THE

CHRISTIAN REVIEW.

No. CXI.—JANUARY, 1863.

ARTICLE I. THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.

Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. By MAX MÜLLER, M. A.

[BY A. C. KENDRICK, D. D., OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ROCHESTER.]

If familiarity legitimately breeds contempt, it is no just matter of censure that the phenomena of language attract to so limited an extent the curiosity and admiration of men. That which syllabled the swaddled thoughts of budding infancy, which has since been the companion of each waking hour, and which the poet and philosopher share with the peasant, can scarcely be expected to awaken the interest that belongs to objects invested with the charm of novelty.

Yet, observing more closely the nature and functions of language, we can not fail to find it challenging our profoundest interest and study. A material vehicle almost as airy and subtle as the immaterial burden with which it is freighted! A thing as light and evanescent as the air we breathe, yet charged with the high commission of revealing, embodying, and perpetuating all the splendid conceptions of the intellect, and all the sublime mysteries of science! A simple stream of Vol. xxviii.-1.

sound emitted from the throat, and in its passage broken up, articulated, modified by palate, tongue, teeth, lips, breath, and intellect, until it issues forth, no longer a mere mass of sound -vox et præterea nihil but wrought into the complicated mechanism, and rising to the transcendent dignity of rational speech! And as such, behold it running parallel with the manifold movements, and meeting the utmost exigencies of the human soul; impregnated with its reason, glittering with its fancies, blazing with its passion; plunging with it to the profoundest depths of thought, and soaring with it to the loftiest heights of imagination; catching its most delicate lineaments, arresting its most fleeting hues, making palpable its most subtle distinctions, and thus proving itself at once an adequate interpreter of the mysteries, and guardian of the treasures, of the soul. Looking thus at the capacities of language, we can hardly regard as less wonderful than thought itself, the essence in which it is embodied.

As a general rule, the objects which most attract our imaginative wonder are most deserving of scientific research. The connexion between the poet and the philosopher; the facility with which the intuitions of the one are transformed into the speculations of the other; the mutually co-operative play of the fancy and the reason, so splendidly exemplified in men like Pythagoras, Plato, Bacon, Kepler, the Schlegels and the Humboldts, are coming to be universally acknowledged. Yet language, matter of just wonder as it has always been, has but recently been subjected to that severity of investigation which has raised it to the dignity of a science. It is, in fact, substantially the creation of the last half century, and can scarcely be said, with us at least, to have had its christening. Indeed, its scientific sponsors seem quite in doubt how to label their new-born progeny. The current name of Comparative Philology is both cumbrous, and too limited, denoting rather the method and chief instrument of the science, than the science itself. Turning to the Greek, the recognized fountain head of our scientific terminology, we find most of the appropriate words held to previous service in other departments. Philology has its sphere in those researches which make language a

means rather than an end; which, by the blended lights of Grammar, Dictionary, Criticism and History, seek to decipher the records of ancient wisdom and genius, and make our own the literary treasures of past ages. Such is not the purpose of our Science. It deals with language, not with literature. It concerns itself not with what Plato or Cicero thought, but with the nature of the instrument by which their thoughts were expressed. It regards with no higher respect the cultivated dialect of Greece or the sacred language of the Brahman, than the rude jargon of the barbarian. To it all languages are on a level; or at least, the sole measure of their value is their respective ability to shed light on the laws and natural course of human speech. The terms Mythology (μ005, a word), Phonology, Glossology, Logology, have each their several grounds of objection. It is not unlikely that, after the French Linguis tique, our scholars may yet resort to Linguistic, or Linguistics, as the designation of their Science. At present we cheerfully forego the indulgence of our classical pedantry, and follow Prof. Müller in a few points of his lucid and admirable exposition of what he unpretendingly calls the Science of Language. We shall find enough of intrinsic interest in its subject matter to enable it to dispense with the adventitious attractions of a name.

And a Science Prof. Müller earnestly claims it to be. As a Science, it passes through the three successive stages common to all sciences-the empirical, the classificatory, and the theoretical; as a Science, it has its fixed principles and invariable laws; and as a Science, it can claim its high practical uses. On this latter point, indeed, Prof. Müller might seem almost unduly anxious, and hardly to do justice to the generous spirit of true science. We have no fear that that which can be demonstrated to be true, will not demonstrate itself to be useful; and when our author concedes that if language, as a Science, can urge in its own vindication no higher practical benefits, it must go the way of Alchemy and Astrology, he half admits a lurking fallacy into his argument. Astrology and Alchemy were discarded, not because they were useless, but because they were false; and in their falseness lay the ground

of their inutility. Such, in human life, is the connexion of all the sciences and all the arts, that no truth can remain permanently barren. A lower form of its application may give place to a higher; but the truth itself can never be superseded. If the Science of Language has a solid basis, it will prove itself fruitful of benefits, and, apart from its high office of vindicating the dignity of man, and placing an insuperable barrier between him and the brute race, it would be easy to multiply utilitarian reasons for its scientific study. We doubt whether, after the Science which expounds man's relations to his God, there is any whose practical uses are more manifold and abundant.

But there are two classes of Sciences: the one lying within the sphere of the human will, as art, politics, religion, which may hence be called moral, or historical: the other, natural or physical, dealing, like Zoology and Botany, with the unchangeable types and phenomena of nature. Prof. Müller puts language into the latter of these categories; he makes it a strictly natural Science. This view of course excludes entirely the once favorite theory that language was the product of convention of a synod of rational mutes gathering in high conclave and saying, in voiceless signs, "Go to, let us construct a language; " while, again, it equally denies that it can, like religion, art, and government, be subject to the fluctuating caprice and arbitrary will of man. And here we must express our doubt whether Prof. Müller does not partially misstate, or at least exaggerate, the difference between the physical and the so-called historical Sciences. A wide dif ference undoubtedly there is in their subject matter, and in their mode of development; but assuredly not in the certainty and fixedness of their principles. Religion, politics, and art are as unchangeable in their principles-as completely independent of the arbitrary will of man-as are Geology or Botany; and it is only in the narrowest and most superficial sense that" an Emperor may change the laws of society, the forms of religion, or the rules of art." The principles of law, religion, and the arts, are as much beyond an Emperor's power to change as are the principles of language, and “a rule in art" he can no more alter than a rule in Grammar.

And so far as a distinction holds between them--and no doubt it is real and broad—we question if language does not lie nearly as much within the sphere of the historical as of the natural Sciences. Its origin is scarcely more a necessary product of man's peculiar organization than religion, or government, or art. It is impossible that men should live a day, without some form of religion and government, and without some of the rudimentary principles of art. These all spring from the original laws and irrepressible tendencies of our nature; and though, in the actual development and practical application of their principles, they may seem more subject to man's free volition than language, yet the difference is one of degree rather than of kind. The laws which control the growth and decay of art are nearly as mysterious, and as much beyond man's individual or even collective will, as those which determine the growth and decay of language. Who could have legislated Greece into the architectural and sculptured glories of the age of Pericles? What conscious will ever presided over, or could have prescribed, the course of Grecian or of Roman art? What edicts of Senates or of Emperors could have essentially modified its progress and development? Whence came that inspiring breath that toward the close of the Middle Ages rekindled, with almost magical suddenness, the slumbering glories of art, and produced the age of Raphael, Michael Angelo, and Rubens? We doubt if any single person ever exercised a greater influence over the developments of art than individual great minds have over the progress of language. Chaucer, Dante, Pascal, Lessing, wrought scarcely less effects upon the language of their respective countries, than upon their literature: Pope developed the harmonies of English rhythm, not only for himself, but for all his successors; and in the modern Greek and the German, the power of a deliberate, collective purpose to reform the abuses and modify the development of a language, has been unequivocally asserted. And as language contains confessedly a material and a rational element, why would not a more exact statement of its nature put it partly into the category of the physical, partly of the historical or moral sciences?