Chapter XIX: Appendix: Comparative View of Sanskrit and Other Languages, (4)

“Unfortunately, everybody is so familiar with his alphabet, that it
takes some time to convince people that they know next to nothing
about the true nature of their letters. Take even a scholar, and ask
him what is T, and he may possibly say, a dental tenuis; ask him
what is D, and he may reply, a dental media. But ask him what he
really means by a tenuis or media, or what he considers the true
difference between T and D, and he may probably say that T is hard
and D is soft; or that T is sharp and D is flat; or, on the
contrary, as some writers have actually maintained, that the sound
of D requires a stronger impulse of the tongue than the sound of T:
but we shall never get an answer that goes to the root of the
matter, and lays hold of the mainspring and prime cause of all these
secondary distinctions between T and D. If we consult Professor
Helmholtz on the same subject, he tells us that ’the series of
so-called mediæ, b, d, g, differs from that of the tenues, p, t, k,
by this, that for the former the glottis is, at the time of
consonantal opening, sufficiently narrowed to enable it to sound, or
at least to produce the noise of the _vox clandestina_, or whisper,
while it is wide open with tenues, and therefore unable to sound.
Mediæ are therefore accompanied by the tone of the voice, and this
may even, where they begin a syllable, set in a moment before, and
where they end a syllable, continue a moment after the opening of
the mouth, because some air may be driven into the closed cavity of
the mouth, and support the sound of the vocal chords of the larynx.
Because of the narrowed glottis, the rush of the air is more
moderate, the noise of the air less sharp than with the tenuis, so
that a great mass of air may rush at once from the chest.”

“This to many may seem strange and hardly intelligible. But if they
find that, several centuries before our era, the Indian grammarians
gave exactly the same definition of the difference between p, t, k,
and b, d, g, such a coincidence may possibly startle them, and lead
them to inquire for themselves into the working of that wonderful
instrument by which we produce the various sounds of our alphabet.”

If Professor Whitney asserts--

“That I _repeatedly_ will not allow that the sonant letters _are_
intonated, but only that they _may be_ intonated,”

I have no answer but a direct negative. For me to say so, would be to run counter to all my own teaching, and if there is anywhere a passage that would admit of such a construction, Professor Whitney knows perfectly well that this could be due to nothing but an accidental want of precision in expressing myself. I know of no such passage.[5]

In order to leave no doubt as to the real distinction between k, t, p and g, d, b, I quoted, for the satisfaction of Sanskrit scholars, the technical terms by which native grammarians define so admirably the process of their formation, the +vâhyaprayatna+, viz., +vivâraśvâsâghoshâḥ+, and +saṃvâranâdaghoshâḥ+. Would it be believed that Professor Whitney accuses me of having invented these long Sanskrit terms, and to have appended them superfluously and pedantically, as he says, to each list of synonyms? “They are found in no Sanskrit grammarian,” he says. Here again I have no answer but a direct negative. They are found in the native commentary on Pâṇini’s Grammar, in Boehtlingk’s edition, p. 4, and fully explained in the Mahâbhâshya.

If one has again and again to answer the assertions of a critic by direct negatives, is it to be wondered at that one rather shrinks from such encounters? I have for the last twenty years discussed these phonetic problems with the most competent authorities. Not trusting to my own knowledge of physiology and acoustics, I submitted everything that I had written on the alphabet, before it was published, to the approval of such men as Helmholtz, Alexander Ellis, Professor Rolleston, and I hold their _vu et approuvé_. I had no desire, therefore, to discuss these questions anew with Professor Whitney, or to try to remove the erroneous views which, till lately, he entertained on the structure of a physiological alphabet. I believe Professor Whitney has still much to learn on this subject, and as I never ask anybody to read what I myself have written, still less to read it a second time, might I suggest to him to read at all events the writings of Brücke, Helmholtz, Czermak, to say nothing of Wheatstone, Ellis, and Bell, before he again descends into this arena? If he had ever made an attempt to master that one short quotation from Brücke, which I gave on p. 159, or even that shorter one from Czermak, which I gave on p. 143:--

“Die Reibungslaute zerfallen genau so wie die Verschlusslaute in
_weiche_ oder _tönende_, bei denen das Stimmritzengeräusch oder der
laute Stimmton mitlautet, und in _harte_ oder _tonlose_, bei denen
der Kehlkopf absolut still ist,”

the theory which I followed in the classification both of the Checks and the Breathings would not have sounded so unintelligible to him as he says it did; he would have received some rays of that inner light on phonetics which he misses in my Lectures, and would have seen that besides the disingenuousness or the self-deception which he imputes to me, in order to escape from the perplexity in which he found himself, there was after all a third alternative, though he denies it, viz., his being unwilling to confess his own ὀψιμαθία.

FIR, OAK, BEECH.

I now proceed to the next charge. I am told that I am in honor bound to produce a passage where Professor Whitney expressed his dissatisfaction at not being answered, or, as I had ventured to express it, considering the general style of his criticism, when he is angry that those whom he abuses, do not abuse him in turn. He is evidently conscious that there is some slight foundation for what I had said, for he says that if Steinthal thought he was angry, because “he (Mr. William Dwight Whitney) and his school” had not been refuted, instead of philosophers of the last century, he was mistaken. Yet what can be the meaning of this sentence, that “Professor Steinthal ought to have confronted _the living and aggressive_ views of others,” _i.e._, of Mr. William Dwight Whitney and his school? (p. 365.)

However, I shall not appeal to that; I shall take a case which, in this tedious process of incrimination and recrimination, may perhaps revive for a moment the flagging interest of my readers.

I had in the second volume of my Lectures called attention to a curious parallelism in the changes of meaning in certain names of trees and in the changes of vegetation recorded in the strata of the earth. My facts were these. _Foraha_ in Old High German, _Föhre_ in modern German, _furh_ in Anglo-Saxon, _fir_ in English, signify the _pinus silvestris_. In the Lombard Laws the same word _fereha_ means oak, and so does its corresponding word in Latin, _quercus_.

Secondly, φηγός in Greek means oak, the corresponding word in Latin, _fagus_, and in Gothic, _bôka_, means beech.

That is to say, in certain Aryan languages we find words meaning fir, assuming the meaning of oak; and words meaning oak, assuming the name of beech.

Now in the North of Europe geologists find that a vegetation of fir exists at the lowest depth of peat deposits; that this was succeeded by a vegetation of oak, and this by a vegetation of beech. Even in the lowest stratum a stone implement was found under a fir, showing the presence of human beings.

Putting these two sets of facts together, I said: Is it possible to explain the change of meaning in one word which meant fir and came to mean oak, and in another which meant oak and came to mean beech, by the change of vegetation which actually took place in early ages? I said it was an hypothesis, and an hypothesis only. I pointed out myself all that seemed doubtful in it, but I thought that the changes of meaning and the parallel changes of vegetation required an explanation, and until a better one could be given, I ventured to suggest that such changes of meaning were as the shadows cast on language by real, though prehistoric, events.

I asked for an impartial examination of the facts I had collected, and of the theory I had based on them. What do I receive from Professor Whitney? I must quote his _ipsissima verba_, to show the spirit that pervades his arguments:--

“It will not be difficult,” he says, “to gratify our author by
refuting his hypothesis. Not the very slightest shade of
plausibility, that we can discover, belongs to it. Besides the
serious minor objections to which it is liable, it involves at least
three impossible suppositions, either one of which ought to be
enough to insure its rejection.

“In the first place it assumes that the indications afforded by the
peat-bogs of Denmark are conclusive as regards the condition of
Europe--of all that part of it, at least, which is occupied by the
Germanic and Italic races; that, throughout this whole region, firs,
oaks, and beeches have supplanted and succeeded each other,
notwithstanding that we find all of them, or two of them, still
growing peaceably together in many countries.”

Here Professor Whitney is, as usual, ploughing with my heifer. I said:--

“I must leave it to the geologist and botanist to determine whether
the changes of vegetation as described above, took place in the same
rotation over the whole of Europe, or in the North only,”

I had consulted several of my own geological friends, and they all told me that there was, as yet, no evidence in Central Europe and Italy of a succession of vegetation different from that in the North, and that, in the present state of geological science, they could say no more. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I said, Let us wait and see; Professor Whitney says, Don’t wait.

His second objection is his own, but hardly worthy of him.

“The hypothesis,” he says, “assumes that the Germanic and Italic
races, while they knew and named the fir-tree only, yet kept by them
all the time, laid up in a napkin, the original term for oak, ready
to be turned into an appellation for beech, when the oaks went out
of fashion.”

This is not so. The Aryan nations formed many new words, when the necessity for them arose. There, was no difficulty in framing ever so many names for the oak, and there can be little doubt that the name φηγός was derived from φάγω, the oak tree being called φηγός, because it supplied food or mast for the cattle. If there remained some consciousness of this meaning among the Greeks, and the Italians, and Germans, then the transference of the name from the oak to the beech would become still more easily intelligible, because both the beech-nuts and the acorns supplied the ordinary mast for cattle.

Professor Whitney probably had misgivings that these two objections were not likely to carry much weight, so he adds a third.

“The hypothesis,” he says, “implies a method of transfer of names
from one object to another which is totally inadmissible; this,
namely--that, as the forest of firs gave way to that of oaks, the
meaning of fir in the word _quercus_ gave way to that of oak: and in
like manner in the other case. Now if the Latins had gone to sleep
some fine night under the shade of their majestic oaks, and had
waked in the morning to find themselves _patulæ sub tegmine fagi_,
they might naturally enough have been led, in their bewilderment, to
give the old name to the new tree. But who does not see that, in the
slow and gradual process by which, under the influence of a change
of climatic conditions, one species of tree should come to prevail
over another, the supplanter would not inherit the title of the
supplanted, but would acquire one of its own, the two subsisting
together during the period of the struggle, and that of the
supplanted going out of use and memory as the species it designated
disappeared?”

This objection was of course so obvious that I had thought it my duty to give a number of instances where old words have been transferred, not _per saltum_, but slowly and gradually, to new objects, such as _musket_ originally a dappled sparrow-hawk, afterwards a gun. Other instances might have been added, such as θάπτω, the Sanskrit _dah_, the latter meaning to burn, the former to bury. But the best illustrations are unintentionally offered by Professor Whitney himself. On p. 303 he alludes to the fact that the names _robin_ and _blackbird_ have been applied in America, for the sake of convenience, and under the government of old associations, to birds essentially unlike, or only superficially like, those to which they belong in the mother country. Of course, every Englishman who settled in America knew that the bird he called _robin_ was not the old Robin Redbreast he knew in England. Yet the two names co-existed for a time in literature, nay, they may still be said to co-exist in their twofold application, though, from a strictly American point of view, the supplanting American bird has inherited the title of the supplanted Cock-Robin of England.

Now, I ask, was there anything in these three cheap objections that required an answer? Two of them I had myself fully considered, the third was so flimsy that I thought no one would have dwelt on it. Anyhow, I felt convinced that every reader was competent to judge between Professor Whitney and myself, and it certainly never entered my mind that I was in honor bound, either to strike out my chapter on the Words for _Fir_, _Oak_, and _Beech_, or to fight.

Was I then so far wrong when I said that Professor Whitney cannot understand how anybody could leave what he is pleased to call his arguments, unheeded? Does he not express his surprise that in every new edition I adhere to my views on _Fir_, _Oak_, and _Beech_, though he himself had told me that I was wrong, and when he calls my expressed desire for real criticism a mere “rhetorical flourish,” is this, according to the opinion of American gentlemen, or is it not, abuse?

EPITHETA ORNANTIA.

Professor Whitney’s ideas of what is real criticism, and what is mere banter, personal abuse, or rudeness are indeed strange. He does not seem to be aware that his name has become a by-word, at least in Europe, and he defends himself against the charge of abusiveness with so much ardor that one sometimes feels doubtful whether it is all the mere rhetoric of a bad conscience, or a case of the most extraordinary self-deception. He declares in so many words that he was never personal (_Ich bestreite durchaus, dass was ich schrieb, im geringsten persönlich war_), and he immediately goes on to say that “Steinthal burst a two from anger and rancor, and his answer was a mere outpouring of abuse against his personality.”

Now I am the last person or personality in the world to approve of the tone of Steinthal’s answer, and if Professor Whitney asks why I had quoted it several times in public, it was because I thought it ought to be a warning to others. I think that all who are interested in maintaining certain civilized usages even in the midst of war, ought to protest against such a return to primitive savagery, and I am glad to find that my friend, Mr. Matthew Arnold, one of the highest authorities on the rules of literary warfare, entertains the same opinion, and has quoted what I had quoted from Professor Steinthal’s pamphlet, together with other specimens of theological rancor, as extreme cases of bad taste.

I frankly admit, however, that, when I said that Steinthal had defended himself with the same weapons with which his American antagonist attacked him, I said too much. Professor Whitney does not proceed to such extremities as Professor Steinthal. But giving him full credit so far, I still cannot help thinking that it was a fight with poisoned arrows on one side, with clubs on the other. As Professor Whitney calls for proofs, here they are:--

Page 332. Why does he call Professor Steinthal, _Hajjim Steinthal_?
Is that personal or not?

Page 335. “Professor Steinthal startles and rebuffs a commonsense
inquirer with a reply from a wholly different and unexpected point
of view; as when you ask a physician, ‘Well, Doctor, how does your
patient promise this morning?’ and he answers, with a wise look and
an oracular shake of the head, ‘It is not given to humanity to look
into futurity.’ The effect is not destitute of the element of
_bathos_.” Is that personal?

Page 337. Steinthal’s mode of arguing is “more easy and convenient
than fair and ingenuous.” Is that personal?

Page 338. “A mere verbal quibble.”

Page 346. “The eminent psychologist may show himself a mere
blunderer.”

Page 356. “To our unpsychological apprehension, there is something
monstrous in the very suggestion that a word is an act of the mind.”

Page 357. “Prodigious . . . . Chaotic nebulosity . . . . We should
not have supposed any man, at this age of the world, capable of
penning the sentences we have quoted.”

Page 359. “We are heartily tired of these comparisons that go
limping along on one foot, or even on hardly the decent stump of a
foot.”

Page 363. “Can there be more utter mockery than this? We ask for
bread, and a stone is thrown us.”

Page 365. “He does not take the slightest notice of the _living_ and
_aggressive_ views of others.”

Page 366. “All this, again, is in our opinion very verbiage, mere
turbid talk.”

Page. 367. “The statement is either a truism or falsity.”

Page 372. “We must pronounce Professor Steinthal’s attempt . . . . a
complete failure, a mere continuation of the same delusive
reasonings by which he originally arrived at it.”

Page 374. “We have found in his book nothing but mistaken facts and
erroneous deductions.”

If that is the language in which Professor Whitney speaks of one whom he calls--

“An eminent master in linguistic science, from whom he has derived
great instruction and enlightenment,” and “whose books he has
constantly had upon his table,”

what can other poor mortals like myself expect? It is true he has avoided actionable expressions, while Professor Steinthal has not, at least, according to German and English law. But suppose that hereafter, when certain small animals have crossed what he calls “the impervious distance,” and acquired the power of language, they were to say, “We have only stung you, and you have killed us,” would they obtain much commiseration?

I had collected a number of _epitheta ornantia_ which I had gathered at random from Mr. Whitney’s writings, such as _worthless_, _futile_, _absurd_, _ridiculous_, _superficial_, _unsound_, _high-flown_, _pretentious_, _disingenuous_, _false_, and I claimed the honor of every one of them having been presented to me as well as to other scholars by our American assailant. Here, for the first time, Professor Whitney seems staggered at his own vocabulary. However, he is never at a loss how to escape. “As the epithets are translated into German,” he says, “he is quite unable to find the passages to which I may refer.” This is feeble. However, without taxing his memory further, he says that he feels certain it must be a mistake, because he never could have used such language. He never in his life said anything personal, but criticised opinions only. This is “the language of simple-minded consciousness of rectitude.”

What can I do? Professor Whitney ought to know his own writings better than I do, and nothing remains to me, in order to repel the gravest of all accusations, but to publish in the smallest type the following Spicilegium. I must add that in order to do this work once for all, I have complied with Professor Whitney’s request, and read nearly all the articles with which he has honored every one of my writings, and in doing so I believe I have at last found the key to much that seemed to me before almost inexplicable.

Formerly I had simply acquiesced in the statement made by one of his best friends, Professor Weber,[6] who, some ten years ago, when reproving Professor Whitney for the acrimony of his language, said:--

“I believe I am not wrong when I trace it to two causes: first,
Professor Whitney found himself forced to acknowledge as erroneous
and to withdraw several of his former views and assertions, which he
had defended with great assurance, and this disturbed his
equanimity; secondly, and still more, there were the miserable
political circumstances of North America, which could not but
exercise an irritating and galling effect on so warm a patriot as
Whitney, an effect which was transferred unconsciously to his
literary criticisms and polemics, whenever he felt inclined to it.”

These two scholars were then discussing the question, whether the Nakshatras or the Lunar Zodiac of the Hindus, should be considered as the natural discovery of the Brahmans, or as derived by them, one knows not how, from China, from Chaldæa, or from some other unknown country. They both made great efforts, Professor Weber chiefly in Sanskrit, Professor Whitney in astronomy, in order to substantiate their respective opinions. Professor Weber showed that Professor Whitney was not very strong in Sanskrit, Professor Whitney retaliated by showing that Professor Weber, as a philologue, had attempted to prove that the precession of the equinox was from West to East, and not from East to West. All this, at the time, was amusing to bystanders, but by this time both combatants have probably found out, that the hypothesis of a foreign origin of the Nakshatras, whether Chinese or Babylonian, was uncalled for, or, at all events, is as uncertain to-day as it was ten years ago. I myself, not being an astronomer, had been content to place the evidence from Sanskrit sources before a friend of mine, an excellent astronomer at Oxford, and after discussing the question again and again with him, had arrived at the conviction that there was no excuse for so violent a theory as postulating a foreign origin of the simple triseinadic division of the Nakshatra Zodiac. I quite admit that my practical knowledge of astronomy is very small,[7] but I do believe that my astronomical ignorance was an advantage rather than a disadvantage to me in rightly understanding the first glimmerings of astronomical ideas among the Hindus. Be that as it may, I believe that at the present moment few scholars of repute doubt the native origin of the Nakshatras, and hardly one admits an early influence of Babylonian or Chinese science on India. I stated my case in the preface to the fourth volume of my edition of the Rig-Veda, and if anybody wishes to see what can be done by misrepresentation, let him read what is written there, and what Professor Whitney made of it in his articles in the “Journal of the American Oriental Society.” His misunderstandings are so desperate, that he himself at times feels uneasy, and admits that a more charitable interpretation of what I wanted to say would be possible. When I saw this style of arguing, the utter absence of any regard for what was, or what might charitably be supposed to have been, my meaning, I made up my mind once for all, that that American gentleman should never have an answer from me, and in spite of strong temptation I kept my resolve till now. A man who could say of Lassen that his statements were “wholly and reprehensibly incorrect,” because he said that Colebrooke had shown that the Arabs received their lunar mansions from the Hindus, was not likely to show mercy to any other German professor.

I find, however, by reading one of his Essays, that there is a more special reason why, in his repeated onslaughts on me, both before and after the Rebellion, “he thinks he may dispense with the ordinary courtesies of literary warfare.” I may tell it in his own words:--

“Some one (I may add the name, now, it was the late Professor
Goldstücker) falls fiercely upon the work of a company of
collaborators; they unite in its defense; thereupon the aggressor
reviles them as a mutual admiration society; and Müller repeats the
accusation, giving it his own indorsement, and volunteering in
addition that of another scholar.”

I might possibly represent the case in a different light, but I am willing to accept the _acte d’accusation_ as it comes from the hand of my accuser; nay more, I am quite ready to plead guilty to it. Only let me explain how I came to commit this great offense. What is here referred to must have happened more than ten years ago. Professor Goldstücker had criticised the Sanskrit Dictionary published by Professors Boehtlingk and Roth, and “the company of collaborators” had united in its defense, only, as Professor Whitney is authorized to assure us, “without any apparent or known concert.” Professor Goldstücker was an old friend of mine, to whom in the beginning of my literary career at Berlin and in Paris, I was indebted for much personal kindness. He helped me when no one else did, and many a day, and many a night too, we had worked together at the same table, he encouraging me to persevere when I was on the point of giving up the study of Sanskrit altogether. When Professor Goldstücker came to England, he undertook a new edition of Wilson’s “Sanskrit Dictionary,” and he very soon became entangled in a controversy with “the company of collaborators” of another Sanskrit dictionary, published at the expense of the Russian Academy. I do not defend him, far from it. He had a weakness very common among scholars;--he could not bear to see a work praised beyond its real merits, and he thought it was his duty to set everything right that seemed to him wrong. He was very angry with me, because I would not join in his condemnation of the St. Petersburg dictionary. I could not do that, because, without being blind to its defects, I considered it a most valuable performance, highly creditable to all its collaborators; nay, I felt bound to say so publicly in England, because it was in England that this excellent work had been unduly condemned. This embittered my relations with Professor Goldstücker, and when the attacks by the company of collaborators on him grew thicker and thicker, while I was treated by them with the greatest civility, he persuaded himself that I had taken part against him, that I had in fact become a sleeping partner in what was then called the “International Praise Insurance Society.” To show him once for all that this was not the case, and that I was perfectly independent of any company of collaborators, I wrote what I wrote at the time. Nor did I do so without having had placed before me several reviews, which certainly seemed to give to the old saying _laudari a viro laudato_ a novel meaning. Having done what I thought I was bound to do for an old friend, I was perfectly prepared to take the consequences of what might seem a rash act, and when I was twitted with having done so anonymously, I, of course, thought it my duty to reprint the article, at the first opportunity, with my name. Now let it be borne in mind that one of the chief culprits, nay, as appeared afterwards, the most eager mischief-maker, was Professor Whitney himself, and let us now hear what he has to say. As if he himself were entirely unconcerned in the matter, instead of having been the chief culprit, he speaks of “cool effrontery;” “magisterial assumption, towards a parcel of naughty boys caught in their naughtiness;” “most discreditable;” “the epithet outrageous is hardly too strong.” Here his breath fails him, and, fortunately for me, the climax ends. And this, we are asked to believe, is not loud and boisterous but gentle and calm: it is in fact “the language of simple-minded consciousness of rectitude!”

These gentle onslaughts were written and published by Professor Whitney ten years ago. I happen to know that a kind of _colportage_ was established to send his articles to gentlemen whom they would not otherwise have reached. I was told again and again, that I ought to put an end to these maneuvers, and yet, during all these years, I thought I could perfectly well afford to take no notice of them. But when after such proceedings Professor Whitney turns round, and challenges me before a public which is not acquainted with these matters, to produce any of the _epitheta ornantia_ I had mentioned as having been applied by him to me, to Renan, to Schleicher, to Oppert, to Bleek, nay, even to Bopp and Burnouf and Lassen, when with all “the simple-minded consciousness of rectitude” he declares, that he was never personal, then I ask, Could I remain silent any longer?

How hard Professor Whitney is driven in order to fix any real blame on me, may be seen from what follows. The article in which the obnoxious passage which, I was told, deprived me of any claim to the amenities of literary intercourse occurs, had been reprinted in the “Indische Studien,” before I reprinted it in the first volume of “Chips.” In reprinting it myself, I had rewritten parts of it, and had also made a few additions. In the “Indische Studien,” on the contrary, it had been reprinted in its original form, and had besides been disfigured by several inaccuracies or misprints. Referring to these, I had said that it had been, as usual, very incorrectly reprinted. Let us hear what an American pleader can make out of this:--

“In this he was too little mindful of the requirements of fair
dealing; for he leaves any one who may take the trouble to turn to
the ‘Indische Studien,’ and compare the version there given with
that found among the ‘Chips,’ to infer that all the discordances he
shall discover are attributable to Weber’s incorrectness, whereas
they are in fact mainly alterations which Müller has made in his own
reprint; and the real inaccuracies are perfectly trivial in
character and few in number--such printer’s blunders as are rarely
avoided by Germans who print English, or by English who print
German. We should doubtless be doing Müller injustice if we
maintained that he deliberately meant Weber to bear the odium of all
the discrepancies which a comparer might find; but he is equally
responsible for the result, if it is owing only to carelessness on
his part.”

What will the intelligent gentlemen of the jury say to this? Because I complained of such blunders as altars being “construed,” instead of “constructed,” “enlightoned” instead of “enlightened,” “gratulate” instead of “congratulate,” and similar inaccuracies, occurring in an unauthorized reprint of my article, therefore I really wanted to throw the odium of what I had myself written in the original article, and what was, as far as the language was concerned, perfectly correct, on Professor Weber. Can forensic ingenuity go further? If America possesses many such powerful pleaders, we wonder how life can be secure.

Having thus ascertained whence _illæ lacrumæ_, I must now produce a small bottle at least of the tears themselves which Professor Whitney has shed over me, and over men far better than myself, all of which, he says, were never meant to be personal, and most of which have evidently been quite dried up in his memory.

I begin with Bopp. “Although his mode of working is wonderfully
genial, his vision of great acuteness, and his instinct a generally
trustworthy guide, he is liable to wander far from the safe track,
and has done not a little labor over which a broad and heavy mantle
of charity needs to be drawn” (I. 208).

M. Renan and myself have “committed the very serious error of
inverting the mutual relation of dialectic variety and uniformity of
speech, thus turning topsy-turvy the whole history of linguistic
development. . . . . It may seem hardly worth while to spend any
effort in refuting an opinion of which the falsity will have been
made apparent by the exposition already given” (p. 177).

In another place (p. 284) M. Renan is told that his objection to the
doctrine of a primitive Indo-European monosyllabism is noticed, not
for any cogency which it possesses, but only on account of the
respectability of M. Renan.

Lassen and Burnouf, who thought that the geographical reminiscences
in the first chapter of the Vendidad had a historical foundation,
are told that their “claim is baseless, and even preposterous”
(p. 201). Yet what Professor Whitney’s knowledge of Zend must be, we
may judge from what he says of Burnouf’s literary productions. “It
is well known,” he says, “that the great French scholar produced
_two or three bulky volumes_ upon the Avesta.” I know of _one_ bulky
volume only, “Commentaire sur la Yaçna,” tome i., Paris, 1833, but
that may be due to my lamentable ignorance.

“Professor Oppert simply exposes himself in the somewhat ridiculous
attitude of one who knocks down, with gestures of awe and fright,
a tremendous man of straw of his own erecting (I. 218). His
erroneous assumptions will be received with most derisive
incredulity (I. 221); the incoherence and aimlessness of his
reasonings (I. 223); an ill-considered tirade, a tissue of
misrepresentations of linguistic science (I. 237). He cannot impose
upon us by his authority, nor attract us by his eloquence: his
present essay is as heavy in style, as loose and vague in
expression, unsound in argument, arrogant in tone” (I. 238). The
motive imputed to Professor Oppert in writing his Essay is that “he
is a Jew, and wanted to stand up for the Shemites.”

If Professor Oppert is put down as a Shemite, Dr. Bleek is sneered
at as a German. “His work is written with much apparent profundity,
one of a class, not quite unknown in Germany, in which a minimum of
valuable truth is wrapped up in a maximum of sonating phraseology”
(I. 292). Poor Germany catches it again on page 315. “Even, or
especially in Germany,” we are told, “many an able and acute scholar
seems minded to indemnify himself for dry and tedious grubbings
among the roots and forms of Comparative Philology by the most airy
ventures in the way of constructing Spanish castles of linguistic
science.”

In his last work Professor Whitney takes credit for having at last
rescued the Science of Language from the incongruities and
absurdities of European scholars.

Now on page 119 Professor Whitney very properly reproves another
scholar, Professor Goldstücker, for having laughed at the _German_
school of Vedic interpretation. “He emphasizes it,” he says, “dwells
upon it, reiterates it three or four times in a paragraph, as if
there lay in the words themselves some potent argument. Any
uninformed person would say, we are confident, that he was making an
unworthy appeal to English prejudice against foreign men and foreign
ways.” Professor Whitney finishes up with charging Professor
Goldstücker, who was himself a German--I beg my reader’s pardon, but
I am only quoting from a North American Review--with “fouling his
own nest.” Professor Whitney, I believe, studied in a German
university. Did he never hear of a ’cute little bird, who does to
the nest in which he was reared, what he says Professor Goldstücker
did to his own?

Χαῖρέ μοι, ὠ Γώλδστυκρε, καὶ εἰν Ἀΐδαο δόμοισιν·
Πάντα γὰρ ἤδη τοι τελέω, τὰ πάροιθεν ὑπέστην.

Haeckel is called a headlong Darwinian (I. 293), Schleicher is
infected with Darwinism (I. 294), “he represents a false and hurtful
tendency (I. 298), he is blind to the plainest truths, and employs a
mode of reasoning in which there is neither logic nor common sense
(I. 323). His essays are unsound, illogical, untrue; but there are
still incautious sciolists by whom every error that has a great name
attached to it is liable to be received as pure truth, and who are
ever specially attracted by good hearty paradoxes” (I. 330).

I add a few more references to the _epitheta ornantia_ which I was
charged with having invented. “Utter futility” (p. 36); “meaningless
and futile” (p. 152); “headlong materialist” (p. 153); “better
humble and true (Whitney) than high-flown, pretentious, and false”
(not-Whitney, p. 434); “simply and solely nonsense” (I. 255);
“darkening of counsel by words without knowledge” (I. 255);
“rhetorical talk” (I. 723); “flourish of trumpets, lamentable (not
to say) ridiculous failure” (I. 277).

What a contrast between the rattling discharges of these _mitrailleuses_ at the beginning of the war, and the whining and whimpering assurance now made by the American professor, that he never in his life said anything personal or offensive!

WHY I OUGHT NOT TO HAVE ANSWERED.

Having taken the trouble of collecting these spent balls from the various battlefields of the American general, I hope that even Professor Whitney will no longer charge me with having spoken without book. As long as he cited me before the tribunal of scholars only, I should have considered it an insult to them to suppose that they could not, if they liked, form their own judgment. For fifteen years have I kept my fire, till, like a Chinese juggler, Professor Whitney must have imagined he had nearly finished my outline on the wall with the knives so skillfully aimed to miss me. But when he dragged me before a tribunal where my name was hardly known, when he thought that by catching the _aura popularis_ of Darwinism, he could discredit me in the eyes of the leaders of that powerful army, when he actually got possession of the pen of the son, fondly trusting it would carry with it the weight of the father, then I thought I owed it to myself, and to the cause of truth and its progress, to meet his reckless charges by clear rebutting evidence. I did this in my “Answer to Mr. Darwin,” and as I did it, I did it thoroughly, leaving no single charge unanswered, however trifling. At the same time, while showing the unreasonableness of his denunciations, I could not help pointing out some serious errors into which Professor Whitney had fallen. Some thrusts can only be parried by _a-tempo_ thrusts.

Professor Whitney, like an experienced advocate, passes over in silence the most serious faults which I had pointed out in his “Lectures,” and after he has attempted--with what success, let others judge--to clear himself from a few, he turns round, and thinks it best once for all to deny my competency to judge him. And why?

“I do not consider Professor Müller capable of judging me justly,”
he says. And why? “Because I have felt moved, on account of his
extraordinary popularity and the exceptional importance attached to
his utterances, to criticise him more frequently than anybody else.”

Is not this the height of forensic ingenuity? Because A has criticised B, therefore B cannot criticise A justly. In that case A has indeed nothing to do but to criticise B C D to Z, and then no one in the world can criticise him justly. I have watched many controversies, I have observed many stratagems and bold movements to cover a retreat, but nothing to equal this. Professor Pott was very hard on Professor Curtius, but he did not screen himself by denying to his adversary the competency to criticise him in turn. What would Newman have said, if Kingsley had tried to shut him up with such a remark, a remark really worthy of one literary combatant only, the famous Pastor Goeze, the critic of Lessing?

What would even Professor Whitney think, if I were to say that, because I have criticised his “Lectures,” he could not justly criticise my “Sanskrit Grammar?” He might not think it good taste to publish an advertisement to dissuade students in America from using my grammar; he might think it unworthy of himself and dishonorable to institute comparisons, the object of which would be too transparent in the eyes even of his best friends in Germany. Mr. Whitney has lived too long in Germany not to know the saying, _Man merkt die Absicht und man wird verstimmt_. But should I ever say that he was incompetent to criticise my “Sanskrit Grammar” justly? Certainly not. All that I might possibly venture to say is, that before Professor Whitney undertakes to criticise my own or any other Sanskrit grammar, he should look at § 84 of my grammar, and practice that very simple rule, that if Visarga is preceded by _a_, and followed by _a_, the Visarga is dropt, _a_ changed to _o_, and the initial vowel elided. If with this rule clearly impressed on his memory, he will look at his edition of the Atharva-Veda Prâtiśâkhya, I. 33, then perhaps, instead of charging Hindu grammarians in his usual style with “opinions obviously and grossly incorrect and hardly worth quoting,” he might discover that +eke spṛshṭam+ could only have been meant in the MSS. for +eke ’spṛshṭam+, and that the proper translation was not that vowels are formed _by contact_, but that they are formed _without contact_. Instead of saying that none of the other Prâtiśâkhyas favors this opinion, he would find the same statement in the Rig-Veda Prâtiśâkhya, Sûtra 719, page cclxi of my edition, and he might perhaps say to himself, that before criticising Sanskrit grammars, it would be useful to learn at least the phonetic rules. I had pointed out this slip before, in the second edition of my “Sanskrit Grammar;” but, as to judge from an article of his on the accent, Professor Whitney has not seen that second edition (1870), which contains the Appendix on the accent in Sanskrit, I beg leave to call his attention to it again.

WHY I OUGHT TO BE GRATEFUL.

I am glad to say that we now come to a more amusing part of this controversy. After I had been told that because I was attacked first, therefore I was not able to criticise Professor Whitney’s writings justly, I am next told that I ought to be very grateful for having been attacked, nay, I am told that, in my heart of hearts, I am really very grateful indeed. I must quote this passage in full:--

“During the last eight years I have repeatedly taken the opportunity
accurately to examine and frankly to criticise the views of others
and the arguments by which they were supported. I have done this
more particularly against eminent and famous men whom the public has
accustomed itself to regard as guides in matters referring to the
Science of Language. What unknown and uncared for people say, is of
no consequence whatever; but if Schleicher and Steinthal, Renan and
Müller, teach what to me seems an error, and try to support it by
proofs, then surely I am not only justified, but called upon to
refute them, if I can. Among these students the last-named seems to
be of different opinion. In his article, ‘My Reply to Mr. Darwin,’
published in the March number of the ‘Deutsche Rundschau,’ he thinks
it necessary to read me a severe lecture on my presumption, although
he also flatters me by the hint that my custom of criticising the
most eminent men only is appreciated, and those whom I criticise
feel honored by it.”

I confess when I read this, I wished I had really paid such a pretty compliment to my kind critic, but looking through my article from beginning to end, I find no hint anywhere that could bear so favorable an interpretation, unless it is where I speak of “the noble army of his martyrs,” and of the untranslated remark of Phocion, which he may have taken for a compliment. In saying that it was acknowledged to be an honor to be attacked by him, Professor Whitney was, no doubt, thinking of the words of Ovid, _Summa petunt dextra fulmina missa Jovis_, and I am not going in future to deny him the title of the Jovial and Olympian critic, nor should I suggest to him to read the line in Ovid immediately preceding the one quoted. Against one thing only I must protest. Though the last named, I am surely not, as he boldly asserts, the only one of the four _sommités_ struck by his Olympian thunderbolts, who have humbly declined too frequent a repetition of his celestial favors. Schleicher, no doubt, was safe, for alas, he is dead! But Steinthal surely has uttered rather Promethean protests against the Olympian,--

Οἶδ’ ὅτι τραχὺς καὶ παρ’ ἑαυτῷ
τὸ δίκαιον ἔχων Ζεύς· ἀλλ’ ἔμπας
μαλακογνώμων
ἔσται ποθ’, ὅταν ταύτῃ ῥαισθῇ·

and as to M. Renan, does his silence mean more than--

Ἐμοὶ δ’ ἔλασσον Ζηνὸς ἢ μηδὲν μέλει

I confess, then, frankly that, in my heart of hearts, I am not grateful for these cruel kindnesses, and if he says that the other Serene Highnesses have been less ungrateful than I am, I fear this is again one of his over-confident assertions. My publishers in America may be grateful to him, for I am told that, owing to Professor Whitney’s articles, much more interest in my works has been excited in America than I could ever have expected. But I cannot help thinking that by the line of action he has followed, he has done infinite harm to the science which we both have at heart. In order to account somehow or other for his promiscuous onslaughts, he now tells Mr. Darwin and his friends that in the Science of Language all is chaos. That is not so, unless Mr. Whitney is here using chaos in a purely subjective sense. There are differences of opinion, as there are in every living and progressive science, but even those who differ most widely, perfectly understand and respect each other, because they know that, from the days of Plato and Aristotle, men who start from different points, arrive at different conclusions, particularly when the highest problems in every science are under consideration. I do not agree with Professor Steinthal, but I understand him; I do not agree with Dr. Bleek, but I respect him; I differ most of all from Schleicher, but I think that an hour or two of private conversation, if it were possible still, would have brought us much nearer together. At all events, in reading any of their books, I feel interested, I breathe a new atmosphere, I get new ideas, I feel animated and invigorated. I have now read nearly all that Professor Whitney has written on the Science of Language, and I have not found one single new fact, one single result of independent research, nay, not even one single new etymology, that I could have added to my Collectanea. If I am wrong, let it be proved. That language is an institution, that language is an instrument, that we learn our language from our mothers, as they learned it from their mothers and so on till we come to Adam and Eve, that language is meant for communication, all this surely had been argued out before, and with arguments, when necessary, as strong as any adduced by Professor Whitney.

Professor Whitney may not be aware of this, or have forgotten it; but a fertile writer like him ought at all events to have a good memory. In his reply, p. 262, he tells us, for instance, as one of his latest discoveries, that in studying language, we ought to begin with modern languages, and that when we come to more ancient periods, we should always infer similar causes from similar effects, and never admit new forces or new processes, except when those which we know prove totally inefficient. In my own Lectures I had laid it down as one of the fundamental principles of the Science of Language that “what is real in modern formations must be admitted as possible in ancient formations, and that what has been found true on a small scale may be true on a larger scale.” I had devoted considerable space to the elucidation of this principle, and what did Professor Whitney write at that time (1865)?

“The conclusion sounds almost like a bathos; we should have called
these, not fundamental principles, but obvious considerations, which
hardly required any illustration” (p. 243).

Here is another instance of failure of memory. He assures us:--

“That he would never venture to charge anybody with being influenced
in his literary labors by personal vanity and a desire of notoriety,
except perhaps after giving a long string of proofs--nay, not even
then” (p. 274).

Yet it was he who said of (I. 131) the late Professor Goldstücker that--

“Mere denunciation of one’s fellows and worship of Hindu
predecessors do not make one a Vedic scholar,”

and that, after he had himself admitted that “no one would be found to question his (Professor Goldstücker’s) immense learning, his minute accuracy, and the sincerity and intensity of his convictions.”

By misunderstanding and sometimes, unless I am greatly mistaken, willfully closing his eyes to the real views of other scholars, Professor Whitney has created for himself a rich material for the display of his forensic talents. Like the poor Hindu grammarian, we are first made to say the opposite of what we said, and are then brow-beaten as holding opinions “obviously and grossly incorrect and hardly worth quoting.” All this is clever, but is it right? Is it even wise?

Much of what I have here written sounds very harsh, I know; but what is one to do? I have that respect for language and for my friends, and, may I add, for myself, to avoid harsh and abusive words, as much as possible. I do not believe in the German saying, _Auf einen groben Klotz gehört ein grober Keil_. I have tried hard, throughout the whole of my literary career, and even in this “Defense,” not to use the weapons that have been used against me during so many years of almost uninterrupted attacks. Much is allowed, however, in self-defense that would be blamable in an unprovoked attack, and if I have used here and there the cool steel, I trust that clean wounds, inflicted by a sharp sword, will heal sooner than gashes made with rude stones and unpolished flints.