.;: - 
 
 UXGlhiG 3 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 "University of California^ 
 
 IRVINE 
 
THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR. 
 
 THREE INTRODUCTORY LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF 
 THOUGHT. With a correspondence on ' ' Thought 
 Without Words," between F. Max Miiller and 
 Francis Gallon, the Duke of Argyll, George J. Ro- 
 manes, and others. Pages, 128. Cloth, 75 cents; 
 paper, 25 cents. 
 
 THE OPEN COURT PUBLISHING COMPANY. 
 
 324 DEARBORN ST., CHICAGO. 
 
THREE LECTURES 
 
 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE 
 
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TABLE OF CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 First Lecture. Man and Animal. No Mystery in Language. i 
 Second Lecture. The Analysis of Language. The Lesson 
 
 Taught by the Science of Language 25 
 
 Third Lecture. Thought Thicker than Blood. The Cradle 
 
 of the Aryas 43 
 
 My Predecessors 73 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 
 
 MAN AND ANIMAL. 
 
 'T^HERE seems to be some truth after all in the old 
 J_ English saying that familiarity breeds contempt, 
 or, at all events, indifference. 
 
 There is nothing we are more familiar with than 
 our own language. We learn it, we hardly know how. 
 While reading, writing, arithmetic, and all the rest, 
 are not acquired without considerable effort, and are 
 often forgotten again in later life, we learn our most 
 difficult lesson, namely, speaking, without any con- 
 scious effort, and, however old we may grow, we never 
 forget it again. 
 
 But I ask you, Have you ever tried to find out what 
 this language of ours really is ; how it came to us ; 
 when and where it was made; and what it was made of? 
 
 Of course, you will all say, we learnt our language 
 from our father and mother or rather from our mother 
 and father. Yes, but from whom did they learn it? 
 From their parents, and these parents again from 
 their parents, and thus ad infinitum. 
 
 Even this simple answer, which is by no means 
 quite correct, is full of import, and ought to have been 
 taken to heart far more seriously than it seems to have 
 
2 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 been by certain philosophers who maintain that parrots 
 and other animals also learn to speak, exactly as chil- 
 dren learn to speak, and that therefore language is 
 after all nothing so very wonderful, and cannot be said 
 to form an impassable barrier between man and beast. 
 It is quite true that children now-a-days do neither 
 create their -own language nor inherit it. Speaking 
 any given language is not an acquired habit that de- 
 scends from father to son. The necessary conditions 
 of speech, however, exist in man and in man only; 
 for if these necessary conditions were present in the 
 parrot as well as in man, it would indeed be strange, 
 to say no more, that there should never have been a 
 Parrotese language, and that no parrot should ever 
 have learnt his language from his parents, and they 
 from theirs, and thus ad infinitum. A parrot never 
 learns to speak, as little as a child would ever learn to 
 fly. These facts are so simple and so obvious that it 
 is difficult to understand, how they can ever have been 
 disregarded by philosophers. And yet to the present 
 day, most thoughtful writers go on repeating the old 
 fallacy, that a parrot learns to say "poor Polly," just 
 as a child learns to say "poor Polly." 
 
 To put it on the lowest ground, do these philoso- 
 phers not see that every child of man is the descend- 
 ant of an animal that could frame language, and has 
 framed language ; while every parrot, and every other 
 animal is the descendant of an animal that never 
 framed a language of its own? When a parrot learns 
 to speak, it is simply tempted to utter certain sounds, 
 in more or less close imitation of English or French, 
 by such rewards as sugar and other sweetmeats, or by 
 severe punishments on the part of its keepers. As to 
 any parrot inventing a language of its own, and teach- 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 3 
 
 ing that language to its young, not even Mr. Romanes 
 would believe in such a miracle. 
 
 It is therefore not enough to say that we learn our 
 language from our parents, and they from their par- 
 ents, and thus ad infinitum. That would be a very 
 lazy way of handling our problem. This retrogression 
 ad infinitum would be a mere confession of ignorance, 
 and such a confession, though it is very honorable 
 when we know that we cannot know, cannot be tol- 
 erated except in cases where we know also why we can- 
 not know. 
 
 When we see the history, or, as it is now the 
 fashion to call it, the evolution of language, we can- 
 not help admitting that there must have been some 
 kind of beginning. A language, such as English, for 
 instance, does not tumble down from the sky; and, 
 even if it did, it would have to be picked up, and to 
 pick up a language, as you know, is not a very easy 
 task, particularly for a person supposed to be dumb 
 and without any idea of what language is meant for. In 
 former times, as it seemed to be impossible to account 
 for language as a piece of human workmanship, it was 
 readily admitted that it was of divine workmanship, 
 that it really had tumbled down from the sky in some 
 way or other, and that, curiously enough, man alone 
 of all animals then living upon earth had been able to 
 pick it up. 
 
 But when languages began to be more carefully 
 examined, traces of human workmanship became 
 more and more visible, and at last the question could 
 no longer be pushed aside, how language was made, 
 and why man alone of all living beings should have 
 come into possession of it. 
 
 Now I ask, If language is that which, as a matter 
 
4 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 of fact, distinguishes man from all other animals, is it 
 not disgraceful that we should be so careless as not to 
 attempt to find out what language is, and why we, and 
 we alone of all animals, enjoy the privilege of speech ? 
 I know quite well that attempts have been made again 
 and again to show that language is not the distinguish- 
 ing characteristic of man, and that animals also, though 
 they have never yet spoken, possess the faculty of 
 speech, and may in time begin to speak. Even Kant 
 seems to have indulged in the hope that the chimpan- 
 zee might some day begin to speak. But if faculty 
 means originally facility, or that which enables us to 
 do a thing, surely it is not too much to ask, why hith- 
 erto no animal should ever have cultivated that gift; 
 why no animal should ever have said, "I am an ani- 
 mal," or, " I am an ape." Mr. Romanes, in his recent 
 work on Mental Evolution in Man, has done his very 
 best to throw a bridge over the gulf that separates all 
 animals from man, namely, language ; and if he has 
 failed in showing how human language could have 
 arisen from animal utterances, I doubt whether any- 
 body else will ever lead that forlorn hope again. 
 
 It is easy enough to show that animals communi- 
 cate ; but this is a fact which has never been doubted. 
 Dogs who growl and bark leave no doubt in the mind 
 of other dogs, or cats, or even of man, of what they 
 mean. But growling and barking are not language, 
 nor do they even contain the elements of language. 
 All names are concepts, and to say that we think in 
 concepts is only another way of saying that we think 
 in class-names. Mr. Romanes admits this fully; in 
 fact, the very words I have used are his own words 
 (Joe. cit., p. 22, note). But has he been able to discover 
 any traces or germs of language, or what he calls "in- 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 5 
 
 tellectual symbolism," in any animal known to us, and 
 more particularly in that animal from which he thinks 
 . we are more immediately descended ? Evidently not. 
 "Anthropoid apes," he says (p. 364), "are the most 
 intelligent, and, therefore, if specially trained, would 
 probably display greater aptitude in the matter of 
 sign-making than is to be met with in any other kind 
 of brute." "But," he continues, " I do not press this 
 point. What I now refer to is the fact, that the 
 existing species of anthropoid apes are very few in 
 number, and appear to be all on the high road to 
 extinction. Moreover, it is certain that none of these 
 existing species can have been the progenitor of man, 
 and, lastly, it is equally certain that the extinct species 
 (or genus) which did give origin to man must have 
 differed in several important respects from any of its 
 existing allies. In the first place, it must have been 
 more social in habits ; and, in the next place, it was 
 probably more vociferous than the orang, the gorilla, 
 or the chimpanzee." 
 
 Against such arguments it seems to me that even 
 the gods would fight in vain. We are told, that man 
 is descended from some kind of anthropoid ape. We 
 answer that all anthropoid apes, known to us, are 
 neither social nor vociferous. And we are told that 
 in that case man must be derived from an extinct ape 
 who differed from all known apes, and was both social 
 and vociferous. Surely, if this is a scientific argu- 
 ment, scientific arguments would in future rank very 
 low indeed. 
 
 I know of no book which has proved more clearly 
 that language forms an impassable barrier between 
 man and beast than the book lately published by Mr. 
 Romanes on the Origin of Human Faculty r , though 
 
6 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 his object was the very opposite. Taking that point 
 therefore for granted, it seems to me disgraceful that 
 in our general system of education, and even of 
 elementary education, no place should have been 
 found as yet for the Science of Language, and that a 
 single child should be allowed to grow up, without 
 knowing the worth and value of his most precious 
 inheritance, without knowing what language is ; lan- 
 guage, which alone distinguishes him from all other 
 animals ; language, which alone makes man man ; lan- 
 guage, which has made him the lord of nature, and has 
 restored to him the consciousness of his own true Self. 
 And here I must guard at once against an outcry 
 that is sure to be raised. It will be said that all 
 these arguments are inspired by an ill-disguised pride, 
 and arise from a wish to claim a higher position for 
 man than for other animals. We are told that we 
 ought to be more humble, and love our neighbors 
 and venerate our ancestors, even though they were 
 hairy apes. I plead ''Not guilty" to all such charges. 
 By suggesting motives, any discussion may be poi- 
 soned, but such suggestions have really nothing what- 
 ever to do with the question which we are discussing. 
 If it could be proved by irrefragable evidence that 
 only a hundred years back all our ancestors were 
 hairy and speechless, that would not make the slight- 
 est difference in our argument. On the contrary, it 
 would only enhance our admiration of language, 
 which, whether in one or in a hundred centuries, could 
 have wrought such a marvellous charge. It would 
 only make it more incumbent on us to find out what 
 language really is, that it should have produced, not 
 only a new species of animal, the homo sapiens, but an 
 entirely new world. That language has raised man 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 7 
 
 into an entirely new atmosphere, an intellectual at- 
 mosphere which no other animal is able to breathe, is 
 admitted on all sides. 
 
 Is it not disgraceful, then, I ask once more is it 
 not disgraceful that we should pass through life with- 
 out attempting to know what that atmosphere really is 
 from which we draw our best intellectual life? No 
 one is considered educated without a knowledge of 
 writing, reading, and arithmetic. To me it seems that 
 no one should call himself educated who does not 
 know what language is, and how it came to be what 
 it is. 
 
 At first sight all we seem to be able to say of lan- 
 guage is that it is wonderful, that it passes all under- 
 standing, or, as some people would say, that it is 
 something supernatural and miraculous. That cer- 
 tain vibrations of air which we produce by various 
 emissions of our breath should represent to us and to 
 others all that has ever passed through our mind, all 
 we have ever seen or heard or felt, all that passes be- 
 fore us in the countless works of nature, and all that 
 passes within us in our own endless feelings, our imag- 
 inings, and our thoughts, is marvellous indeed. In fact, 
 next to the great miracle of existence, there is no greater 
 miracle than this translation of all existence into hu- 
 man speech and human thought. 
 
 But, as with all true miracles, so with this, our first 
 duty is to try to interpret it, because then only will it 
 reveal to us all that it was meant to reveal. And with 
 regard to the miracle wrought by language, nothing is 
 really more miraculous than its simplicity. It is gen- 
 erally supposed that the philosophy of language is a 
 subject far beyond the reach of ordinary minds. I 
 should be sorry to suppose that there were any minds 
 
8 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 which could not take in the simple lessons of the 
 Science of Language. We never know anything truly, 
 unless we can make it as clear as daylight to the com- 
 monest understanding. Every one of us starts from 
 the level of the ordinary understanding, and however 
 far he may advance, unless he has lost the thread of 
 his own knowledge, that is, unless he has allowed his 
 own mind to get ravelled, tangled, and knotted, he 
 ought to be able to lead others step by step to the 
 same eminence which he has reached himself. 
 
 In no science is this more easy than in the Science 
 of Language. It is difficult to teach a man music 
 who cannot play a single instrument. But we all play 
 at least one language, and can test the teachings of 
 the Science of Language by a reference to our own 
 language. 
 
 I shall try therefore to show you what the Science 
 of Language has achieved, by taking my illustrations 
 chiefly from a language which you all know from 
 English. And though I cannot in a few lectures attempt 
 to give you more than the A B C of our science, still 
 even that ABC may be useful, and may possibly en- 
 courage some of you to pay more attention to the study 
 of so familiar, and yet so little explored a subject as 
 our language is. It has indeed many lessons to teach 
 us, many mysteries to reveal to us, and there is in it 
 more work to do for any one who wishes to do useful 
 work, than in any other science which I know of. 
 
 When we are told that the English language con- 
 sists of about 250,000 words, we are no doubt stag- 
 gered, and do not know how such a number of signs 
 could have arisen, and how they can all be kept in our 
 memory, each in its own place. But this large number 
 of words is really an accumulation of many centuries, 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 9 
 
 and nothing like that number could have been kept 
 alive, except through the influence of literature. 
 
 Now literature, or, at least, a written literature, is 
 a mere accident. Let us try, therefore, to realise what 
 a language would be which possesses as yet no litera- 
 ture, and, therefore, no literary standard. Such lan- 
 guages still exist, and we find them generally full of 
 dialectic variety. They vary as spoken colloquially in 
 each family ; they vary still more as spoken in different 
 clans and colonies. In both these forms, as colloquial 
 and as dialectic, they are full of what we may call 
 slang, expressions started by the whims of individ- 
 uals, but often retained, and admitted after a time into 
 more general use. 
 
 The first beginning of a settled form of speech is 
 made at public gatherings, where a language must be 
 used that is intelligible to persons belonging to different 
 families and coming from distant settlements. This 
 public language, which is soon adopted for sacred 
 poetry also, for popular legends, and for legal enact- 
 ments, becomes in time what is called the sacred, the 
 literary, or the classical dialect. But it does not ab- 
 sorb the whole life of a language. On the contrary, 
 each language runs on in its natural channels of col- 
 loquial speech and dialect and slang, and supplies from 
 time to time new material to the classical dialect. 
 
 What thus takes place before our very eyes in 
 illiterate languages, must have taken place in all lan- 
 guages, and we can see the same forces at work, even 
 now, in such highly cultivated literary forms of speech 
 as English. 
 
 There is one kind of English which is spoken in 
 parliament, in the pulpit, and in the courts of law, 
 
10 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 which may be called the public, the ordinary, and rec- 
 ognised English. 
 
 The colloquial English, as used by educated people, 
 differs but slightly from this parliamentary English, 
 though it admits greater freedom of construction, and 
 a more familiar phraseology. 
 
 The literary English again requires still greater 
 grammatical accuracy, and admits a number of uncom- 
 mon, poetical, and even antiquated expressions which 
 would sound strange in ordinary conversation. 
 
 The dialectic English is by no means extinct. The 
 peasants in every part of England and Scotland and 
 Ireland, though they understand a sermon in church, 
 and read their newspaper, both of which are written 
 in literary English, continue to speak their own lan- 
 guage among themselves, a language full of ancient 
 and curious expressions which often throw much light 
 on the history of classical English. These dialects 
 have of late been most carefully collected, and this is 
 a branch of study in which everybody, if only he has 
 a well-trained ear, is able to render most valuable as- 
 sistance. 
 
 Lastly, in discussing special subjects, we are driven 
 to use a large number of technical, scientific, foreign, 
 and even slang expressions, many of which are quite 
 unintelligible to the ordinary speaker. 
 
 It is these technical, scientific, foreign, and slang 
 terms which swell our dictionaries to such an enor- 
 mous size. We are told that the new Oxford Dic- 
 tionary will contain a quarter of a million of words. 
 Does any one of us know 250,000 English words? I 
 doubt it. It is extraordinary how many words this 
 small brain of ours will hold, but there are limits to 
 everything. In China a young man receives his first 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 1 1 
 
 or second class in examination, according to the num- 
 ber of words he can read and write. But in order to 
 obtain the place of an imperial historian, a candidate 
 is not required to know more than 9,000. We do more 
 than this. Most of us can read Shakespeare's plays, 
 and in order to do that, we must know about 15,000 
 words. But though we understand most of these words 
 (there are only about 500 to 600 words in Shakespeare 
 which may justly be called obsolete), there are many 
 we should never think of using ourselves. Most of us, 
 I believe, never use more than 3,000 or 4,000 words, 
 and we are assured that there are peasants who never 
 use more than 300 or 400. This does not mean that 
 they would not understand more than that number, 
 for the Bible which they hear in church contains about 
 6,000 words; 1 these they would understand more or 
 less accurately, though the}' would never think of using 
 them. 
 
 NO MYSTERY IN LANGUAGE. 
 
 A language, therefore, is after all not so bewilder- 
 ing a thing as it seems to be, when we hear of a dic- 
 tionary of 250,000 words. In fact, for all the ordinary 
 purposes of life a dictionary of 4,000 words would be 
 quite sufficient. 
 
 Skeat's Etymological Dictionary of the English Lan- 
 guage, which confines itself to primary words, that 
 is to say, which would explain luck, but not lucky, 
 unlucky, luckless, deals with no more than 13,500 en- 
 tries. Of these only 4,000 are of Teutonic origin ; 5,000 
 
 lAccording to W. T. Adey, The English of King James's Version, the Old 
 and New Testaments contain 6,000 words. 
 
12 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 are taken from French; 2,700 direct from Latin, 400 
 from Greek, about 250 from Celtic, and the rest from 
 various sources. If, therefore, we confine our atten- 
 tion to that portion of English which is Teutonic, we 
 find that English proper consists of about 4,000 inde- 
 pendent words, and that all the rest are derived from 
 these. 
 
 Let us now examine some of the words which swell 
 our dictionaries to such an enormous extent, in order 
 to see whether they really belong to the living lan- 
 guage, and whether we ourselves should be able to 
 understand them. 
 
 And first of all a few antiquated "words, words which 
 were used some centuries ago, but are now to be found 
 in the dictionary only. 
 
 Do you understand anred and anredness! Anred 
 means single-minded. It is derived from red (rad} t 
 purpose, plan, scheme, and, -like anfald, German ein- 
 fdltig, meant originally not-planning, not-scheming. 
 Hence anredness came to mean singleness, and in the 
 thirteenth century people spoke of the onrednesse of 
 luve and onnesse of heorte. 
 
 You might guess the meaning of avenant when you 
 read in Caxton's Myrr., I. xiv. 45, "A ly til man is ofte 
 we I made and avenaunt, " i. e. a little man is often well- 
 made and becoming or comely. Avenant is derived 
 from avenir, to come, to become, and meant agreeable, 
 becoming, handsome ; but no one would use that word 
 now. 
 
 If you saw two men fighting, and one of them were 
 called a regular bangster, you might probably guess 
 what was meant ; but, though Walter Scott still uses 
 the word in The Abbot, it is no longer a living word. 
 There was an old legal expression to commit a burg- 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 13 
 
 lary "by bangstrie and force.'" This again would hardly 
 be intelligible, except to the historical student of law. 
 
 There are other words which survive, but the orig- 
 inal meaning of which has become antiquated. In the 
 legal phrase, "by assault and battery," for instance, 
 battery still retains its original meaning, namely, beat- 
 ing or striking. But we could no longer say, to give 
 a boy a battery ; we must say a flogging. In ordi- 
 nary parlance battery now only means a number of 
 artillery, while men of science speak also of an elec- 
 tric battery. 
 
 It is curious to observe in how many words the 
 meaning deteriorates, while it very seldom improves. 
 
 A knave was originally a young man, in German 
 ein Knabe. In the Court cards the knave is simply 
 the page or the knight, but by no means the villain. 
 Villain itself was originally simply the inhabitant of a 
 village. A pleader once made good use of his etymo- 
 logical knowledge. For this is what Swift relates : 
 " I remember, at a trial in Kent, where Sir George 
 Rook was indicted for calling a gentleman knave and 
 villain, the lawyer for the defendent brought off his 
 client by alleging the words were not injurious, for 
 knave, in the old and true signification, imported only 
 a servant ; and villain in Latin is villicus, which is no 
 more than a man employed in country labor, or 
 rather a baily. " 
 
 I doubt whether in these days any Judge, if pos- 
 sessed of some philological knowledge, would allow 
 such a quibble to pass, or whether in return he would 
 not ask leave to call the lawyer an idiot, for idiot, as you 
 know, meant originally no more than a private person, 
 a man who does not take part in public affairs ; and 
 
14 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 afterwards only came to mean an outsider, an ill- 
 informed man, and lastly an idiot. 
 
 A pagan was originally, like villain, the inhabitant 
 of Apagus, a countryman. It came to mean heathen, 
 because it was chiefly in the country, outside the town, 
 that the worshippers of the old national gods were 
 allowed to continue. A heathen was originally a 
 person living on the heath. Heathen, however, is not 
 yet a term of reproach ; it simply expresses a difference 
 of opinion between ourselves and others. But we have 
 the same word under another disguise, namely as 
 hoiden. At present hoiden is used in the sense of a 
 vulgar, romping girl. But in old authors it is chiefly 
 applied to men, to clowns or louts. We may call 
 Socrates a heathen, but we could not call him a 
 hoiden, though we might possibly apply that name to 
 his wife Xanthippe. 
 
 Sometimes it happens that the same word can be 
 used both in a good and in a bad sense. Simplicity 
 with us has generally a good meaning. We read in 
 the Bible of simplicity and godly sincerity. But, in the 
 same Bible the simple ones are reproved: "How 
 long, ye simple ones, will ye love simplicity ? and 
 the scorners delight in their scorning, and fools hate 
 knowledge?" (Prov. I. 22.) 
 
 If at present we were to call a boy an imp, he 
 would possibly be offended. But in Spenser's time imp 
 had still a very good sound, and he allows a noble lady, 
 a lady gent, as he calls her, to address Arthur, as 
 "Thou worthy imp" (Faerie Queen, I. 9. 6). Nor is 
 there any harm in that word, for imp meant originally 
 graft, and then offspring. To graft in German is impfen, 
 and this is really a corruption of the Greek 
 to implant. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 15 
 
 Brat is now an offensive term, even when applied 
 to a child. It is said to be a Welsh word, and to sig- 
 nify a rag. It may be so, but in that case it would be 
 difficult to account for brat having been used originally 
 in a good sense. This must have been so, for we find 
 in ancient sacred poetry such expressions as, "O 
 Abraham's brats, o broode of blessed seede." 
 
 To use the same word in such opposite meanings 
 is possible only where there is an historical literature 
 which keeps alive the modern as well as the antiquated 
 usages of a language. In illiterate languages, anti- 
 quated words are forgotten and vanish. 
 
 Think of all the meanings imbedded in the word 
 nice! How did they come there? The word has a long 
 history, and has had many ups and downs in its pas- 
 sage through the world. It was originally the Latin 
 nescius, ignorant, and it retained that meaning in old 
 French, and likewise in old English. Robert of 
 Gloucester (p. 106, last line) still uses the word in that 
 sense. "He was nyce," he says, "and kowthe no 
 wisdom," that is, he was ignorant and knew no wis- 
 dom. But if there is an ignorance that is bliss, there 
 is also an ignorance, or unconsciousness, or simplicity 
 that is charming. Hence an unassuming, ingenuous, 
 artless person was likewise called nice. However, even 
 that artlessness might after a time become artful, or, 
 at all events, be mistaken by others for artfulness. 
 The over-nice person might then seem fastidious, dif- 
 ficult to please, too dainty, and he or she was then 
 said to be too nice in his or her tastes. 
 
 We have traced the principal meanings of nice from 
 ignorant to fastidious, as applied to persons. If nice 
 is applied to things, it has most commonly the mean- 
 ing of charming ; but as we speak of a fastidious and 
 
l6 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 difficult person, we can also speak of a difficult matter 
 as a nice matter, or a nice point. 
 
 At last there remained nice, which simply expresses 
 general approval. Everything, in our days, is nice, 
 not to say, awfully nice. But unless we possessed a 
 literature in which to study the history of words, it 
 would be simply impossible to discover why nice should 
 express approval as well as disapproval, nay, why it 
 should in the end become a mere emphatic expression, 
 as when we say, "That is a nice business," or "that 
 is a nice mess." 
 
 And here we approach a new class of words which 
 swell our dictionaries very considerably, namely, slang- 
 words. Slang is more than a colloquial and familiar 
 expression, it always conveys the idea of being a little 
 vulgar. It is quite true that some expressions which 
 we call slang were perfectly correct some centuries ago, 
 and that they have the right to claim a place among 
 antiquated words. The Americans are very clever at 
 making out that most of their slang was pure classical 
 English some centuries ago. That may be so ; in 
 many cases it no doubt is so. But that does not take 
 away the peculiar twang of what has now become 
 slang. A distinguished American politician declared 
 that under certain circumstances he would let the Con- 
 stitution "slide." That certainly was slang. But 
 when he was blamed for his undignified expression, he 
 appealed to Chaucer and Shakespeare, who use the 
 same word in such phrases as, "Wei neigh all other 
 cures let he slyde"; she "lete her sorwe slide"; "he 
 lets the world slide. " 
 
 It is often difficult to say why certain colloquial 
 expressions are vulgar, while others are allowed to 
 pass. Much depends on the speaker, for you may say 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 17 
 
 almost anything in English, if you know how to say it. 
 There is no harm in saying "You bet "; yet in America 
 it is a sign of vulgarity. "I am very dry " is slang, " I 
 am very thirsty" is quite correct; yet thirsty meant 
 originally dry, and we may still speak of "thirsty land," 
 instead of dry land. Thirsty is connected with Latin 
 torrere, to parch, Greek repffSffOat, to become dry. 
 
 "I have been enjoying poor health " is certainly 
 wrong, but I doubt whether poor or bad health is a 
 solecism. It is true that health by itself means sound- 
 ness of body, and is connected with hale, healing, and 
 whole (for hole}. But as we can speak of good and bad 
 luck, there is no serious objection to our speaking of 
 good, or bad, or indifferent health. 
 
 The frequent use of the verb to get is in bad taste, 
 but again, it can hardly be called wrong. When we 
 read, " I got my things packed, and got to the train in 
 time, and got to Paris, and got to the hotel, and got my 
 supper, and got sleepy, and soon got to bed, and got a 
 good night's rest," we can understand all that is meant, 
 but we feel offended by the poverty and vulgarity of 
 the expression. 
 
 Sometimes, however, slang becomes utterly unin- 
 telligible, and requires a commentary except to the 
 initiated. I shall read a sentence from a Melbourne 
 paper, which I hope few here present will understand 
 without the help of explanatory notes : 
 
 "Say, mate, some our'n cockneys chummed with 
 'em Melbourne larrikins at yon booze-ken. Flash 
 coves, blacklegs, and welchers that they be, they lushed 
 like old 'Arry till on 'em kicked the bucket. They 
 told a bobby that coomed by as they was gents. 
 'That's all my heye and Betty Martin,' says he and 
 he slips on the darbies and brought 'em to quod. " 
 
l8 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 This, no doubt, is very vulgar English, but it is 
 English for all that, and if there ever should be a 
 violent social revolution at Melbourne, and the lower 
 classes should become the upper classes, it is quite 
 possible that this kind of English might be spoken 
 there in parliament and even in the pulpit. We must 
 not forget that in its origin every language may be 
 called vulgar. It is the language of the vulgus, before 
 it becomes the language of literature. Even Dante 
 calls his Italian // volgare, and he was the first to use 
 that common spoken idiom for the highest literary 
 purposes. 
 
 There are slang-dictionaries, as large as the dic- 
 tionaries of any language, and I am sorry to say that 
 even our Universities contribute every year a fair share 
 toward new and enlarged editions of these books. 
 Little go, Moderations, Greats, to be ploughed, to be 
 gulphed, are well-known specimens of this mysterious 
 language. There are many more which it is perhaps 
 wiser not to mention. 
 
 As to technical and scientific terms, they are end- 
 less. Try to speak with a boot-maker or a carpenter 
 about his own tools and his own work, and you will be 
 surprised at the unknown treasures of the English 
 language. Not long ago a wine-merchant to whom I 
 had complained about some bottles of wine not being 
 quite full, wrote to me to return the ullaged bottles. 
 I did not understand ullaged, and I had to consult a 
 dictionary. There I found that eullage in ancient 
 French meant that which is required to fill a bottle, 
 from euiller, to fill. This euiller is supposed to stand 
 for olier, to oil. But why to oil? Because in the South 
 of France and Italy to the present day oil is poured 
 into a bottle, instead of corking it. That oil has to be 
 
FIRST LECTURE. IQ 
 
 dashed out before the wine is drunk, and a certain 
 amount of wine is lost in that process. That is the 
 eullage, and hence the ullaged bottle. I doubt whether 
 my wine-merchant knew this, and it is strange that a 
 custom which obtained only in the South of Europe 
 of using oil for closing bottles of wine, should have 
 produced an expression which was used in the North 
 of Europe, where oil was never used for that purpose. 
 That shows how words travel forward and backward 
 over the whole world. 
 
 When I was in Cornwall I heard the smoked pil- 
 chards called by the people Fair Maids. I tried to 
 find out why, and this was the result of my inquiries. 
 These smoked pilchards are largely exported to Genua, 
 and are eaten there during Lent. They are called in 
 Italian fumada, smoked fish. The Cornish sailors 
 picked up that word, naturalised it, gave it an intel- 
 ligible meaning, and thus became, according to their 
 own confession, exporters of fair maids. You see the 
 Odyssey and the adventures of Ulysses are nothing 
 compared with the adventures of our words. 
 
 A carpenter once told me that the boards of a box 
 ought to be properly dowald. I did not understand 
 what he meant, and it was only when he showed me 
 the actual process that I saw that to dowal meant to 
 dove-tail, to cut the ends so that they should fit like 
 dove-tails. 
 
 Scientific terms are likewise technical terms, only 
 put into Greek or Latin. What can be achieved in the 
 manufacture of such terms may be gathered from the 
 following extract from a book on Botany : x 
 
 " Begoniaceae, by their anthero-connectival fabric 
 indicate a close relationship with anonaceo-hydro- 
 
 1 Marsh, Lectures on the English Language, p. 186. 
 
2O SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 charideo-nymphaeoid forms, an affinity confirmed by 
 the serpentarioid flexuoso-nodulous stem, the lirioden- 
 droid stipules, and cissoid and victorioid foliage of a 
 certain Begonia ; and if considered hypogynous, would 
 in their triquetrous capsule, alate seed, apetalism, and 
 tufted stamination, represent the floral fabric of Ne- 
 penthes, itself of aristolochioid affinity, while by its 
 pitchered leaves, directly belonging to Sarracenias and 
 Dionaeas. " 
 
 I doubt whether any Englishman, unless he be a 
 botanist by profession, would understand the hidden 
 meaning of these sentences, and though these words 
 have to be admitted into an English dictionary that 
 professes to be complete, they cannot be said to form 
 part of the commonwealth of English undefiled. 
 
 If, then, we confine our attention to those words 
 which form the real stock in trade of the English lan- 
 guage, our task will become much more manageable. 
 Instead of 250,000, we shall have to deal with about 
 4,000 truly English words, or, if we include all French, 
 Latin, Greek, and Celtic primaries, with 12,350 
 words, and then ask ourselves once more the ques- 
 tion, Whence do they come? 
 
 No one can help seeing that even amongst the most 
 ordinary words in English there are some which are 
 very much alike in sound. If these words have also 
 some similarity in meaning, we are justified in suppos- 
 ing that they may have a common origin. 
 
 Take, for instance, such words as to bear, burden, 
 bier, and barrow. They all have the same constituent 
 element, namely, br; they all have a meaning connected 
 with bearing or carrying. Burden is what is carried ; 
 bier, what a person is carried on ; barrow, in wheel- 
 barrow, an implement for carrying things. 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 21 
 
 No doubt, this is only prima facie evidence. We 
 must not forget that we are dealing with a modern 
 language which has passed through many vicissitudes. 
 In order to institute truly scientific comparisons, we 
 should have in each case to trace these words to their 
 Anglo-Saxon, or even to their corresponding Gothic 
 forms. 
 
 How great the danger is of trusting to mere simi- 
 larity of sound in modern languages, you will see at 
 once, if you take the last word barrow, which means 
 not only a wheelbarrow, but also a burial-mound. 
 We have only to trace this barrow back to its Anglo- 
 Saxon form beorh, in order -to see that it has nothing 
 to do with bearing or carrying, but that it is connected 
 with the Anglo-Saxon beorgan, the German bergen, to 
 hide, to protect. 
 
 But though it is necessary, before we institute 
 comparisons, always to go back to the oldest forms of 
 words which are within our reach, still for practical 
 purposes it suffices if we know that such words as bear, 
 burden, bier, and barrow have all been proved to come 
 from one common source. 
 
 And more than this. As to bear is used in many 
 languages in the sense of bearing children, we may 
 safely trace to the same source such English words as 
 birth, and bairn, a child. 
 
 Nay, as the same expression is also used of the 
 earth-bearing fruit, we can hardly be wrong in ex- 
 plaining, for instance, barley, as what the earth bears 
 or brings forth. In German Getreide, M. H. G. Ge- 
 tregede, literally, what is born, has become the name of 
 every kind of corn. If we go back to Anglo-Saxon, 
 we find bar-lie for barley, in which lie is derivative, 
 while bere by itself meant barley. In Scotland more 
 
22 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 particularly bear continued to be used for barley, and a 
 coarse kind of barley is still called bear-barley. Barn 
 also receives its explanation from the same quarter. 
 For barn is contracted from bere-arn, which means 
 barley-house, or, as also called, bere-flor. 
 
 We have thus collected eight words, which all con- 
 tain one common element, namely br, and which prima 
 facie come from the same source. Their various 
 meanings, as we saw, can likewise be traced back to 
 the one fundamental concept of bearing. 
 
 From every one of these words ever so many de- 
 rivatives may be formed, and have been formed. 
 
 Think only of the numerous offspring of to bear, 
 and the various meanings that can be conveyed by that 
 one word. We have, to bear up, to bear out, to bear 
 oneself, proud bearing, to bear in mind, to bear with, 
 to forbear ; then to bear down on a person, in the 
 sense of to press hard on him, to bear away, said of a 
 ship that sails away, to lose one's bearings, bearable, 
 unbearable, a bearer, an office-bearer, bearing in the 
 sense of behavior, child-bearing, and many more. 
 
 Now you begin to see how thrifty language can be, 
 and what immense results it can achieve with very 
 small means. It starts with a syllable of two conso- 
 nants, such as bar, and out of it, by means of deriva- 
 tives, it forms a perfect army of words. If we had a 
 hundred such syllables, and derived only forty words 
 from each, we should possess what, as we found, is 
 wanted for carrying on all social and intellectual inter- 
 course, namely, 4,000 words. 
 
 But now we shall be asked, What are those mys- 
 terious syllables? What is, for instance, that bar, 
 which we discovered as the kernel of ever so many 
 words? 
 
FIRST LECTURE. 23 
 
 These syllables have been called roots. That is, of 
 course, nothing but a metaphorical expression. What 
 is meant is neither more nor less than what you saw 
 just now as the result of our comparison namely, 
 what remains of a number of words after we separate 
 the purely formative elements. In bur-den, den is 
 formative : in birth, th is formative ; in bairn, n is form- 
 ative. In barn, too, n is formative, but it is different 
 from the n in bairn, because it is really a contraction 
 of cern. Bere-cern meant a place for barley, just as 
 horsern meant a place for horses, a stable, slapern, a 
 sleeping- place. 1 
 
 There remains therefore bar with a variable vowel, 
 and this we call a root, or an ultimate element of 
 speech, because it cannot be analysed any further. 
 
 This root bar, however, is not an English root. It 
 existed long before English existed, and we find it 
 again in Latin, Greek, Celtic, Slavonic, Zend, and 
 Sanskrit, that is, in all the languages which form what 
 is called the Aryan family of speech. As this root bar 
 exists in Latin zsfer, in Greek as (pep, in Celtic as her, 
 in Slavonic as ber, in Zend as bar, and in Sanskrit as 
 bhar, it is clear that it must have existed before these 
 languages separated, and that, as you may imagine, 
 must have been a very, very long time ago. 
 
 But you may ask, How did these roots exist ? 
 Were they ever independent words, or did they only 
 exist in their derivatives? Of course, it is impossible 
 to answer this question by historical evidence. If any- 
 thing deserves to be called pre-historic, it is the period 
 of language which precedes the formation of Sanskrit, 
 Greek, and Latin. But if we argue by analogy, we 
 may say that as in Chinese, so in this Proto-Aryan 
 
 1 Morris, Historical Outlines, 322. 
 
24 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 language, these roots, without any formative suffixes 
 or prefixes, were probably used by themselves. On the 
 other hand, it is quite true that, as soon as one of these 
 roots was used either as a subject or as a predicate, it 
 had really ceased to be a root in the true sense of that 
 word, and had become a noun, or a verb, or an ad- 
 jective. 
 
 Hitherto, it seems to me, there is nothing difficult, 
 nothing uncertain, nothing mysterious in this process 
 of taking our language to pieces, and separating the 
 radical from the formal elements. It is no more than 
 cracking a nut and separating the kernel from the 
 shell. What the result of this cracking and peeling 
 has been, I shall try to explain to you in my next 
 lecture. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 
 
 THE ANALYSIS OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 WE SAW at the end of our last lecture by what 
 process the constituent elements of a language 
 can be discovered. It is a very simple process. You 
 take a word, remove from it all that can be accounted 
 for, that is, all that can be proved to be purely forma- 
 tive and derivative; and what cannot be accounted 
 for, what cannot be further analysed, you accept as an 
 element, as an ultimate fact, or, as scholars are in the 
 habit of calling it, as a root. 
 
 Now let me tell you, first of all, that this chemical 
 analysis of words is by no means a new invention. 
 It was performed for the first time more than 2,000 
 years ago by the grammarians of India. They reduced 
 the whole of their abounding language to about 1,706 
 roots. 1 Given these roots, they professed to be able 
 to account for every word in Sanskrit, and to a certain 
 extent they achieved it. Considering the time when 
 that experiment was carried out, it strikes us as per- 
 fectly marvellous. We, in Europe, were still savages 
 at that time, entirely unacquainted with letters or 
 literature. Still, we have made some advance over 
 
 1 Science of Language, Vol. I. p. 306. 
 
26 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Pamni, and Mr. Edgren has reduced the number of 
 necessary roots to 816, afterwards to 633, and at last 
 to 587. l With these roots he thinks that the great 
 bulk of the Sanskrit vocabulary can be accounted for. 
 And here again we may say that, with certain well- 
 understood exceptions, this promise has been fulfilled. 
 For instance, the root bar, or bhar, particularly if we 
 include the words derived from Latin ferre and adopted 
 in English, such as, for instance, fertile, far (barley), 
 farina, barley-flower, reference, deference, conference, 
 difference, inference, preference, transference, and all the 
 rest, would yield more than a hundred English words. 
 We should not want therefore more than a hundred 
 such roots to account for 10,000 words in English. 
 Now, as a matter of fact, the number of Aryan roots 
 which have left offspring in English, is only about 
 46o. 2 When all the offspring of a root dies, of course 
 the root itself comes to an end, and this is what has 
 happened to a number of roots which are required to 
 account for words in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, but 
 no longer, for any words existing in English. 
 
 It stands to reason that all these statements are 
 broad statements. There is in every language a con- 
 siderable residue of words which has not yet been 
 traced back to any root. There are likewise many 
 words which are not to be derived from roots at all, 
 but come straight from imitations of sounds, or inter- 
 jections. To this class belong such words as cuckoo, 
 moo (cow), bah (lamb), to click, to hiss. The Greeks 
 called the formation of such words onomatopoeia or 
 word-manufacturing, by which they meant that they 
 formed a class by themselves, that they were mere 
 
 1 Science of Thought , p. 377. 
 
 SSkeat, Etymological Dictionary, pp. 739, seq. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 27 
 
 made words, artificial words, not real and natural 
 words, like all the rest. 
 
 Besides there are interjections, such as ah, oh, fie, 
 pooh, pah, and all the rest. 
 
 Still, to put the matter broadly and I cannot here 
 attempt more than to give you the broad outlines of 
 the Science of Language we have now come to this. 
 Instead of being startled and staggered by 250,000 of 
 words, all crowding in upon us and asking us what 
 they are and whence they came, we are now only con- 
 fronted by four or five hundred words or roots, and 
 have to render some account of them. If we can do 
 that, the world-old riddle of the origin of language is 
 solved. How from these roots the whole wealth of 
 English was evolved has been shown by Comparative 
 Grammer. Here all formative elements, such as suf- 
 fixes, prefixes, infixes, all case-terminations, all per- 
 sonal and tense-terminations, have been classified, 
 and traced back, more or less successfully, to so-called 
 demonstrative elements. Here also much remains 
 still to be done, but the broad fact is established once 
 for all, that all we call grammar is the result of syn- 
 thesis between predicative roots and demonstrative 
 elements, often also between words, ready made. 
 
 Thus birth was originally bhar, to bear, plus a de- 
 monstrative element //', in English th, which localises 
 the act of bearing here and there. 
 
 The Sanskrit bi-bhar-mi shows us the same root 
 reduplicated, so as to express continuous action, and 
 followed by m i as a personal demonstrative. Bearing- 1 
 comes to mean, I bear. 
 
 The English bear-able is a compound of bear with 
 the Roman suffix able, the Latin abilis, which ex- 
 presses fitness. 
 
28 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Instances of composition of ready-made words, we 
 have in English in such words as huzzy, which stands 
 for housewife ; or world, which stands for wear = man, 
 and yld, age ; god-less, which means loose or away from 
 God ; god-ly, which means like God. 
 
 We have now to face the final question, What are 
 these roots ? If we can answer that, we shall know 
 what language is. We shall not simply stare at it in 
 silent wonderment, nor shall we repeat the old answer 
 that we learnt it from our mother, and our mother 
 from her mother, and thus ad infinitutn. We shall 
 probably wonder at it all the more, but with an intel- 
 ligent wonder and pleasure, and not simply with a 
 vacant stare, that so much could have been made out 
 of so little. 
 
 All roots which we find in English, in Sanskrit, or 
 rather in that stratum of language which lies even 
 beneath Sanskrit, are perfectly definite in sound. 
 Their consonants are guttural, dental, or labial, surd, 
 sonant, or aspirated. These consonants can be modi- 
 fied according to certain rules, but they are not vague 
 and indefinite, as is often the case with the vowels and 
 consonants of less developed languages. 
 
 Secondly, they nearly all express acts, such as 
 bearing, striking, pushing, cutting, tearing. And you 
 will find, if you trace even the most abstract and 
 elevated notions back to their original source, they 
 are borrowed from such material concepts as tearing, 
 pushing, and all the rest. Abstract, for instance, is 
 what is torn away, elevated what is pushed aloft. 
 
 Thirdly, they are all conceptual, that is to say they 
 do not express a single percept, as, for instance, the 
 sound of cuckoo, or moo, or bah, but they signify acts, 
 or qualities, conceived as the result of acts. Percept, 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 2Q 
 
 as you know, is the technical name given to our cog- 
 nisance of a single object actually perceived by the 
 senses ; while concept is the technical term for our 
 cognisance of something common to several objects, 
 which can never by itself be conceived by the senses. 
 Thus snow is called a percept, the white of snow a con- 
 cept. 
 
 When logicians ask, how we came to form con- 
 cepts, they seem to see no difficulty whatever in this 
 process. There was white in snow, they say, in chalk, 
 and in milk ; and the sign for this common quality was 
 the sound white. So, no doubt, it is with us ; but in the 
 evolution of the human mind, the forming of concepts 
 represents quite a new epoch, and like everything else 
 in that evolution, we must try to discover some natural 
 necessity for it. Now the first natural necessity for 
 our taking cognisance of two or more percepts as one, 
 lies in our own acts. Most of our acts are repeated 
 acts. We do not strike, or push, or rub once only, but 
 repeatedly. This consciousness, therefore, of our own 
 repeated acts as one action, grew by necessity into our 
 first conceptual knowledge, and that primitive con- 
 ceptual knowledge is embodied in those very roots 
 which, as we saw, were the feeders of all human 
 speech. When this conceptual tendency was once 
 started, it would go on growing stronger with every 
 new generation, till at last our whole intellectual life 
 became, as it now is, conceptual. It is the beginning 
 of this peculiar mental operation that has to be ex- 
 plained, and it should be explained, if possible, as 
 brought about by the same natural necessity which 
 forces us to see and to hear. I do not say that the 
 consciousness of our own repeated acts is the only 
 possible way in which the beginning of concepts can 
 
30 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 be explained. All I say is that it is the most natural 
 explanation, and that it is confirmed in the most un- 
 expected way by the facts of language. 
 
 One more question now remains. Why should the 
 consciousness of our acts be accompanied by certain 
 definite sounds, such as bhar, to bear, mar, to rub, std, 
 to stop, tan, to stretch? Here again our answer can 
 only be hypothetical. Often though we cannot drive 
 our shaft into a deep geological stratum, we can guess 
 by analogy what its constituent elements must have 
 been. It is the same in the geology of language. 
 
 With regard to the sounds accompanying our no- 
 tions, we know from physiology that under any strong 
 muscular effort it is a relief to the system to let our breath 
 come out strongly and repeatedly, and by that process 
 to let the vocal cords vibrate in different ways. That is 
 the case with savages, and it is the case even with us. 
 These natural sounds accompanying our acts are 
 called clamor concomitans. Navvies when they have to 
 lift a heavy weight together, shout Yo heo. Sailors, 
 when they pull together, have their own monotonous 
 song. Even children, when they march or dance, 
 break out naturally in some kind of rhythmic sing- 
 song. Here we have at all events a hint, for I will 
 say no more, how this natural music which accom- 
 panied the acts of early people, this clamor concomitans, 
 could have supplied the outward signs of the inward 
 concepts of these acts. What we want are natural 
 signs of concepts, not of percepts. If our thoughts 
 and our language consisted of percepts only, the sound 
 of cuckoo for the cuckoo, of moo for cow, and bah for 
 lamb would have been amply sufficient. But we must 
 take language as it is. Language as it is, is derived 
 from sounds which express the consciousness of our 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 31 
 
 acts, and which are ipso facto conceptual. Such sounds 
 can be supplied, as it seems to me, through one chan- 
 nel only, namely, from the sounds which accompany 
 our acts, and particularly such acts as are performed 
 in common with our fellow-men. From the fact that 
 these primitive acts were performed in common, an- 
 other advantage arises, namely, that the sounds which 
 accompany them, and which afterwards are to remind 
 us of them, are naturally understood by others as well 
 as by ourselves, in every part of the world where a be- 
 ginning of social life is made. 
 
 Let us see now what are the results at which we 
 have arrived, not by a priori theories about language 
 and thought, but by a mere analysis of facts, of the 
 facts of language, as garnered in our dictionaries and 
 grammars. 
 
 We found that a small number of insignificant little 
 syllables, such as bhar, or dhar, or mar, or pat, or 
 man formed the elements with which the whole Eng- 
 lish langxiage had been put together. We found that 
 a somewhat larger number sufficed to account for the 
 whole verbal harvest of all the Aryan languages, such 
 as Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, Russian, German, 
 and Welsh. I may add that a similar analysis of the 
 Semitic languages, such as Hebrew, Syriac, and Arabic 
 has led to exactly the same result, and that in other 
 families of languages also, outside the pale of Aryan 
 and Semitic, something corresponding to our roots 
 has been discovered as the residue of a careful etymo- 
 logical analysis. 
 
 We may now with perfect safety make another step 
 in advance. 
 
 These so-called roots, these insignificant little syl- 
 lables, which form the foundation of all that we call 
 
32 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 language, form at the same time the impassable bar- 
 rier between man and beast. Whatever animals may 
 be able to do and no one who has watched intelligent 
 animals without preconceived opinions, can doubt that 
 they can do almost everything that we do, only in their 
 own way but whatever the cleverest animals are able 
 to do, they cannot form these little syllables as signs 
 of concepts. And as what we mean by a concept can- 
 not come into existence except by a sign, we may 
 argue, with a certain amount of plausibility, that ani- 
 mals have not what we call concepts, and that this is 
 the true reason why they have not what we mean by 
 language. It may seem a very small matter, this being 
 able to use a number of syllables as signs of con- 
 cepts; but it forms nevertheless the sine qud non of 
 language, and no one will venture to say that language 
 is a small matter, even though it consists at first of 
 300 words only. The first rays of language, like the 
 first rays of the dawn, change the world from night to 
 day, from darkness to light, from a strange phantom 
 into our own home. However humble we may try to 
 be, no one who really knows what language means, 
 and what it has done for us, will be able to persuade 
 himself that, after all, there is not a radical difference 
 between him and the parrot, the elephant, or the ape. 
 Here then, is one of the lessons which the Science 
 of Language teaches us. It opens our eyes at first to 
 the marvellousness of language, and makes us see that 
 the language which we speak, and which seems to us 
 so very simple, so very natural, so very familiar, is 
 really something so magnificent, so wonderful, so dif- 
 ferent from everything else we have or do or know, 
 that some of the wisest of mankind could not help 
 themselves, but had to ascribe it to a divine source. 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 33 
 
 It shows us secondly, that, like all the most marvel- 
 lous things, language also, if carefully studied, dis- 
 closes a simplicity more wonderful even than its sup- 
 posed complexity. As chemistry has shown us that 
 the whole universe, the sea and the mountains, the 
 earth and the sun, the trees and the animals, the sim- 
 plest protoplasm and the most highly organised brain, 
 are all put together with about sixty simple substances, 
 Comparative Philology has taught us that with about 
 400 simple radical substances, and a few demonstrative 
 elements, the names and the knowledge of the whole 
 universe have been elaborated. Only by being named 
 does this universe become our universe, and all our 
 knowledge, the accumulation of the labor of countless 
 generations, is possible only because it could be handed 
 down to us in the sacred shrine of language. Let 
 us be humble, as much as you like ; but on the other 
 hand, let us not depreciate our inheritance. We have 
 not made our language ourselves, we have received it. 
 We are what we are by what those who came before 
 us have done for us. Like the coral islands which 
 have been built up by the silent and self-sacrificing in- 
 dustry of millions of millions of living beings, our 
 languages have been elaborated by the incessant labors 
 of millions of millions of those who came before us. 
 Whether those ancestors of ours were hairy, whether 
 they had tails, whether they walked on all fours, or 
 whether they climbed trees what does that matter to 
 us? Our body is a mere conglomerate of cells. It 
 comes and goes, it is born and dies. It is not ours, 
 it is not our own self. But whatever these prehistoric 
 ancestors of ours may have been, they were able to 
 bring to maturity and to compound in ever-varying 
 forms those intellectual cells which, for want of a bet- 
 
34 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ter name, we call roots, and which constitute a barrier 
 between ourselves and all other living beings a barrier 
 which fortunately does not vanish by being ignored. 
 The Science of Language, better than any other sci- 
 ence, teaches us our true position in the world. Our 
 bodily frame is like the bodily frame of the animals ; 
 it is even less perfect than that of many animals. We 
 are beasts, we are wild beasts, and those who have 
 fought with wild beasts, not only at Ephesus, but 
 within the arena of their own hearts, are least likely to 
 forget that lesson. But there is a light within us, 
 which not only lights up our own true self, but throws 
 its rays upon the whole world that surrounds and holds 
 us. That light is language. Take away that language, 
 and man is lower than the dumb animals of the field 
 and of the forest. Give us that language, and we are 
 not only higher than all animals, but lifted up into a 
 new world, thinking thoughts and speaking words 
 which the animal may obey, may even imitate, but 
 which no animal can ever create, or even impart to its 
 own offspring. 
 
 THE LESSON TAUGHT BY THE SCIENCE OF 
 LANGUAGE. 
 
 I have tried hitherto to show how the Science of 
 Language teaches us our true position with regard to 
 animals. Let me now try to explain to you how the 
 same science has taught us likewise our true position 
 with regard to our fellow-men. 
 
 I mentioned before that English belongs to what I 
 call the Aryan family of speech. That means that in 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 35 
 
 the same manner as Italian, French, and Spanish are 
 derived from Latin, English and the other Aryan 
 languages are derived from a more ancient language, 
 which is lost, but which must once have had a very 
 real historical existence. This lost language we call 
 Aryan, or Proto-Aryan. The descendants of the Proto- 
 Aryan language are known to us in seven great 
 branches, called the Teutonic, the Celtic, the Italic, the 
 Greek, the Slavonic, the Iranic, and the Indie. The 
 first five constitute the North - Western or European, 
 the other two the South-Eastern or Asiatic division. 
 
 Now let us consider for a moment what all this 
 means. English belongs to the Teutonic branch of 
 the Aryan family ; that means that English, and Ger- 
 man, and Dutch, and Danish, and Swedish, and even 
 Icelandic, are all varieties of one type of Aryan speech, 
 and that all the people who speak these languages are 
 held together by the closest ties of a linguistic rela- 
 tionship. 
 
 It is said that blood is thicker than water, but it 
 may be said with even greater truth that language is 
 thicker than blood. If, in the interior of Africa, sur- 
 rounded by black men, whose utterances are utterly 
 unintelligible, we suddenly met with a man who could 
 speak English, we should care very little whether he 
 was English, or Irish, or American. We should under- 
 stand him, and be able to exchange our thoughts with 
 him. That brings us together far more closely than if 
 we met a Welshman speaking nothing but Welsh, or 
 a Scotchman speaking nothing but Gaelic ; or, for all 
 that, an Englishman who, having been brought up in 
 China, could speak nothing but Chinese. A common 
 language is a common bond of intellectual brother- 
 hood, far stronger than any supposed or real commu- 
 
36 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 nity of blood. Common blood without a common 
 language leaves us as perfect strangers. A common 
 language, even without common blood, makes the 
 whole world feel akin. 
 
 It is quite true that the different Teutonic dialects 
 have changed so much, that at present an Englishman 
 can hardly understand a Dutchman, a Dutchman can 
 hardly understand a German, while to a German, 
 Danish and Swedish and Icelandic sound as strange 
 as French and Italian. Nevertheless, in spite of dy- 
 nastic and national feuds, English, Dutch, Germans, 
 Danes, and Swedes, feel themselves as one, when 
 brought face to face with Slavonic or Romanic nations. 
 They know that by their language, if not by their 
 blood, they represent a unity in the history of the world. 
 The same feeling is shared most strongly by all Sla- 
 vonic people. However much they may be separated 
 from each other by government, religion, and general 
 civilisation, against Teutonic nations the Slaves are 
 one. There can be no doubt, however, that during 
 the middle ages, and also in modern times, the mix- 
 ture of blood between Slaves and Germans has been 
 enormous. The Slavonic names of places and families 
 in Germany, and the German names of places and fam- 
 ilies in Bohemia, Poland, and Russia tell their own tale. 
 Nevertheless, a man who speaks Bohemian, Polish, or 
 Russian, feels himself a Slave ; a man who speaks 
 German feels himself a German, and he can hardly 
 understand what is meant when he is told that the 
 blood of his great-grandfather was either Slavonic or 
 Teutonic. Nor do I think that any biologist has as 
 yet given us a scientific definition of what is meant by 
 Slavonic or Teutonic blood, by Slavonic or Teutonic 
 hair, or skulls, or skin ; and until that is done, such 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 37 
 
 undefined words should simply be boycotted in all sci- 
 entific discussions. 
 
 The Science of Language, however, professes to 
 teach us something else. Whatever the so-called na- 
 tional antipathy between people speaking Slavonic 
 and Teutonic and Romanic languages may be, they 
 have now to learn a new lesson a lesson that may 
 bear good fruit in the future, namely, that these very 
 Slavonic, Teutonic, and Romanic languages, which at 
 present divide the people who speak them, belong to 
 one and the same family, and were once spoken by 
 the common ancestors of these divided and sometimes 
 hostile nations. 
 
 At present such lessons may seem to possess a sci- 
 entific interest only, in so far as they have made schol- 
 ars take a completely new view of the ancient history 
 of mankind. The old idea that our languages were 
 all derived from Hebrew, has been surrendered long 
 ago ; but it was not surrendered without an effort, an 
 effort almost as great as that which made the world 
 surrender its faith in the central position of the 
 earth. 
 
 After that came a new surrender, of which I still 
 remember the beginning and the end. I myself was 
 brought up in the most straitest school of classical 
 scholarship. I was led to believe that there were only 
 two so-called classical languages in the world Greek 
 and Latin and that all the other nations of Europe 
 were more or less of barbarians till they were debar- 
 barised by contact with Greek and Roman civilisation. 
 That the language of the ancient Germans or Celts 
 could have been anything but an uncouth jargon, as 
 compared with the language of Homer and Virgil ; 
 that the grammar of the Goths could have been as 
 
38 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 perfect as that of the Hellenes; that the natives of 
 Gaul and Germany could have possessed a religion, a 
 mythology, and an epic poetry that could be compared 
 to the religion, the mythology, and the epic poetry of 
 Greeks and Romans these are ideas which would 
 have been scouted by all scholars, in fact by all edu- 
 cated people, at the beginning of our century. But 
 facts will have their way, however much they may be 
 scouted at first. That the Gothic language was as finely 
 organised as Latin, admitted of no contradiction. That 
 the religion and the mythology of the Teutonic nations 
 flowed from the same source as the religion and mythol- 
 ogy of the Greeks and Romans, had to be granted even 
 by the best Greek and Latin scholars of the day, such 
 as Gottfried Hermann, Otfried Miiller, and Welcker. 
 And that the epic poetry of Iceland, and of Germany, 
 the Edda and the Nibelunge, contained fragments of 
 as peculiar beauty as the Homeric poems, was freely 
 acknowledged by the foremost poets and critics in Ger- 
 many, such as Herder and Goethe. 
 
 Though no one would have denied the superiority 
 of the Greek genius, and though the glory of having 
 raised the world from darkness to light will forever 
 remain with the Greeks, yet the Greeks, and their 
 pupils, the Romans, could no longer command a posi- 
 tion apart from all the rest. They had made a better 
 use of the talent committed to them ; it may be they 
 had received from the beginning a richer endowment. 
 But those whom in their pride they had called bar- 
 barians, had now to be recognised as of the same kith 
 and kin from the beginning, nay, destined hereafter to 
 outstrip even their masters in the historic race after 
 the true, the noble, and the good. Classical scholars 
 who can remember the events of the last fifty years 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 39 
 
 know best how radical a change every branch of clas- 
 sical learning has undergone, when it became pos- 
 sessed by this new comparative spirit. 
 
 Like many movements, true in themselves, this 
 movement also has sometimes been carried too far. 
 No one, it was boldly asserted, could know Greek who 
 did not know Sanskrit or Gothic. No one could un- 
 derstand Roman mythology who had not studied mod- 
 ern folk-lore. All this is true in a certain sense, but 
 it has been much exaggerated. Still, our historical 
 horizon has been permanently enlarged. Greeks and 
 Romans have been placed in a new historical environ- 
 ment, and so far from losing in their prestige, they 
 only stand forth in bolder relief by the historical back- 
 ground with which the Science of Language has sup- 
 plied them. 
 
 But if this feeling of fraternity between the prin- 
 cipal languages of Europe can only claim a scientific 
 and literary interest, it has produced very practical 
 results in other quarters. The feeling between the 
 white and the black man is deeply engrained in human 
 nature, and in spite of all the arguments in support of 
 our common humanity, it was not to be wondered at 
 that the dark people of India should look upon their 
 white conquerors as strangers, and that the white rulers 
 of India should treat their dark subjects almost as 
 people of another kind. That feeling seemed wellnigh 
 unconquerable, till the discovery of Sanskrit proved 
 beyond all manner of doubt that the languages spoken 
 by the inhabitants of India must have sprung from 
 the same source as Greek, Latin, and English. The 
 name Indo-European marked not only a new epoch in 
 the study of language ; it ushered in a new period in 
 the history of the world. Language, as I said before, 
 
40 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 is thicker than blood, and while a so-called community 
 of blood conveys really no definite meaning at all, a 
 community of language that extended even to conso- 
 nants, vowels, and accents, proved an intellectual fra- 
 ternity far stronger than any merely genealogical rela- 
 tionship. 
 
 When the Hindus learnt for the first time that their 
 ancient language, the Sanskrit, was closely connected 
 with Greek and Latin, and with that uncouth jargon 
 spoken by their rulers, they began to feel a pride in 
 their language and their descent, and they ceased to 
 look upon the pale-skinned strangers from the North 
 as strange creatures from another, whether a better or 
 a worse, world. They felt what we feel when later in 
 life we meet with a man whom we had quite forgotten. 
 But as soon as he tells us that he was at the same 
 school with ourselves, as soon as he can remind us of 
 our common masters, or repeat some of the slang 
 terms of our common childhood and youth, he be- 
 comes a schoolfellow, a fellow, a man whom we seem 
 to know, though we do not even recollect his name. 
 Neither the English nor the Hindus recollected their 
 having been at the same school together thousands of 
 yeais ago, but the mere fact of their using the same 
 slang words, such as m a t a r and mother, such as 
 b h r a t a r and brother, such as s t a r a s and stars, was 
 sufficient to convince them that most likely they had 
 been in the same scrapes and had been flogged by the 
 same masters. It was not so much that either the 
 one or the other party felt very much raised in their 
 own eyes by this discovery, as that a feeling sprang 
 up between them that, after all, they might be chips 
 of the same block. I could give you ever so many 
 proofs in support of this assertion, at all events on 
 
SECOND LECTURE. 4! 
 
 the part of the Hindus, and likewise from the speeches 
 of some of the most enlightened rulers of India. But 
 as I might seem to be a not altogether unprejudiced 
 witness in such a matter, I prefer to quote the words 
 of an eminent American scholar, Mr. Horatio Hale. 
 "When the people of Hindostan in the last century," 
 he writes, "came under the British power, they were 
 regarded as a debased and alien race. Their complexion 
 reminded their conquerors of Africa. Their divinities 
 were hideous monsters. Their social system was anti- 
 human and detestable. Suttee, Thuggee, Juggernaut, 
 all sorts of cruel and shocking abominations seemed 
 to characterise and degrade them. The proudest In- 
 dian prince was, in the sight and ordinary speech of 
 the rawest white subaltern, only a ' nigger.' This uni- 
 versal contempt was retorted with a hatred as univer- 
 sal, and threatening in the future most disastrous 
 consequences to the British rule. Then came an un- 
 expected and wonderful discovery. European philol- 
 ogists, studying the language of the conquered race, 
 discovered that the classic mother-tongue of Northern 
 Hindostan was the elder sister of the Greek, the Latin, 
 the German, and the Celtic languages. At^ the same 
 time a splendid literature was unearthed, which filled 
 the scholars of Europe with astonishment and delight. 
 The despised Asiatics became not only the blood-rela- 
 tions, but the teachers and exemplars, of their con- 
 querors. The revulsion of feeling on both sides was 
 immense. Mutual esteem and confidence, to a large 
 extent, took the place of repulsion and distrust. Even 
 in the mutiny which occurred while the change was 
 yet in progress, a very large proportion of the native 
 princes and people refused to take part in the out- 
 break. Since that time, good-will has steadily grown 
 
42 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 with the fellowship of common studies and aims. It 
 may freely be affirmed, at this day, that the discovery 
 of the Sanskrit language and literature has been of more 
 value to England in the retention and increase of her In- 
 dian Empire, than an army of a hundred thousand men. " 
 
 This is but one out of many lessons which the Sci- 
 ence of Language has taught us. We have become 
 familiarised with many of these lessons, and are apt to 
 forget that not more than fifty years ago they were 
 scouted as absurd by the majority of classical scholars, 
 while they have proved to be the discovery of a new 
 world, or, if you like, the recovery of an old world. 
 
 But there are many more lessons which that science 
 has still in store for us. There is still much gold and 
 silver to be raised by patient labor from the mines that 
 have been opened. What is wanted are patient and 
 honest laborers, and it is in the hope of gaining fresh 
 recruits that I have ventured to invite you to listen to 
 my pleading. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 
 
 THOUGHT THICKER THAN BLOOD. 
 
 I HAVE been asked the question, a very natural 
 question, and one that has often been discussed 
 since the discovery of Sanskrit and since the establish- 
 ment of a close relationship between Sanskrit, Per- 
 sian, Greek, Latin, Russian, German, English, and 
 Welsh Does the close relationship of these languages 
 prove a real relationship between the people who speak 
 these languages ? 
 
 At first sight, the answer seems very easy. As a 
 negro may learn English and become, as has been the 
 case, an English bishop, it would seem as if language 
 by itself could hardly be said to prove relationship. 
 That being so, I have always, beginning with my very 
 first contribution to the Science of Language my 
 letter to Bunsen "On the Turanian Languages," pub- 
 lished in 1854 I have always, I say, warned against 
 mixing up these two relationships, the relationship 
 of language and the relationship of blood. As these 
 warnings, however, have been of very little avail, I 
 venture to repeat them once more, and in the very 
 words which I used in the year 1854 : 
 
 "Much of the confusion of terms and indistinctness of prin- 
 ciples, both in ethnology and philology, is due to the combined 
 
44 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 study of these heterogeneous sciences. Ethnological race and lin- 
 guistic race are not commensurate, except in ante-historical times, 
 or perhaps at the very dawn of history. With the migrations of 
 tribes, their wars, their colonies, their conquests and alliances, 
 which, if we may judge from their effects, must have been much 
 more violent in the ethnic than ever in the political periods of 
 history, it is impossible to imagine that ethnological race and lin- 
 guistic race should continue to run parallel. The physiologist 
 should therefore pursue his own science, unconcerned about lan- 
 guage. Let him see how far the skulls, or the hair, or the color, 
 or the skin of different tribes admit of classification ; but to the 
 sound of their words his ear should be as deaf as that of the orni- 
 thologist must be to the notes of caged birds. If his Caucasian 
 race includes nations or individuals speaking Aryan (Greek), Tur- 
 anian (Turkish), and Semitic (Hebrew) languages, it is not his 
 fault. His system must not be altered in order to suit another 
 system. There is a better solution both for his difficulties and for 
 those of the philologist than mutual compromise. The philologist 
 should collect his evidence, arrange his classes, divide and com- 
 bine, as if no Blumenbach had ever looked at skulls, as if no 
 Camper had ever measured facial angles, as if no Owen had ex- 
 amined the basis of a cranium. His evidence is the evidence of 
 language, and nothing else ; this he must follow, even though it 
 were in the teeth of history, physical or political. Would he 
 scruple to call the language of England Teutonic, and class it with 
 the Low-German dialects, because the physiologist could tell him 
 that the skull, the bodily habitat of such language, is of a Celtic 
 type, or because the genealogist can prove that the arms of the 
 family conversing in this idiom are of Norman origin ? With the 
 philologist English is Teutonic, and nothing but Teutonic. Ethno- 
 logical suggestions as to an early substratum of Celtic inhabitants 
 in Britain, or historical information as to a Norman conquest, will 
 always be thankfully received by the philologist ; but if every 
 record were burnt, and every skull pulverised, the spoken language 
 of the present day alone would enable the philologist to say that 
 English, as well as Dutch and Frisian, belongs to the Low-Ger- 
 man branch that this branch, together with the High-German 
 and Scandinavian, belongs to the Teutonic stock, and that this 
 stock, together with the Celtic, Slavonic, Hellenic, Italic, Iranic. 
 and Indie, belongs to the Aryan family. . . . 
 
 "There ought to be no compromise of any sort between ethno- 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 45 
 
 logical and philological science. It is only by stating the glaring 
 contradictions between the two sciences that truth can be elicited. 
 . . . Ever since Blumenbach tried to establish his five races of men 
 (Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethiopian, and Malay), which 
 Cuvier reduced to three (Caucasian, Ethiopian, and Mongolian), 
 while Prichard raised them to seven (Iranian, Turanian, Ameri- 
 can, Hottentots, Negroes, Papuas, and Alfourous), it was felt that 
 these physiological classifications could not be brought to harmo- 
 nise with the evidence of language This point was never 
 
 urged with sufficient strength till at last Humboldt, in his Kosmos 
 (! . 353). stated it as a plain fact, that, even from a physiological 
 point of view, it is -impossible to recognise in the groups of Blu- 
 menbach any true typical distinction, any general and consistent 
 natural principle. From a physiological point of view, we may 
 speak of varieties of man, no longer of races, if that term is to 
 mean more than variety. Physiologically the unity of the human 
 species is a fact established as firmly as the unity of any other 
 animal species. So much then, but no more, the philologist should 
 learn from the physiologist. He should know that in the present 
 state of physiological science it is impossible to admit more than 
 one beginning of the human race. He should bear in mind that 
 Man is a species, created once, and divided in none of its varieties 
 by specific distinctions ; in fact, that the common origin of the 
 Negro and the Greek admits of as little doubt as that of the poodle 
 and the greyhound. ..." 
 
 I have made this long extract from a book written 
 by me in 1854, because it will show how strongly I 
 have always deprecated the mixing up of Ethnology 
 and Philology, and likewise that I was a Darwinian 
 long before Darwin. At that time, however, I still 
 entertained a hope that the physiologist might succeed 
 in framing a real classification of races, on the evidence 
 of skulls, or the skin, or the hair, as the philologist has 
 succeeded in framing a real classification of languages, 
 on the evidence of grammar. But in this hope we 
 have been disappointed. Mankind has proved ob- 
 streperous ; it has not allowed itself to be classified. 
 According to Darwin, all men form but one species, 
 
46 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 and to his mind that species overlaps even the limits 
 usually assigned to mankind. So far there seems to be 
 at present a general agreement among physiologists. 
 But all further attempts at classifying the human spe- 
 cies have signally failed. Some biologists (Virey) have 
 proposed two classes ; Cuvier proposed three, Lin- 
 naeus four, Blumenbach five, Buffon six, Prichard and 
 Peschel seven, Agassiz eight, Pickering eleven, Fried- 
 rich Miiller twelve, Bory de St. Vincent fifteen, Mor- 
 ton twenty- two, Crawford sixty, and Burke sixty-three. l 
 This does not prove that all these classifications are 
 wrong. One of them may possibly hereafter be proved 
 to be right. But at present not only is there the most 
 decided disagreement among the most eminent biolo- 
 gists, but some of them, and these men of high author- 
 ity in biological science, have themselves given up 
 the whole problem of classifying mankind on physio- 
 logical grounds as utterly hopeless. Oscar Peschel, 
 in his classical work, The Races of Man and Their Geo- 
 graphical Distribution, sums up his conclusions in the 
 following words : "We must needs confess that nei- 
 ther the shape of the skull nor any other portion of 
 the skeleton has afforded distinguishing marks of the 
 human races ; that the color of the skin likewise dis- 
 plays only various gradations of darkness ; and that 
 the hair alone comes to the aid of our systematic at- 
 tempts, and even this not always, and never with suf- 
 ficient decisiveness. . . . Who then can presume to 
 talk of the immutability of racial types? To base a 
 classification of the human race on the character of 
 the hair only, as Haeckel has done, was a hazardous 
 venture, and could but end as all other artificial sys- 
 tems have ended." 
 
 1 Horatio Hale, Race and Language, p. 340. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 47 
 
 Nor does Peschel stand alone in this honest confes- 
 sion that all classification of the human race based on 
 the color of the skin, the texture of the hair, the 
 shape of the skull, has completely failed. No one 
 has of late done more excellent work in ethnology 
 than the indefatigable Director of the American 
 Bureau of Ethnology, Major Powell. Yet this is what 
 he says 1 : "There is a science of anthropology, com- 
 posed of subsidiary sciences. There is a science of 
 sociology, which includes all the institutions of man- 
 kind. There is a science of philology, which includes 
 the languages of mankind. And there is a science of 
 philosophy, which includes the opinions of mankind. 
 But there is no science of ethnology, for the attempt 
 to classify mankind in groups has failed on every 
 hand." 
 
 The very Nestor among ethnologists, Horatio Hale, 
 from whose essay on " Race and Language " 2 I have 
 largely quoted, has, after a long life devoted to eth- 
 nological and linguistic studies, arrived at exactly the 
 same conclusion, and expressed it with the same open- 
 ness, that the classification of mankind cannot be 
 founded on color, hair, or skull, but must be founded 
 on language. 
 
 This is, no doubt, a great collapse. We had all 
 been brought up with a belief in a white, a yellow, a 
 brown, a red, and a black race ; or, if we entered 
 more deeply into the subject, we seemed perfectly 
 certain of a Caucasian, Mongolian, American, Ethio- 
 pian, and Malay race. More recently, the division of 
 the human race according to the texture of their hair, 
 as proposed by Haeckel and adopted by Friedrich 
 
 1 Science, June 24, 1887. 
 
 2 Popular Science Ret'ie^v, January, 1888. 
 
48 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Muller in his learned work on Ethnology, was accepted 
 by the new school of ethnologists as meeting all objec- 
 tions that had been made to former classifications. 
 Still, it is far better to confess that no satisfactory 
 classification has as yet been discovered, than to 
 maintain that hair, color, and shape of skulls have 
 proved real criteria of racial distinction. It does not 
 follow by any means that further research may not 
 bring to light a real divisor of the human race. At 
 present, however, color of skin is in conflict with 
 shape of skull, and shape of skull is in conflict with 
 texture of hair. What we want is a principle of 
 division that shall do justice to most, if not to all, the 
 essential qualities of the varieties of man, provided 
 always that such essential qualities can be discovered. 
 Till this is done, I agree with Mr. Horatio Hale 
 that the most satisfactory, nay the only possible di- 
 vision of the human race, is that which is based on 
 language. No one doubts that languages can be 
 classified, and that the true principle of classification 
 is their grammar. If some languages stand as yet 
 apart, which hereafter may be proved to be related, 
 or if other languages have not as yet been analysed 
 at all, that does not interfere with the enormous area 
 of human speech which has been carefully surveyed. 
 It is, of course, of that area alone that we can make 
 any assertion, and our assertion is that the people 
 who speak the same or cognate languages may, nay 
 must, be treated as closely related. In modern times 
 the frequent intercourse between all the people of the 
 world, and the facility with which foreign languages 
 may be acquired, are apt to make us look upon lan- 
 guage as something, not essential, but purely acciden- 
 tal. But that was not the case in ancient times ; and 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 49 
 
 though the acquisition of a foreign language may be 
 accidental, language as such is not. It is language 
 that makes man. Language is surely more of the es- 
 sence of man than his skin, or his color, or his skull, 
 or his hair. Blood, flesh, and bone are not of our true 
 essence. They are in a constant flux, and change with 
 every year, till at last they return to the dust. Our 
 body is our uniform, very tight sometimes, very pain- 
 ful to don, very painful to doff, but still our uniform 
 only. It matters very little whether it is black or 
 white. Language, on the contrary, is the very em- 
 bodiment of our true self. Take away language, 
 and we shall indeed be mere animals, and no more. 
 And, besides that, it is language that binds individ- 
 uals together into families, clans, and nations, and 
 survives them all in its constant growth, thus en- 
 abling us to base our classification on general and 
 permanent characteristics, and not on peculiarities 
 which, for all we know, may be the result of climate, 
 diet, and heredity. 
 
 There can be no doubt that in the beginning at all 
 events, the members of one family spoke one and the 
 same language. When families grew into clans and 
 nations, they would continue to speak the same lan- 
 guage, and if colonies started from their original 
 home, they could not but carry the same language with 
 them. 
 
 But it is objected, that in the spreading of nations 
 a mixture would necessarily occur between, say, white 
 and black tribes. 
 
 No doubt it would, and it is for this very reason 
 that physiological classification breaks down, while 
 linguistic classification, though it becomes more diffi- 
 cult, does not become impossible. After blood has 
 
5O SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 once become mixed, no scientific test has yet been 
 discovered for distinguishing its ingredients. No one 
 can tell, for instance, whether the offspring of a white 
 man and a black woman should be classed as Cauca- 
 sian or as Negro. The color may be quite white or 
 quite black, or something between the two. The 
 nose and mouth may be Negro-like, and yet the 
 color may be fair, and the shape of the skull and the 
 texture of the hair may be Caucasian. After one or 
 two generations certain varieties may either become 
 permanent, or they may, by the force of atavism, re- 
 turn to their original type. New mixtures of mixed 
 or mongrel offspring with other mongrel or with pure 
 breeds will make confusion even worse confounded, 
 and after hundreds and thousands of years, the very 
 possibility of pure breeds may very justly be doubted. 
 How then should we dare in our days to classify man- 
 kind according to such variable peculiarities as color, 
 skull, or hair? 
 
 The case is very different with regard to languages. 
 No doubt, while this social intercourse between black 
 and white people takes place, the white might adopt 
 some words from the black, and the black from the 
 white people. But these words could nearly always 
 be distinguished, as we are able to distinguish French, 
 Latin, and Greek words imbedded in English. And 
 there would always remain the criterion of grammar, 
 which enables us to say that English is and remains a 
 Teutonic language, even though every word in an Eng- 
 lish sentence should be, as it often is, of Latin origin. 
 
 Lastly, it should never be forgotten, that if we 
 speak of Aryas, we mean no more than the speakers 
 of Aryan languages. As to their color, skull, or hair, 
 we neither assert nor imply anything, unless we hap- 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 5! 
 
 pen to know it from other sources. We may thus 
 use "languages" as a synonym of "people," just as 
 Nebuchadnezzar addressed his subjects, "O people, 
 nations, and languages." It is quite possible in fact, 
 it is almost inevitable in the constant turmoil of 
 history that the same language may come to be 
 spoken by the white and the black, or any other variety 
 of man. We take that for granted, and we should 
 always have to make allowance for it, whenever we 
 have to make any assertions as to the physical appear- 
 ance of the Aryan or Semitic or Turanian speakers. 
 But even then there remains the fact that, whenever 
 there is a mixture of language, there is at the same 
 time a much greater mixture of blood ; and while it is 
 possible to analyse mixed language by scientific tests, 
 no tests whatever have as yet been discovered for 
 analysing mixed blood. It would be very hazardous 
 to say that hereafter such tests may not be discovered, 
 and that a classification of the human race according 
 to physiological peculiarities is altogether impossible. 
 What I maintain is that all attempts hitherto made 
 have failed, and that if we want to classify the species 
 to which we belong, we can only do it on linguistic 
 grounds. 
 
 Much fault has been found with a remark which I 
 made many years ago, that the same blood runs in the 
 veins of the Sepoy and of the English soldier, that they 
 are brothers in blood as well as brothers-in-arms. And 
 yet, though it is difficult to prove it in every single 
 case, all speaks in favor of supposing that the soldier 
 who speaks English and the soldier who speaks Ben- 
 gali, must be descended from ancestors who in far dis- 
 tant times spoke the same language and shared the 
 same blood. There may be Sepoys of Mongolian ori- 
 
52 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 gin ; but though of course I did not mean them, yet the 
 probability is that even they, if they have learned to 
 speak an Indian vernacular, are descended from an- 
 cestors who intermarried with women of Aryan origin. 
 As a rule, no tribe, whether conquered or conquering, 
 adopts the language of the conquerors or the con- 
 quered, and abstains at the same time from inter- 
 marriage. And what one single marriage may pro- 
 duce can easily be shown. Let there be one couple 
 of a black man and a white woman, and suppose they 
 have four children, two boys and two girls. Let 
 those boys and girls marry outsiders, whatever their 
 color may be. Then, if each of these four couples has 
 again four children, there would be sixteen mongrels. 
 In another twenty years these sixteen might produce 
 thirty-two, and in another twenty years these thirty- 
 two might have produced a total of sixty-four mon- 
 grels. If this process is carried on at the same not 
 very extravagant ratio of four children to every couple, 
 about six hundred years would suffice to produce a 
 population of 2,147,483,648 human beings, all mon- 
 grels. This, I believe, is a great deal more than the 
 population of the whole earth, which is said to amount 
 to no more than 1,400,000,000. If we ask what the 
 language of all these people would be, the answer is 
 easy. It would be the language of one of their two 
 ancestors, and it need not differ from that language 
 more than the English of to-day differs from that of 
 Robert of Gloucester. But however much it differed, 
 we could always discover whether the grammar, the 
 lifeblood of their language, was like that of the Ne- 
 groes or like that of the Greeks. With regard to 
 color, skull, and hair, however, it would be impos- 
 sible to hazard any conjecture. If the original white 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 53 
 
 man and black woman were only varieties of a com- 
 mon type, and their color was due to climatic influen- 
 ces, their offspring might be neither black nor white, 
 but any color grey, brown, or red. The noses of 
 their descendants might be Greek or Negro-like, their 
 skulls dolichocephalic or brachycephalic, their hair 
 straight, or curled, or tufty. 
 
 It was necessary to enter into this subject more 
 fully, because, whether from a dislike of the idea that 
 the same blood might run in the veins of the Sepoy 
 and of the English soldier, or from some other cause, 
 the idea of an Indo-European humanity has often 
 been scouted, and our ancestors have been sought for 
 in every part of the world rather than somewhere in 
 Asia. You will now understand in what sense Indo- 
 European speech is equivalent with Indo-European 
 race, and how far we are justified with Nebuchadnez- 
 zar to use languages as synonymous with nations. 
 
 It may be that the practical usefulness of the lesson 
 taught us by the Science of Lauguage, that all Aryas 
 do not only speak the same tongue, but are children 
 of the same parents, is at present confined to the dark 
 inhabitants of India and their fair rulers who came 
 from the extreme West of Europe. But in time to 
 come the same lesson may revive older and deeper 
 sympathies between all Indo-European nations, even 
 between those who imagine that they are divided, if 
 not by language, at all events by blood. 
 
 The Celts of Ireland are Aryas, and speak to them 
 only the language of the Aryan brotherhood, and the 
 wild fancies of a separate Fenian blood will soon 
 vanish. 
 
 The French are Aryas, and more than that, they 
 are, to a very considerable extent, Franks, and their 
 
54 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 veins are as full of the best Teutonic blood as their 
 language is of the best Teutonic speech. Why should 
 the French and the Germans not learn again those 
 neighborly sentiments which have made the westward 
 march of the Aryan brotherhood the triumphal pro- 
 gress of true civilisation? 
 
 The Slaves are Aryas, and so far as they are Aryas, 
 tillers of the soil, (for that is the original meaning of 
 the word,) they have preserved some of the noblest 
 features of the Aryan race. Why should they be taught 
 to look upon their German neighbors as aliens and 
 enemies, when they have so many interests and so 
 many duties in common ? Why should there be strife 
 between their herdmen, when they know that they are 
 brethren, and there is land enough for all of them, on 
 the right and on the left ? 
 
 These may seem but idle dreams, of little interest 
 to the practical politician. All I can say is, I wish it 
 were so. But my memory reaches back far enough to 
 make me see the real and lasting mischief for which, 
 I fear, the Science of Language has been responsible 
 for the last fifty years. The ideas of race and nation- 
 ality, founded on language, have taken such complete 
 possession of the fancy both of the young and the old, 
 that all other arguments seem of no avail ? 
 
 Why was Italy united? Because the Italian lan- 
 guage embodied Italian nationality. Why was Ger- 
 many united ? Because of Arndt's song, What is the 
 German's Fatherland ? and the answer given, As far 
 as sounds the German tongue. Why is Russia so 
 powerful a centre of attraction for the Slavonic inhab- 
 itants of Turkey and Germany ? Because the Russian 
 language, even though it is hardly understood by Ser- 
 vians, Croatians, and Bulgarians, is known to be most 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 55 
 
 closely allied. Even from the mere cinders of ancient 
 dialects, such as Welsh, Gaelic, and Erse, eloquent 
 agitators know how to fan a new, sometimes a danger- 
 ous, fire. 
 
 But if the Science of Language has encouraged 
 these various national aspirations in places even where 
 separation and national independence would mean 
 political annihilation ; if it has called forth a spirit of 
 separatism, it has also another lesson to teach, that 
 of an older, a higher, a truer brotherhood a lesson 
 too often forgotten, when the opposite lesson seems 
 better to answer political ends. As dialects may well 
 exist by the side of a national speech, nay, as they form 
 a constant supply of life, and vigor, and homely grace 
 to the classical language, so imperial rule does not ex- 
 clude provincial independence, but may derive from 
 the various members of a great empire, if only held 
 under proper control, its best strength, its permanent 
 health, and that delightful harmony which is the re- 
 ward of all true and unselfish statesmanship. 
 
 THE CRADLE OF THE ARYAS. 
 
 And now let us return once more from the present 
 and the future to the most distant past. If we are 
 all members of the great Aryan brotherhood, the 
 question whence the Aryas came, and what was the 
 original Aryan home, was a natural and legiti- 
 mate subject of a scholar's curiosity. The question 
 was asked and answered without much hesitation, 
 though, of course, with a clear knowledge that the 
 answer could be speculative only. Traditions among 
 
56 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 the South-Eastern Aryas, the Indians and Persians, 
 might point to the North, the legends of North-Wes- 
 tern Aryas, the Greeks and Germans, might point to 
 the North or the East, as their earthly paradise ; but 
 such dreams would be of little help in settling events 
 supposed to have taken place two, three, it may be four 
 or five thousand years before the beginning of our era. 
 The only arguments, if arguments they can be called, 
 or, we should rather say, the only impressions by 
 which scholars were guided in giving a guess at the 
 whereabouts of the cradle of the Aryan race, were first 
 of all geological, and afterwards semi-historical. Ge- 
 ology tells us that the first regions inhabitable by 
 human beings were the high plateau of Pamir in the 
 Belurtagh, and the chain of the Caucasus between the 
 Caspian, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean. No 
 geologist would ever think of any part of Europe as 
 inhabited, or inhabitable, at the same period of time 
 as these two highest points in Asia. From the same 
 high plateau spring the rivers Oxus and Yaxartes, 
 which would have served as guides to the West and 
 the North-West, and the Indus, which would have 
 served as a guide to the South-East ; the former lead- 
 ing the Indo-European race to Europe, the latter to 
 India. 
 
 And when we leave these distant geological per- 
 iods, we find again all the beginnings of what we may 
 call civilised life in Asia. I say nothing of China, or 
 Babylon and Assyria, of Egypt, Phenicia, and Pales- 
 tine. All these countries were teeming with civilised 
 life when, so far as history tells us anything, Europe 
 may still have been a sheet of ice, a swamp, or a 
 howling wilderness. But if we confine our attention 
 to the Aryas, we find them entering the land of the 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 57 
 
 Seven Rivers, as they called the country of the Pan- 
 jab, at a time when Europe had hardly risen above 
 the horizon of legend, much less of history. If we 
 claimed no more than 1000 B. C. as the date of that 
 Aryan immigration into India, the language which 
 they brought with them presupposes untold centuries 
 for its growth. When we proceed to Media and 
 Persia, we find there, too, traces of an ancient lan- 
 guage and literature, closely allied with that of India ; 
 and we can watch how in historical times these 
 Medes and Persians are brought in contact with an 
 even more ancient civilisation in Babylon, in Egypt, 
 and in Phenicia. When that Median and Persian 
 wave rolls on to Asia Minor, and after the conquest 
 of the Ionian settlements there, threatens to over- 
 whelm Europe, it is repelled by the Greeks, whose 
 civilisation was then of a comparatively recent date. 
 And when, after the Persian wars, the stream of 
 Greek civilisation flows westward to Italy, and from 
 Italy overflows into Gaul and Germany, sweeping 
 everything before it, it meets there with hardly any 
 monuments of ancient growth, and with no evidence 
 of a language more primitive than Sanskrit, or of a 
 literature and religion to be compared for freshness 
 and simplicity with the religious literature of the 
 Vedic age. 
 
 It might have been intelligible if, under these cir- 
 cumstances, the cradle of the Aryan race had been 
 sought for in India or Persia, possibly even in Asia 
 Minor, in Greece, or in Italy. But to place that cradle 
 in the untrodden forests of Germany, or even on the 
 shores of the bleak Scandinavian peninsula, would 
 seem to have required a courage beyond the reach of 
 ordinary mortals. 
 
58 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Yet, this feat has been accomplished by some Ger- 
 man ethnologists, and the south coast of Sweden has 
 actually been singled out as the hive from which the 
 Aryas swarmed, not only into Germany, Italy, Greece, 
 and Armenia, but into Persia and India likewise. 
 Scholars shook their heads and rubbed their eyes, but 
 they were told that this counted for nothing, and that 
 the least they could do was to prove that Sweden had 
 not been the original home of the Aryas. Now, you 
 know how difficult it is under all circumstances to 
 prove a negative ; but in this case it became doubly 
 difficult, because there was hardly anything adduced 
 that could be disproved. There was no evidence of 
 any Aryan people having lived in Sweden much be- 
 fore the time when Persia invaded Greece, and when 
 the ancient Vedic religion, after a sway of many cen- 
 turies, after long periods of growth and decay, was 
 already being supplanted by a new religion, by Bud- 
 dhism. The statement quoted as having been made 
 by a defender of the Scandinavian theory, that the 
 date of the Aryan migration into India was about the 
 seventh century, must clearly rest on a misprint, and 
 was probably meant for the seventeenth century. For, 
 after all, whenever the Aryans started from Scandi- 
 navia, they must have been near the Indus about 
 1500 B. C., speaking Vedic, and not modern Buddhist 
 Sanskrit; they must have been in Greece about 1000 
 B. C., speaking the Dorian dialect of the Greek branch 
 of the Aryan stock of speech. They must have been 
 in Asia Minor, speaking the Ionian dialect of the 
 same Greek branch at a time early enough for their 
 name of Varan to be quoted by the author of Genesis, 
 for their name of Yauna to be joined with those of 
 Media and Armenia as provinces of Persia in the 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 59 
 
 cuneiform inscriptions of Darius ; nay, possibly for the 
 same name, under the disguise of Uinen, being found 
 in Egypt in the hieroglyphic inscriptions of the fif- 
 teenth century B. C. 
 
 These are facts that have to be accommodated, 
 when we are asked to believe that the ancestors of all 
 these Aryas came from Sweden, where we know of no 
 traces of human life, much less of Aryan life, much 
 before these very wars between Persians and lonians. 
 Even then we only find kitchen-middens and funeral 
 barrows, and who is to tell us whether these beaux restes 
 of prehistoric dinners were left by Aryas or by pre- 
 Aryan hordes, and whether these silent dolichocepha- 
 lic skulls spoke once an Aryan or non- Aryan dialect? 
 
 With all these palpable facts against them it can 
 hardly be supposed that the supporters of the Scan- 
 dinavian theory had no arguments at all on their side. 
 Yes, they had, but let us see what their strength 
 really is. 
 
 It has been said that Latham, who first started 
 this theory, pointed out that at present the number of 
 Aryas, speaking different Aryan dialects in Europe, is 
 much larger than the number of Aryas in Asia, and 
 that it would therefore be absurd to derive the major- 
 ity from so small a minority. First of all, I doubt 
 these linguistic statistics, even at the present day. I 
 am not at all certain that the number of people speak- 
 ing Aryan dialects in Asia at the present moment is 
 smaller than that of Aryan speakers in Europe. But 
 at the time of which we are now speaking, say 500 
 B. C., when one great period of language, literature, 
 and religion had already come to an end in India, the 
 population of the North of Europe and of Scandinavia 
 was of the scantiest, and even if they were Aryas, and 
 
60 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 not Basks, or Laps, or Fins, their number would have 
 been a mere nothing compared with the enormous 
 number of Aryas at that time living in India, and 
 Persia, and Asia Minor. How then these Aryas who 
 composed their Vedic hymns on the banks of the Seven 
 Rivers between 1500 and 1000 B. C., should have 
 migrated from Sweden, passes my understanding. 
 
 A stronger argument that has been adduced in 
 favor of Sweden being the cradle of the Aryan race, 
 is a passage from Jordanes, or Jornandes, as he is 
 commonly called. At all events we have here some- 
 thing tangible that can be handled, that can be proved 
 or disproved. It is said that Jordanes has preserved 
 the ancient tradition that Sweden was "the manu- 
 factory of people," the officina gentium, as he ex- 
 pressed it. 
 
 Before we quote an authority, our first duty is to 
 find out who he was and what means of knowledge 
 he possessed. Now Jordanes lived about 550 A. D. 
 He was originally a notary in Bulgaria, and became 
 afterwards a monk, possibly in Ravenna. He wrote a 
 book De rebus Geticis et De origine actuqite Geticae 
 gentis, which is chiefly based on a lost work of Cas- 
 siodorus, the friend and adviser of Theodoric, on 
 Orosius, and on similar authorities. He himself is a 
 most ignorant and uncritical writer. Besides that, he 
 writes with an object, namely to magnify the Gothic 
 race and bring it somehow in connexion with Troy 
 and the fabulous ancestors of the Romans. 1 He cer- 
 tainly, whether rightly or wrongly, believed that the 
 Gothic and other German tribes among whom he had 
 lived on the Danube, came from the north, and from 
 Sweden. He therefore called the island of Scancia or 
 
 1 Jordanes, Cap. 9, and 20. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 6l 
 
 Scandza the officina gentium, 1 the manufactory of peo- 
 ples. But by these peoples he clearly understood the 
 Teutonic tribes, who had overrun the Roman Empire. 
 The idea that other nations, such as Romans, or 
 Greeks, or other Aryas could have come from Sweden 
 would probably have completely staggered his weak 
 mind. 
 
 On such evidence then we are asked to believe 
 that tradition had preserved in the year 550 A. D. 
 some recollection of the original migration of the 
 Aryas from Sweden, say 500 B. C. Poor Jordanes 
 himself never dreamt of this, and a theory must 
 indeed be very near drowning to grasp at such a 
 straw. 
 
 What would the upholders of the Scandinavian 
 theory say, if we appealed to the famous legend of 
 Odin's migration from Asia in support of the Asiatic 
 origin of the Aryas in Europe? And yet that legend 
 meets us only a century later than Jordanes, namely, 
 in Fredegar, 650 A. D. , and then grows from century 
 to century till we find it fully developed in the Heims- 
 kringla and the Prose Edda in the thirteenth century, 
 nay, believed in by certain scholars of the present 
 day. 
 
 If we reason soberly, all we can say is that the 
 separation between the South-Eastern branch of the 
 Aryan family, the Hindus and Persians, and the 
 North-Western branch, the Germans, Celts, Slavs, 
 Greeks, and Italians, cannot be proved to have taken 
 place in Europe, because at that early time we know 
 absolutely nothing of Europe being inhabitable or in- 
 habited by any race, whether Aryan or non-Aryan. 
 
 lEx hac igitur Scancia insula, quasi officina gentium, aut certe velut 
 vagina nationum, cum rege suo Berich Gothi quondam memorantur egressi. 
 
62 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 The angle from which these two streams of language 
 might have started points to Asia, and points to that 
 very locality where geologists tell us that human life 
 became possible for the first time, the high plateau of 
 Pamir, or rather the valleys sloping down from it 
 towards the South. 
 
 We can construct a picture of the life of these as 
 yet undivided Aryas from the words which the North- 
 ern and Southern Aryan languages share in common, 
 and all the salient features of that picture fit in with 
 the picture which recent travellers have given us of 
 the neighborhood of Pamir. Let us examine a few 
 of them. 
 
 We are told that the climate is cold, the winter 
 long, and that there is plenty of ice and snow. We 
 should therefore expect that the Aryas, before they 
 left that neighborhood, should have formed names 
 for snow and winter, and that these names should 
 have been preserved in both branches of the Aryan 
 family. And so it is. We find in Sanskrit the same 
 words for snow and winter as in Greek, Latin, and 
 German. This proves at all events that the original 
 home of the Aryan language could not have been in a 
 tropical climate, for there snow and ice being un- 
 known, names for snow and ice would not be wanted. 
 
 Snow is snizh in ancient Persian, snaivs in German, 
 nix in Latin. Winter was he" man in Sanskrit, j?//# 
 in Greek, hiems in Latin, zima in Slavonic. Ice is 
 isi in Zend, is in Old High-German. 
 
 The most common trees in Northern Kohistan are 
 the pine, the birch, and the oak. One of these trees, 
 the birch, has the same name in Sanskrit and in Eng- 
 lish. Birch in English is bhur^a in Sanskrit. The 
 names of the other trees exist in the South and the 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 63 
 
 North, and must therefore have been known before 
 the Aryan separation ; but their meaning varies. The 
 word which in Sanskrit is used for tree and wood in 
 general, dru, appears in Greek as dpvs, meaning 
 tree, but especially the oak. In German triu is like- 
 wise used for tree in general, but in Celtic daur means 
 the oak, while in Lituanian derva has become the 
 special name for fir. We see a similar change of 
 meanings in another name for oak, the Latin quercus. 
 The same word appears in Lombardian as/ere/ia, and 
 in the A. S. furh, the English fir. The beech has not 
 a common name in Sanskrit and Greek, whatever the 
 defenders of the Scandinavian theory may say to the 
 contrary. They mistook the name of the birch for 
 that of the beech, and, more than that, they assigned 
 a wrong habitat to the beech. 
 
 One of the strongest, if not the strongest argument 
 against the Asiatic origin of the Aryas has always 
 been that there are no common Aryan names for lion, 
 and tiger, and camel in their ancient language, while 
 there are common names for swine, sheep, ox, dog, 
 and horse. First of all, this reasoning is not correct. 
 We may safely conclude, when we find the same 
 words in Sanskrit on one side and in Greek and Latin 
 on the other, that these words existed before these 
 languages separated, and that therefore the objects 
 signified were known. But we cannot conclude with 
 the same safety that because the same words do not 
 exist in these languages, therefore the objects signi- 
 fied by them could not have been known. Words are 
 constantly lost and replaced. It does not follow, for 
 instance, that the Aryas, before they separated, were 
 ignorant of the use of fire, because the Sanskrit word 
 for fire, .agni, is not to be found in Greek. It is re- 
 
64 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 placed in Greek by rcvp, but in Latin the Sanskrit 
 word for fire, a g n i , appears as ignis. Though the 
 positive argument is irresistible, the negative argu- 
 ment has always to be used with great caution. But 
 the latest traveller in Kohistan, M. de Ujfalvy, 1 tells 
 us that even the zoological foundation of this argu- 
 ment about lion and tiger is wrong, and that these 
 wild beasts are not to be found in those cold regions 
 where the home of the Aryas is most likely to have 
 been. The fact therefore that the Southern and 
 Northern Aryan languages have not the same names 
 for lion and tiger, so far from being against us, is in 
 perfect harmony with the theory that the original 
 home of the Aryas was on the slopes of the mountains 
 which form the junction between the Hindukush and 
 the Karakorum chains, what may be called Northern 
 Kohistan. 
 
 I call it a theory, for I do not see how it can ever 
 be more than a theory. It was in order to guard 
 against useless controversy that I have always con- 
 fined myself to the statement that the Aryan home 
 was "somewhere in Asia." This has been called a 
 vague and unsatisfactory conclusion ; 2 but all who are 
 familiar with these studies know perfectly well what 
 it meant. No one would suspect m.e of deriving the 
 Aryas from India, Persia, or Asia Minor, nor from 
 Burma, Siam, China, Mongolia, and Siberia, nor from 
 Arabia, Babylon, Assyria, or Phenicia. Then what 
 remains? Not much more than that high plateau 
 from which the Himalaya chain branches off toward 
 
 ^Expidition scientifique Francaia en Russie, Sibfrfe et Turkistan, par 
 Ch. E. D. Ujfalvy de Mez5-Kovesd, Paris, 1878. 
 
 2 See Horatio Hale,- " The Aryans in Science and History," in The Popular 
 Science Zlonthiy, for March, 1889, p. 673. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 65 
 
 the south-east, the Kuen-lun chain towards the east, 
 the Karakorum towards the west, and the Hindukush 
 towards the south-west : the region drained by the 
 feeders of the Indus, the Oxus, and Yaxartes. That 
 is still a sufficiently wide area to accommodate the 
 ancestors of our Aryan race, particularly if we remem- 
 ber in how short a time the offspring of one single 
 pair may grow into millions. 
 
 This question has now been so fully discussed, 
 and so splendidly summed up by a Dutch scholar, a 
 Jesuit, worthy of the name and fame which that order 
 once possessed in literature and science, Van den 
 Gheyn, 1 that I hope we shall hear no more of Sweden 
 as the cradle of the Aryas. It would be best, perhaps, 
 to accept a proposal made in the interest of peace by 
 my learned friend and fellow-worker, Professor Sayce, 
 who thinks that he might be able to persuade all eth- 
 nologists to use the name Aryan in a purely physio- 
 logical sense, and to restrict it to the dolichocephalic 
 people, with blue eyes and blonde hair, regardless of 
 the language they speak. Whether all people with 
 blue eyes and golden hair in Greece and Italy, in the 
 Caucasus, in Persia, and in Central Asia, have come 
 from Scandinavia, ethnologists would then have to 
 settle among themselves ; but we should at all events 
 have peace within our borders. Aryan is a mere ad- 
 jective, which we could well spare. We should then 
 retain the old classical name of Arya for those people 
 who brought the numerous varieties of Aryan speech 
 from Asia to Europe, whose thought still runs in our 
 thoughts, as their blood may run in our veins our 
 true ancestors in spirit and in truth, whether their 
 heads were long, their eyes blue, and their hair golden, 
 
 \L'Origine europeenne des Aryas, Paris. 1889. 
 
66 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 or whether their heads were round, their eyes dark, 
 and their hair black. 
 
 And here I must conclude my plea for the Study 
 of the Science of Language. I hope I have shown 
 you that it really is a disgrace for any human being 
 to go through life without some knowledge of what 
 language is and what it has done for us. There are 
 certain things which are essential to education not 
 only reading, writing, and arithmetic, but a general 
 knowledge of the earth on which we live (Geology and 
 Geography) ; of the sky and the stars which tells us of 
 infinite law and order above (Astronomy) ; of the great 
 men who have made the world what we found it (His- 
 tory) ; and of some of the greatest men who have told 
 us what this world ought to be (Religion and Philoso- 
 phy). I add to these the Science of Language which, 
 better than anything else, teaches us what we really 
 are. You have only to try to imagine what this world 
 would be, if it were inhabited by speechless beings, in 
 order to appreciate the full importance of knowing 
 what language really is to us, and how much we owe 
 to language in all we think, and speak, and do. 
 
 It is quite true that life is too short for any human 
 being to gain a thorough knowledge of these funda- 
 mental subjects. But life is not too short to allow us 
 to gain a sound knowledge of the general outline of 
 these subjects, and of the results that have been gar- 
 nered up in some of our best school-books and man- 
 uals. And this is particularly true with regard to the 
 Science of Language. As I said in a former lecture, 
 we all can play at least one language, many in these 
 days even know two or three. We therefore possess 
 the facts ; we have only to digest, to classify, and to 
 try to understand them. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 67 
 
 THE STUDY OF SANSKRIT. 
 
 It has often been said that no one can know any- 
 thing of the Science of Language who does not know 
 Sanskrit, and that that is enough to frighten anybody 
 away from its study. But, first of all, to learn San- 
 skrit in these days is not more difficult than to learn 
 Greek or Latin. Secondly, though a knowledge of 
 Sanskrit may be essential to every student who wishes 
 to do independent work, and really to advance the 
 Science of Language, it is not so for those who simply 
 wish to learn what has been hitherto discovered. It 
 was necessary for those who laid the foundations of 
 our Science to study as many languages as possible, 
 in order to find out their general relationship. Men 
 like Bopp and Pott had to acquire some knowledge of 
 Sanskrit, Zend, Gothic, Lituanian, Old Slavonic, Cel- 
 tic, Armenian, Georgian, Ossetian, Hebrew, Arabic, 
 and Ethiopian, to say nothing of languages outside 
 the pale of the Aryan and the Semitic families. Their 
 work in consequence was often rough, and it could 
 hardly have been otherwise. When that rough work 
 had been done, it was easy enough to proceed to 
 more minute and special work. But it seems unfair, 
 if not absurd, to find faults with pioneers like Bopp 
 and Pott, because some of their views have been 
 proved to be mistaken, or because they exaggerated 
 the importance of Sanskrit for a successful study of 
 Comparative Philology. Without Sanskrit we should 
 never have had a Science of Language ; that seems 
 admitted even by the extreme Left. After the study 
 of Sanskrit had once led to the discovery of a new 
 
68 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 world, it was but natural that the land should be di- 
 vided and sub-divided, and that each scholar should 
 cultivate his own special field. Thus Grimm chose 
 the German languages for his special domain, Mick- 
 losich the Slavonic, Zeuss the Celtic, Curtius Greek, 
 Corssen Latin. There came, in fact, a reaction, and 
 we were told at last that Sanskrit had nothing more 
 to teach us. Not long ago Manchester, which has 
 taken the lead in so many important movements, in- 
 formed the world through the Times that the long- 
 planned revolution had at last been successful, that 
 Sanskrit was dethroned, that its ministers had been 
 guillotined, and a new claimant had been installed, 
 who had been in hiding in Finland. The Aryan lan- 
 guage was a mere bastard of Finnish! However, when 
 the real sources of this information had been discov- 
 ered, the panic soon came to an end, and scholars 
 worked on quietly as before, each in his own smaller 
 or larger field, unconcerned about the pronunciamentos 
 of the Manchester or any other new school. If the 
 rebellion meant no more than that Sanskrit had been 
 shown to be the elder sister only, and not the mother 
 of the other Aryan languages, then I am afraid that I 
 myself must be counted among the oldest rebels. If it 
 meant that the students of Comparative Philology 
 could henceforth dispense altogether with a knowledge 
 of Sanskrit, then I feel sure that by this time the mis- 
 take has been found out, and Sanskrit has been re- 
 stored to its legitimate throne, as prima inter pares 
 among the members of the Aryan republic. 
 
 It used to be said for a time that even the ABC 
 of Sanskrit was extremely deficient and misleading, 
 and that the system of the Aryan vowels in particular 
 was far more perfect in Greek and German than in 
 
THIRD LECTURE. 69 
 
 Sanskrit. Sanskrit, we were told, has written signs 
 for the three short vowels only, a, t, u, not for short 
 e and o. It was declared to be a very great blemish 
 that the two vowels e and <?, which existed in the 
 primitive Aryan speech, had been lost in Sanskrit. 
 If, however, they were lost in Sanskrit, that, accord- 
 ing to the laws of logic, would seem to show that San- 
 skrit also formerly possessed them, and possibly found 
 that it could do without them. The same spirit of a 
 wise economy may be observed in the historical pro- 
 gress of every language. 
 
 But it has now been recognised that, from a gram- 
 matical point of view, the Sanskrit system of vowels is 
 really far more true than that of Greek, German, or 
 any other Aryan language. It seems to me altogether 
 wrong, whatever the highest authorities may say to 
 the contrary, to maintain that the Aryan languages 
 began with five, and not with four short vowels. 
 
 The Aryan languages possessed from the begin- 
 ning no more than the well-known four fundamental 
 vowels, namely /', u, the invariable a, and the variable 
 vowel, which changes between e, o, and rarely a. 
 There are ever so many roots which differ from each 
 other by having either a, i, u, or that fourth variable 
 sound ; there are no roots that differ in meaning by 
 having either a, e, or o as their radical. Hence (tr) 
 , o represent one fundamental vowel only ; they are 
 grammatical variations of one common type. 1 
 
 If we represent roots, as in Hebrew, by their con- 
 sonants only, then we have in the Aryan languages a 
 root consisting of D and H. With the radical vowel 
 /, that root DIH means to knead, with the radical 
 vowel u the root DUH means to milk. With the 
 
 1 1 use a for the invariable a ; a, e, o, for the variable vowel. 
 
7O SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 third or variable vowel, the root DaH means to burn, 
 and it may appear in certain grammatical derivations 
 as DorH, DfH, or DoH. We never find a root D#H 
 by the side of a root DfH, or a root DfH by the side 
 of the root DoH. What we find, and what has not 
 yet been explained, is that certain roots show a de- 
 cided predilection for e or for o. 
 
 Here then we see how right Sanskrit grammarians 
 were in admitting only four, and not five fundamental 
 vowels, though it might have been better if they had 
 in writing also distinguished between the invariable 
 a of A.G, and the variable a of BH^R. Whether the 
 variable vowel was in Sanskrit also pronounced differ- 
 ently in different grammatical forms, we cannot tell, 
 because in Sanskrit that variable vowel in the body 
 of a word is never written. There are indications, 
 however, in the changes produced in preceding con- 
 sonants, which seem to speak in favor of such a 
 view. 
 
 And nowhere has the importance of a knowledge 
 of Sanskrit been shown more clearly than in the ex- 
 planation of these very vowel- changes, in Greek and 
 German. Why the variable vowel appears as a, , o 
 or disappears altogether, why the second and third 
 radical vowels are weakened or strengthened in the 
 same way, remained a perfect mystery, till the key 
 was found in the system of accentuation, preserved in 
 the Vedic Sanskrit, and nowhere else. 1 
 
 But although in this, as in many other cases, 
 Sanskrit betrays more of the ancient secrets of lan- 
 guage than Greek or Latin or German, there is plenty 
 
 lUdltta in Sanskrit means high, anudatta not-high. Originally the 
 udatta syllable represented what we now call Hochstufe, the anudatta 
 Tie/stu/e, at least during the period when accent meant as yet musical pitch 
 only. 
 
THIRD LECTURE. Jl 
 
 of work, and most important work, to be done in 
 every language, nay in every dialect, for which we 
 want no direct aid from Sanskrit. Some of the most 
 brilliant discoveries in the Science of Language have 
 lately been made by students of Teutonic philology. 
 The work begun in that sphere by Grimm and Scherer 
 has been carried on without any flagging by Fick, 
 Schmidt, Sievers, Osthoff, Collitz, Brugmann and 
 others in Germany, by De Saussure in France, by 
 Ascoli and Merlo in Italy. The same work has been 
 taken up with renewed ardor in England, where Ellis, 
 Morris, Sweet, Skeat, Napier, Douse, and others have 
 done most excellent work, and made valuable addi- 
 tions to our inherited stock of knowledge. 
 
 Many more laborers, however, are wanted to culti- 
 vate this field of English scholarship. Thousands, as 
 you know, have come forward to gather honey and 
 bring it into the beehive at Oxford, where a Diction- 
 ary of the English Language is prepared which, when 
 finished, need not fear comparison with the diction- 
 aries of either Grimm or Littre". But there is much 
 more work to be done in which other thousands might 
 help, such as collecting spoken dialects, watching 
 local pronunciation, gathering old proverbs, writing 
 down with phonetic accuracy popular stories and 
 poems, as repeated by old grannies and young chil- 
 dren. If among some of my hearers to-day I have suc- 
 ceeded in raising an interest in language in general, 
 and in kindling a love for their own language in par- 
 ticular, and if that interest and love will bear fruit, 
 however small, but nothing is too small in the eyes 
 of a conscientious scholar, then I shall feel amply 
 rewarded for having stayed here to attend your Meet- 
 
72 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ing, which, I hope, may henceforth become a perma- 
 nent institution in the educational system of our 
 country. 
 
 GENEALOGICAL TABLE 
 
 or 
 THE AKYAN FAMILY OF LANGUAGES. 
 
 North TTetrn Dirtoon 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 1 
 
 IN writing my book, On the Science of Thought,* my 
 chief object was to collect all the facts which 
 seemed to me to bear on the identity of language and 
 thought. I sifted them, and tried to show in what 
 direction their evidence pointed. But, as I imagined 
 myself as addressing a very small special jury, it 
 seemed to me unnecessary, and almost disrespectful, 
 to bring any pressure to bear on them, except the 
 pressure inherent in facts. I therefore did not avail 
 myself as fully as I might otherwise have done, of the 
 many witnesses that I could have brought into court 
 to support by their authority the truth of the theory 
 which I propounded. I mentioned, indeed, their 
 names, but I did not call upon them to speak for me 
 or for themselves. The fact is, that I did not expect 
 that public opinion at large could, at the present mo- 
 ment, be very much interested in a question which 
 had been discussed many times before, but which, as 
 far as I could see, was by nearly all living philosophers, 
 
 1 Reprinted with the consent of publishers and author from the Contempo- 
 rary Review, Vol. LIV. 
 
 2 The Science of Thought, Longmans & Co., 1887. Three Introductory Lec- 
 tures on the Science of Thought, delivered at the Royal Institution, with an 
 Appendix, which contains a Correspondence on "Thought Without Words, 1 
 between F. Max MOller, Francis Galton, the Duke of Argyll, George J. Ro- 
 manes, and others. The Open Court Pub. Co., Chicago, 111., and Longmans 
 & Co., London, 1888. 
 
74 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 particularly by those in this country, answered in a 
 direction diametrically opposed to that which I, follow- 
 ing the lead of the greatest philosophers of antiquity, 
 of the middle ages, and of more modern times, con- 
 sidered the right one. I know how long I myself liv- 
 ing under the influence of prevailing systems of phi- 
 losophy, had hesitated to give up the old belief that 
 language is a product of thought ; that thought must 
 always come first, language after; that thought is in- 
 dependent of language, and that the Greeks were 
 great bunglers when they called language and thought 
 by one and the same name, Logos. A long life, de- 
 voted to the study of philology and philosophy, was 
 necessary before I could free myself of the old words 
 that is, the old thoughts and cease to treat language 
 as one thing and thought as another. Much astro- 
 nomical observation was required before people could 
 persuade themselves that their evening star was the 
 same as their morning star, 1 and much linguistic ob- 
 servation will have to be performed before anybody 
 will see clearly that our language is really our thought 
 and our thought our language. 
 
 But though I was quite prepared that the verdict 
 of living philosophers would, for the present at least, 
 be adverse to my theory, I was not prepared to find 
 nearly all my critics under the impression that this 
 theory of the identity of thought and language was 
 quite a novel theory, something quite unheard of in 
 fact, a mere paradox. This showed the same want of 
 historical knowledge and tact which surprised so many 
 philosophers in Germany and France at the time of 
 the first appearance of Darwin's book On the Origin 
 of Species. Most of the leading reviews in England 
 
 1 See, however, Hibbert Lectures, by Sayce, pp. 258, 264. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 75 
 
 seemed to consider the theory of evolution as some- 
 thing quite novel, as a kind of scientific heresy, and 
 they held Darwin personally responsible for it, whether 
 for good or for evil. Darwin himself had at last to 
 protest against this misapprehension, to point out the 
 long succession of the advocates of evolution, from 
 Lucretius to Lamarck and Oken, and to claim for 
 himself what he really cared for, a legitimate place in 
 the historical evolution of the theory of evolution. 
 
 In Germany and France the doctrine of the iden- 
 tity of language and thought has at once been recog- 
 nised as an old friend, as a theory that had almost 
 been battered to pieces in former historical conflicts, 
 but which, like the theory of evolution, might well 
 claim for itself a new hearing on account of the im- 
 mense accumulation of new material, chiefly due to 
 the study of the Science of Language during the pres- 
 ent and the past generations. I myself, so far from 
 pretending to propound a new philosophy, thought it 
 right to point out how some of the greatest philoso- 
 phers have held to the same theory, though without 
 being able to support it by the important evidence 
 supplied by the study of comparative philology, or to 
 perceive quite clearly all the consequences which must 
 flow from it. It seemed certainly strange that a theory 
 which was, to mention more recent philosophers only, 
 accepted without any misgivings by such men as Her- 
 der, 1 Schleiermacher, W. von Humboldt, Schelling, 
 and Hegel, in Germany; by Hobbes, Archbishop 
 Whately, and Mansel, in England ; by Abelard, De 
 Bonald, De Maistre, and Taine, in France ; and by 
 Rosmini in Italy, should have been treated as a com- 
 plete novelty, or as a mere philological mare's nest, 
 
 1 Science of Thought, pp. 30, 129. 
 
76 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 by men who stand in the foremost ranks of philosophers 
 in England. What should we say if our best scien- 
 tific reviews shrank from the theory of the homogeneity 
 of light, heat, and magnetism as an unheard-of nov- 
 elty, or as a mere scientific paradox? But such has 
 nevertheless been the attitude of some of the best phil- 
 osophical journals in England, in discussing, or rather 
 in declining to discuss, the identity of language and 
 thought, which in my Science of Thought I tried to 
 support, chiefly by the evidence brought together dur- 
 ing the last fifty years by the Science of Language. 
 
 It may be useful, therefore, to look back, in order 
 to see what form our problem had assumed before the 
 Science of Language had thrown new light upon it. 
 In France this problem of the identity of language 
 and thought has always remained on the order of the 
 day. The controversy between Nominalism and Re- 
 alism has left there a far deeper impression than in 
 England, and it has not been forgotten that one of 
 the principal tenets of the Nominalists was that our 
 knowledge of universals consisted entirely in words. 
 It was Condillac (1715-1780) and his school in the 
 last century who gave new life to this old controversy, 
 though his well-known dictum, Nous ne pensons qu'avec 
 les mots, went certainly beyond the point which had 
 been reached by the older Nominalists. 1 The question 
 is what he meant by penser, and if penser meant, as it 
 does according to Condillac, no more than sentir, it 
 would not be difficult to prove that not only sensation, 
 but also imagination, can take place without language. 
 
 1 " Qu'est ce au fond que la realit qu'une idee abstraite et ge'ne'rale a 
 dans notre esprit ? Ce n'est qu'un nom . . . Les id^es abstraites ne sont done 
 que des denominations ... Si nous n'avions point de denominations, nous 
 n'aurions point d'idees abstraites, nous n'aurions ni genres ni especes, nous 
 ne pourrions raisonner sur rien." (Condiliac, Logique, lime, partie, Chap. V.) 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 77 
 
 We must define what we mean by thought before we 
 can understand its identity with language. It was 
 Rousseau (1712-1778) who at once perceived the weak 
 point in Condillac's statement. He saw that, if we 
 used the name of thought for all mental work, we 
 ought to distinguish between at least two kinds of 
 thought, thought in images, and thought in words. 
 As a poet and as a dreamer Rousseau was naturally 
 aware how often we are satisfied with images ; that is 
 to say, how often we indulge in mere imagination and 
 call it thinking. And though it is quite true that with 
 us who are so saturated with language there are few 
 images which on closer examination turn out to be 
 really anonymous, yet we cannot deny the possibility 
 of such mental activity, and are bound to admit it, 
 particularly in the earlier periods of the development 
 of the human mind. It is this kind of thought which 
 has been often claimed for animals also. 1 Rousseau 
 therefore remarks very justly, Lorsque r imagination s'ar- 
 rete, F esprit ne marche qu'a Paide du discours, "When 
 imagination stops, the mind does not advance, except 
 by means of language." 2 
 
 But, even supposing that our modern philosophers 
 should treat Condillac and Rousseau as ancient and 
 forgotten worthies, surely they must have heard of 
 
 1 De Bonald, De POrigzne du Langage, p. 67 : " Lcs brutes, qui prouvent 
 les mSmes besoins, resolvent aussi les images des objets que 1'instinct de 
 leur conservation les porte a fuir ou a chercher, et n'ont besoin de langage. 
 L' enfant, qui ne parle pas encore, le muet qui ne parlera jamais, se font aussi 
 des images des choses sensibles, et la parole necessaire pour la vie morale et 
 iddale, ne 1'est pas du tout a la vie physique." 
 
 2De Bonald, loc.cit. ,p. 65, remarks : " Ce qui veut dire qu'on nepeut pen 
 ser qu'au moyen de paroles, lorsqu'on ne pense pas au moyen d'images.' 
 Haller expressed almost the same idea, when he said : " Ita assuevit anima 
 signis uti, ut mera per signa cogitet ac sonorum vestigia sola omnium rerum 
 repraesentationes animae offerant, rarioribus exemplis exceptis, quando 
 affectus aliquis imaginem ipsam revocat." 
 
78 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Dugald Stewart in Scotland (i 753-1828), of De Bonald 
 (1754- 1840) and De Maistre (1754-1821) in France. 
 Now, Dugald Stewart was not ashamed to teach what 
 the Nominalists had taught before him namely, that, 
 for the purpose of thinking three things are necessary: 
 universalia, genera, and words. If Dugald Stewart had 
 not persuaded himself that Sanskrit was a mere forgery 
 of the Brahmans, he might have learned a new lesson 
 namely, that all our words, even those which we 
 call singular, are derived from general concepts, in 
 so far as they must be traced back to roots embodying 
 general concepts. This discovery, however, was re- 
 served for later comers. In the meantime, men like 
 De Bonald and De Maistre in France did not allow 
 the old argument to sleep. But curiously enough, 
 while formerly the idea of the identity of thought and 
 language was generally defended by philosophers of 
 the type of Hobbes, by the supporters of sensualistic 
 theories who derive all our knowledge from the im- 
 pressions of the senses and their spontaneous associa- 
 tions, we have in De Bonald and De Maistre men of 
 the very opposite stamp orthodox, almost mystic 
 philosophers, who nevertheless make the identity of 
 thought and language the watchword of their philos- 
 ophy. It is true that even Bossuet (1627-1704) in- 
 clined in the same direction. In his famous treatise, 
 De la Connaissance de Dieu et de soi meme, he allows 
 that we can never, or, with the usual proviso of weak- 
 kneed philosophers, hardly ever, think of anything 
 without its name presenting itself to us. But De 
 Bonald went far beyond this, as will be seen from the 
 following extracts : x 
 
 1 CEuvres de M. de Bonald, Recherches Philosophiques sur Us Premiers Ob- 
 jets des Connaissances Morales. Paris. 1858. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 79 
 
 In his treatise on the origin of language he says : 
 "There was geometry in the world before Newton, 
 and philosophy before Descartes, but before language 
 there was absolutely nothing but bodies and their im- 
 ages, because language is the necessary instrument of 
 every intellectual operation nay, the means of every 
 moral existence." 1 He puts the same idea into more 
 powerful, though at first sight somewhat perplexing 
 language, when he says : " Man thinks his word before 
 he speaks his thought, or, in other words, man cannot 
 speak his thought without thinking his word." 2 
 
 De Maistre, who belongs to the same school as De 
 Bonald, and whose ultimate conclusions I should feel 
 most unwilling to adopt, shows, nevertheless, the same 
 clear insight into the nature of language. Thus he 
 writes: "The question of the origin of ideas is the 
 same as the question of the origin of language ; for 
 thought and language are only two magnificent syno- 
 nyms. Our intellect cannot think nor know that it 
 thinks without speaking, because it must say, ' I 
 know.' " 8 
 
 And again: "It is absolutely the same thing 
 whether one asks the definition, the essence, or the 
 name of an object! 4 . . . In one word, there is no 
 word which does not represent an idea, and which is 
 not really as correct and as true as the idea, because 
 thought and language do not differ essentially, but 
 represent the same act of the mind, speaking either 
 to himself or to others." 5 
 
 ILoc. cit., p. 73. 
 
 VLoc. eft., p. 64 : " L'homme pense sa parole avant de parler sa pens6e; 
 ou autrement, 1'homme ne peut parler sa pens^e s&nspfnser sa parole." 
 SSoirfes de St. Pttersbourg, I., p. 75. 
 *Loc. cit., I., p. 135. 
 &Loc. cit., I., p. 131. 
 
80 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 I say once more that I am the last person to follow 
 these French philosophers to their last conclusions. 
 Their object is to show that language, being what it 
 is, cannot have been a human invention, but must 
 have been a divine revelation. 1 I quote them here as 
 representative men only, and as showing how familiar 
 the idea of the identity of thought and language was 
 on the Continent during the first half of our century 
 an idea which, by some of the most prominent philos- 
 ophers in England, has been treated as an unheard- 
 of paradox. 
 
 Of course it may be said that De Bonald, and De 
 Maistre too, are ancient history ; that the first half of 
 this century was a mistake, and that true and positive 
 philosophy dates only from the second half of our 
 century. But even then, those who wish to take part 
 in the discussion of the great problems of philosophy 
 ought to know that the question of the identity of 
 language and thought has never to the present day 
 been neglected by the leading philosophers of Ger- 
 many and France. Let us take one, who has not only 
 proved himself most intimately acquainted with the 
 most recent schools of philosophical thought in Eng- 
 land, but has often been claimed as a disciple of Stuart 
 Mill let us take M. Taine, and what do we find in 
 his great work, De I' Intelligence, first published in 
 1870? Without the slightest hesitation, without any 
 
 1" Si 1'expression est necessaire, non-seulement a la production de 1'idee 
 ou a sa revelation exteYieure, mais encore a sa conception dans notre propre 
 esprit; c'est-a-dire, si 1'idee ne peut tre presente a notre esprit ni presente' 
 a 1'esprit des autres que par la parole orale ou ecrite : le langage est ntcessaire, 
 ou tel que la socie^ n'a pu, dans aucun temps, exister sans le langage, pas 
 plus que 1'homme n'a pu exister bors de la societe. L'homme n'a done pas 
 invent^ le langage .... La necessite de la re've'lation primitive du langage a 
 6te defendue dans f 'Encyclopedic par le savant et vertueux Beauzee. Charles 
 Bonnet et Hugh Blair entrent dans le meme sentiment." DE BONALD, loc. tit., 
 P 199- 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 8l 
 
 fear that what he says could sound strange to well- 
 schooled philosophical ears, or be taken for mere par- 
 adox even by the outside public, he writes : l 
 
 "What we call a general idea is nothing but a 
 name ; not the simple sound which vibrates in the air 
 and sets our ears in motion, nor the assemblage of 
 letters which blacken the paper and touch our eyes 
 not even these letters apprehended mentally, or the 
 sound of them mentally rehearsed, but that sound and 
 those letters endowed, as we perceive or imagine them, 
 with a twofold character, first of producing in us the 
 images of individuals belonging to a certain class, and 
 of these individuals only; secondly, of reappearing 
 every time when an individual of that class, and only 
 when an individual of that same class, presents itself 
 to our memory or our perception." 
 
 And again : 2 
 
 "Hence arise curious illusions. We believe we 
 possess, besides our general words, general ideas; we 
 distinguish between the idea and the word ; the idea 
 seems to us a separate act, the word being an auxiliary 
 only. We actually compare the idea and the image, 
 and we say that the idea performs in another sphere 
 the same office in presenting to us general objects 
 which the image performs in presenting to us individ- 
 uals . . . Such is the first of our psychological illu- 
 sions, and what we call our consciousness swarms 
 with them. The false theories arising from them are 
 as complicated as they are numerous. They obstruct 
 all science, and only when they shall have been swept 
 away will science become simple again." 
 
 I could go on quoting passage after passage from 
 
 ILoc. cit., I., p. 35. 
 ILoc. cit., I., p. 66. 
 
82 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 M. Taine's work, and I may say, with regard to him 
 too, that, though accepting his facts, I by no means 
 accept all the conclusions he draws from them. I 
 agree with him that word and idea are but two names 
 for the same thing. I agree with him, when he, like 
 Locke, shows the impossibility of animals ever reach- 
 ing the intellectual level of language, for the simple 
 reason that they cannot reach the level of general 
 ideas. But I differ from him when he thinks that the 
 origin of language and the original formation of words 
 can be explained by watching the way in which a child 
 of the present day acquires the use of a language ready 
 made, though even here our opinions are by no means 
 so far apart as he imagines. We are concerned with 
 different problems, but we agree, at all events, as to 
 the manner in which these problems ought to be 
 treated, not by mere assertion and counter-assertion, 
 but by a comprehensive study of facts, and by a care- 
 ful examination of the opinions of those who came 
 before us. 
 
 The unhistorical treatment of philosophy, for which 
 some English philosophers have been of late fre- 
 quently, and, I think, justly, reprehended, entails far 
 more serious consequences than might be imagined. 
 I admit it gives a certain freshness and liveliness to 
 philosophical discussions. Completely new ideas, or 
 ideas supposed to be new, excite, no doubt, greater 
 enthusiasm, and likewise greater surprise and indig- 
 nation. But life, nay, even history, would be too short, 
 if we were always to begin again where Thales, Aris- 
 totle, or Descartes began, or if the well-known results 
 of Kant's Critique of Pure Reason were published to 
 the world as the most recent discoveries of synthetic 
 philosophy. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 83 
 
 Another inconvenience arising from this unhistori- 
 cal treatment of philosophical questions is felt even 
 more acutely namely, that in defending an old theory 
 by new arguments we are often supposed to be plead- 
 ing our own cause. Darwin, particularly in his earlier 
 books, speaks of the cause of evolution, not as if it 
 were anything personal to himself, but as a trust 
 handed down to him, almost as an heirloom of his 
 family ; anyhow, as a valuable inheritance dating from 
 the earliest days of awakening physical and philosoph- 
 ical inquiry. In his later books he becomes more and 
 more self-conscious, and seems restrained from apply- 
 ing that rapturous language to the results obtained 
 by the theory of evolution which those who follow him 
 feel perfectly justified in applying to his and their 
 own labors. I have been blamed for speaking with 
 unconcealed rapture of the theory of the identity of 
 language and thought, and I certainly should feel that 
 I deserved blame if this theory had really been of my 
 own invention. But, knowing how many of the most 
 authoritative philosophers had held the same views, I 
 felt at perfect liberty to speak of it, as I did, as the 
 most important philosophical truth, in fact, as the 
 only solid foundation of all philosophy. 
 
 I also took it for granted, though it seems I ought 
 not to have done so, that the misunderstandings which 
 had formerly beset this theory, and had been demol- 
 ished again and again, would not be repeated with the 
 innocent conviction that they had never been thought 
 of before. 
 
 Of course, such an expression as identity of thought 
 and language can be cavilled at. If Kant is right, no 
 two things in space and time can ever be identical, 
 and if people really take identical in that sense, the 
 
84 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 sooner the word is altogether superseded the better. 
 When we say that language and thought are identical, 
 we mean that they are two names of the same thing 
 under two aspects. There is a very useful term in 
 Sanskrit philosophy, " apr/'thagbhava " ("the not 
 being able to exist apart "), and it is this, the impossi- 
 bility of thought existing apart from language, or lan- 
 guage from thought, which we mean when we call the 
 two identical. We can distinguish for our own pur- 
 poses, and these purposes are perfectly legitimate, be- 
 tween the sound and the meaning of a word, just as we 
 can distinguish between the pitch and the timbre of 
 our voice. But though we can distinguish, we can- 
 not separate the two. We cannot have timbre with- 
 out pitch, nor pitch without timbre ; neither can we 
 have words without thought, nor thought without 
 words. There never was on one side a collection 
 of vocables, mere flatus vocis, and on the other a 
 collection of concepts. The two were always one 
 and indivisible, but not one and indistinguishable. 
 We can certainly distinguish the sound of a word from 
 its meaning, but we must not expect to meet with 
 meanings walking about in broad daylight as disem- 
 bodied ghosts, or with sounds floating through the air, 
 like so many Undines in search of a soul. The two 
 were not two, but were one from the beginning, and 
 the TrpooTov i/jvdos lies in this attempted divorce be- 
 tween sound and meaning. 
 
 After words have been formed, as embodied 
 thoughts, no doubt it is possible to imitate and re- 
 peat their sound without knowing their meaning. We 
 have only to speak English to a Chinaman, and we 
 shall see that what to us is English is to him mere 
 sound and jabber. It is no longer language, because 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 85 
 
 it is of the essence of language to be sound and mean- 
 ing at the same time. 
 
 But then it is asked Is our thinking always 
 speaking? I say, yes it is, if only we take speaking 
 in its proper sense. But if we mean by speaking the 
 mere vibrations of our vocal chords, then thinking is 
 not always speaking, because we can suppress these 
 vibrations, and yet keep in our memory the sound 
 which they were meant to produce, and the meaning 
 which that sound was meant to convey. It is this 
 speaking without voice which has come to be called 
 thinking, while thinking aloud has monopolised the 
 name of speaking. The true definition, in fact, of 
 thinking, as commonly understood, is speaking minus 
 voice. And as this kind of thinking is that which is 
 most commonly used for intense intellectual work, 
 people have become so proud of it that they cannot 
 bear to see it what they call degraded to mere speak- 
 ing without voice. Still so it is, as every one can dis- 
 cover for himself, if he will only ask himself at any 
 moment what he is or has been thinking about. He 
 can answer this question to himself and to others in 
 words only. Nor is there anything degrading in this, 
 and, at all events, the greatest philosophical thinkers, 
 the Greeks, did not think so, or say so, for they were 
 satisfied with one and the same word for thought and 
 speech. 
 
 Nor do we really, when we examine ourselves 
 carefully, ever detect ourselves as thinking only, or as 
 thinking in the abstract. How often have I been 
 asked, not whether I think without words, but whether 
 I think in English or in German. What does that 
 mean ? It means, whether I speak to myself in Eng- 
 lish or in German, and no more. The idea that I 
 
86 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 could speak to myself in no language at all is too ab- 
 surd to be even suggested. 
 
 The results which the Science of Language has ar- 
 rived at, and which are by no means so startling as 
 has been supposed, are shortly these : We have sen- 
 sations without language, and some of these sensa- 
 tions may produce in men, as well as in animals, in- 
 voluntary cries. 
 
 We have perceptions, or images without language, 
 and some of these may be accompanied by gestures 
 or signs, such gestures or signs being often intelli- 
 gible to others belonging to the same kind. 
 
 We have concepts, but these we can never have 
 without words, because it is the word which embodies 
 originally one feature only of the whole image, and 
 afterwards others, and thus supplies what we call ab- 
 stract concepts, to which nothing can ever respond in 
 imagination, nothing in sensation, nothing in nature. 
 
 Here it is where the Science of Language has sup- 
 plied the historical proof of what would otherwise 
 have remained a mere postulate. We know, as a fact, 
 that about eight hundred roots will account for nearly 
 the whole wealth of the Sanskrit Dictionary. We can 
 account for these roots in different ways, the most un- 
 objectionable being that suggested by Noire, that they 
 were originally the clamor concomitans of the conscious 
 acts of men. Now, let us take an instance. Man would 
 have received the sensation of brightness from the 
 stars in the sky, and it is possible, at least I should 
 not like to deny it, that animals too might receive the 
 same sensation. After a time, when the same starry 
 sky was observed night after night, and year after year, 
 the stars as bright points would be remembered, and 
 would leave an image of separate sparkling points, 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 87 
 
 nay, it may be, of certain very prominent constella- 
 tions in our memory. Nor is there any reason to 
 doubt that, without any language, the mere image of 
 certain constellations appearing on the sky might from 
 the earliest times have evoked the images of concom- 
 itant events, such as the approach of cold weather, 
 or the return of spring, in the minds of our most sav- 
 age ancestors. 
 
 But with all that, there was as yet no word, and, 
 in consequence, no concept of a star. What we call 
 stars, as different from the sky to which they seem 
 attached, as different also from sun and moon, were 
 as yet bright images only. 
 
 Now, the next decisive step was this. The Aryan 
 man possessed what we call roots, sounds which had 
 often been used while he and his friends were engaged 
 in acts of scattering, dispersing, strewing. One of 
 these sounds may have been STAR. We find it in Latin, 
 ster-no and stramen ; in Greek, ffrop-fvvvjui ; in Gothic, 
 strauja ; English, to strew, and its many derivatives, 
 In all these words, the root, we say, is STAR, though 
 we need not assert that such a root ever existed by 
 itself- before it was realised in all the words which 
 sprang from it. One of the features of the bright 
 sparkling points in heaven was their scattering or 
 strewing sprays of light. By means of the root STAR 
 this one feature was abstracted from the rest of the 
 image, and the stars were thus at the same time called 
 and conceived as strewers : in Sanskrit, star-as ; in 
 Greek, affrep-ss; in Latin, stellae, i. e. sterulae; in 
 English, stars. 
 
 This word star was not meant for any single star, 
 it did not correspond to a sensation, nor to any vague 
 image or recollection of stars ; it was a name repre- 
 
88 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 senting one abstract feature of the stars, namely, their 
 scattering of light in a dark night. It was man's own 
 creation, and corresponded to nothing in nature, un- 
 less it was predicated afterwards of this or that par- 
 ticular star. It was so general, in fact, that, as soon 
 as special stars had to be named, new determining or 
 individualising names became necessary. When it 
 was observed that certain stars always retained their 
 place, while others travelled about, the former were 
 named fixed stars, the latter travellers or planets, 1 till 
 at last every prominent star received some kind of 
 name, that is to say, was known and called as different 
 from all the rest. 
 
 We see the same process everywhere, though it is 
 not always possible to discover with perfect certainty 
 what specific features in the objects of nature were 
 selected for the purpose of knowing and naming them, 
 or, in other words, from what root their names were 
 derived. Let us examine the name of tree. Here it is 
 quite clear that the most primitive savage must have 
 had the sensation produced by trees growing up all 
 around him, and giving him shelter against the sun, 
 possibly supplying food also to appease his hunger. 
 Let us suppose that that sensation was on a level with 
 the sensation which animals also receive from trees. 
 I do not think it was, but I am willing to grant it for 
 argument's sake. The hundreds and thousands of 
 trees which made an impression on the eyes of these 
 savages must soon have become indistinguishable, and 
 left an image in the memory of a very general and in- 
 distinct character. Some philosophers maintain that 
 animals also have these blurred images, and that they 
 
 1 Lectures on the Science of Language, I., p. 8. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 89 
 
 would mistake a post for a tree. Again, for argument's 
 sake, I do not mean to contest it. 
 
 But now comes a new step. Men, and men alone, 
 in the earliest stages of their life on earth, began to 
 take hold of certain trees, tear off their bark, hollow 
 out their stems, and use these in the end for making 
 beds, boats, and tables, and for other purposes. Con- 
 comitant and significative of this act of tearing off the 
 bark of trees, the Aryan people had a root DAR ; in 
 Greek, Ssipco; in English, to tear. Being chiefly in- 
 terested in trees because they could thus be peeled 
 and shaped and rendered useful, they called a tree in 
 Sanskrit dru ; in Greek, dpvS; in Gothic, triu\ in 
 English, tree. This was but one out of many names 
 that could be applied to trees for various reasons, 
 more or less important in the eyes of the Aryan sav- 
 ages ; and here, even for the sake of argument, I can- 
 not bring myself to admit that any animal could have 
 done the same. We must bear in mind that there is 
 really nothing in nature corresponding to tree. If it 
 simply meant what could be shaped, there are hun- 
 dreds of things that can in various ways be shaped. 
 If it was confined to trees, there are again hundreds 
 of trees, oaks, beeches, fir-trees, etc. ; but no human 
 eye has ever seen a tree, nor could any artist give us 
 an idea of what a tree may be as a mere phantasm a in 
 the mind of man or animal. 1 
 
 If all this is true, it follows that no concept, not 
 even the concept of so simple an object as a tree, was 
 possible without a name. It was by being named, 
 that is, by having one of its prominent features sin- 
 gled out or abstracted, and brought under the root 
 DAR, to tear, that the blurred image, left on the mem- 
 
 iTaine, De V Intelligence, I., p. 27. 
 
90 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ory after repeated sensations, became known, became 
 definite, received a handle for the purposes of thought 
 and speech. And what was the result? The result 
 was that with the name there arose in the mind, not a 
 sensation, not an image for think what such an image 
 would have been but what we call a concept, when 
 we speak to ourselves without vibrations of the vocal 
 chords, but what is called a word when uttered aloud. 
 If we distinguish, therefore, at all between concepts 
 and words, we are bound to say that concepts are due 
 to words, they are words minus sound, and not, as 
 most philosophers will have it, that words are due to 
 concepts, that they are concepts plus sound. It is only 
 because to think aloud is to speak that to speak sotto 
 voce may be called to think. All this was perfectly 
 known, as far as the general principle is concerned. 
 I believe that even Berkeley's ingenious views of gen- 
 eral ideas might easily be translated into our language. 
 He maintains that general ideas do not exist at all ; 
 so do we. He then proceeds to say that what we call 
 general ideas are particular ideas with a word attached 
 to them. So do we, 1 only that we have learned how 
 this process took place. It could not be done by tak- 
 ing a sound at random and attaching it to a particular 
 idea, for the simple reason that there were no such 
 sounds in the market. But if Berkeley had known 
 the results of the Science of Language, he would, I 
 believe, have been perfectly satisfied with the process, 
 as described before, of bringing one feature of the par- 
 ticular idea under a root, and thus raising that particu- 
 lar into a general idea at the same time that the root 
 was raised into a word. 
 
 We could come to an understanding with Locke 
 
 1 Science of Thought, p. 259. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. QI 
 
 also, when he says that "words become general by 
 being made the signs of general ideas!" 1 if only he 
 could be made to see that the same object which he 
 has in view can be attained by saying that ideas be- 
 come general by being signed with a word. 
 
 Nor should I despair of establishing a perfect 
 agreement with M. Taine, if only he would leave the 
 modern Parisian nursery and follow me into the dis- 
 tant caves of our Aryan ancestors. Nothing can be 
 more brilliant than the way in which he describes the 
 process of generalisation going on in the mind of a 
 child. 2 He describes how the nurse, on showing a 
 dog to a child, says oua-oua, how the child's eyes fol- 
 low the nurse's gestures, how he sees the dog, hears 
 his bark, and how, after a few repetitions which form 
 his apprenticeship, the two images, that of the dog 
 and that of the sound, become, according to the law 
 of the association of images, associated permanently 
 in his mind. Thus, when he sees the dog again, he 
 imagines the same sound, and by a kind of imitative 
 instinct he tries to utter the same sound. When the 
 dog barks, the child laughs and is enchanted, and he 
 feels all the more tempted to pronounce the sound of 
 the animal, which strikes him as new, and of which 
 he had hitherto heard a human imitation only. Up to 
 this point there is nothing original or superior ; the 
 brain of every mammal is capable of similar associa- 
 tions. What is peculiar to man is that the sound as- 
 sociated by him with the perception of a certain indi- 
 vidual is called forth again, not only by the sight of 
 exactly similar individuals, but likewise by the pres- 
 ence of distinctly different individuals, though with 
 
 ^Loc, cit., p. 259. 
 2 Loc. cit., p. 245. 
 
Q2 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 regard to certain features belonging to the same class. 
 In fact, analogies which do not strike an animal, strike 
 man. The child says oua-oua at the sight of the dog 
 belonging to the house. Soon he says oua-oua at the 
 sight of poodles, pugs, and Newfoundland dogs. A 
 little later the child will say oua-oua to a toy dog 
 which is made to bark by some kind of mechanism, 
 and this no animal would do. Even a toy dog which 
 does not bark, but moves on wheels nay, a dog made 
 of bronze, standing motionless and dumb in the draw- 
 ing-room, a small friend walking on all fours in the 
 nursery, lastly a mere drawing, will evoke the same 
 sound. 
 
 All this is true, perfectly true ; and M. Taine may 
 be quite right in maintaining that the discoveries of 
 Oken, Goethe, and Newton are in the end due to the 
 same power of discovering analogies in nature. I 
 follow him even when he sums up in the following 
 words : 
 
 " To discover relations between most distant objects, to dis- 
 entangle most delicate analogies, to establish common features in 
 the most dissimilar things, to isolate most abstract qualities, all 
 these expressions have the same meaning, and all these operations 
 can be traced back to the name being evoked by perceptions and 
 representations possessing the slightest resemblances, to the signal 
 being roused by an almost imperceptible stimulant, to the mental 
 word appearing in court at the first summons. " 
 
 With certain restrictions, all these observations 
 made among children of the present day apply with 
 equal force to the children of our race. 1 When, for 
 instance, such a word as dru, tree, had once been 
 formed, supposing that at first it was meant for such 
 
 ISee also L. M. Billia, Due Risposte al Prof. Angela Valdarnini intorno a 
 una pretesa contraddizione fra la dottrina ideolcgica t la psicologica del Ros- 
 mini. Torino, 1887, p. 14. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 93 
 
 trees only as could be peeled and smoothed and fash- 
 ioned into some useful tools, it would soon be trans- 
 ferred to all trees, whatever their wood. After that, 
 it might become specialised again, as we see in Greek, 
 where dpvs means chiefly oak, and in Lithunian, 
 where it means pine. 1 On the other hand, we see a 
 word such as oak, after it had taken its definite mean- 
 ing, becoming generalised again, and being used in 
 Icelandic for trees in general. 
 
 With regard to all this I see no difference between 
 M. Taine's views and my own, and I likewise fully 
 agree with him, when he explains how in the end every 
 word, before it is used for philosophical purposes, has 
 to be carefully defined. 2 
 
 There is, however, some new and important light 
 which the Science of Language has thrown on this old 
 problem, and which, if M. Taine had taken it into 
 account, would have enabled him, not only to establish 
 his own views more firmly, but to extend them far 
 beyond the narrow walls of our modern nurseries. 
 The Science of Language has clearly shown that every 
 word coincides from the very beginning with a general 
 concept. While formerly the admission that thought 
 was impossible without words was mostly restricted to 
 general and abstract terms, we can now extend it to 
 singular terms likewise, in fact, to the whole of our 
 language, with the exception of interjections and what 
 are called demonstrative elements. That no one could 
 think whiteness, goodness, or even humanity or bru- 
 tality was generally admitted, even by those who hesi- 
 tated to admit that no thought was possible without 
 language. But now that we can prove historically 
 
 ILoc. cit., I., pp. 39, 57. 
 
 8 Biographies of Words, p. 258. 
 
94 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 that even a tree could not have been named except as 
 coming under the general term of tearing, peeling, 
 shaping, or, in other cases, of feeding, sheltering, or 
 growing, no wavering or haggling is any longer pos- 
 sible. All our words are conceptual, all our concepts 
 are verbal : this is what Nominalism postulated with- 
 out being able to prove it, that is what Nominalism 
 has proved by means of the discoveries which a com- 
 parative study of languages has placed at our disposal, 
 and which no scepticism can touch. From the first, 
 Comparative Philology had no such ulterior objects in 
 view. It confined itself to a careful collection of facts, 
 to the analysis of all that had become purely formal, to 
 the discovery of the constituent elements of language, 
 to the establishment of the genealogical relationship of 
 all members of the same family of speech ; but beyond 
 this it did not mean to go. When, however, some of 
 the results at which Comparative Philology had ar- 
 rived quite independently, were found to be almost 
 identical with the teachings of some of the most author- 
 itative philosophers ; when it was found, for instance, 
 that while Locke maintained that animals had no gen- 
 eral ideas because they had no words, the Science of 
 Language had arrived at the conclusion that animals 
 had no words because they had no general ideas, 1 the 
 Science of Language became ipso facto the Science of 
 Thought, and language and thought were recognised 
 once more as two faces of the same head. 
 
 The consequences which follow by necessity from 
 this recognition of the identity of thought and lan- 
 guage,- and which I was anxious to put forward as 
 strongly as possible in my Science of Thought, may, no 
 doubt, have startled some philosophers whose chief 
 
 "^Lectures on the Science of Language, I., p. 65. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 95 
 
 strength lies in the undefined use of words. But that 
 theory itself could never have startled a careful student 
 of the history of philosophy. It is a very old friend 
 with a new face, and had a right to expect a different 
 reception. 
 
 To the Greeks, we know, it was so natural to look 
 upon language and thought as two sides of the same 
 thing, that we can hardly appeal to them as conscious 
 upholders of such a theory. As they used logos in both 
 senses, as discourse, whether internal or external, their 
 knowledge of the identity of language and thought came 
 to them by intuition rather than by reflexion. They had 
 never been led astray as we have been ; hence they 
 had not to discover the right way. 
 
 Still, whenever Greek philosophers come to touch 
 on this question, they speak with no uncertain tone, 
 though even then they are generally satisfied with stat- 
 ing the truth, without attempting to prove what, in 
 their eyes, seemed hardly to require any proof namely, 
 the identity of language and thought. 
 
 In the Sophist, Plato begins by showing how lan- 
 guage (Ao^/os) may be true or false, and only after 
 having proved this, does he proceed to show that 
 thought and imagination also may be true or false. 
 For, he proceeds, "thought (diavoiof) is the same as 
 language, with this exception, that thought is the con- 
 versation of the soul with herself which takes place 
 without voice, while the stream which, accompanied 
 by sound, flows from thought through the lips, is 
 called language (Ao/o?)." He then defines opinion 
 as the result of thinking (SiavoiaS a?roTsXsv- 
 , and imagination ((pavTaffia) as the union of 
 opinion and sensation. In this way only, that is, by 
 proving that thought, opinion, and imagination are 
 
g6 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 closely akin to language, does he establish in the end 
 that, as language has been proved to be either true or 
 false, thought, opinion, and imagination also may be 
 true or false. 
 
 Whether Plato could not have established the pos- 
 sibility of truth and falsehood in thought, opinion, 
 and imagination by a simpler and shorter process, is 
 not the question which concerns us here. What con- 
 cerns us is the perfect assurance with which he iden- 
 tifies here, as well as in the Theaetetus (igo), 1 speech 
 (/logoff) and thought (diavoia), an assurance which 
 seems to be shared by his latest translator, Professor 
 Jowett, when finding fault with Hegel because "he 
 speaks as if thought, instead of being identical with 
 language, was wholly independent of it. " 2 
 
 Now, therefore, when it will hardly be safe to say 
 any longer that the identity of language and thought 
 is something quite unheard of, a paradox, a mere per- 
 versity (all these expressions have been used by men 
 who call themselves philosophers, and even professors 
 of philosophy), the next step will probably be to treat 
 it as a mere question of words. 
 
 And, indeed, it is a question of words, but in the 
 true sense of that word. 3 
 
 If we use thought promiscuously for every kind of 
 mental process, it stands to reason that to say that 
 thought is impossible without language would be ab- 
 
 1" What do you mean by thinking ?" " I mean by thinking the conversa- 
 tion which the soul holds with herself in thinking of anything. ... I say, then, 
 that to form an opinion is to speak, and opinion is a word spoken, I mean, to 
 oneself and in silence, not aloud, or to another." 
 
 VPlato, Vol. IV., p. 420. Hegel, however, said : "We think in names;" 
 see Science of Thought, p. 45. 
 
 3"Ein Wortstreit entsteht daraus, well ich die Sachen unter andern 
 Kombinationen sentire und drum, ihre Relativitat ausdruckend, sie anders 
 benennen muss." Goethe an Lavater, 1774. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 97 
 
 surd. To feel pain and pleasure is an inward mental 
 process, to see and hear are inward mental processes ; 
 to stare at the images of present and past events, to 
 build castles in the air, to feed on such stuff as dreams 
 are made of all this might certainly be brought under 
 the general category of mental activity. For ordinary 
 purposes we need not be too particular about lan- 
 guage, and, if people like to call all this thinking, why 
 should we object? I, myself, when there can be no 
 misunderstanding, use thought in that general sense, 
 and use the word mind for all that is going on within 
 us, whether sensation, perception, conception or nam- 
 ing. 1 I did not, therefore, put on my title-page, "No 
 thought without language," but "No reason without 
 language," and I did so after having defined reason as 
 the addition and subtraction of conceptual words. 
 
 But though admitting this general meaning of 
 thinking, we should carefully distinguish it from its 
 more special and technical use, when it becomes syn- 
 onymous with reasoning, and is, in fact, speaking sotto 
 or senza voce. Whenever there is danger of misap- 
 prehension, it is decidedly better to avoid it by defi- 
 nition, but in most cases it is quite clear whether to 
 think is used in its general or in its special sense. If, 
 therefore, it is said that the question of the identity of 
 thought and language is a mere question of words, I 
 say, Yes, it is ; but so is every question of philosophy, 
 if rightly understood. Words are terms, and only if 
 rightly determined do they enable us to reason rightly. 
 Let the word thought be rightly defined, and let the 
 word language be rightly defined, and their identity will 
 require no further proof ; for, when we maintain their 
 identity, we do not mean by language mere sound, 
 
 1 Science of Thought, p. 30, 
 
98 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 nor do we mean by thought mere sensation or imagi- 
 nation, but knowledge of something that can neither 
 be felt nor imagined, and can only be signified. We 
 can never see nor can we imagine tree, dog, man, tri- 
 angle, polygon, parallelepiped, and all the rest of our 
 dictionary. Then what are tree, dog, man, and all the 
 rest? They are names (nomina=gnomind), that is, acts 
 of knowledge, and of that peculiar class of knowledge 
 which cannot possibly have anything corresponding to 
 it in sensuous perception or imagination, because it 
 has always reference to something which we discover 
 in and lift out from percepts in order to signify whole 
 classes of percepts, but never any real and individual 
 percept. We can afterwards use these names, and 
 say, for instance, this is a tree, this is a dog ; but tree 
 and dog, which we thus predicate, are general and ab- 
 stract terms ; they are not the fir-tree or the poodle 
 dog which our sensation and imagination present to us. 
 
 I hope that, after this definition of the true mean- 
 ing of language and thought, the usual result will fol- 
 low, and that my critics will say that, if I meant no 
 more than that, no one would think of differing from me, 
 and that I have only myself to blame for not having 
 made my meaning clear. I am quite willing to take 
 that blame so long as I may agree with my adversa- 
 ries quickly. If people will only see what "a question 
 of words " really means, I believe there will soon be 
 peace among all contending philosophical parties. 
 
 But, unfortunately, we think but too much in words, 
 and almost let them think for us, instead of making 
 them completely our own. We take our words as they 
 come to us by inheritance, and we trust that other 
 people will take them in the same sense in which we 
 use them. 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 99 
 
 And yet nothing is more certain than that two peo- 
 ple hardly ever take the same word in the same sense, 
 and that just the most important words are often used 
 in entirely different senses by different philosophers. 
 Hence all our misunderstandings, all our quarrellings, 
 all our so-called systems of philosophy, every one dif- 
 fering from the other, and yet all starting from the 
 same given facts, all collected by the same eyes and 
 the same minds ! 
 
 If all philosophers used the same words in the 
 same sense, their conclusions would differ as little as 
 the conclusions of mathematicians. A mathematician 
 knows exactly what is the meaning of the terms with 
 which he operates, while philosophers will hardly ever 
 condescend to define the terms which they use. We 
 wonder why mathematicians always arrive at the same 
 results, or, if they do not, why they can always dis- 
 cover the mistakes they have made. But how could 
 it be otherwise ? Even their highest problems, which 
 completely stagger the unmathematical mind, consist 
 in the end in nothing but addition and subtraction. 
 Our reasoning also, even when it reaches the highest 
 metaphysical problems, consists in nothing but addi- 
 tion and subtraction. What else could it consist in? 
 But there is this difference, that, while the mathema- 
 tician adds and subtracts values which are defined 
 within the strictest limits, the philosopher adds and 
 subtracts values which are often not defined at all, or 
 defined within the vaguest limits. If the metaphysi- 
 cian does not actually play with loaded dice, he often 
 uses dice which he has never examined, and which, 
 for all he knows, may have been marked rightly or 
 wrongly by those who placed them in his hands. If 
 all our words were defined as triangles, squares, and 
 
100 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 spheres are In geometry, or as 1.999 * s m arithmetic 
 philosophy would soon become a worthy rival of math- 
 ematics. 
 
 The only hope of peace and of an understanding 
 between various schools of philosophy lies in defini- 
 tion, and definition ought at the present moment to be 
 the chief employment of all honest philosophers. 
 
 But we want more than definition we want a 
 thorough purification of language. A perfect lan- 
 guage ought to be like a perfect alphabet. As in a 
 perfect alphabet the same letter ought always to have 
 one and the same sound, and the same sound ought 
 always to be represented by one and the same letter, 
 so, in a perfect language, the same word ought always 
 to have one and the same meaning, and the same 
 meaning ought always to be represented by one and 
 the same word. I know all poets will cry out against 
 this heresy, but I am speaking of philosophical, not of 
 poetical, language. 
 
 Languages suffer from wealth even more than from 
 poverty. The human mind is so made that it is always 
 inclined to presuppose a difference of meaning where 
 there is a difference of names. Because we have a 
 number of names to signify what is going on within 
 us, such as spirit, mind, understanding, intelligence, 
 and reason, philosophers have made every kind of ef- 
 fort to show how each differs from the rest, till we 
 seem to have ever so many pigeon-holes within us, 
 and ever so many pigeons hatching their eggs in them, 
 instead of one undivided mental activity, applied to 
 different objects. 
 
 While here confusion is due to too great a wealth of 
 expression, we saw before how the employment of the 
 word language in totally different senses, or poverty of 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. IOI 
 
 expression, played equal havoc with our thoughts. If 
 we can speak of the language of the eyes, of the lan- 
 guage of silence, of the language of flowers, of the lan- 
 guage of animals, no wonder that we forget altogether 
 the distinctive meaning of language when used in the 
 definite sense of expression of conceptual thought by 
 conceptual words. Let this definition of language be 
 granted, and ever so many books might have remained 
 unwritten. We are all dealing with the same facts 
 when we say that animals have no language, while 
 others say they have language. We may go on for- 
 ever collecting anecdotes of parrots and jackdaws, we 
 shall never come to a mutual understanding. But let 
 language be once defined, and all wrangling will cease. 
 If language is defined as communication in general, 
 we shall all agree that animals have language. If lan- 
 guage means human language, conceptual language, 
 language derived from roots, then we shall all agree 
 that animals have no language. 
 
 But it is not only in philosophy that we want a 
 katharsis of human speech ; it is wanted in every 
 sphere of human thought. Think of the different 
 meanings attached to the word gentleman. From the 
 most opposite quarters, from high and low, you hear 
 the expression, "He is a gentleman," or "He is not 
 a gentleman." If you venture to doubt, or are bold 
 enough to ask for a definition of gentleman, you run 
 a considerable risk of being told that you are not a 
 gentleman yourself if you do not know what gentle- 
 man means. Yet the butler will call you a gentleman 
 if you give him ten shillings instead of half-a-crown ; 
 your friends will doubt whether you are a gentleman 
 if you indulge in that kind of menial generosity. And 
 if there is this haze about the meaning of gentleman, 
 
IO2 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 think of the polychromatic iridescence that plays round 
 the name of lady. The best we can do when we are 
 asked to define that word is to say that it cannot be 
 defined, and that to define means to destroy its charm, 
 which can be felt only, but cannot be analysed. 
 
 If you wish to see a real confusion of tongues, you 
 need not go to the plain in the land of Shinar, but read 
 any article on art in any of our leading reviews. If you 
 were to ask for a definition of almost any word used in 
 these reviews, whether nice, sweet, charming, felici- 
 tous, exquisite, lovely, heavenly, or realistic, warm, 
 throbbing, bewitching, killing, and all the rest, you 
 would fare very badly. You would be called a pedant, 
 or an ignoramus, and you would require no definition 
 of what is meant by these words. 
 
 Look for a moment at political language. An emi- 
 nent politician has lately spoken in rapturous terms 
 about the name of Home Rule. He called it so de- 
 lightful a term, so apt, so full of meaning. To others 
 it seems the most stupid word that has lately been in- 
 vented, and exactly for the same reason namely, be- 
 cause it is so full, so brimful of meaning. Define 
 Home Rule, and if we do not all of us become Home 
 Rulers at once, we shall at all events be able to com- 
 pare notes, to arrive at a mutual understanding, and 
 to find out what is practicable and what is not. Every 
 individual, every home, every town, every county has 
 a right to so much individual liberty, to so much Home 
 Rule, to so much municipal freedom, to so much 
 county government, as is compatible with the vital in- 
 terest of the commonwealth. All individual claims 
 that clash with the welfare of the larger communities 
 must be surrendered, some for a time, others in per- 
 petuity. Home Rule, in its undefined meaning, is 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 103 
 
 certainly brimful of meaning, but these words over- 
 flowing with meaning are exactly the most bewilder- 
 ing and the most misleading terms. Home Rule may 
 mean liberty, independence, self-government, and a 
 careful regard to local interests. In that sense we are 
 all Home Rulers. But it may also mean licence, sedi- 
 tion, and selfishness and in that sense, I hope, the 
 number of Home Rulers is very small in the United 
 Kingdom of Ireland, Scotland, and England. 
 
 But much more serious consequences may follow 
 from a careless use of words. Politics, after all, are 
 but a small section of ethics, and we have lately seen a 
 complete sytem of ethics built up on the ambiguous 
 use of the word good. No doubt, a knife, or a gun, or 
 a house may be called good, if they are well adapted 
 to cut, to shoot, and to shelter. We may also speak 
 of actions as good or bad, not in a moral sense, but 
 simply as answering their purpose. A shot, for in- 
 stance, may be called a good shot, if it is well aimed 
 and well delivered, even though it should be the shot 
 of a murderer. The first arrow which William Tell 
 let fly at the apple on the head of his son was a good 
 shot, but there was no moral element in it, because the 
 father acted under constraint. But if he had wounded 
 his son, and then, as he intended, had shot the second 
 arrow at Gessler, that might likewise have been a good 
 shot, in one sense, but, from a moral point of view, it 
 would have been murder. 
 
 But to say that moral actions also are called good 
 or bad, according as the adjustments of acts to ends 
 are or are not efficient, is mere jugglery with words. 
 Good has two meanings, and these two meanings 
 should be kept carefully apart. Good may mean use- 
 ful, but good also means what is anything but use- 
 
104 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 ful or profitable ; and it is goodness in that sense which 
 moral philosophy has to account for. It is quite open 
 to any philosopher to say that nothing should be called 
 good except what is in some sense or other useful. 
 But in that case the meaning of usefulness ought to 
 be properly defined ; we ought not to imagine that, 
 because we use the same word, we are thinking the 
 same thought. Now, how does our utilitarian philos- 
 opher define moral usefulness ? He maintains that 
 as the preservation and prolongation of our own life 
 are our summum bonum, any acts conducing to this 
 should be called good. Here many people would 
 question the statement that preservation, and, more 
 particularly, prolongation, of life beyond a certain 
 term could always be called the highest good ; but, 
 even admitting this, we might indeed call cannibalism 
 useful, for the preservation and prolongation of life, 
 but we should hardly call it good. 
 
 It is different when we come to consider the two 
 other spheres of action in which we are told that any 
 acts useful for the preservation and prolongation of 
 life of our own offspring, and of our fellow creatures, 
 should be called good. 
 
 Here we must again distinguish. Any act for the 
 benefit of our own offspring may be useful, wise, and 
 prudent, and, if well conceived and carefully carried 
 out, may be called good, in one sense. But not till we 
 know the motive, should we call it good in the other 
 sense. In a primitive state of society children consti- 
 tuted the wealth and strength of a family, and to feed 
 them and keep them from danger was no more meri- 
 torious than the feeding and keeping of slaves and 
 cattle. From a purely utilitarian point of view, how- 
 ever, it would be useful, and therefore good, not to 
 
MY PREDECESSORS. 105 
 
 rear weak or crippled children, but to kill them, and 
 here for the first time real goodness comes in. Real 
 goodness is always, in some form or other, unselfish- 
 ness. The unselfishness of a mother in bringing up a 
 child that must always be a trouble and burden to her 
 may be very misguided, anything but good in the eyes 
 of those who interpret good as useful ; but neverthe- 
 less, so long as the word good exists, it has always 
 been applied to such acts. 
 
 In this case, however, the psychologist may still 
 discover traces of selfishness in the natural love of a 
 mother. But in the third sphere of action, in our en- 
 deavor to preserve and prolong the life of our fellow 
 creatures, or, more correctly, in our endeavors to pro- 
 mote their general happiness, we can easily distin- 
 guish between acts that ought to be called good, sim- 
 ply in the sense of useful, and acts that ought to be 
 called good, in the sense of unselfish. A man who 
 fulfils the general duties necessary for keeping a com- 
 munity together may be called a good, that is, a use- 
 ful citizen. He is useful to society, but he is useful 
 also to himself, as a member of that society. A man, 
 however, who, like Marcus Curtius, jumped into the 
 abyss in order to save Rome, may no doubt be called 
 a fool by utilitarian philosophers, but the Romans 
 called him good, and we too must call him unselfish. 
 And a man who, like Gordon, remained at his post, 
 trusting in his God and in his country, may be called 
 a madman ; but no one would dare to call him selfish, 
 and posterity will keep for him a place of honor among 
 the heroes, among the martyrs, among the good men 
 of England. 
 
 Philosophers are perfectly justified in attempting 
 to build up systems of ethics on utilitarian and hedon- 
 
106 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 istic principles. We should not even contest their 
 right to give a new definition of goodness, and to say 
 that with them it shall mean nothing but usefulness. 
 But they must not play with language, and tell us that 
 what the world meant by good was never more than 
 what they mean by useful. On the contrary, the word 
 good was framed originally to signify acts which were 
 not useful, nay, which might be detrimental to the 
 agent, and which, nevertheless, require our approval. 
 Their usefulness depends on the means which we em- 
 ploy, goodness on the objects which we have in view. 
 We may call useful what is selfish, we can never call 
 what is selfish good. 
 
 There is no sphere of mental activity which does 
 not stand in need of the corrective influence of the 
 Science of Thought. If soldiers must look to their 
 swords, philosophers will have to look to their words. 
 I know that here, as elsewhere, inquiry into the sup- 
 ply, and a vigorous test of the efficiency, of words will 
 be declared a nuisance, will be resisted and resented 
 as an insult. But, in spite of all that, it will come, in 
 some departments of thought it has already come, 
 and in the future battles of the world good swords 
 and good words will carry the day. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbot, Tkt, i*. 
 
 Abelard, 75. 
 
 Abstract, 38. 
 
 Agassiz, 46. 
 
 A g n i , 63, 64. 
 
 Alphabet, 100. 
 
 Americans, slang of, 16. 
 
 An/aid, 12. 
 
 Animal, man and, 2-6, 32. 
 
 Anred, 12. 
 
 Anthropology, 47. 
 
 Antiquated words, 12 et seq. 
 
 Apes, language of, 5. 
 
 AprzthagbhSva, 84. 
 
 Aristotle, 82. 
 
 Art, 102. 
 
 Aryan languages, 23, 31, 35, 72. 
 
 Aryas, 50, 53, 55-66. 
 
 Asia, 56, 64. 
 
 Astronomy, 66. 
 
 Australian slang, 17. 
 
 Avenant, 12. 
 
 Bah, 26, 30. 
 Bairn, 21. 
 Bangster, 12. 
 Bar, the root, 22, 27. 
 Barbarians, 37. 
 Barley, 21 et seq., 26. 
 Barn, 22. 
 
 Barrier, between man and beast, lan- 
 guage a, 5, 32, 34. 
 Barrow, 20 et seq. 
 Barrows, funeral, 59. 
 Battery, 13. 
 Bear, 20-23, 27. 
 Beech, 63. 
 Beorh, 21. 
 
 Bergen, 21. 
 
 Berkeley, 90. 
 
 Bet, you, slang, 17. 
 
 B h a r , Sanskrit root, 23, 26, 27. 
 
 B h r a t a r , 40. 
 
 Bi-b h armi, 27. 
 
 Bible, n, 14. 
 
 Bier, 20 et seq. 
 
 Billia, L. M., 92. 
 
 Birch, 62. 
 
 Birth, 23, 27. 
 
 Blood, thicker than water, 35; lan- 
 guage thicker than, 40; thought 
 thicker than, 43 et seq.; mixture of, 
 49 et seq. 
 
 Blumenbach, 44 et seq. 
 
 Bopp, 67. 
 
 Bossuet, 78. 
 
 BOTV-VJOUI, 92 et seq. 
 
 Brahmans, 78. 
 
 Brat, 15. 
 
 Buddhism, 58. 
 
 Buffon, 46. 
 
 Bunsen, 43. 
 
 Burden, 20 et seq. 
 
 Burke, 46. 
 
 Camel, 63. 
 
 Cannibalism, 104. 
 
 Cassiodorus, 60, 
 
 Caucasus, 56. 
 
 Caxton, 12. 
 
 Celts, 53. 
 
 Chaucer, 16. 
 
 Chemical analysis of words, 25 et seq. 
 
 Chemistry, 33. 
 
 Child-psychology, 91. 
 
 Children, 104. 
 
io8 
 
 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Chinese, education, ion ; language, 
 23- 
 
 Chips of the same block, 40. 
 
 Clamor concomitans, 30. 
 
 Classical languages, 37 et seq. 
 
 Colloquial language. 9 et seq. 
 
 Comparative, grammar, 37 ; philol- 
 ogy, 33, 67 et seq., 94. 
 
 Concepts, 29, 90, 94. 
 
 Condillac, 76. 
 
 Consonants, in roots, 28. 
 
 Conversation of the soul, thought 
 the, 95. 
 
 Coral islands, 33. 
 
 Cradle of the Aryas, 55 et seq. 
 
 Crawford, 46. 
 
 Cuckoo, 26, 30. 
 
 Cuneiform inscriptions, 59. 
 
 Curtius, Marcus, 68, 105. 
 
 Cuvier, 45, 46. 
 
 Dante, 18. 
 
 DAR, 89. 
 
 Darius, 59, 
 
 Darwin, 45, 74, 75, 83. 
 
 De Bonald, 75, 77, 78 et seq. 
 
 Definition, 100. 
 
 Demonstrative elements, 27. 
 
 Descartes, 79. 
 
 DH, root, 69. 
 
 Dialects, 9 et seq., 55, 71. 
 
 Dice, 99. 
 
 Dictionaries, 10, n, 26, 71. 
 
 Dog, 91, 92, 98. 
 
 Dove-tailed, 19. 
 
 Dtnvald, 19. 
 
 Dry, 17. 
 
 Economy of language, 22, 69. 
 
 Edda, The, 38, 61. 
 
 Edgren, 26. 
 
 Education, essential elements of, 66. 
 
 Elements of words, 22 et seq., 27, 33. 
 
 Ellis, 71. 
 
 efufietv, 14. 
 
 England and India, 41-42. 
 
 English language, its character and 
 
 history, 8 et seq.; its stock of words, 
 
 8, ii et seq., 20 et seq. 
 Ephesus, 34. 
 
 Erse, 55. 
 
 Ethnology, 44 et seq. 
 Ethics, 103. 
 Europe, 56 et seq. 
 
 Faerie Queen, 14. 
 
 Fair maids, 19. 
 
 Familiarity, breeds contempt, i. 
 
 Farina, 26. 
 
 Fenians, 53. 
 
 Per, root, 23, 26. 
 
 Finnish, 68. 
 
 Fir, 63. 
 
 Fire, 63-64. 
 
 Flatus rocis, 84. 
 
 Flowers, language of, 101. 
 
 Folk-lore, 39, 71. 
 
 French, 53. 
 
 Fumada, 19. 
 
 Gaelic, 55. 
 
 General ideas, 90. 
 
 Gentleman, 101. 
 
 Geography, 66. 
 
 Geology, 30, 56, 66. 
 
 Germany, 54, 57 et seq. 
 
 Gessler, 103. 
 
 Gestures, 86. 
 
 Get, slovenly use of, 17. 
 
 Gheyn, Van den, 65. 
 
 Goethe, 38, 92, 96. 
 
 Good, its many meanings, 103 et seq. 
 
 Gordon, 105. 
 
 Gothic, 38, 39. 
 
 Grammar, as a criterion of language, 
 
 50- 
 
 Grammarians of India, 25. 
 Greats, 18. 
 
 Greek language, 37, 39. 
 Greeks, 38, 57, 95. 
 Grimm, 68, 71. 
 Gulphtd, 18. 
 
 Hair, as a criterion of race, 47, 53. 
 Hale, Horatio, 17, 41, 46, 47, 48, 64. 
 Heathen, 14. 
 Hebrew, not the original tongue, 37, 
 
 69. 
 
 Hedonism, 105. 
 Hegel, 75, 96- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Heimskringla, 61. 
 Herder, 38, 75. 
 Hermann Gottfried, 38. 
 Hieroglyphics, 59. 
 Hindus, 40-41. 
 History, 66. 
 Hobbes, 75, 78. 
 Hochstufe, 70. 
 Hoi den, 14. 
 Home rule, 102. 
 Homer, 37. 
 Homo sapiens, 6. 
 Housewife, 28. 
 Humboldt, W. von, 45, 75. 
 Huzzy, 28. 
 
 Ice, 62. 
 
 Identity of thought and language, 73 
 
 et seq. 
 Idiot, 13. 
 
 Images, 88-89, 9. 
 Imagination, 95. 
 Imp, 14. 
 
 Imperial rule, 55. 
 Impfen, 14. 
 India, 25, 39-41. 
 Indo-European, 39, 
 Indus, 58, 65. 
 Infixes, 27. 
 Interjections, 27. 
 Intermarriages, 52. 
 Italy, 54. 
 
 Jabber, 84. 
 
 Jackdaws, 101. 
 
 Jordanes, on the origin of the Aryas, 
 
 60 et seq. 
 Jowett, Prof., 96. 
 Juggernaut, 41. 
 
 Kant, 4, 82, 83. 
 Katharsis, 101. 
 Kitchen-middens, 59. 
 Knave, 13. 
 Knowledge, 8. 
 Kohistan, 64. 
 
 Lady, 102. 
 
 Language, our familiarity with, i ; 
 whence it came from and what it is 
 
 made of, i et seq.; an impassable 
 barrier between man and beast, 
 2-6, 32-34 ; of parrots, 2 ; the begin- 
 nings of, 3 et seq.; its divine or hu- 
 man origin, 3 et seq.; the communi- 
 cative utterances of animals not 
 language, 4-5 ; has raised man to a 
 new, intellectual plane, 6-7; knowl- 
 edge of, requisite to a good educa- 
 tion, 7 ; though a miracle, yet infin- 
 itely simple, 7 et seq.; we all play 
 at least one language, 8, 66; illiter- 
 ate speech the beginnings of liter- 
 ary speech, 9 et seq.; colloquial, 
 dialectic, technical, etc., 9-10, 16- 
 20; no mystery in, u et seq.; obso- 
 lete, 12 ; deterioration of, 13 ; all 
 language in its origin vulgar, 18; 
 the constituent elements of, roots, 
 etc., 20-23, 25-32; its parsimony, 22; 
 chemical analysis of, 25 et seq.; its 
 explanation ultimately amounts to 
 the explanation of its roots, 28; 
 roots the feeders of, 29 ; the light 
 it throws on the origin of thought, 
 30-34 ; the geology of language, 30; 
 derived from sounds expressing 
 the consciousness of repeated acts, 
 30-31 ; roots the foundation of, 31- 
 32; the simplicity of, 33 ; compared 
 to coral islands as the outcome of 
 the untold labor of millions of an- 
 cestors, 33-34 ; the light of the 
 world, 34; thicker than blood, 35, 
 39-42; hypothetical primitive, 35- 
 37; relationship of language and 
 relationship of blood, 43 et seq.; 
 linguistic classification of more 
 evidential value as proving com- 
 munity of descent than physiologi- 
 cal classification, 44-55 ; it is lan- 
 guage that makes man, 49; the 
 very embodiment of our true selves, 
 49; language as a synonym of peo- 
 ples, 51 ; as a means of historical 
 research, 62 et seq.; the secrets of, 
 betrayed by Sanskrit, 70 ; the work 
 to be done in, 71 ; genealogical 
 table of the Aryan family of, 72, 
 identity of thought and, 73 et seq.; 
 and thought, two faces of the same 
 
no 
 
 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 head, 94; Plato 011,95; defined, 97 
 et seq., 100 et seq.; purification of, 
 100 ; of flowers, etc., 101. See also 
 the headings Language, Science of, 
 Words, Roots, and the adjectives 
 English, Aryan, etc. 
 
 Language, Science of, its place in 
 education, 6,66; its simple but sig- 
 nificant lessons, 8, 32 et seq., 34-42; 
 the results of its inquiry, 27 ; has 
 encouraged national aspirations, 
 37i 54~55 '. nas enlarged our histori- 
 cal horizon, 39; its bearing on phi- 
 losophy, 75, -6, 86; shows the iden- 
 tity of words and concepts, 93 et 
 seq. 
 
 Lamarck, 75. 
 
 Latham, 59 et seq. 
 
 Latin, 37. 
 
 Lavater, 96. 
 
 Linnaeus, 46. 
 
 Lion, 63. 
 
 Literary standard, 9 et seq. 
 
 Little go, 18. 
 
 Littre, 71. 
 
 Locke, 82, 90-91, 94. 
 
 Logos, 74, 85, 95 et seq. 
 
 Luck, ii. 
 
 Lucretius, 75. 
 
 Maids, Fair, 19. 
 
 Maistre, De, 75, 78, 79 et seq. 
 
 Man, descent of, 2-6, 32-33. 
 
 Manchester, school of, 68 et seq. 
 
 Mansel, 75. 
 
 Mar, 30. 
 
 Mare's nest, 75. 
 
 M a t a r , 40. 
 
 Mathematics, 99. 
 
 Media, 57. 
 
 Mental activity, 97 et seq. 
 
 Micklosich, 68. 
 
 Mill, J. Stuart, 80. 
 
 Miracle, language a, 7. 
 
 Moderations, 18. 
 
 Moo, 26, 30. 
 
 Morris, 71. 
 
 Morton, 46. 
 
 Motherly love, 105. 
 
 Muller, Friedrich, 46-48. 
 
 Mttller, Otfried, 38. 
 
 Mystery, in language, no, n et seq. 
 Mythology, 38, 39. 
 
 Names, 98. 
 Nationalities, 54. 
 Nebuchadnezzar, 51, 53. 
 Nescius, 15. 
 Newton, 79, 92. 
 Nibelunge, The, 38. 
 Nice, 15. 
 Nigger, 41. 
 Noire", 86. 
 
 Nominalism, 76, 94 et seq. 
 Nursery psychology, 91. 
 
 Oak, 63, 93. 
 
 Odin, 61. 
 
 Officina gentium, 60. 
 
 Oken, 75, 92. 
 
 Onomatopoeia, 26. 
 
 Opinion, 95. 
 
 Orosius, 60. 
 
 Oxford Dictionary, 10, 71. 
 
 Oxus, 56, 65. 
 
 Pagan, 14, 
 
 Pamir, 56, 62. 
 
 PSwini, 25. 
 
 PanjSb, 57. 
 
 Parliamentary English, 9-10. 
 
 Parrots, language of, 2-3, 101. 
 
 Particular ideas, 90. 
 
 People, language a synonym of, 51. 
 
 Percept, 28. 
 
 Persia, 57. 
 
 Peschel, Oscar, 46-47. 
 
 <f>ep, root, 23. 
 
 Philology and ethnology, 44 et seq.; 
 
 comparative, 27, 33, 67, 94. 
 Philosophy, 66, 74 et seq., 97, 99. 
 Physiological classifications, get seq. 
 Pickering, 46. 
 Pigeon-holes, 100. 
 Planets, 88. 
 Plato, 95, 96. 
 Ploughed, 18. 
 
 Population of the earth, 52. 
 Pott, 67. 
 
 Powell, Major, 47. 
 Prefixes, 27. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Prichard, 45, 46. 
 Primary words, 20. 
 Proto-Aryan, 23, 35. 
 irpurov tyevdos, 84. 
 Proverbs, 14. 
 
 Races of man, 44 et seq. 
 
 Realism, 76. 
 
 Reason, 97 et seq. 
 
 Religion, 66. 
 
 Repetition of acts, leads to the origin 
 
 of common concepts, 29 et seq. 
 Robert of Gloucester, 15. 
 Romanes, G. J., 3, 4, 5. 
 Romans, 38, 105. 
 Rook, Sir George, 13, 
 Roots, 20, 23, 25 et seq., 28 et seq., 31 
 
 et seq., 86. 
 Rosmini, 75. 
 Rousseau, 77. 
 
 Sanskrit, 23, 25, 26, 39, 40-43, 67-72, 
 
 78, 86. 
 Sayce, 65. 
 Selfishness, 105. 
 Semitic languages, 31. 
 Sepoys, and the English, 51. 
 Seven Rivers, the land of, 57. 
 Scancia, 60 et seq. 
 Scandinavia, 57 et seq. 
 Schelling, 75. 
 Scherer, 71. 
 Schleiermacher, 75. 
 Science of Language, The, cited, 88, 94. 
 Science of Thought, The, cited, 26, 73, 
 
 75> 76, 9. 94. 96, 97- 
 Scientific terms, 19. 
 Shinar, 102. 
 
 Shakespeare, words in, n, 16. 
 Simplicity, 14. 
 Skeat, ii, 26, 71. 
 
 Skin, as a criterion of race, 47, 52. 
 Skull, as a criterion of race, 47, 53. 
 Slang, 10, 16, 17. 
 Slaves, 53. 
 
 Slavonic languages, 36. 
 Slide, slang word, 16. 
 Snow, 62. 
 Spenser, 14. 
 StO, 30. 
 
 Star, 87. 
 
 Statesmanship, 55. 
 
 Stewart, Dugald, 78. 
 
 Strew, 87. 
 
 Suffixes, 23, 27. 
 
 Suttee, 41. 
 
 Sweden, 58 et seq. 
 
 Sweet, 71. 
 
 Swift, 13. 
 
 Swords, soldiers must look to their, 
 
 106. 
 Symbolism, intellectual, 5. 
 
 Taine, 75, 80, 91, 92 et seq. 
 
 Tan, 30. 
 
 Tear, 89. 
 
 Technical terms, 19. 
 
 Tell, William, 103. 
 
 repaeaOai, 17. 
 
 Termination, 27. 
 
 Teutonic languages, 36. 
 
 Thales, 82. 
 
 Theodoric, 60. 
 
 Thinking aloud, 85. 
 
 Thirsty, 17. 
 
 Thought, defined, 96 et seq.; identity 
 of language and, 73 et seq.; Science 
 of, its corrective influences, 106; 
 thicker than blood, 43 et seq. 
 
 Thuggee, 41. 
 
 Tiefstufe, 70. 
 
 Tiger, 63. 
 
 Timbre, 84. 
 
 Times, The, 68. 
 
 Tongues, confusion of, 102. 
 
 Torrere, 17. 
 
 Tree, 63, 88, 89, 92, 98. 
 
 Turanian, 43 et seq. 
 
 U d a 1 1 a , 70. 
 Uinen, 59. 
 Ujfalvy, 64. 
 Ullage, 18. 
 Undines, 84. 
 Unselfishness, 105. 
 Utilitarianism, 104. 
 
 Vedic, age, religion, etc., 57 et seq.-, 
 
 language, 70. 
 Villain, 13. 
 
112 
 
 SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. 
 
 Vincent, Bory de St., 46. 
 Virgil, 37. 
 Volgare, II, 18. 
 Vowels, 69 et seq. 
 
 Welcker, 38. 
 Welsh, 55, 
 Wear, 28. 
 Whately, 75. 
 Winter, 62. 
 
 Words, number of, used in common 
 life, in Shakespeare, the Bible, 
 
 etc., 10-11 ; the adventures of, 19, 
 63 ; their analysis into roots, 25 et 
 seq.; their importance, 97 et seq.; 
 philosophers must look to their, 
 106. 
 World, 28. 
 
 Yavan, or Yauna, 58. 
 Yaxartes, 56, 65. 
 Yo heo, 30. 
 
 Zeuss, 68. 
 
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