolina ^inte Cttolkga V7Z M6 >>0>.\\ I This book is due on the date indicated below and is subject to an overdue T*» fine as posted at the circulation desk. EXCEPTION: Date due will be earlier if this item is RECALLED. f\^.^ Woc/- 200M/09-98-981815 THE COLLECTED WORKS OF F. MAX MiJLLER. Vol. I. Natural Religion : the Gifford Lectures, iS8S. 5s. Vol. II. Physical Religion : the GifTord Lectures, 1S90, fs. Vol. in. Anthropological Reli- gion: the (J ifturd Lectures, i8yi. 5 s. Vol. rV. Theosophy ; or, Psy- chological Religion: the GitTord Lectures, lS(j2. 5s. Cliips from a German Work- shop. 4 vols. Vol. V. Recent Essays and Addresses. 5 s. Vol. VI. Biographical Essays. 5 s. Vol.Vn. Essays on Language and Literature. 5s. Vol. Vm. Essays on Myth- ology and Folklore. 5 s. Vol. IX. The Origin and Growth of Religion, as illustrated by the Religions of India : the Hibbert Lectures, 1878. 5s. Vol. X. Biographies of Words and the Home of the Aryas. 5s. Vols. XI, Xn. The Science of Language: Founded on l^ectuirs delivered at the Royal Institution in 1861 and 1863. 2 vols. 5s. each. Vol. Xm. India: What can it Teach Us? 5s. Vol. XIV. introduction to the Science of Religion, i' our Lec- tures, 1S70. fs. Vol. XV. Ramakr/shna: his Life and Sayings. 5s. Vol. XVI. Three Lectures on the Vedanta Philosophy, 1 894. 55- Vol. XV n. Last Essays. First Series. Lssays on Language, Folk- lore, &c. 5s, Vol.XVni. Last Essays. Second Series. Lssays on the Science of Religion. 5s. Vol. XIX. The Six Systems of Indian Philosophy. 7s. Od. net. Vol. XX. The Silesian Horse- herd ("Das Pferdeburla "; : Questions of the Hour Answered, fs. 32s. 35. 6d. 0//ier Worh by the same Author. Contributions to the Science of Mythology. 2 vols. 8vo. My Autobiography: a Fragment. With 6 Portraits. 8vo. Auld Lang Syne. Second Series. Svo. los. 6d. Deutsche Liebe (German Love). Translated from the German by Mrs. Max Ml'LLER. Crown 8vo, gilt top. 5s. PocJcet Edition: Wx^h. Photogravure Portrait. Fcap Svo, gilt top. 2S. net ; leather, 3s. net. The Life and Letters of the Right Honourable Friedrich Max Miiller. Edited by his Wife. With 6 Photogravure Illustrations (three Portraits). 2 vols. Svo. 32s. net. LONGMANS, GREEN & CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.C. NEW YORK AND BOMBAY COLLECTED WORKS OF THE RIGHT HON. F. MAX MULLER BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS AND THE HOME OF THE ARFAS BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE First Printed, November, 1887 ; Reprinted in the Collected Edition of Prof. Max Mflller'a Worka, December, 189S; May, 1905; October, 1912. TABLE OF CONTENTS. PAGE Introduction ix Biographies of Words : I. Foes Fortuna i II. Words in their Infancy 17 III. Persona 32 IV. School-day Recollections 48 v. Weighing, Buying, and Selling .... 62 VI. The Home of the Aryas 80 VII. The Earliest Aryan Civilisation . . . .128 Statistics : I. Family 156 II. Domestic Animals 160 III, Wild Animals . . . . , .163 IV. Birds 165 V. House and Home 166 VI. Home Occupations 168 VII. Trees and Plants 173 VIII. Agriculture 174 IX. Seasons 177 X. Weapons 178 XI. Metals 180 XII. Government 181 XIII. Body 183 XIV. Mind 187 XV. Religion and Myth . , . , . 1S8 Appendices : I. Letter from Sir George Biedwood on the Aryan Fauna and Flora II. Letters on the Original Home of Jade . III. Letters on the Original Home of the Soma IV. Letter on Philology versus Ethnology . V. The Third Metal, Copper or Iron , 199 209 222 243 252 Index 267 I INTRODUCTION. F what I have tried to prove in my ' Science of _ Thought 1 is true, if thought is impossible with- out language, as language is without thought, many things will follow, not dreamt of yet in our philosophy. But leaving aside these graver matters for the present, there is one thing which, as everybody can see, will follow by necessity from the admission of the insepar- ableness of language and thought, and that is that all thoughts which have ever passed through the mind of men must have found their first embodiment, and their permanent embalmment, in words. If then we want to study the history of the human mind in its earliest phases, where can we hope to find more authentic, more accurate, more complete docu- ments than in the annals of language? I speak, of course, of the materials of thought only, of the words which in reasoning we add and subtract, combine and separate, whether in the daily intercourse of life, or in our speculations as philosophers, or in our flights of fancy as poets. No doubt, the way in which we reason,in which we arrange or contrast our materials, is our own, the work of our own will, our own judg- ment, our own genius, or whatever else we like to call it. With all the bricks, or all the marble, silver, gold, and precious stones that may be given to an architect, 1 ' The Science of Thought, by F. Max MiiUer. Longmans, 1887. X INTRODUCTION. it is only a Michael Angelo that could build St. Peter's ; and with all the wealth of the Greek laniruajre, it is only an Aeschylus that could create the Agamemnon. But neither could a builder build a temple without bricks and mortar, nor a poet make a poem without the materials supplied by dictionary or grammar. We are far too apt to take these bricks and mortar for granted, and to look upon our dictionary as something given, something for which no one is responsible, something for which we owe no thanks to anybody. But that is not so. Our words are not rousfh. unhewn stones, left at our door by a glacial moraine ; they are blocks that have been brought to light by immense labour, that have been carved, shaped, measured and weighed again and again, before they became what we find them to be. Our poets make poems out of words, but every word, if carefully examined, will turn out to be itself a petrified poem, a reward of a deed done or of a thought thought by those to whom we owe the whole of our intellectual inheritance, the capital on which we live, with which we speculate and strive to grow richer and richer from day to day. Every word therefore has a story to tell us, if only we can break the spell and make it speak out once more. It is known that every word, if we can analyse it at all, is found to be derived from a root It is equally well known that every root is predicative, that it predicates something of something, and that what it thus predicates is in reality an abstract or general concept. This applies to all languages, even to those of so-called savages, whenever they have been subjected to a really scholarlike analysis. All words, INTRODUCTION. XI even the most concrete, are based on abstract concepts, and what was supposed to come last, namely abstraction, has now been proved to have come first, at all events in the growth of real language and real thought. This may sound strange particularly if we remember how often we have been told that there are savages now living in whose languages we find as yet no abstract nouns at all. These poor savages are a real godsend to our young philosophers, a kind of Utopia where they find everything which their hearts desire. If by abstract nouns we mean what Schopenhauer calls abstract nouns of the second degree, such as whiteness, goodness, kindness, this may be true. These words form a kind of second story, and may well be absent in some of the languages of so-called savages, without causing serious inconvenience. Even in our own advanced languages we could dispense with those words. We could speak of the white of the eye, instead of its whiteness ; we could speak of the white of milk, chalk, and snow, and we should convey the same idea, though less definitely, as if we used the word whiteness. But what we have now learnt is that the very ground-floor of our lan- guage is made up of abstract terms, that it rests in fact on arches and pillars, and not on mere rubbish. White is an abstract term, so is good, so is kind, so are also man and woman, dog and cat, river and tree. A river is a runner, and presupposes a root meaning to run ; a tree is what can be torn or peeled or hol- lowed out or shaped into shafts, and presupposes a root meaning to tear. There is this ancient crypt underlying everywhere the ground-floor of oui' Ian- XU INTRODUCTION. guage, and though that crypt is often very trouble- some to explore, very slippery and full of cobwebs, no one can any longer deny its existence, or doubt that it consisted of what, for want of a better name, we call roots. What we have more lately learnt is that these roots, or these elements, which resist further analysis, expressed originally concepts, and that these concepts can, in most cases, be traced back to simple states of consciousness of certain primitive acts of our own, which, if repeated and conceived as one, contain within themselves the first germs of general and abstract concepts. There ai'e, or there were, writers who try to deny these facts, or to minimise their importance. There are no such things as roots, they say, and they imagine that in saying this they have started quite a new heresy. But the question whether there ever was a 'time in which language consisted of roots only, is really an absurd question. A root with us is always the result of an analysis, and, as such, it cannot strictly be said to have ever existed by itself. A word, even though identical in sound with a root, has no right to be called a root, as soon as it forms part of a sentence. All this has been explained a hundred times. San- skrit grammarians have insisted on it more than two thousand years ago ; and yet it is preached again and again as a new revelation, that in real language we never meet with a root^. ^ *Der Wurzel werden wir eine einstmalige reale Existenz abzu- Bprechen nicht im Stande sein.' Schrader, ' Uber den Gedanken einer Kulturgeschichte/ 1887, p. 7; Delbriick, 'Einleitung in das Sprach- Btudium,' p. 74. INTRODUCTION. Xlll Another discovery which likewise seems to be made periodically, is that roots, such as we can now dis- cover by phonetic analysis, need not therefore be con- sidered as the ultimate elements of language. Of course, if ultimate is used in the sense of existing in the beginning of all things, we can know nothing of ultimate roots. But if, as every scholar knows, we mean by ultimate the last elements within our reach, then the 800 roots of Sanskrit may be called the ultimate elements of Sanskrit. Of ultimate, in the sense of primary elements of language, we can never EopTlo know anything. We may, if it gives us pleasure, believe in ever so many extinct generations of roots, but real science has nothing to do with such mere dreams of possibilities. What we know is that, given about 800 roots, we can account for the great majority of words in Sanskrit. Modern languages, though richer in words, require even a smaller number of roots for their explanation, because where all the descendants of a root have become extinct, and this is frequently the case in modern languages, the very existence of such a root would be unknown to us, unless we possessed some documents of an earlier date. The fact then that nearly the whole of the Sanskrit Dictionary can be accounted for with about 800 roots, expressing about 120 concepts, remains unaffected by all these vague surmises. All we mean when we call these roots ultimate elements is that, for the present at least, they admit of no further analysis ^ It is ^ If in the list of Sanskrit roots, as arranged by me for the first time under 121 concepts, there are roots of a clearly secondary character. XIV INTRODUCTION. the discovery of these predicative roots which lie embedded in every word, which has restored life to our words, and has enabled us to read the original meaning of many of the most ancient names in our language. Every word, if it can thus be analysed and traced back to its root, tells us its own story, and though in listening to these stories we may occasionally be deceived, that is no reason why we should not attempt to do what we can. It is no sign of scientific honesty to attempt to claim for what is in reality a branch of historical research, a character of mathematical cer- tainty. We all know that in dealing with th ejearliest phases of human thought, whether in language, or religion, or mythology, our evidence is often very imperfect, and our conclusions liable therefore from time to time to considerable modifications. This is so ; it cannot be otherwise ; and it is only the rawest recruit who expects mathematical precision where, from the nature of the case, we must be satisfied with approximative aimings. If we cannot interpret every word, let us interpret those we can. If we cannot guard against the possibility of error, let us guard at all events against too positive assertions. No one knows better than the hardy workman, who has whether in form or in nieanirg, this means no more than that in Sanskrit we cannot go beyond such roots. Thus N^T, to dance, is certainly very far from being primitive, but if we try to go beyond, we find that NiB is no root at all, at least in Sanskrit, and that there is no concept, either more special or more general, to which in Sanskrit that of dancing can be traced. Why will people always ask for what is impossible, namely, the discovery of Pre- Adamite roots, instead of trying with all their might and main to do what is possible, namely, to discover the real constituent elements of real language ? INTRODUCTION. XV passed his whole life in opening a mine and digging for gold, how many dangers he has to face, and how often he may take for gold what only glitters. But though he knows the risks he runs, and the disap- pointments that await him, he does not therefore give up his work and throw away his tools. It is the idle lounger who thinks it folly to enter a shaft where there has ever been an accident, and who sneers at anything which, when brought to light, does not turn out to be pure gold. New facts must modify old theories. In all historical sciences — and etymology, as such, must be called an historical science — we keep a door open for the discovery of new documents and for a more accurate interpretation of old documents. A historian who claims absolute certainty for his arguments, or infallibility for his conclusions, may pose as an oracle, but his utterances will be ignored by all who know what real history is. In the Semitic languages we are never satisfied till we have traced words back to their roots, and even though the radical meanings assigned to some nouns are very startling, the general principle that words must have had a radical predicative meaning is never doubted in Hebrew or Arabic. Why then should it be considered so incredible that the same holds good with regard to the Aryan languages ? Nothing seems to have given so great offence to certain students of anthropology as what I consider one of the funda- mental principles of the Science of Language, namely that everything in language had originally a meaning, or, what is the same thing, that every word is derived from a predicative root. These roots may not always XVI INTKODUCTION. give the anthropologist the answer which he expected, they may sometimes startle even unprejudiced scholars by the strangeness of their replies. But without sup- posing that our interpretation of the facts of language is always right, the facts themselves remain, whether they are ignored or ridiculed, and they will have to be explained, however troublesome they may appear. Much has been written of late against my interpreta- tion of words expressive of the different degrees of rela- tionship in the Aryan languages, and more particularly in Sanskrit, but nothing, as far as I know, to invalidate in the least degree the lessons which I thou2rht we ought to learn from the interpretation of these words. What is, for instance, the meaning of the word Father? Has any more plausible interpretation been offered than that it meant feeder, protector, ruler ? Pater, Sk. pi tar, consists of a radical element Pa, and a derivative element tar. The root pi means to feed in pa-bulum, food; it means to protect in Sk. go -pa, cow-herd; and it means strong, ruler, king, in Sk. pa-ti, lord, 8€o--7ro-rr]9, lord, potis, strong. Some scholars may doubt about the connection of pa in pati with pa in pater, but the fact that father was intended by the early Aryas as a feeder, protector, and lord, would not be in the least affected by this. Which of these three meanings was present to the mind of the original framers of the word it is impossible to say. A root lives in its derivatives, and its mean- ings are called out and differentiated by the varying purposes which it is made to serve. But whether the Aryas, before they were broken up into Hindus, Persians, Greeks, Italians, Teutons, Slaves, and Celts, INTRODUCTION. XVll conceived the father as a feeder, or a protector, or a ruler, it is quite clear that they could not have framed such a name during the so-called metrocratic stage, when, as we are told, the mother was the feeder, pro- tector and ruler of her young, and the father no more than a casual visitor. Whether in unknown times the Aryas ever passed through that metrocratic stage in which the children and all family property belong to the mother, and fathers have no recognised position whatever in the family, we can neither assert nor deny. But if Aryan language makes the Aryan man, then the Aryan man had certainly emerged from that half-brutal state before he could form such a name as father, Sanskrit pitdr, Armenian hayr, Greek Trar?//), Latin pater, Gothic fadar, Irish athir, whether it means nourisher, protector, or ruler. To the students of Agriology such facts are unwelcome, and they try to laugh them away. They hoped to see in the image of the earliest stage of society as reflected in the mirror of language, clear traces of metrocracy, of communal marriage, of omo- phagy and cannibalism, but there were none. It does by no means follow therefore that the Aryas never passed through these stages of brutality, savagery, and barbarism. They may or they may not have done so. All I maintain is that their lanoruasfe has preserved no traces of it, and that there is no evidence, so far a6_I J^noWj^more ancient and more trustworthy than language. If Agriologists are quite convinced that aU humanity must begin with metrocracy, communal marriage, omo- P^2,gy, and cannibalism, there is every excuse for their b XVlll INTRODUCTION. declaring that the Aryan period, as reflected in the common dictionary of the Aryan languages, must be very modern and very far removed from the equivocal birth of the primitive savage. It may bo so. But when I look at what is pretended to be the more ancient picture of bloody savagery, such as the students of prehistoric ages have drawn it, I find that it is mostly composed of far more modern elements, of sketches in fact taken from uncivilised races of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. To transfer the customs, myths, and reli- gious beliefs of these modern savages to the end of the glacial period requires a bold flight of imagination, which we may admire, though we should not like to imitate it. One advantage, therefore, may be justly claimed for our modern narrow picture of modern Aryan life. It really rests on ancient evidence, and on evidence which can be criticised and verified by every student, without appealing to mere authority or trusting to his own fertile fancy. We are restricted to the evidence which language, by means of a careful analysis, can be made to reveal to us. The Agriologist is under no such restraints, and he can fill his canvas with whatever suits his taste and purpose. If his work is done consci- entiously, it deserves no doubt the highest credit, and may still lead to great discoveries. But there should be for the present, at least, a broad line of demarcation between his studies and our own. Our materials are different, our method is different. We cannot listen to the Agriologist when he tells us that pater may be derived from Pa, and mater from Ma, which are called sounds of nature uttered by INTRODUCTION. XIX savages all over the world. I know there are great names which may be quoted in support of such theories, but we are dealing here, not with great names, but with small facts. If pi tar were derived from Pa, and ma tar from Ma, then bhratar, brother, ought to be derived from a natural sound bhra, and duhitar from a natural sound duh, and sic in infinitum^ et in ahsurclum. Whenever language has been forced to give evidence in support of metrocratic and similar theories, the attempt has always failed. I do not for one moment deny the existence of a metrocratic stage of society in some part of the world, nor do I maintain that we find no traces of it here and there, in the customs even of certain Aryan races. All I object to is the un- natural craving of discovering such customs a tout jorix. Because, for instance, the Hindus say matj^-jpitarau for father and mother, not pita-ma tar au, it has been argued that they were still in a metrocratic stage when they formed that compound, as if the children's love and a father's inborn chivalry did not supply a far better 'explanation. Another attempt to discover in the Aryan languages traces of the former prevalence of marriage between brothers and sisters, has been equally unsuccessful. Because b h a r t a r, husband, is derived from the same root as bhratar, brother, it was argued that in the earliest phase of Aryan life there was no distinction between brother and husband. One might argue in the same way, as has been truly remarked by Tick, that because 3 XXI] INTRODUCTION. sister, also may well from the first have been intended for those who took care of the well-being of the family. Svas-ar is formed by ar (like dev-ar, nanan- dar) from svas, to be well. This compound root we have also in svas-ti, i.e. well-being, eveorw. This may again sound very modern or sentimental, still the combination is phonetically safe, and psycho- logically intelligible, and more than that we cannot hope to achieve. In 5va*uras, which stands for sva-#uras, I see likewise an old compound, meaning the lord of his own people or of his own estate. That sva is used in Sanskrit in the sense of die Seinigen and das Seinige we see in the Upanishads, in such pas- sages as Kaush. Up. IV, 20, yatha sreshf/iinsim sva bhu/7^ate, 'as his people live on the master,'' That it meant s u u m , one's own, one's property, we see in the Rig-veda, VII, 82, 6, dhruvam asya yat svam, 'safe is what is his own.' So again in the case of devar, which I take to have meant originally a play-fellow, from Div, to play, I do not claim absolute certainty for this ety- mology, though it is curious that in Sanskrit devar should be used more especially of the younger bro- thers of a husband^. All I maintain is that in an early state of society such a name would have been perfectly natural. To say that not every brother-in- law is a play-fellow, is saying no more than that not every beau-frere is beautiful. A very common name for son in later Sanskrit is nandana, which cannot mean anything but rejoicer. If then a eister- ' Delbruck, ' Zeitschrift fur d. Fbil.' i. 152. INTRODUCTION. XXlll in-law also is called nanandar, why should we not understand that name also as play-fellow, com- panion, friend *? When we find such a name as pa^u in India, Italy, and Germany, used in the sense of cattle, we know that the people who used such a word must have tethered their cattle, for pa5u comes from a root PA^, to fetter. If we find in Sanskrit vadhri, in Greek e^pi?, castratus, we may be sure that the Aryas had made some advance in the tending of cattle. It may be said that pa^, to tether, does not yet mean to tame or domesticate, but it is nevertheless the fii'st step towards it. In the Vedic and the Epic periods the difference between wild and domesticated animals is clearly established. As wild animals (ara;^ya/^, Zend auruna?) the following are men- tioned in the Mahabharata, VI, 165: — siw^ha, lion, vyaghra, tiger, varaha, wild boar, mahisha, wild ox, vara^^a, wild elephant, r/ksha, bear, vanara, ape. As tamed animals the Atharva-veda XI, 29, mentions: — gava/^, cows, a^va//, horses, a^ a v ay a /^, goats and sheep; and lastly purusha/^, men. In the lacustrian dwellings of the stone age remains of all these animals have been found, and those of the horse also at Viville (Van den Gheyn, p. 14). Sometimes gardabha, donkey, and a^vatara, mule, are added to this list of domestic animals, but, strange to say, never the dog. The name for king, ^anaka in Sanskrit and chuning in German, seems to me still, as it did years ago, a very strong argument in support of the patriarchal theory of government. For it could only XXIV INTRODUCTION. be among people where the father (^anaka) wielded the highest authority that the name for father could become the name for king, as //ani, wife, became the name for queen, Gothic qui no. We know from archaeology that weapons were made in different countries and at different times of stone, wood, and bone, before they were made of metal. Language tells us the same lesson. We have names of weapons before the Aryan Separation which clearly point to their material having been stone, wood, or bone, but none as yet which indicate their being made of metal. Thus clkcdv is clearly the San- skrit ii<>?an, which means stone and stone-weapon, as Rig-veda II, 30, 4, tapushasneva vidhya, 'pierce as if with a fiery stone.' The evidence for wooden weapons we find in hopv, corresponding to Sanskrit daru, wood. The use of bone is confirmed by the Zend asti, arrow, which is the Sanskrit asthi, Greek 6(tt€oi% Latin os, and still better perhaps by TreXeKuj, the Sanskrit para^u, provided that para<$u is con- nected with pur^u, rib and knife, and meant originally a rib of an animal, used as a falx or a curved weapon. These few specimens may serve to show how words, if only properly deciphered, may reflect the thoughts of the people who framed and modified them, and how wide a field is still open here for both linguistic and historical research. It is extraordinary to hear young people say that there remain no kingdoms to conquer in the Science of Language. It seems to me on the contrary that there is almost the whole world to INTRODUCTION. XXV conquer. Even in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, there is still plenty of work to do, and one of my chief objects in writing the following papers, the ' Biographies of Words,' for Good Words, was to show to younger stu- dents how many straws there are still to be gleaned, how many tracts lie uncultivated, how many mines unworked in the study of words. But the student of language has lessons to learn, not only from the Aryan, Semitic, and Turanian languages, not only from languages which possess a literature, but also from the unnumbered dialects, generally classed as savage, though if one knows what language means, it seems almost like a contradictio in adjecto to call any language savage. When one looks at the work that might here be done, one feels indeed inclined to say, ' The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few.' There was a time when it was thought possible to write about savages, to explain their customs, to criticise their legends and myths, and to compare their religions with the reli- gions of more civilised races, without a previous study of their languages. That time is past. As little as a scholar would venture to compare the religion of Homer with that of the Veda without knowing Greek and Sanskrit, would any one now consider it safe to compare the legends, say, of Mangaia with those of Rarotonga, without some previous knowledge of the grammar and dictionary of these dialects. Many revelations await us here. When we are told that the people of Mangaia look upon the universe as the hollow of a cocoa-nut shell, and that at the bottom of that shell there is a thick stem, called Te-aka-ia-Roe, XXvi INTRODUCTION. we seem to move in the very thick of dense savagery. But if the student of languages analyses Te-aka-ia- Roe, and tells us that it meant originally the * Root of all Existence \' our savages become suddenly meta- morphosed into modern metaphysicians, and we learn that even the thoughts of a Herveyan islander may have possibly some antecedents. If those who agree with me that many customs, legends, and beliefs of civilised nations can be explained by a comparison with the customs, legends, and beliefs of less civilised tribes, would only concentrate their energies on the study of their dialects, they would find ample work to do, and they might render service of real and perma- nent utility. In the Science of Language, Mythology and Religion, words have their history in Zulu quite as much as in Sanskrit and Greek, and the unravelling of one cluster of Zulu words would be more really useful than the most ingenious guesses on the true character of Tsui-go a b", or on the original purpose of the Te-pi custom ^. • I look upon the work done by such scholars as Bleek, Hahn, Gill, Callaway, Brinton, Hale, and others, as every whit as important as the labours of Grimm and Kuhn and Pott. Wherever we analyse language in a truly scholarlike spirit, whether in Iceland or in Tierra del Fuego, we shall find in it the key to some of the deepest secrets of the human mind, and the solution of problems in philosophy and religion which nothing else can supply. Each language, whether Sanskrit or \ » W. W. Gill, ' Myths and Songs from the South Pacific,' p. a. ^ * Introduction to the Science of Religion,' p. 280, ' 'Lectures on the Science of Language,' ii. p. 37. INTRODUCTION. XXVll Zulu, is like a palimpsest, which, if carefully handled, will disclose the original text beneath the superficial writing, and though that original text may be more difficult to recover in illiterate languages, yet it is there nevertheless. Every language, if properly sum- moned, will reveal to us the mind of the artist who framed it, from its earliest awakening to its latest dreams. Every one will teach us the same lesson, the lesson on which the whole Science of Thought is based, that there is no language without reason, as there is no reason without language. F. Max Muller. Oocjord, Oct. 12, 1887. BIOGEAPHIES OF WOEDS. I. FORS FORTUNA. TF ever there was an age bent on collecting old -*- things, it is our own. Think only of our museums, brimful of antiquities from all countries and all ages, and which, like our cemeteries, will soon become small villages, if they are to hold all that was once young and alive on earth. Besides these vast public repositories of the old things of the world, there is hardly a house of any pretensions in which we do not meet with some col- lection of old coins, old gems, old books, or old pictures, to say nothing of old lace and china. Yet such collections are expensive, and become more so with every year. Then why should not those who are unable to pay for Roman coins or Greek bronzes, for Egyptian bracelets or Babylonian cylinders, collect antiquities which will cost them nothing, and which are older than the oldest things from any part of the ancient world ? The fact is that everybody possesses such a museum of antiquities. Only he does not value it. He does not take the various specimens, clean and label them as he ou^ht B 2 BIOaRAPIIIES OF WORDS. if he wishes to know their real value, and hopes to make them useful to himself and others. That museum is our lanojuaoje. There is no word in English, French, or German, which is not older than the oldest of the pyramids, and yet, while we are willing to pay any sum for a scarabee containing the name of Sesostris, which after all tells us very little, we attach hardly any value to words which, if we would only trace them back to their distant source, might teach us lessons of the highest import. It does not matter what language we take or what word we choose ; every one of them will carry us back to times when there were as yet no statues, no gems, no coins, no cylinders, no pyramids, not even lacustrian dwell- ings, stone hammers, or flint-heads. For all these are the workmanship of intelligent beings, and no being can be intelligent without language. Here therefore is an opening for all who have a taste for collecting old things, and who are too poor to pay for what are after all, in comparison to words, very modern antiquities. But although the specimens for such a collection are cheap, the labour of collecting, of sifting and analysing them is not inconsiderable. There are some provinces in the vast realm of speech which as yet have been but very imperfectly surveyed and mapped out, and I should advise no collector to begin his museum with Patagonian, Indo-Chinese, or Abchasian w^ords. It is best to begin with our own language, and from thence to allow our researches to radiate towards the other languages of Europe. These have all been classified. With two exceptions, all the modern and ancient dialects of our small Euro- pean continent belong to three great families, the FORS FORTUNA. 3 Aryan, the Semitic, and the Turanian. The two unclassed languages are Bask and Etruscan, which as yet stand alone without any recognised relationship, while all the rest can prove their legitimate origin and their unquestioned descent. We might in fact claim the whole of Europe for the Aryan family of speech. For modern Hebrew, as spoken by a few Jews, is really a foreign language in Europe, while Maltese is a very insignificant representative of Semitic speech. As to the offshoots of Turanian speech in Europe, we have Hungarian in the south, and Finnish, Esthonian, and Lapponian in the north. Excluding these in- truders, or, it may be, these exiles, the whole of Europe is the home of Aryan speech. Before we begin to collect, however, and before we can hope to arrange our collection systematically, we must remember that the Aryan family did not take possession of this Western peninsula of Asia as an un- divided body, and at one and the same time. They had been separated for centuries, nay, more likely, for thousands of years, and to such an extent that when they poured into Europe, wave upon wave, they hardly recollected their distant relationship, and had cei*tainly become as unintelligible to one another as if they had never had the same fathers and mothers. We must therefore keep in our collections separate departments. In well-arranged museums we do not mix Greek with Roman statues, Celtic with Slavonic and Teutonic coins. W^e have one room for historic, another for prehistoric antiquities. We must keep the same order in our museums of words. I do not like to repeat here what every one who takes an in- terest in the subject can find in my ' Lectures on the B 2 4 BIOGBAPIIIES OF WORDS. Science of Language/ I have given there a full out- line of a scientific classification of the principal lan- guages of Europe, and according to that outline every collector can arrange his small collection of words, can trace their relationship, and follow their migra- tions from century to century. Though these lectures Avero published many years ago and may possibly themselves be counted among old things, I believe they will still answer every purpose in the hands of careful collectors of words or students of Comparative Philo- logy. It may bo that some more recent linguistic theories are not mentioned in them, but in that case, though my silence does not necessarily mean dissent, still less disapproval, it may mean that adltuc sub jiidice lis est^ i. e. that these theories require more careful testing before they should be admitted into a manual of the Science of Language. It may also bo that some of the theories which I still adhere to in these lectures may seem to others superseded by newer theories. But here again, though in a growing science like that of Comparative Philology we naturally have to learn and to unlearn from day to day, and from year to year, I doubt whether I have in my lectures put forward any doctrines which I should now have to surrender, or whether I ever represented arguments and conclusions as firmly established which, in the present state of our knowledge, cannot be otherwise than problematical. I may therefore, I believe, with a good conscience refer those of my readers who really wish to arrange for themselves a small museum of words to my ' Lec- tures on the Science of Language ' (last edition, 1885), where they will find all those rules which a librarian FORS FORTUXA. 5 wants for a caiaJogiie ralsonne of his books, or the keeper of a collection of coins for a proper arrange- ment of his chests and drawers. And as example is always better than precept, I shall select a few specimens in order to show how words should be collected, how they should be cleaned and arranged, and how their migrations should be traced from century to century, or from country to country ; for words are tossed about in the world, and their fates are often very strange. Each word has its biography, beginning with its birth, or at least with its baptism. We may speak of its childhood, its youth, its manhood, and old age, nay, even of its death, and of its heirs and successors. The early chapters of these word- biographies are no doubt the most difficult and require very careful treatment; but, as in the lives of men and women, they are also the most important, and in the case of most words they often determine the whole of their subsequent career. In the earliest chapters we shall find that our authorities sometimes differ and are not always quite trustworthy; nay, there are many lives in which as yet the earliest chapters are entirely missing. But there are rich archives which have still to be ransacked, and every conscientious student, I believe, will find that, with proper care and judgment, his researches will be amply rewarded. I shall begin with a word that seems to be very easy to place and to trace, but which, nevertheless, will prove somewhat troublesome when we try to follow it up to its first beginnings. Fortune came into English with that large class of words which the Normans brouo-ht into England from the north of France. The Normans, being them- 6 BIOGKArniES OF WORDS. selves of Scandinavian, that is, of Teutonic origin, adopted Northern French as their language, and had to learn a number of Latin words in that form which they had assumed in the laiirjue d 'oil, or the northern dialects of Gaul. The Latin fort una thus became the Norman fortune, and with a change of accent the English fortune. These later fates of the word require indeed but few remarks. Almost every one of the meanings which for tuna has assumed in English can be traced back to French, to mediaeval Latin, and finally to classical Latin. We speak of good and evil fortune, so did the French, and so did the Romans. By itself fort una was taken either in a good or in a bad sense, though it generally meant good fortune. It is the same in French, though in such expressions as Bieu vovs preserve de mal et de fortune it is clear that it can only be intended for mauvaise fortune. Whenever there could be any doubt, the Romans defined for tun a by such adjectives as hona^ seciuida^ jorospera, for good ; mala or adversa for bad fortune. Fort una thus be- came at a very early time one of those numerous words which, when their real origin has once been forgotten, prove very troublesome to all thoughtful speakers, and as they seem to be full of contradictions, call forth numerous more or less ingenious explana- tions. F r t u n a came to mean something like chance, and the ancient Romans accustomed themselves at a very early time to believe that certain things hap- pened by chance {forte qnddam), wdiile others were ordered by a divine will {diviriitiis). Sometimes they speak doubtfully whether there is such a thing as FOES FOETCxVA. 7 chance, or whether there is a god who cares for what happens to us (Cic. Att. iv. lo^); while more philo- sophical minds deny altogether the possibility of any chance, if all things are held together by necessity. (Cic. Divin. ii. 7, Si haec habent talem necessitatem, quid casil fieri aut forte fortutid putemus ? Nihil enirii est tarn contrarium rationi et constantiae quam for tuna : tit mihiiie in cleum quidem cadere mdeatiir ut sciat quid casu etfortuKo futurum sit.) In another place, however, he admits that, according to the judgment of all men, fortune may be asked from the gods, while wisdom is to be found within ourselves only (Nat. D. iii. 36). In this manner the word was tossed about. A distinction was sometimes attempted between fors, having the sense of chance, and For tuna, being the name of a goddess, a distinction which is clearly artificial, and is contra- dicted by the old name of the goddess herself, which, as we shall see, was Fors Fortuna. Another more definite sense which ' fortune ' has assumed in English and in French, namely ' wealth,' seems at first sight unclassical, but it is not so. As we say of a young lady that she has no fortune (which is not necessarily a misfortune), elle rCa point de fortune, or as we speak of a man who has made or lost his fortune, the Romans used fortuna, and particularly the plural, fortunae, in the sense of riches, or what the Germans call GVdcksfjilter. Cicero himself (pro S. Rose. Amer. 3) says, a Chrysogono jjeto ut pecunid for- tunisque nostris conientus sit. There are other meanings, however, which fortuna assumed in the mouths of the less classical descen- dants of Cicero, for which we are unable to produce * Sed de ista ambulatione fors viderit, aut si qui est qui curet deua. 8 EIOGIIAPHIES OF W0RD3. any warrant from classical writers, though, of course, this does not prove that for tuna, in its early youth and manhood, did not possess those meanings. In mediaeval Latin for tuna means a storm, or peril of the sea, and so it does in French. Froissart (i. i. loS) writes : Lenrs vaissaux eurent si graiide fortune sur mer que plusieurs de leiirs nefs furent perdues, which leaves no doubt ihdX fortune here means misfortune. Rabe- lais uses fort una! for tempest, and a sail which may be left during a storm is even now called voil de fortune. In Italian too fortunoso is used for a tempestuous sea, though originally it may have meant no more than perilous ; peril and fortune being used \ almost synonymously in such expressions, for in- stance, as a ses risqzces^ perils, et fortune. Another curious meaning was assumed by for- tuna when in mediaeval law-books it occurs in the sense of treasure trove, i. e. tresor trouve. Thus we read in the Stabilimenta St. Ludovici, lib. i, Nns na for- tune d'or, se il nest rois, i.e. no one has a right to \ treasure trove of gold, unless he be king. Such are the later chapters in the history of the word for tuna, and it might seem that nothing more "svas wanted to make us understand the whole of its curriculum rilae, if only we are satisfied that from the very beginning fort una meant chance, fortune, or misfortune, both, to our minds, very familiar ideas, and which seem to require no further j ustification. If an etymology was wanted, nothing seems more natural than to derive fors and for tuna from ferre, to bring, so that fors would have meant something that brings, and For tuna a goddess that brings good or evil gifts. Why should we wish to know any more, FORS FORTUNA. 4 or why should we hesitate to accept so natural a derivation ? I appeal to those who have studied the biographies of similar words in Latin whether they do not feel some misgiving about so vague and abstract a god- dess as I)ea quae fert, the goddess who brings. That For tuna and Fors were names of goddesses cannot be doubted. The only doubt is, whether the abstract noun f r t u n a was raised into a goddess, like Virtus or Victoria, or whether the name of the goddess became afterwards an abstract noun, as in the case of Venus, Gratiae, Mars, «&c. When abstract nouns are changed into goddesses, they seem in most cases to represent acts or qualities of men and women, such as virtus, virtue, pudicitia, shame, victoria, victory. For tuna, however, is of a very different character. She is something un- known or divine, supposed to bring good or evil to man. We ask, therefore, Who is she ? Wliat is her birthplace? What stuff is she made of? And here, if we inquire into the earliest traditions about the birth and the parents of For tuna, we observe a very great difference between her and such thin and airy per- sonifications as Fides, Spes, Virtus, Pavor, Pallor, Honor, Victoria, Concordia, Pudi- citia, and all the rest. These abstract goddesses have hardly any antecedents, and even later poets have no more to say of them than what any poet might say even at present, when addressiug such heavenly spirits as Virtue or Honour. Very different are the early credentials of For- tuna. To the later Romans For tuna may have seemed to be no more than ' one who brings,' dca quae 10 BIOaRAPHIES OP WORDS. fert^ but Fors was one of the most ancient Italian deities, and her worship flourished in many places. One of her oldest names is Fors Primogenia, or Primigenia, the first-born of the gods, though she is represented at other times as the daughter of Jupi- ter. One inscription ^ is addressed to her as Fortunai iJiovos Jilciai jirimoceiiiai, others as Fortunne Jovis pnero jjrimigeniae. This puer (child) or filia of Jupiter held an even more exalted position in some parts of Italy, for Cicero tells us of an old sanctuary and oracle at Praeneste, where Fortuna was represented as holding Jupiter and Juno on her lap, and giving the breast to young Jupiter. I ask, can such a goddess be explained as one of the modern abstract deities, like Fides or Spes? Do we find in Roman mythology anything analogous to a nondescript ' being who brings,' but occupying at the same time old sanctuaries, and being raised to the rank of either the mother or nurse or the child of Jupiter? It will be said, no doubt, that if we have in Greek such abstract goddesses as Moira or Aisa, we are hardly justified in objecting, on principle, to a Latin goddess, Fors, in the sense of a bringer. But, fi.rst of all, old Italian mythology is not the same as Greek ; and secondly, Moira, at least in Homer, shows no traces of that truly mythological character which can be discovered in Fors Primogenia. I believe that throughout Homer we might take Moira as a simple appellative, meaning share or fate, without destroying the poetical character of any passage in ^ See H. Jordan! Symbolae ad historiam religionnm Italicanim, in the Index Lectionum ex Regia Academia Albertina per aestatem anni 1885 habendarum ; Regimontii, 1S86. FOKS FORTUNA. 11 "which it occurs. I remember neither parents nor offspring of Moira and Aisa in Homer, nor do I think that, either in the Iliad or in the Odyssey, are prayers ever addressed to either of them. In later times, no doubt, they assume new names and a new character, but this seems chiefly due to their being- joined or even identified with such really ancient goddesses as the Erinyes, Keres, and Charites. Who, then, was this Fors, the fii'st-born, who can be conceived both as the daughter and as the mother of Jupiter? According to the language of Aryan mythology, the first-born of the bright gods is the Dawn. She is called Agriya. the first, who comes at the head of all the other gods, who brings, indeed, precious gifts, namely, light and life, and who, there- fore, is invoked first (prathama) at every morning prayer (purvahutau). The same Dawn is also called the daughter of Dyaus (Zeus), duhita Diva/^, and in other places she is, like Fors, represented as the mother of the gods (Rig-veda i. 113, 19), and as carry- ing her bright child, rusadvatsa. There are, in fact, few praises bestowed in the Veda on U s h a s, the Dawn, which cannot be transferred to For tuna, thus showing her to have been originally, like U s h a s, the bright light of each day, worshipped from the earliest days as the For tuna hujusce diei. Fortuna had one temple near the Circus Maximus, another in the Campus Martins, and her own festival fell on the 30th of July. This Fortuna hujusce diei was very much what we might call Good Morning. There was likewise a Fortuna Virgo, reminding us of the Fer-onia as Juno Virgo, and her festival fell on the same day as that of the Mater Matuta. Are all 12 ETOCJEArniES OF wouds. these purely fortuitous coincidences, or may we not see in all tliese sayings the same thought which Isaiah expressed in a parallel Semitic metaphor : ' Thy light shall break forth as the morning, and thine health shall spring forth speedily ? ' (ch. Iviii. 8.) And if in the concept of Fors Fortuna we cannot but recognise a reflex of the goddess of the Dawn, who brings everything, who in her lap has good and evil gifts, or who, as the German proverb say's, ' has gold in her mouth,' does her name resist our attempt to trace fortune back to the East and to recognise in her an old Aryan name of the Dawn ? No one who is acquainted with the phonetic laws which determine the form of Aryan roots in Latin and Greek, will hesitate for one moment to see in Fors a possible and, as far as phonetic rules are concerned, a perfectly legitimate descendant of the Sanskrit root iiJR, to glow, from which many names expressive of the light of day have sprung. In Sanskrit, by the side of h^p., we find the fuller form gum, and from it we have a large family of words, such as gh/ewa, heat, but also ghriw a, warmth of the heart, or pity; ghri?ii, sun- shine, gharma {Oepfios), summer, but likewise a name for a warming vessel, a kettle, and for what is warmed in it, hot milk; ghrfta, melted butter, fat, &c. This root is most prolific, particularly in words expressive of the afi'ections of the heart. Thus hrt- ni'te is used in the sense of being angry, i. e. of being hot against a person, while har-ya-te means he is hot after something, i. c. he desires it. From this we have har-yata, desirable, beautiful, Lat. gratus, while in hri, the original meaning of heat or blushing has been changed into that of shame. Many names FOES FOPvTUNA. 13 of colour too owe their origin to this root, such as hari, harit, hariwa, and harita, all meaning ori- ginally bright, but afterwards specialised, so as to express the colours of red, yellow, or gi'een. Two of these adjectives have in India become mythological names, hari and harit, both being used in the Veda as the names of the horses of the sun and of Indra. And while harit in Sanskrit remained the name of the horses or rays of the morning, in Greek the same word Xaptr became the name of one and after- wards of many bright and graceful goddesses of the morning, well known to all lovers of Greek poetry and art as Charis and the Charites. From the same source that yielded x<^P^^ ^^ caay, I believe, safely derive Fors, Fortis, taking it either as a mere contraction, or as a new derivative, corresponding to what in Sanskrit would be Har-ti, and would mean the brightness of the day, the Fortuna hujusce diei. But it will be said, Why should the people of Italy have called her Fors, and not Hors? To answer this question fully would require a long phonetic dis- quisition, and I prefer therefore to appeal here to a few facts only. Latin was poor in what we call aspirated sonant consonants. Greece was entirely deficient in them. If, therefore, we have in Sanskrit words beginning with h, gh, dh, or bh, we must be prepared in Latin to find either the aspiration alto- gether dropped, or h and f doing service for guttural, dental, or labial aspirated sonant consonants ^ That f and h vary in Latin we know from the statement of Latin grammarians, who mention fostis by the side * See Grassmann, in Kuhn's * Zeitschrift,' xii. 89. \ 14 BTOGRArniES OF WOLDS. of hostis, fostia by the side of hostia. Our shortest way, however, to show. that Fors may stand for Hors, is the Latin word corresponding to ghar- nia, heat, Greek ^ep/xo'y, -which is the same as the Latin adjective formus, a, um, hot. If gharma could become formus, harti could become forti. On phonetic grounds it is impossible to raise any objec- tions. From a m^^thological point of view Fors finds its full and perfect justification as a name given originally to the bright Dawn, as the daily bringer of good or it may be evil tidings, as the unknown or uncertain goddess, as the first-born of all the bright powers of the sky, and the daughter of the sky ; but likewise, from another point of view, as the mother of the daily sun, who is the bright child she carries in her arms. It is a very common fate for etymologies of this kind to be set down as ingenious and plausible, but no more. Now I protest against this. I do not claim absolute certainty for any etymology, but I maintain that, if all phonetic rules have been carefully ob- served, and if all psychological difficulties have been cleared away, an etymology ought to be accepted and treated like any other historical fact. I do not claim more, but I cannot accept less. Like all historical facts, an etymology also is liable to correction by the discovery of new evidence. We accept the fact that Napoleon was born in 1769, but we do not say that it is impossible he should have been born in any other year, and if new evidence should be forthcoming to show that his birth took place in 1768, we should be perfectly ready to accept it. The same applies to the bii'th of words. Show that Fors could not have FOES FOP.TUNA. 15 sprung from the root gh^, and that there is evidence that it sprang from the root bh.e, and we are willing to reconsider our conclusion. But, as the case stands now, we have a right to say, that unless some analogy can be shown for an ancient Italian deity having so thin and unmeaninir a name as ' she who brinofs or carries away,' and this, not as an epithet of another more substantial deity, but as a pure appellative, we must object to the explanation of Forsas Deaquae fert. We have likewise a right to say that Fors, as derived from gh^, and meaning the bright or golden, would, like xapoiri], aLyXi]€a-cra, \afJLTTpo(pai]s, (f)a€i'vd, be a most natural name of the brightest of all goddesses, the Dawn, the Morning, the Day. If a better ety- mology can be found, let it be produced, but until then let us accept our facts, as we accept all other facts, liable to correction, but, until so corrected, true.. There are historians who doubt whether Napoleon ever existed, and there are philosophers who doubt whether the Dawn and other manifestations of nature had any existence in the poetry and mythology of the ancient world. With such antagonists I am too old to fight. But if any should doubt that Nature in her common and yet her grandest aspects is reflected in the myths of the most ancient poets, let them consult the myths of the most modern poets, and they will see in them too ' the calm, all-permitting, wordless spirit of Nature — the sunrise, the heaving sea, the woods and mountains, the storm and the whistling winds, the gentle summer day, the winter sights and sounds, the night, and the high dome of the stars ^' absorbing the ^ See 'Birds and Poets,' by John Burroughs, Edinburgh, 1887, p. 255 ; the Flight of the Eagle (Walt Whitman). 16 EIOaEAPHIES OF WORDS. spirit of the beholder, and quickening and purifying the thoughts of the true poet with fresh and un- breathed morning air. Thus our biography of For s For tuna ends, as the biographies of most words end, with thoughts taken from that nature by w^hieh man found himself sur- rounded when he formed his first concepts of words, by which he w^as taught his first lessons, and supplied ^vith the first metaphors for the expression of higher and less tangible ideas. It may seem a long journey from the golden rays of the dawn, which were a for- tune to our earliest ancestors, to the bright gold coins which are supposed to constitute our own fortune. But there is really no break on the road on which Fors or Fortuna travelled from East to West, if only we look carefully for the faint footprints which she has left behind. n. Words in their Infancy. THERE are not many words whose history, like that of Fortuna, can be traced back without a break from their old age to their very birth, but whenever this can be done, we invariably find that, like Fors and. Fortuna, every word expressed in the beginning something that could be handled or smelt or seen or heard. Every word, in fact, has had to spend some time in the cradle and in the nursery, and during that period there is little call for abstract ideas or sublime conceptions. For some reason or other a certain class of philoso- phers has always protested, and is still protesting, against this view, whether it is advocated as a mere theory by sagacious thinkers like Locke, or proved as a fact by the students of language. They seem to consider it almost as an indignity that language should have started with such poor and home-spun materials, and should not from the very first have been endowed with general, abstract, spiritual, and sublime ideas — should have been earth-born, in fact, not heaven-born. But why should these idealistic philosophers feel uneasy on that score ? When will people learn that in order to know what a thing is, we must always try to learn what it can become ? As far as any outward signs of language and reason c 18 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. are concerned, no doubt a baby is no better than a puppy. But an infant, that is to say, a being that speaks 7iot yet, grows into a speaker, a puppy never develops into anything but a barker. Aristotle would have said that with regard to language a baby and a puppy were alike actually, but not so virtually. I confess I like these old scholastic terms, if only they are properly understood, and it is by no nieans easy to replace them by more telling w^ords. We might say that there is virtue in the baby, but not in the puppy ; and that though the infant does not speak as yet in very deed, there is in it a germ which sooner or later will unfold — will blossom and bear fruit. Aristotle, who was one of the first to struggle with these distinctions, called what we call germ or power or force hvvaixLs, which in Latin w^as rendered both by potentia and virtus, while what was perceptible in act or deed was said by him to exist €V€py€La, which mediaeval philosophers have translated by actu. When we now use these w^ords virtually and actually, we hardly remember to whom we owe them ; nay, we sometimes imagine that it was reserved to the nineteenth century to discover the constant transition of the virtual into the actual — the real essence of evolution and development — a misconcep- tion which has lately received a w^ell-deserved casti- gation at the hands of Professor Huxley ^. But it is strange that not philosophers only, but philologists also, nay, even comparative philologists, seem to have a kind of feeling that there is some- thing disheartening in the confession that language is entirely of the earth, earthy. They w^ould like to * • Nineteenth Century,' December, 1SS5, p. S54. WORDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 19 make an exception, if only in favour of a few words. Thus, while Cousin pleads as a philosopher for at least two words — je, I, and etre, to be — as of equivocal birth, G. Curtius, whose recent death will long be felt as a real calamity by all who have the true interests of the science of language at heart, claims an exemption from the general rule for at least three pet roots of his own, viz. man, to think; SM/R, to remember ; and gna, to know. Cousin, in his 'Lectures on the History of Philosophy during the Eighteenth Century' (Paris, 1871, vol. ii. p. 274), writes : — *I shall give you two -worcls, and I shall ask you to trace them back to primitive words expressive of sensible ideas. Take the word je. This word, at least in all languages known to me, is not to be reduced, not to be decomposed ; it is primitive, and expresses no sensible idea ; it represents nothing but the meaning which the mind attaches to it ; it is a pure, true sign, without any reference to any sensible idea. The word etre is exactly in the same case ; it is primitive and altogether intellectual. I know of no language in which the French verb etre is rendered by a corresponding word that expresses a sensible idea ; and therefore it is not true that all the roots of language in their last analysis are signs of sensible ideas ! ' A ' sensible idea ' is a horrible mixture, but sup- posing that it is meant for a sensuous percept, there is no difficulty any longer in discovering a very definite percept which is at the bottom of etre. The French etre has passed no doubt through many vicissitudes, and it really stands for so monstrous a grammatical blunder as ess ere instead of esse. It does not stand for stare, as has been sometimes supposed, though stare was used to express the c 2 20 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. concept of mere being in the French dtd, j'ai 4t^, i.e. ogo habeo statu m. The question therefore is whether we are able to discover something earthy even in so airy a concept as etre, to be. Without entering here into the whole history of that word of which I have treated elsewhere ^ I think I may safely say that as, which is the corresponding form in Sanskrit, meant originally to breathe, just as bhU (fui, (f)vai) meant to grow, VAS (Germ, wesen, I was) to dwell, v^T (Germ, werden) to turn. All these are what Cousin would call very sensible ideas ; and in the same way, whenever we press hard on the so-called auxiliary verbs, they will always disclose behind their faded featui-es clear traces of an original purpose, very definite, very palpable, very sensible. The case is somewhat different with j e, ego. This pronoun does certainly not express what Cousin would call a sensible idea, but, like all pronouns, it is simply demonstrative, pointing to something in space or time, not very different originally from the Greek oye or uhe, this man, i. e. I. It might be said, no doubt, that Cousin produced these objections a long time ago, and at a time when the results of comparative philology had not yet become the common property of all educated people. This is true. But what shall we say then of Curtius? Though he too is sometimes represented as pa.ssJ, I doubt whether very much that is really new and true has been added to the permanent capital of the science of language by those who are constantly telling us themselves that they have so far outstripped him. By all means let us all outstrip one another, and let us ^ * Lectures on the Origin of Religion,' p. 197. WOPwDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 21 readily confess that in some things the yourg are sure to outstrip the old. Curtius was the very last man to grudge the younger philologists their new discoveries, their more minute distinctions, their filigree-work traced on the somewhat cyclopean walls on which the founders of our science had erected their noble edifice. He did not object to being criticised; he was ready to learn even from his own pupils. But he certainly seems to have been surprised, as others have been, when those who had built some very useful attics, declared arrsiin and a2:ain that the first and second floors of the building erected by such men as Bopp, Grimm, and Pott, were no longer fit for respectable people to live in. Well, I have often differed from Curtius, and he from me ; but our differences have generally ended in a mutual understanding, for the simple reason, I believe, that we both cared for truth, and not for victory. I feel no hesitation, therefore, in expressing my dissent from him even now when he himself can no longer reply, and I deny that the three roots which he mentions^ as exceptions to the general rule that all abstract words are derived from concrete, consti- tute real exceptions. v With regard to the root s^iJR^ to remember, Latin ^ memoria, I have fully shown in a chapter devoted to the root M^t^, a parallel form of SM.P.,that it meant to care, to love, to desire, as we^see in Sanskrit smara, love, and in Greek /xep/jtaipo), [xepLfxva, io/xaj/309, etc. ; and I have tried to explain by what process the concepts of caring, loving, dwelling on, could be ex- * * Grundziige der Griechischen Etymologie,' p. 102. ^ f~. . ^ ' * Lectures on the .Science of Language,' vol. ii. p. 347. /yr-( yj 22 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. pressed by a root which meant originally to make soft, to melt, the very concept which is assigned to the root M^, the sister root of SM/ii. 1 The root of gnA, to know, had no doubt reached its abstract meaning in all Aryan languages before the Aryan family was broken up, and that is a long time ago. But we can still perceive that the root gna is formed from a root can, like mna from man, dhma from DHAM, etc. Now this root gan meant really, I am I strong, I can, and originally, I beget, as we may see in such derivatives as yov^vs, parens, Sk.^anita,yerer7ip, genitor, etc. A root which originally meant, ' I am strong,' ' I can,' and afterwards, ' I know,' may surely be said to have expressed a very sensible idea. We say in German Ich kann Griechisch, in the sense of ' I know Greek,' and this includes both the practical knowledge, the rixvr], and the theoretical knowledge, the iiTLa-Triixr] of Greek. This iino-Triij.r], or knowledge, is, as Aristotle tells us, the result of repeated ^ixireipia, of practical experience, power, or skill. In Sanskrit sak means to be strong or able, the desiderative siksh means to learn. We can thus understand how in an early phase of thought, I can, i. e. I have mastered, came to mean I k n o w, while in a later phase of language I know came to mean I can, for, in Anglo-Saxon, ic can, I can, is really an old preterite of cunnan, to know^ There remains, therefore, out of the whole capital of language one root only, man, to think, of which, according to Curtius, it would be impossible to find a material origin. Let us see whether we really cannot follow up that root also a little farther, and trace it to V its homely nursery. We find here again two forms of * Skeat, * Principles of English Etymology,' p. 1 26. WORDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 23 the same root, man and mna, giving rise to such words as fiivos, mind, Sk. manas, Lat. mens, and re-min-iscor, but also to fxi-niJ-r], memory. That this root MAN is the same root which we have in jxivco, I remain, or in Latin maneo, has been admitted by Curtius and by most comparative scholars ; but Cur- tius thinks that ' the concept of remaining and con- tinuing was secondary, and derived from the primary concept of meditative and hesitative thought as the opposite of quick deed' (Lc. p. 103). Unnatural as this may sound, there is much to be said for it, as for most of Curtius's observations. In the growth of lan- guage and thought words do not only change their material into a spiritual, but likewise their spiritual into a material meaning. While at first the quickness of thought is likened to the quickness of lightning or of horses, after a time the quickness of horses is likened to the quickness of thought. As early as the Veda we find horses called mano^ava, ' quick like thought.' And as thought is not only quick, but, from another point of view, may also be said to be slow, Curtius's view is by no means unnatural, and might be supported by not a few analogies. If we ask a man whether he is coming, he might say, * I am thinking,' i.e. 'I am hesitating.' The great Cunctator, Fabius, might really be translated as the thoughtful general if, as Curtius thinks, cunctari is connected with the Sk. SANK, to ponder, the Gothic hugjan. But in spite of all this, everything seems to me to point in a different direction when we are looking for the true origin of man, to think. The fact that man would be the only root which started with an abstract meaning would alone be enough to make us feel very 24 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. doubtful. But there is stronger evidence in support of the theory that man meant first to remain, or, in a causative sense, to make remain, to stop, to hold ; and that it afterwards only took the meaning of hold- ing, remembering, thinking. I am almost afraid to quote Aristotle once more, for we have of late been told so often that he is antiquated, and that in our days a knowledge of Plato and Aristotle disqualifies rather than qualifies a man for giving an opinion on any philosophical questions. However, I shall sum- mon up courage and point out how Aristotle clearly saw in the remaining of impressions the origin of remembering and thinking. After stating that all animals possess sensation, he divides them into two classes — those whose sensations remain (/ixor?/) and those whose sensations do not remain. Those whose sensations do not remain possess no knowledge (yvuta-Ls) beyond sensation, while those whose sensa- tions do remain are again divided by him into two classes, according as they are able or not to gather the permanent sensations w^hich remain (Aoyos). The process, therefore, by which, according to Aristotle, thought arises is first sensation (ata-O^ja-Ls) ; then per- manence (fMovrj or tMn]iJLr], memory). Then from re- peated acts of memory comes experience (e//7retpta) ; and lastly, from experience arise both art (t^xvt)) and knowledge (eTrioT?//^?;), which deal with the one in the many, that is with the general, and constitute in fact what we call the acts of the mind. If this should be called a very primitive analysis of our mental develop- ment it will answer oui' purpose all the better ; for it will make it all the more plausible that what struck Aristotle as the first step leading from sensation to OF BlECOllEGFLIBBABy; WORDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 25 thought may have been in the minds of the early framers of language also, when they chose the root MAN, to remain or retain, which we have in fxovi], to express the act of memory, iJLvi]ixr], and what is closely connected with memory, Sk. manas, /xeVo?, mens, mind. No doubt every one of these words took its own peculiar colouring from the atmosphere in which it was brought up. No doubt also there is still a great step from mere memory to thought. But so there is from a shepherd to a king (go pa), from a hearth to a temple (aedes); and yet the name of the one grows slowJy and imperceptibly into the name of the other. Nor is there any real weight in the objection that fxhoi) and mane re are intransitive verbs, meaning to remain and not to retain. Most ancient verbs can be applied both in a transitive and an intransitive sense, and language to supply her wants took as great liber- ties in ancient as in modern times, when, instead of suhvenit mihi aliquid'^, 'something comes up in my mind,' we say ^V 7neti soicvie?is, ' I remember it.' But if it should seem strange that what we call memory was expressed at first as that which re- mains, and that to remember should have been conceived as holding back or causing to remain, let us consider that our own word recollection comes originally from a very rough and ready word, namely from re-colligo, to bind together, while intelligo, i.e. inter-ligo, meant much the same, namely to bind or combine one thing with another, and cogito, i.e. co- agito, was originally no more than putting two and * Gell. xix. 7, 2, ' Ut quaeque vox digna animadverti subvenerat, memoriae mandabamus.' 26 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. two together. Intellectual acts which go beyond mere sensation are over and over again expressed by words which meant originally to hold back or to hold to- gether. Thus to apprehend meant to take hold of, to comprehend to hold together, just as in German we have ergreifen, to grip, i.e. to apprehend, be- greifen to comprehend. In Sanskrit upa-labh, to take hold of, is likewise used in the sense of appre- hending and perceiving. Percipere from meaning to seize, came to mean to perceive (percipere anitno et rnenwria custodire, Cic. de Or. i. 28, 127). Concipere, to lay hold of on all sides, was used in the same sense, though in time it took more prominently the sense of understanding, thus preparing the modern distinction between percept and concept, the one sensuous, the other intellectual. From nehmen, caper e, we have not only wahrnehmen, to perceive, but like- wise the German name of reason, Vernunft. Vor- s tell en in German means to stand or place before, and a Vorstellung -was originally used in the sense of an image placed before the mind. The question whether Vers tan d comes from the same source, and meant originally the act of stopping, arresting, or holding sensations, is extremely difficult to answer. If it were so, this derivation would throw some light on the equally difficult word k-nicrTriixr], understanding, knowledge, which seems to be connected with ((fiia-r-qixiy to stop, and more particularly with k-nicrTacns^ which means stopping, but is often used in the sense of attention or noticing. In that case, understanding also would perhaps receive some rays of light, though, at present, its formation and first intention are still involved in much doubt. WORDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 27 And as the names of our intellectual faculties, which are mostly expressions for various acts performed by them, lead us back invariably to the simplest occupa- tions of the child which stops, seizes, holds, gathers, it may be smells and tastes whatever is brought within his grasp, other names also of that which is supposed to be within us, call it mind, or spirit, or soul, or anything else, disclose much more primitive meanings, whenever we succeed in discovering their baptismal certificates. Thus spirit meant at first no more than breath, then life, then soul, then mind. Animus is connected with a n i m a, air. I still know no better etymology of s o u 1, though it has been much attacked, than that which connects it with the Gothic saivala, and with saivs, the sea, and traces these w^ords back to the same root which appears in Greek creto), I shake (Lobeck, Rhemat., 112), a root which Curtius identified with the Sanskrit root shu, pre- ra?^e, to set in motion. Though this derivation must remain somewhat uncertain, the possibility of forming a name of the emotions and passions within us from roots expressive of violent external motion is fully proved by the Greek Ovixos, which, as even Plato knew (Crat. p. 419), is closely connected with dveiv, to rush, to rage, from which OveWa, a gale, and similar words. I must confess that it was chiefly this remark of Plato in the Cratylus (p. 419), that Ovfios is so called from the raging and boiling of the soul, that led me to sup- pose ^ that the idea of boiling might also be at the root of such words as Geist in German and ghost in English, AS. gast. To boil in Greek is (ecu for C^^Vco, from which (ea-Ls, boiling, and probably also ff/Aos, ' * Lectures on the Science of Language/ vol. i. p. 434. 28 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. ardour, zeal. In Sanskrit the same verb exists as YAS and YESH, which would account for Old High- German j es-an, to ferment, from which A.S. gy st (for geost). The representation of a Sanskrit y by a Teutonic g has been needlessly called in question. We see an analogous change in such forms as Middle High- German gise, jas, jiiren, gejesen; in gist, foam, by the side of gest and jest, yeast. In Icelandic geisa means to chafe and rage, and in Swedish dialects gajst means a sharp wind. I still think, therefore, as I did in iS6i, that ghost and Geist may come from the same root, and I may now refer to Grimm's Dictionary, s.v. Geist, in support of my theory, and in explanation of certain peculiar changes of the vowels of this very root. Why the name of the famous Gey sir in Iceland should not come from the same root, though with a modified vowel, I cannot see; and even the name of Gas, though it is an artificial word, seems to me to have been formed under the influence of these words. It was the Belgian chemist Von Helmont (died 1644), who, as Dr. Skeat informs us, invented the two words Gas and Bias; and in inventing them he had no doubt in his mind the Dutch geest, a volatile liquid, and blaze n, to blow. If we think of other words for spirit, soul, or mind, they all tell us the same tale. As we speak of the heart and the brain, the Greeks spoke of the midrif, (fyptves ; the heart, Kaphia, K^ap, rjTop ; and even of the liver, rjirap ; while yfrvxth which expressed in time almost everything that goes on within us, meant ori- ginally no more than spirit or breath ^. ^ For further information on this point see * On the Philosophy of Mythology,' iu Selected Essays, vol. i. pp. 594-97. WORDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 29 Whatever words we take which now express the most abstract and spiritual concepts, they have all passed through their infancy and early youth, and duiing that time they were flesh and bone, and little else. What was the original meaning of to consider? It meant star-gazing. In Latin it is frequently used together with contemplare, to contemplate, and that is derived from templum, a space marked out in the heavens for the observation of auguries. The Latin percontari, to interrogate, to examine, comes from contus, the Greek kovtos, a pole used for punting and for feeling the bottom of a river (Donat. ad Ter. Hec. i. 2, 2). To govern was originally guvernare, to steer, formed from the Greek Kv^epvau, to steer, and this from Kv^epvov, guvernum, the helm, the rudder, possibly so called because it was a slightly bent pole attached to a ship, and derived from kvttto), to bend, from which Kv/38a, bent forward, etc. (See Schmidt, Vo- calismus, p. 162.) When we hear of an exploded error, we are apt to think of an explosion, as if the exploded error was like an exploded bomb, burst and harmless. But to explode meant originally to clap the hands till an actor took off his mask or left the stage, as Cicero says : JS sceim modo sifnlis sed etlam con- vicio explodehauinr . We see nothing strange when we speak of weighing our arguments or pondering the etymology of a word. Why should we wonder at the French using penser, i. e. pensare, to weigh, in the sense of thinking % We speak of well-weighed state- ments, and in the same sense the Romans said ex- actus, exact, from exigere, to drive out the tongue of a balance, to weigh carefully. Such a careful 30 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. weighing was called exagium, the French essai, the English Essay, w^hich is always supposed to be a careful and exact treatment of a subject. What is sagacity? The Romans themselves tell us that sagacitas applies primarily to the keenness of scent in dogs. They tell us of a goose being more keen-scented than dogs, canihusve sagacior anser (Ov. M. xi. 599), and speak of a man as an animal providum, sagax, multiplex, acutum, memor, plenum ra- tionis et consilii (Cic. Leg. i. 7, 22). But what is the origin of the word sagax ? Cicero derives sagax from sagire. ^ Sdgirel he says, ^ sentire acute est : ex quo sdgae anus quia multa scire volunt ; et sagaces dicti canes. Is igitur qui ante sdgit quam oUata res est^ dicltur praesdgire, id est fatura ante sentire! Classical scholars will probably be shocked at the idea of deriving siigax with a short a, from sagire with a long, but nothing is more common than the change of a to d, when there is a reason for it. In one sense, however, they are quite right. Sagire is derived not from sagax, but from sagus, like saevire from saevus; but for all that sagax and sagus sprang originally from the same root. But w^hat is that root % I believe it was Lottner, himself a man of great sagacity, who first proposed to connect sagax and sagus \vith Greek ijyelaOaL. In Greek i]yd(T9ai means to lead and to think, just as ducere in Latin. This //yeto-^at cannot possibly be derived from ayoi, though not only classical scholars think so, but even Curtius {Grund2ilge,-p. 171). But it may be connected w^ith the English to seek, the Gothic sokian, so that a dog was at first called sagax because he led well or sought well, because he WORDS IN THEIR INFANCY. 31 was a good pointer. This implied his possessing a keen scent, and hence the applicability of the word sagacity even in the case of a Prime Minister, who must be a good leader, a good seeker, a good pointer, and, let us hope, a good retriever also. We have thus seen how important in the biography of words must always be the chapter of their nursery recollections. We shall see hereafter how the school- days also have left their lasting impression on the character of many words. III. Persona. WE Lave seen how strikingly Locke's famous aphorism, Nihil in iniellectv quod noyi anie fuerit in sensu^ was confirmed by the testimony of language. The whole temple of language is built of bricks, and every one of these bricks is made of clay; or, in other words, every word in our dictionary is derived from roots, and every root, as Noire has shown, expressed a primitive act of primitive men, such as digging, platting, cutting, shaking, chewing, drinking, roaring, etc. Even Curtius's three abstract roots SM^, to remember, gna, to know, and man, to think, when closely pressed, had to confess their humble origin. But roots belong to prehistoric periods, and we have now to inquire whether the same law holds good in historic times likewise, and whether we too must be satisfied to use common clay wherewith to mould and model the most sublime, the most airy, the most abstract conceptions of our mind. An experiment is always more convincing than mere argument. Let us take such a word as Person. Nothing can be more abstract. It is neither male nor female, neither young nor old. As a noun it is hardly more than what to be is as a verb. In French it may even come to mean nobody. For if we ask our concierge at Paris whether anybody has called on us PERSONA. 33 during our absence, he will reply, ^Persoime, monsieur' which means, 'Not a sotil, sir.' Of course person is the Lat. persona. It came to us from Rome, but the journey was long and its adventures many. In Latin persona meant a mask, made of thin wood or clay, such as was worn by the actors at Rome. It is curious that while the Greek actors always wore these masks, the Roman actors did not adopt them at first. Thus while nearly all technical Latin terms connected with the theatre were borrowed from Greek, the name for mask, irpocrcoTTov, was never naturalised in Italy. The story goes that a famous actor, Roscius Gallus (about loo B.C.), introduced masks, which had been unknown before on the Roman stage, because he had the misfortune to squint. This may or may not be true, but I confess it sounds to me a little like a story invented by malicious friends. Anyhow it is strange that, if Roscius had introduced masks simply in order to hide certain blemishes of his face, the name given to them in Latin, possibly by Roscius Gallus himself, should have been persona, i.e. that which causes the voice to sound. We can understand why the Greeks called their masks tt/joV- oiTTov, which means simply what is before the face, the mask thus worn being meant to indicate the character represented by each actor on the stage. To us it seems almost incredible that the erreat Greek actors should have submitted to such mummeries, and should have deprived themselves of the most powerful help in acting, the expression of the face. But so it was, and we are told that it was necessary, because without these pro sopa, which contained some D 34 BIOGRAPHIES OF WORDS. acoustic apparatus to strengthen the voice of the actor, they could not have made themselves heard in the wide and open-air theatres of Greece. Why these masks should have been called persona in Latin, i.e. through-sounder, requires no further explanation ; but the story of Roscius Gallus, the squinting actor, becomes thereby all the more doubt- ful, particularly if we remember that Plautus already was able to use the diminutive per sol la in the sense of ' You little fright ! ' (Plaut. Cure. i. 3. ^6.) I see no reason to doubt that persona, as a feminine, was a genuine Latin word, the name of an instrument through which the voice could be made to sound, and more particularly of the mask used by Greek actors. Gellius (v. 7) informs us that a Latin grammarian who had written a learned work on the origin of words, Gavius Bassus by name, derived persona from personare, to sound through, because 'the head and mouth being hidden everywhere by the cover of the mask and open only through one passage for the emission of the voice, drives the voice, being no longer unsettled and diffused, into one exit only, well gathered together, and thus makes it sound more clear and melodious. And because that mask makes the voice of the mouth clear and resonant, therefore it has been called persona, the o being lengthened on account of the form of the word.' I should have thought that with regard to the origin and the formation of a word which had become current at Rome not so very long before his time, the testimony of a scholar such as Gavius Bassus was, would have carried considerable weight. But no ; PERSONA. 35 there is nothing that scholars, who can discover nothing else, like so much as to discover a false quantity. The o in the Latin adjective personus, they say, is short, that in persona is long. No doubt it is, and Gavius Bassus was well aware of it, but he says the o was lengthened on account of the form of the word. Is not that clear enough for a grammarian ? Are there not many words in which the vowel is lengthened or strengthened on account of the form of the word ? Have we not in Sanskrit the same root, svan, which forms svana, sound, but svana, sounding? However, before we enter on the defence of our own derivation, let us see whether our opponents can produce a more plausible one. Scaliger, the great Scaliger, in order to avoid a false quantity, went so far as to derive persona from Trept acoixa, what is round the body, or even from Trept^oio-^at, to gird round. Is not this straining at a gnat and swallow- ing a camel ? We have only to consider that such an etymology was possible, and possible with a Scaliger who, taking all in all, was perhaps the greatest classical scholar that the world has ever known, in order to see how completely classical scholarship has been purified and reinvigorated by comparative philo- logy. Would even the most insignificant of Greek professors now venture on such an etymology which, not much more than three hundred years ago, was uttered without any misgivings by the prince of classical scholars ? About a hundred years later, another great autho- rity, Vossius, the author of an Etymologicum Magnum, represented persona as a corruption of the Greek D 2 36 BIOGRAPHIES OP WORDS. prosopon. Now it is quite true that the Romans made sad havoc with some of the words which they adopted from Greek, but we may go through the whole Tenmums Ifalo-graecns, lately published by Saal- feld (1884), without finding anything approaching to such violence. However, I must confess classical scholars are not the only oflfenders. Professor Pott, the Nestor of comparative philologists, rather than incur the sus- picion of committing a false quantity, suggests that persona may be a corruption, if not of prosopon, at least of a possible adjective prosopina, while the change of prosopina into persona might be j ustified by the analogous change of Persephone into Proserpina. I do not think that the equation Perse- phone : Proserpina = prosopina : persona would be approved of by many mathematicians, and there remains besides the other objection that Persephone was a real Greek word, but prosopina was not. ' We must try to find out, therefore, whether Latin could not have formed two words, one personus, meaning resounding, and another persona, meaning a resounding instrument. It is well known that the radical vowels i and u are constantly strengthened in certain derivatives. I still think that the best name for that change is Guwa, but if it is thought better to begin with the strong vowels or rather diphthongs ai and au, and call i and u their weakened forms, I do not think that we either lose or gain much by this change of fashion. I hold that what Hindu gram- marians have explained as Gu^^a, or strengthening, accounts best for such words as dux, diicis and duco, fides and fidus, dicax and dico, etc. PERSONA. 37 Exactly the same process would account for so no and persunus by the side of persona. We are not surprised at sopor and sopio, toga and contagium, sagax and sagus, placidus and placare, even sedere and sedare. We have in Sanskrit a.