Chapter XVIII: Appendix: Comparative View of Sanskrit and Other Languages, (3)

Other charges, however, of neglect and carelessness on my part in reading Professor Whitney’s writings, I can meet by a direct negative. Among the more glaring mistakes of his lectures which I had pointed out, was this, that fifteen years after Rougé’s discovery, Professor Whitney still speaks of “the Phenician alphabet as the ultimate source of the world’s alphabets.” Professor Whitney answers: “If Professor Müller had read my twelfth lecture he would have found the derivative nature of the Phenician alphabet fully discussed.” When I read this, I felt a pang, for it was quite true that I had not read that lecture. I saw a note to it, in which Professor Whitney states that the sketch of the history of writing contained in it was based on Steinthal’s admirable essay on the “Development of Writing,” and being acquainted with that, I thought I could dispense with lecture No. 12. However, as I thought it strange that there should be so glaring a contradiction between two lectures of the same course, that in one the Phenician alphabet should be represented as the ultimate source, in another as a derivative alphabet, I set to work and read lecture No. 12. Will it be believed that there is not one word in it about Rougé’s discovery, published, as I said, fifteen years ago, that the old explanation that _Aleph_ stood for an ox, _Beth_ for a house, _Gimel_ for camel, _Daleth_ for door, is simply repeated, and that similarities are detected between the forms of the letters and the figures of the objects whose names they bear? Therefore of two things one, either Professor Whitney was totally ignorant of what has been published on this subject during the last fifteen years by Rougé, father and son, by Brugsch, Lenormant and others, or he thought he might safely charge me with having misrepresented him, because neither I nor any one else was likely to read lecture No. 12.

After this instance of what Professor Whitney considers permissible, I need hardly say more; but having been cited by him before a tribunal which hardly knows me, to substantiate what I had asserted in my “Answer to Mr. Darwin,” it may be better to go manfully through a most distasteful task, to answer _seriatim_ point after point, and thus to leave on record one of the most extraordinary cases of what I can only call Literary Daltonism.

LIKE AND UNLIKE.

I am accused by Professor Whitney of having read his lectures carelessly, because I had only been struck by what seemed to me repetitions from my own writings, without observing the deeper difference between his lectures and my own. He therefore advises me to read his lectures again. I am afraid I cannot do that, nor do I see any necessity for it, because though I was certainly staggered by a number of coincidences between his lectures and my own, I was perfectly aware that they differed from each other more than I cared to say. I imagined I had conveyed this as clearly as I could, without saying anything offensive, by observing that in many places his arguments seemed to me like an _inverted fugue_ on a _motive_ taken from my lectures. But if I was not sufficiently outspoken on that point, I am quite willing to make amends for it now.

AN INVERTED FUGUE.

I must give one instance at least of what I mean by an _inverted fugue_.

I had laid great stress on the fact that, though we are accustomed to speak of language as a thing by itself, language after all is not something independent and substantial, but, in the first instance, an act, and to be studied as such. Thus I said (p. 51):--

“To speak of language as a thing by itself, as living a life of its
own, as growing to maturity, producing offspring, and dying away, is
sheer mythology.”

Again (p. 58):--

“Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each
word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard.”

When I came to Professor Whitney’s Second Lecture, and read (p. 35):--

“Language has, in fact, no existence save in the minds and mouths of
those who use it,”

I felt pleasantly reminded of what I knew I had said somewhere. But what was my surprise, when a few lines further on I read:--

“This truth is sometimes explicitly denied, and the opposite
doctrine is set up, that language has a life and growth independent
of its speakers, with which men cannot interfere. A recent popular
writer (Professor Max Müller) asserts that, ‘although there is a
continuous change in language, it is not in the power of man either
to produce or to prevent it. We might think as well of changing the
laws which control the circulation of our blood, or of adding an
inch to our height, as of altering the laws of speech, or inventing
new words according to our own pleasure.’”

How is one to fight against such attacks? The very words which Professor Whitney had paraphrased before, only substituting “skull” for “height,” and by which I had tried to prove “that languages are not the artful creations of individuals,” are turned against me to show that, because I denied to any _single_ individual the power of changing language _ad libitum_, I had set up the opposite doctrine, viz. that language has a life and growth independent of its speakers.

Does Professor Whitney believe that any attentive reader can be taken in by such artifices? Suppose I had said that in a well-organized republic no individual can change the laws according to his pleasure, would it follow that I held the opposite doctrine, that laws have a life and growth independent of the lawgiver? The simile is weak, because an individual may, under very peculiar circumstances, change a law according to his pleasure: but weak as it is, I hope it will convince Professor Whitney that Formal Logic is not altogether a useless study to a Professor of Linguistics. I only wonder what Professor Whitney would have said if he had been able to find in my Lectures a definition of language (p. 46), worthy of Friedrich Schlegel, viz.:--

“Language, like an organic body, is no mere aggregate of similar
particles; it is a complex of related and mutually helpful parts.”

And again:--

“The rise, development, decline, and extinction of language are like
the birth, increase, decay, and death of a living creature.”

In these poetical utterances of Professor Whitney’s we have an outbreak of philological mythology of a very serious nature, and this many years after I had uttered my warning that “to speak of language as a thing by itself, as living a life of its own, as growing to maturity, producing offspring, and dying away, is sheer mythology” (I. p. 51).

REPETITIONS AND VARIATIONS.

It is, no doubt, quite natural that in reading Professor Whitney’s lectures I should have been struck more forcibly than others by coincidences, which have reference not only to general arguments, but even to modes of expression and illustrations. I had pointed out some of these verbal or slightly disguised coincidences in my first article, but I could add many more. As we open the book, it begins by stating that the Science of Language is a modern science, that its growth was analogous to that of other sciences, that from a mere collection of facts it advanced to classification, and from thence to inductive reasoning on language. We are told that ancient nations considered the languages of their neighbors as merely barbarous, that Christianity changed that view, that a study of Greek, Latin, and Hebrew widened the horizon of scholars, and that at present no dialect, however rude, is without importance to the students of the Science of Language. Next comes the importance of the discovery of Sanskrit, and a challenge for a place among the recognized sciences in favor of our new science.

Now I ask any one who may have read my Lectures, whether it was not very natural that I should be struck with a certain similarity between my old course of lectures on the Science of Language, and the lectures delivered soon after on the Science of Language at Washington? But I was not blind to the differences, and I never wished to claim as my own what was original in the American book.

For instance, when the American Professor says that one of the most important problems is to find out “How we learn English,” I said at once, “That’s his ane;” and when after leading us from mother to grandmother, and great-grandmother, he ends with Adam, and says:--

“It is only the first man before whom every beast of the field and
every fowl of the air must present itself, to see what he will call
it; and whatever he calls any living creature, that is the name
thereof, not to himself alone, but to his family and descendants,
who are content to style each as their father had done before them.”

I said again, “That’s his ane.”

When afterwards we read about the large and small number of words used by different ranks and classes, and by different writers, when we come to the changes in English, the phonetic changes, to phonetics in general, to changes of meaning, etc., few, I think, will fail to perceive what I naturally perceived most strongly, “the leaves of memory rustling in the dark.” I perceived even such accidental reminiscences as:--

_Old Prussian leaving behind a brief catechism_ (p. 215), and,

_Old Prussian leaving behind an old catechism_ (p. 200);

_Frisian having a literature of its own_ (p. 211), and the

_Frisians having a literature of their own_ (p. 178),

though, of course, no other reader could possibly perceive such unimportant coincidences. These, no doubt, were mere accidents; but when we consider that there is perhaps no science which admits of more varied illustration than the Science of Language, then to find page after page the same instances which one had collected one’s self, certainly left the impression that the soil from which these American lectures sprang, was chiefly alluvial. Of course, as Professor Whitney has acknowledged his indebtedness to me for these illustrations, I have no complaint to make, I only protest against his ingratitude in representing such illustrations as mere by-work. For the purpose of teaching and placing a difficult subject into its proper light, illustrations, I think, are hardly less important than arguments. In order to show, for instance, in what sense Chinese may be called a _parler enfantin_, I had said:--

“If a child says _up_, that _up_ is to his mind, noun, verb,
adjective, all in one. It means, I want to get up on my mother’s
lap.”

What has Professor Whitney to say on the same subject?

“It is thus that, even at present, children begin to talk; a radical
word or two means in their mouths a whole sentence; _up_ signifies
‘Take me up into your lap.’”

Enough of this, if not too much. Perhaps a thousand years hence, if any of our books survive so long, the question whether my lectures were written by myself, or by an American scholar settled in Germany, may exercise the critical acumen of the philologists of the future.

LECTURES PRINTED IN ENGLAND ALSO.

But I see there is one more charge of carelessness brought against me, and as I promised to answer every one, I must at least mention it.

“He has not even observed that my Lectures are printed and published
in England, and not only in America.”

Why I ought to have observed this, I do not understand. Would it have served as an advertisement? Should I have said that the author resided in Canada to secure his book against the imminent danger of piracy in England? Or does Professor Whitney suspect here too, one of those sinister influences which he thought had interfered with the sale of his books in England? However, whatever sin of omission I have committed, I am quite willing to apologize, in order to proceed to graver matters.

THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE AS ONE OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.

I stand charged next not only with having read Professor Whitney’s writings in too cursory a manner, but with actually having misrepresented his views on the question, so often discussed of late, whether the Science of Language should be reckoned one of the historical or one of the physical sciences. Let us look at the facts:--

I had tried to show in my very first Lecture in what sense the Science of Language might properly be called a physical, and in what sense it might be called an historical science. I had given full weight to the arguments on either side, because I felt that, owing to the twofold nature of man, much might be said with perfect truth for one or the other view. When I look back on what I wrote many years ago, after having carefully weighed all that has been written on the subject during the last fifteen years, I am glad to find that I can repeat every word I then wrote, without a single change or qualification.

“The process” I said (p. 49), “through which language is settled and
unsettled, combines in one the two opposite elements of necessity
and freewill. Though the individual seems to be the prime mover in
producing new words and new grammatical forms, he is so only after
his individuality has been merged in the common action of the
family, tribe, or nation to which he belongs. He can do nothing by
himself, and the first impulse to a new formation in language,
_though given by an individual_, is mostly, if not always, given
without premeditation, nay, unconsciously. The individual, as such,
is powerless, and the results apparently produced by him, depend on
laws beyond his control, and on the coöperation of all those who
form together with him one class, one body, or one organic whole.
But though it is easy to show that language cannot be changed or
moulded by the taste, the fancy, or genius of man, it is
nevertheless through the instrumentality of man alone that language
can be changed.”

Now I ask any reader of Mr. Whitney’s Lectures, whether he has found in them anything in addition to what I had said on this subject, anything materially or even in form, differing from it. He speaks indeed of the actual additions made by individuals to language, but he treats them, as I did, as rare exceptions (p. 32), and I cannot help thinking that when he wrote (p. 52):--

“Languages are almost as little the work of man as is the form of
his skull, the outlines of his face, the construction of his arm and
hand,”

he was simply paraphrasing what I had said, though, as will be seen, far more cautiously than my American colleague, because my remarks referred to the laws of language only, not to language as a whole (p. 47):--

“We might think as well of changing the laws which control the
circulation of our blood, or of adding an inch to our height, as of
altering the laws of speech, and inventing new words, _according to
our own pleasure_.”

I cannot hope to convince Mr. Whitney, for after I had tried to explain to him, why I considered the question whether the Science of Language is to be classed as a physical or an historical science, as chiefly a question of technical definition, he replies:--

“That I should probably consider it as more than a matter of
terminology or technical definition whether our science is an
historical science, _because men make language_, or a physical
science, _because men do not make language_.”

Everybody will see that to attempt a serious argument on such conditions, is simply impossible.

If Professor Whitney can produce one single passage in all my writings where I said that _men do not make language_, I promise to write no more on language at all. I see now that it is Schleicher who, according to Professor Whitney, at least, held these crude views, who called languages natural organisms, which, without being determinable by the will of man, arose, grew, and developed themselves, in accordance with fixed laws, and then again grow old and die out; who ascribed to language that succession of phenomena which is wont to be termed life, and who accordingly classed _Glottik_, the Science of Language, as a natural science. These are the very opinions which, with the exception of the last, are combated in my writings.

I understood perfectly well what Mr. Whitney meant, when he, like nearly all scholars before him, claimed the Science of Language as an historical or a moral science. Man is an amphibious creature, and all the sciences concerning man, will be more or less amphibious sciences. I did not rush into print, because he took the opposite side to the one I had taken. On the contrary, having myself laid great stress on the fact that language was not to be treated as an artful creation of the individual, I was glad that the artistic element in language, such as it is, should have found so eloquent an advocate. But I confess, I was disappointed when I saw that, with the exception of a few purely sentimental protests, there was nothing in Mr. Whitney’s treatment of the subject that differed from my own. I proved this, if not to his satisfaction, at least to that of others, by giving _verbatim_ extracts from his Lectures, and what is the consequence? As he can no longer deny his own words, he uses the only defense which remained, he now accuses me of garbling quotations and thus misrepresenting him. This, of course, may be said of all quotations, short of reprinting a whole chapter. Yet to my mind the charge is so serious, that I feel in duty bound to repel it, not by words, but by facts.

This is the way in which Professor Whitney tries to escape from the net in which he had entangled himself. In his reply to my argument he says:--

“He chooses even more than once a sentence, in order to prove that I
maintain an opinion, directly from an argument in support of the
opposite opinion; for instance, in quoting my words, ‘that languages
are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull,’
he overlooks the preceding parts of the same sentence: ‘_as opposed_
to the objects which he, the linguist, follows in his researches,
and the results which he wishes to attain.’ The whole is a part of a
section which is to prove that the absence of reflection and
conscious intent, takes away from the facts of language the
subjective character which would otherwise belong to them as
products of the voluntary action.”

Very well. We now have what Professor Whitney says that he said. Let us now read what he really said (p. 51):--

“The linguistic student feels that he is not dealing with _the
artful creations of individuals_. So far as concerns the purposes
for which he examines them, and the results he would derive from
them, they are almost as little the work of man as is the form of
his skull.”

To render “so far as concerns the purposes” by “Gegenüber den Zwecken, die er bei seinen Untersuchungen verfolgt,” is a strong measure. But even thus, the facts remain as I, not as he, had stated them. There was no garbling on my part, but something worse than garbling on his, and all this for no purpose whatever, except for one which I do not like to suggest. As a linguistic student Professor Whitney feels what I had felt, ‘that we are not dealing with the artful creations of individuals.’ What Professor Whitney may feel besides about language, does not concern us, but it does concern us, and it does still more concern him, that he should not endeavor to impart to scientific language that character which, as he admits, it has not, viz., that of being the very artful creation of an individual.

I am quite willing to admit, and I have done so before on several occasions, that I may have laid too great stress on those characteristics of the Science of Language by which it belongs to the physical sciences. I have explained why I did so at the time. In fact these are not new questions. Because I had said, as Dr. Whewell had said before me,--

“That there are several large provinces of speculation which concern
subjects belonging to man’s immaterial nature, and which are
governed by the same laws as sciences altogether physical,”

it did not follow, as Professor Whitney seems to think, that I regarded language as something like a cow or a potato. I cannot defend myself against such puerilities.

In reviewing Schleicher’s essay, “On Darwinism tested by the Science of Language,” I had said:--

“It is not very creditable to the students of the Science of
Language that there should have been among them so much wrangling as
to whether that science is to be treated as one of the natural or as
one of the historical sciences. They, if any one, ought to have seen
that they were playing with language, or rather that language was
playing with them, and that unless a proper definition is first
given of what is meant by nature and by natural science, the
pleading for and against the admission of the Science of Language to
the circle of the natural sciences, may be carried on _ad
infinitum_. It is, of course, open to anybody so to define the
meaning of nature as to exclude human nature, and so to narrow the
sphere of the natural sciences, as to leave no place for the Science
of Language. It is also possible so to interpret the meaning of
growth that it becomes inapplicable alike to the gradual formation
of the earth’s crust, and to the slow accumulation of the _humus_ of
language. Let the definition of these terms be plainly laid down,
and the controversy, if it will not cease at once, will at all
events become more fruitful. It will then turn on the legitimate
definition of such terms as nature and mind, necessity and
free-will, and it will have to be determined by philosophers rather
than by scholars. Unless appearances deceive us, it is not the
tendency of modern philosophy to isolate human nature, and to
separate it by impassable barriers from nature at large, but rather
to discover the bridges which lead from one bank to the other, and
to lay bare the hidden foundations which, deep beneath the surface,
connect the two opposite shores. It is, in fact, easy to see that
the old mediæval discussions on necessity and free-will are turning
up again in our own time, though slightly disguised, in the
discussions on the proper place which man holds in the realm of
nature; nay, that the same antinomies have been at the root of the
controversy from the days when Greek philosophers maintained that
language existed φύσει or θέσει, to our own days, when scholars
range themselves in two hostile camps, claiming for the Science of
Language a place either among the physical or the historical
branches of knowledge.”

And again:--

“At all events we should never allow ourselves to forget that, if we
speak of languages as natural productions, and of the Science of
Language as one of the natural sciences, what we chiefly wish to say
is, that languages are not produced by the free-will of individuals,
and that, if they are works of art, they are works of what may be
called a natural or unconscious art--an art in which the individual,
though he is the agent, is not a free agent, but checked and
governed from the very first breath of speech by the implied
cooperation of those to whom his language is addressed, and without
whose acceptance language, not being understood, would cease to be
language.”

In the first lecture which I delivered at Strassburg, I dwelt on the same problem, and said:--

“There is, no doubt, in language a transition from the material to
the spiritual; the raw material of language belongs to nature, but
the form of language, that which really makes language, belongs to
the spirit. Were it possible to trace human language _directly_ back
to natural sounds, to interjections or imitations, the question
whether the Science of Language belongs to the sphere of the natural
or the historical sciences would at once be solved. But I doubt
whether this crude view of the origin of language counts one single
supporter in Germany. With one foot language stands, no doubt, in
the realm of nature, but with the other in the realm of spirit. Some
years ago, when I thought it necessary to bring out as clearly as
possible the much neglected natural element in language, I tried to
explain in what sense the Science of Language had a right to be
called the last and the highest of the natural sciences. But I need
hardly say that I did not lose sight, therefore, of the intellectual
and historical character of language; and I may here express my
conviction that the Science of Language will yet enable us to
withstand the extreme theories of the evolutionists, and to draw a
hard and fast line between spirit and matter, between man and
brute.”

Professor Whitney will see, therefore, that all that can be said, and be justly said, against treating the Science of Language as a purely physical science was not so new to me as he expected; nay, his friends might possibly tell him that the _pro’s_ and _con’s_ of this question had been far more fully and fairly weighed before his own lectures were published than afterwards. A writer on this subject, if he wishes to win new laurels, must do more than furbish up old weapons, and fight against monsters which owe their existence to nothing but his own heated imagination.

IS GLOTTOLOGY A SCIENCE?

His knowledge of the German language ought to have kept Professor Whitney from an insinuation that I had claimed for Glottology a place among the physical sciences, because I feared that otherwise the title of “science” would be altogether denied to my researches. Now whatever artificial restriction may have been forced on the term “science” in English and American, the corresponding term in German, _Wissenschaft_, has, as yet, resisted all such violence, and it was as a German that I ventured to call _Sprachwissenschaft_ by its right name in English, and did not hesitate to speak even of a Science of Mythology, a Science of Religion, and a Science of Thought.

Finally, as to my wishing to smuggle in Glottology, and to secure for it at least some small corner in the circle of the Physical Sciences, I am afraid I cannot lay claim to such modesty. When at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1847, Bunsen claimed the establishment of a separate section for Ethnology, he said:--

“If man is the apex of creation, it seems right on the one side,
that a historical inquiry into his origin and development should
never be allowed to sever itself from the general body of natural
science, and, in particular, from physiology. But on the other hand,
if man is the apex of creation, if he is the end to which all
organic formations tend from the very beginning; if man is at once
the mystery and the key of natural science; if that is the only view
of natural science worthy of our age, then ethnologic philology,
once established on principles as clear as the physiological are, is
_the highest branch_ of that science for the advancement of which
this Association is instituted. It is not an appendix to physiology
or to anything else; but its object is, on the contrary, capable of
becoming the end and goal of the labors and transactions of a
scientific association.”

These words of my departed friend express better than anything which I can say, what I meant by claiming for the Science of Language and the Science of Man, a place among the physical sciences. By enlarging the definition of physical science so as to make it comprehend both Anthropology and Glottology, I thought I was claiming a wider scope and a higher dignity for physical science. The idea of calling language a vegetable, in order to smuggle it through the toll-bar of the physical sciences, certainly never entered my mind.

When one remembers how since 1847, man has become the central point of the discussions of the British Association year after year, Bunsen’s words sound almost prophetic, and it might have been guessed, even in America, that the friend and pupil of Bunsen was not likely to abate much in his claims for the recognition of the Science of Man, as the highest of all sciences.

Have I done? Yes, I believe I have answered all that required an answer in Mr. Darwin’s article, in Professor Whitney’s new attack in the “Contemporary Review,” and in his Lectures. But alas! there is still a page bristling with challenges.

Have I read not only his lectures, but all his controversial articles? No. Then I ought.

Have I quoted any passage from his writings to prove that the less he has thought on a subject, the louder he speaks No. Then I ought.

Have I produced any proof that he wonders that no one answers his strictures? No. Then I ought.

He actually appeals to my honor. What can I do? I cannot say that I have since read all his controversial articles, but I have read a considerable number, and I frankly confess that on many points they have raised my opinion of Professor Whitney’s acquirements. It is true, he is not an original worker, but he is a hard reader, and a very smart writer. The gall of bitterness that pervades all his writings, is certainly painful, but that concerns him far more than us.

LANGUAGE AND THOUGHT INSEPARABLE.

First then, I am asked to explain what I meant by saying that Professor Whitney speaks the loudest on subjects on which he has thought the least. I could best explain my meaning, if I were to collect all that Professor Whitney has written on the relation of language to thought. He certainly grows most boisterous in these latitudes, and yet he evidently has never, as yet, read up that subject, nay, he seems convinced that what has been written on it by such dreamers as Locke, Schelling, Hegel, Humboldt, Schopenhauer, Mansel, and others, deserves no consideration whatever. To maintain, what every one of these philosophers maintains, that a conception cannot be entertained without the support of a word, would be, according to the Yale Professor, the sheerest folly (p. 125),--“part of that superficial and unsound philosophy which confounds and identifies speech, thought, and reason” (p. 439).

I can quite enter into these feelings, for I can still remember the mental effort that is required in order to surrender our usual view of language, as a mere sign or instrument of thought, and to recognize in it the realization of all conceptual thought. A mere dictionary would, no doubt, seem the best answer to those who hold that thought and language are inseparable, and to throw a stout Webster at our head might be considered by many as good a refutation of such sheer folly, as a slap in the face was supposed to be of Berkeley’s idealism. However, Professor Whitney is an assiduous reader, and I do not at all despair that the time will come when he will see what these thinkers really mean by conceptual thought and by language, and I am quite prepared to hear him say that “he had known all that long ago, that any child knew it, that it was mere _bathos_, and that it was only due to a want of clear and definitive expression, or to a want of knowledge of English, excusable in a foreigner, if there had been so much darkening of counsel by words without thought.” I shall then be told that:--

“I consulted excellent authorities, and I worked these up with a
commendable degree of industry, but that I am wanting in the inner
light . . . and have never gained a comprehension of the movements
that go on in my own mind, without which real insight into the
relation of language to thought is impossible” (p. 268).

PROFESSOR PRANTL ON THE REFORM OF LOGIC.

In order to accelerate that event, may I advise Professor Whitney to read some articles lately published by Professor Prantl? Professor Prantl is _facile princeps_ among German logicians, he is the author of the “History of Logic,” and therefore perhaps even the American Professor will not consider him, as he does others who differ from him, as quite ignorant of the first rules of logic! At the meeting of the Royal Academy at Munich, March 6, 1875, Professor Prantl claimed permission, after having finished his “History of Logic,” to lay some thoughts for the “Reform of Logic,” before the members of that Academy, the very fundamental principle of that reform being

_The essential unity of thought and language._

“Realized thought, or what others might call the realization of the
faculty of thought, exists therefore in language only, and _vice
versâ_, every element of language contains thought. Every kind of
priority of real thought before its expression in language, is to be
denied, as well as any separate existence of thought” (p. 181).

“In one sense I should not deny that there is something in animals
which in a very high degree of elevation is called language in man.
In recognition of the distance produced by this high degree of
elevation, one can agree with Max Müller, that language is the true
frontier between brute and man.” (p. 168).

Or, if the Yale Professor wants a more popular treatment of the subject, he might read Dr. Loewe’s essay on “The Simultaneity of the Genesis of Speech and Thought,” also published this year. Dr. Loewe, too, avails himself gladly of the new results obtained by the Science of Language, and shows clearly that the origin of thought is the origin of language.

Every one who has to write on philosophical subjects in English, German, and French, or who has to superintend translations of what he has written into other languages, must know how difficult it is to guard always against being misunderstood, but a reader familiar with his subject at once makes allowance for this; he does not raise clouds of dust for nothing. Observe the difference between some criticisms passed on what I had said, by Dr. Loewe, and by others. I had said in my Lectures (ii. 82):--

“It is possible, without language, to see, to perceive, to stare at,
to dream about things; but, without words, not even such simple
_ideas_ as white or black can be for a moment realized.”

My German translator had rendered _ideas_ by _Vorstellungen_ while I used the word in the sense of concept, _Begriff_. Dr. Loewe in commenting on this passage says:--

“If M. M. maintains that _Vorstellungen_, such as white and black,
cannot be realized for a moment without words, he is right, but only
if by _Vorstellung_ he means _Begriff_. And this is clearly his
meaning, because shortly before he had insisted on the fact that it
was conceptual thought which is impossible without words. Were we to
take his words literally, then it would be wrong, for sensuous
images (Sinnesbilder), such as white and black, do not require words
for their realization. One glance at the psychical life of animals
would suffice to prove that sensuous representation (Vorstellen) can
be carried out without language, for it is equally certain that
animals have sensuous images as that they have no words.”

This is the language of a well-schooled philosopher, who cares for truth and not for controversy, _à tout prix_. Let us contrast it for a moment with the language of Professor Whitney (p. 249):--

“This may be taking a very high view of language; it certainly is
taking a very low view of reason. If only that part of man’s
superior endowments which finds its manifestation in language is to
receive the name of reason, what shall we style the rest? We had
thought that the love and intelligence, the soul, that looks out of
a child’s eyes upon us to reward our care long before it begins to
prattle, were also marks of reason,” etc.

This is a pretty domestic idyl, but the marvelous confusion between conceptual thought and the inarticulate signs of the affections, will, I fear, remind logicians of infantine prattle with no mark of reason about it, rather than of scientific argument.

It is quite clear, therefore, from this single specimen, that it would be impossible to argue with Professor Whitney on this subject. He returns to it again and again, his language grows stronger and stronger every time, yet all the time he speaks like a man whom nothing shall convince that the earth does move. He does not even know that he might have quoted very great authorities on his side of the question, only that they, knowing the bearings of the whole problem, speak of their antagonists with the respect due say by Nyâya to a Sânkhya philosopher, not with the contempt which a Brahman feels for a Mleccha.

GRAMMATICAL BLUNDERS.

But let us take a subject where, at all events, it is possible to argue with the Professor--I mean Sanskrit Grammar--and we shall see again that he is most apodictic when he is least informed. He has criticised the first volume of my translation of the Rig-Veda. He dislikes it very much, and gives me very excellent advice as to what I ought to have done and what I ought not. He thinks I ought to have thought of the large public who want to know something of the Veda, and not of mere scholars. He thinks that the hymns addressed to the Dawn would have pleased the young ladies better than the hymns to the Stormgods, and he broadly hints that all the _pièces justificatives_ which I give in my commentary are _de trop_. A translation, such as Langlois’, would, no doubt, have pleased him best. I do not object to his views, and I hope that he or his friends may some day give us a translation of the Rig-Veda, carried out in that spirit. I shall devote the remaining years of my life to carrying on what I ventured to call and still call the first _traduction raisonnée_ of the Veda, on those principles which, after mature reflection, I adopted in the first volume, and which I still consider the only principles in accordance with the requirements of sound scholarship. The very reason why I chose the hymns to the Maruts was because I thought it was high time to put an end to the mere trifling with Vedic translation. They are, no doubt, the most difficult, the most rugged, and, it may be, the least attractive hymns, but they are on that very account an excellent introduction to a scholarlike study of the Veda. Mere guessing and skipping will not avail us here. There is no royal road to the discovery of the meaning of difficult words in the Veda. We must trace words of doubtful meaning through every passage where they occur, and we must give an account of their meaning by translating every passage that can be translated, marking the rest as, for the present, untranslatable. Boehtlingk and Roth’s excellent Dictionary is the first step in that direction, and a most important step. But in it the passages have only undergone their first sifting and classifying; they are not translated, nor are they given with perfect completeness. Now if one single passage is left out of consideration in establishing the meaning of a word, the whole work has to be done again. It is only by adopting my own tedious, it may be, but exhaustive method that a scholar may feel that whatever work he has done, it is done once for all.

On such questions, however, it is easy to write a great deal in general terms; though it is difficult to say anything on which all competent scholars are not by this time fully agreed. It is not for me to gainsay my American critic that my renderings into English, being those of a foreigner, are tame and spiritless, but I doubt, whether in a new edition I shall change my translation, “the lights in heaven shine forth,” for what the American Professor suggests: “a sheen shines out in the sky,” or “gleams glimmer in the sky.”

All this, however, anybody might have written after dinner. But once at least Professor Whitney, Professor of Sanskrit in Yale, attempts to come to close quarters, and ventures on a remark on Sanskrit grammar. It is the only passage in all his writings, as far as I remember, where, instead of indulging in mere sheet lightning, he comes down upon me with a crashing thunderbolt, and points out a real grammatical blunder. He says it is--

“An extremely violent and improbable grammatical process to render
+pari tasthushas+, as if the reading were +paritasthivâṃsas+. The
participial form +tasthushas+ has no right to be anything but an
accusative plural, or a genitive or ablative singular; let us have
the authority for making a nominative plural of it, and treating
+pari+ as its prefix, and better authority than the mere dictum of a
Hindu grammarian.”

Those who are acquainted with Vedic studies know that Professor Benfey has been for years preparing a grammar of the Vedic dialect, and, as there is plenty of work for all workers, I purposely left the grammatical questions to him, confining myself in my commentary to the most necessary grammatical remarks, and giving my chief attention to the meaning of words and the poetical conceptions of the ancient poets. If the use of the accusatival form +tasthushas+, with the sense of a nominative, had been confined to the Veda, or had never been remarked on before, I ought, no doubt, to have called attention to it. But similar anomalous forms occur in Epic literature also, and more than that, attention had but lately been called to them by a very eminent Dutch scholar, Dr. Kern, who, in his translation of the Bṛhat-Saṃhitâ, remarks that the ungrammatical nom. plur. +vidushas+ is by no means rare in the Mahâbhârata and kindred works. If Professor Whitney had only read as far as the eleventh hymn in the first book of the Rig-Veda, he would have met there in +abibhyushas+ an undoubted nom. plur. in +ushas+:--

tvấm devấḥ ábibhyushaḥ tujyámânâsaḥ âvishuḥ,

The gods, stirred up, came to thee, not fearing.

Now, I ask, was I so far wrong when I said that Professor Whitney speaks loudest when he knows least, and that in charging me, for once at least, with a tangible blunder, he only betrayed his ignorance of Sanskrit grammar? In former times a scholar, after such a misfortune, would have taken a vow of silence or gone into a monastery. What will Professor Whitney do? He will take a vow of speech, and rush into a North American Review.

HARD AND SOFT.

There are other subjects to which Professor Whitney has of late paid much more attention than to Sanskrit Grammar, and we shall find that on them he argues in a much gentler tone.

It is well known that Professor Whitney held curious views about the relation of vowels to consonants, and I therefore was not surprised to hear from him that “my view of the essential difference between vowels and consonants will not bear examination.” He mixes up what I call the substance (breath and voice) with the form (squeezes and checks), and forgets that _in rerum naturâ_ there exist no consonants except as modifying the column of voice and breath, or as what Hindu grammarians call +vyanjana+, _i.e._, determinants; and no vowels except as modified by consonants. In order to support the second part of this statement, viz., that it is impossible to pronounce an initial vowel without a slight, and to many hardly perceptible, initial noise, the _coup de la glotte_, I had appealed to musicians who know how difficult it is, in playing on the flute or on the violin, to weaken or to avoid certain noises (_Ansatz_) arising from the first impulses imparted to the air, before it can produce really musical sensations. Professor Whitney, in quoting this paragraph, leaves out the sentence where I say that I want to explain the difficulty of pronouncing initial vowels without some _spiritus lenis_, and charges me with comparing all consonants with the unmusical noises of musical instruments. This was in 1866, whereas in 1854 I had said: “If we regard the human voice as a continuous stream of air, emitted as breath from the lungs and changed by the vibration of the _chordæ vocales_ into vocal sound, as it leaves the larynx, this stream itself, as modified by certain positions of the mouth, would represent the vowels. In the consonants, on the contrary, we should have to recognize a number of stops opposing for a moment the free passage of this vocal air.” I ask any scholar or lawyer, what is one to do against such misrepresentations? How is one to qualify them, when to call them unintentional would be nearly as offensive as to call them intentional?

The greatest offense, however, which I have committed in his eyes is that I revived the old names of _hard_ and _soft_, instead of _surd_ and _sonant_. Now I thought that one could only revive what is dead, but I believe there is not a single scholar alive who does not use always or occasionally the terms _hard_ and _soft_. Even Professor Whitney can only call these technical terms obsolescent; but he thinks my influence is so omnipotent that, if I had struck a stroke against these obsolescent terms, they would have been well nigh or quite finished. I cannot accept that compliment. I have tried my strokes against much more objectionable things than _hard_ and _soft_, and they have not yet vanished. I know of no living philologist who does not use the old terms _hard_ and _soft_, though everybody knows that they are imperfect. I see that Professor Pott[2] in one passage where he uses _sonant_ thinks it necessary to explain it by _soft_. Why, then, am I singled out as the great criminal? I do not object to the use of _surd_ or _sonant_. I have used these terms from the very beginning of my literary career, and as Professor Whitney evidently doubts my word, I may refer him to my _Proposals_, submitted to the Alphabetic Conferences in 1854. he will find that as early as that date, I already used _sonant_, though, like Pott, I explained this new term by the more familiar _soft_. If he will appeal to Professor Lepsius, he will hear how, even at that time, I had translated for him the chapters of the Prâtiśâkhyas, which explain the true structure of a physiological alphabet, and ascribe the distinction between k and g to the absence and presence of voice. I purposely avoided these new terms, because I doubted, and I still doubt, whether we should gain much by their adoption. I do not exactly share the misgivings that a _surd mute_ might be mistaken for a _deaf and dumb_ letter, but I think the name is awkward. _Voiced_ and _voiceless_ would seem much better renderings of the excellent Sanskrit terms +ghoshavat+ and +aghosha+, in order to indicate that it is the presence and absence of the voice which causes their difference. Frequent changes in technical terms are much to be deprecated,[3] particularly if the new terms are themselves imperfect.

Every scholar knows by this time what is meant by _hard_ and _soft_, viz., _voiceless_ and _voiced_. The names _hard_ and _soft_, though not perfect, have, like most imperfect names, some kind of excuse, as I tried to show by Czermak’s experiments.[4] But while a good deal may be said for _soft_ and _hard_, what excuse can be pleaded for such a term as _media_, meaning originally a letter between the _Psila_ and the _Dasea_? Yet, would it be believed that this very term is used by Professor Whitney on the page following immediately after his puritanical sermon against my backslidings!

This gentle sermon, however, which Professor Whitney preaches at me, as if I were the Pope of Comparative Philologists, is nothing compared with what follows later. When he saw that the difference between _voiced_ and _voiceless_ letters was not so novel to me as he had imagined, that it was known to me even before I published the Prâtisâkhya,--nay, when I had told him that, to quote the words of Professor Brücke, the founder of scientific phonetics,--

“The medias had been classed as _sonant_ in all the systems
elaborated by the students of language who have studied comparative
phonology,”

he does not hesitate to write as follows:--

“Professor Müller, like some other students of philology (who except
Professor Whitney himself?) finds himself unable longer to resist
the force of the arguments against _hard_ and _soft_, and is
convinced that _surd_ and _sonant_ are the proper terms to use; but,
instead of frankly abandoning the one, and accepting the other in
their place, he would fain make his hearers believe that he has
always held and taught as he now wishes he had done. It is either a
case of disingenuousness or of remarkable self-deception: there
appears to be no third alternative.”

I call this a gentle reproof, as coming from Professor Whitney; but I must say at the same time that I seldom saw greater daring displayed, regardless of all consequences. The American captain sitting on the safety-valve to keep his vessel from blowing up, is nothing in comparison with our American Professor. I have shown that in 1854 the terms _surd_ and _sonant_ were no novelty to me. But as Professor Whitney had not yet joined our ranks at that time, he might very properly plead ignorance of a paper which I myself have declared antiquated by what I had written afterwards on the same subject. But will it be believed that in the very same lecture which he is criticising, there occurs the following passage (ii. p. 156):--

“What is it that changes k into g, t into d, p into b? B is called a
media, a soft letter, a sonant, in opposition to P, which is called
a tenuis, a hard letter, or a surd. But what is meant by these
terms? A tenuis, we saw, was so called by the Greeks, in opposition
to the aspirates, the Greek grammarians wishing to express that the
aspirates had a rough or shaggy sound, whereas the tenues were bald,
slight, or thin. This does not help us much. _Soft_ and _hard_ are
terms which, no doubt, express an outward difference of b and p, but
they do not explain the cause of that difference. _Surd_ and
_sonant_ are apt to mislead; for if, according to the old system
both p and b continue to be classed as mute, it is difficult to see
how, taking words in their proper sense, a mute letter could be
sonant. . . . . Both p and b are momentary negations of breath and
voice; or, as the Hindu grammarians say, both are formed by complete
contact. But b differs from p in so far as, in order to pronounce
it, breath must have been changed by the glottis into voice, which
voice, whether loud or whispered, partly precedes, partly follows
the check.”

And again:--

“But although the hardness and softness are secondary qualities of
_tenues mediæ_, of surd and sonant letters, the true physiological
difference between p and b, t and d, k and g, is that in the former
the glottis is wide open, in the latter narrowed, so as to produce
either whispered or loud voice.”

In my introduction to the “Outline Dictionary for Missionaries,” published in 1867, I wrote:--