of Prof. Müller. Whether it is absolutely true, may perhaps be doubted. Whether forms such as phenomenon and phenomena, criterion and criteria, index and indices, may not be slight exceptions, and also point to broader innovations which. a vast influx of words, like that with which the Norman conquest overwhelmed the succumbing Saxon, may produce in an invaded dialect, we will not undertake to decide. Of the soundness of the principle as a general one, we have no doubt. Just as a powerful nationality will fuse down all the diverse and heterogeneous elements of population into one prevailing type, so will a dominant language mould to its own form whatever foreign material may come within its sphere. Our English language, though much more than half of its words are of foreign stock, is yet by its grammar unmistakeably Teutonic. Its naturalized residents have to bear the German yoke, and the lordly Roman, and the elegant Greek, as they enter its pale, have to assume the costume of the Barbarian whom the one knew not, and the other knew but to despise.

But in yet another way language is historical. Though we are dealing with a natural science, we are dealing with a science which yet lives only within the sphere of humanity, and is subject to all the fluctuations of human history; a science which is as broad as humanity, and in its development follows necessarily the movements and fortunes of the races to whom it belongs. If we would investigate the origin of a word or a grammatical form, we must obviously trace it through all the changes which it has undergone, among the different peoples that have used it, until we may reach its earliest form, in its own special dialect, and may also compare it with other kindred forms in those nearly or remotely related to it. This opens to us the subject of Comparative Philology, as a means at once of explaining the forms, and determining the affinities and classification of languages.

For many reasons this is a science born within our own day. The Greek Philosophers were profoundly impressed with the wonderful nature and functions of language, but they examined it almost entirely in the interests of Meta

physics and Logic. The necessity of grammatical analysis is but little felt until we come to learn a foreign language. That which we have learned imitatively in our earliest childhood, and which seems a part of our very being, we never dream of regarding analytically. Modes, tenses, cases, we use with an utter unconsciousness of tense, case, and mode, and scarcely, indeed, with the thought that there is any other possible way of expressing our conceptions. The distinctions of Aristotle were chiefly logical distinctions, although, in their deep truth, they subsequently readily adjusted themselves to a grammatical nomenclature. But the Greeks, despising every people but themselves, and affixing to them the common stigma of Barbarians, despised equally every other language. They never dreamed that in any of the numerous tongues that surrounded them, there could be anything which deserved the slightest scientific attention. When Aristotle engaged his royal pupil to send him such specimens in natural history as came within the wide range of his conquests, he seems not to have thought of asking for collections of words which should illustrate the speech and the ethnical affinities of the remote nations of the East. How curious the workings of that philosophic pride which could condescend to monkeys, but could not condescend to men! What a god-send to Leibnitz would have been the friendship, united with the conquering career, of an Alexander!

But if pride goes before destruction morally, it does no less so intellectually. Nothing is so hostile to the genius of true science as the spirit of contempt. Of this incurious and arrogant temper even the sagacious Greek paid the inevitable penalty in the narrowness of his conceptions, and in his want alike of the disposition and the ability to reach those profounder views of language which can spring only from a wide induction and comparison of facts. Could the Greek have forgotton the word Barbarian, and have merged the pride of a clannish civilization in a genial sympathy with humanity, he would have found in the numberless forms of social life around him, problems of profoundest interest. But the garment which arrogant exclusiveness wraps around itself, is

necessarily the garment of ignorance; and the Greeks, having the usages of no other tongue, either to provoke or to aid comparison, could do little for the analysis of language. The Alexandrian critics in settling the text of Homer, had occasion to investigate more carefully some points of grammatical usage, and to enlarge the grammatical terminology. The first regular Greek grammar, however, was constructed for the Roman students of Greek. The Romans were as little able to withstand the power of Greek letters, as were the Greeks to resist the might of the Roman legionaries. Greek was early cultivated in Rome, and to speak and write in this elegant tongue became an indispensable accomplishment of an educated Roman. Thus for foreigners a grammar of the language became necessary, and the need was supplied in the time of Pompey, by Dionysius Thrax, a pupil of the Alexandrian. Aristarchus, and residing as Greek teacher in Rome. The grammatical mould into which he cast the Greek, has largely determined the form of subsequent grammars. Long before this, however, in the remote East, the Indian philologists had done the same thing, on a much completer scale, for the language of the Brahmans. All the grammatical principles of that noble tongue had been thoroughly explored, and developed in a manner so accordant with the results of Greek grammatical research, as to prove either the close affinity of the two languages, or the depth and universality of the principles in which grammer has its origin.

Thus far, however, the process is little else than mechanical. We are in the empirical stage of our science; we have not risen above a mere art of grammar. We have thrown a sort of grammatical network over language: we have classified, labelled, and remitted to their respective places, its words and forms of speech; but made no attempt to explain their nature and origin. "Etvяtoy means, I was striking, and rúfw, I shall strike; amabam means, I was loving, and amabo, I shall love; j'ai parlé means, I have spoken, and je parlerai, I shall speak; the form I loved, transfers the action of love from the present to the past: Athenarum means, at Athens, and Carthagini means, in Carthage; but how and why this diversity of forms

works these diverse results, no attempt has been as yet made to show. All is purely formal. We pick the flower to pieces with our fingers; we roughly separate with chisel and hammer the different layers or elements of the rock; but we have not attempted to penetrate the deep laboratories of nature, where she is subtilely compounding and vitalizing these wondrous organisms. The exploring of the hidden philosophy of language demanded other influences than heathenism could furnish; it belonged legitimately to Christianity.

The clannish and exclusive spirit of Paganism was hostile to the large inquiry and broad inductions of genuine science. It could scarcely raise itself to the dignity and magnitude of questions of world-wide interest. For humanity, as such, it had no concern. The Greeks despised everybody but themselves; the Romans despised everybody but themselves and the Greeks. "It was Christianity," says Prof. Müller, "which first broke down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, between Greek and Barbarian, between the white and the black. Humanity is a word you look for in vain in Plato or Aristotle: the idea of mankind as one family, as the children of one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and the science of mankind, and of the languages of mankind, is a science which, without Christianity, would never have sprung into life. When people had been taught to look upon all men as brethren, then, and then only, did the variety of human speech present itself as a problem that called for solution in the eyes of thoughtful observers; and I therefore date the real beginning of the Science of Language from the first day of Pentecost. After that day of cloven tongues a new light is spreading over the world, and objects rise into view which had been hidden from the eyes of the nations of antiquity. Old words assume a new meaning, old problems a new interest, old sciences a new purpose. The common origin of mankind, the difference of race and language, the susceptibility of all nations of the highest mental culture, these become, in the new world in which we live, problems of scientific, because of more than scientific, interest."

It is true that the new principle remained for some time

comparatively unfruitful, and much labor had yet to be wasted in misdirected inquiry. The Hebrew, with its cognate languages, standing in sharp contrast with the classical tongues, shared with them the attention of scholars; and the endeavor to establish the claims of Hebrew to be the language of Paradise, absorbed not a little of the learned industry of the middle ages. Yet this industry was not wholly wasted; for as the labors expended on the fancied sciences of Alchemy and Astrology, either originated or advanced the genuine sciences of Astronomy and Chemistry, so these zealous endeavors to determine the original language of the race, though resting on wholly false assumptions, and pursued by false methods, yet accumulated vast material for the future structure of the Science of Language. The Lord's prayer, translated into every language reached by the missionaries, laid a good foundation for mutual comparison.

The first clear exposure of the futility of the prevailing inquiries, and opening of the right method, is due to the sagacity of Leibnitz. He rudely shivered the idol of the Hebrew worshippers, by declaring that Hebrew had just as much claim to being regarded as the primitive language as the Low Dutch, and he saw and urged the necessity of collections of words from all languages, for the purpose of comparison. He corresponded with Eastern Missionaries on this point, and becoming acquainted with Peter, the Czar of Russia, he wrote to him, urging him to use his royal authority in procuring vocabularies of the numberless dialects spoken throughout his vast European and Asiatic dominions. His efforts were not in vain; and even the Empress Catherine, Peter's successor, did not disdain to devote herself assiduously to the work both of collecting and classifying these vocabularies.

In the year 1800, Hervas, a Spanish Jesuit, for years a Missionary in America, and then resident at Rome, where he had access to returned Missionaries from all parts of the world, published, as part of a large work, a work in six volumes, containing a catalogue, with specimens, of 300 languages. He himself prepared grammars of more than 40. He was the first to point out the affinities of languages as dependent