Chapter II: Preface (2)

I must here guard against the misinterpretation of an expression used a few sentences back. I wish to let nothing drop that may encourage the germs of an undue presumption. I expressed an opinion--which I meant to be a decided one--that the time allowed for your medical studies was full, fair, and sufficient,--so much so that if it prove _in_sufficient the fault must lie in the neglect of it. _Sufficient_, however, as it is, it gives no opportunity for any superfluous leisure. It must not be presumed on. You have no odd months, or weeks, or days, or even hours, to play with. It is a sufficient space for you to lay in that knowledge of your profession which the experience and opinion of your examining boards have thought proper to require. I believe the amount thus required, to be, like the time granted for the acquisition of it, a fair amount. But it is not a high one, and it is not right that it should be so. Standards of fitness that are set up for the measure of a body of students so numerous as those in medicine, rarely err on the side of severity. They favour mediocrity; and they ought to favour it. It is safe: and that is all they have a right to look to. What they profess is never very formidable; and what they require is generally less than what is professed. But the time that is sufficient for this _modicum_ (or _minimum_) of professional learning is not the time sufficient for the formation of a practitioner of that degree of excellence which the competition of an open profession, like that of medicine, requires as the guarantee of success. An examining board has but one point to look to--it must see that you can practise with safety to the public. It never ensures, or professes to ensure, that you shall practise with success to yourself, or even that you shall practise at all. In the eyes of an Examiner, as in those of a commissioner of lunacy, there are but two sorts of individuals; those that can be let loose upon the public, and those that cannot. In the eyes of the public there is every degree of excellence, and every variety of comparative merit or demerit.

Now as to the way of attaining these higher degrees of merit, and the rewards, moral or material, which they ensure--which follow them as truly as satisfaction follows right actions, and as penalties follow wrong ones. The opportunity we have spoken of. It consists in the whole range of means and appliances by which we here, and others elsewhere, avail ourselves of those diseases that humanity has suffered, and is suffering, for the sake of alleviating the misery that they seem to ensure for the future. Disease with us is not only an object of direct and immediate relief to the patient who endures it, but it is an indirect means of relief to sufferers yet untouched. Out of evil comes good. We make the sick helpful to the sound; the dead available to the living. Out of pestilence comes healing, and out of the corruption of death the laws and rule of life. Suffering we have, and teaching we have, and neither must be lost upon you. It is too late to find that these objects, and objects like them, are repugnant and revolting. These things should have been thought of before. Your choice is now taken, and it must be held to. The discovery that learning is unpleasant is the discovery of a mistake in the choice of your profession; and the sooner you remedy such a mistake the better--the better for yourselves, the better for your friends, the better for the public, and the better for the profession itself.

Steady work, with fair opportunities--this is what makes practitioners. The one without the other is insufficient. There is an expenditure of exertion where your industry outruns your materials, and there is a loss of useful facts when occasions for observation are neglected.

See all you can, and hear all you can. It is not likely that cases will multiply themselves for your special observations, and it is neither the policy nor the practice of those who are commissioned with your instruction to open their mouths at random.

See all you can. If the case be a common one, you get so much familiarity with a phenomenon that it will be continually presenting itself. If a rare one, you have seen what you may seldom see again. There is every reason for taking the practice of the hospital exactly as you find it. It represents the diseases of the largest class of mankind--the poor; and, although in some of the details there may be a difference, upon the whole the forms of disease that are the commonest in hospitals are the commonest in the world at large; and _vice versâ_. Hence, what you see here is the rule rather than the exception for what you will see hereafter. The diseases are not only essentially the same, but the proportion which they bear to one another is nearly so. I mention this, because there is often a tendency to run after rare cases to the neglect of common ones; whilst, on the other hand, remarkable and instructive forms of disease are overlooked, simply because they are thought the curiosities rather than the elements of practice. You may carry your neglect of common cases, on the strength of their being common, too far. You may know all about catalepsy and hydrophobia, and nothing about itch or measles. You may find that, of the two parties concerned, the patient and yourself, it is the former that knows the most about his complaint. You may live to have your diagnosis corrected by the porter, your prognosis criticised by the nurse. On the other hand, by missing single instances of rare disease, you may miss the opportunity of being able to refer to your memory rather than to your library.

I have given you reasons against being afraid of over-observation, and against the pernicious habit of neglecting this case because it is common, and that because it is rare--a common excuse for neglecting _all_ diseases, and a popular reason for doing so. _Medicus sum, nihil in re medicâ a me alienum puto_, &c. Some minds, indeed, are so constituted that they can make much, very much, out of single cases, out of solitary specimens of diseases. The power of minute analysis is the characteristic of this sort of observation. It is just possible so to seize upon the true conditions of a disease, as to satisfy yourself, once for all, of its real permanent attribute--of its essence, if I may so express myself. And this being seen, you may, for certain purposes, have seen enough; seen it at one glance; seen it at a single view as well as others see it at a hundred. I say that certain minds are thus constituted; but they are rarely the minds of many men in a single generation, and never the minds of beginners. Before this power is attained your observation must be disciplined into the accuracy and the rapidity of an instinct; and to this power of observation--attainable only by long practice, and after long practice--a high power of reflection must be superadded.

No such power must be presumed on. If the student delude himself, the disease will undeceive him. The best practitioners, in the long run, are those whose memory is stored with the greatest number of individual cases--individual cases well observed, and decently classified. It is currently stated that the peculiar power of the late Sir Astley Cooper was a power of memory of this sort, and I presume that no better instance of its value need be adduced. Now the memory for cases implies the existence of cases to remember; and before you arrange them in the storehouse of your thoughts you must have seen and considered; must have used both your senses and your understanding; must have seen, touched, and handled with the one, and must have understood and reflected with the other.

I am talking of these things as they exist in disciplined intellects, and in retentive memories; and, perhaps, it may be objected that I am talking of things that form the exception rather than the rule; that I am measuring the power of common men by those of extraordinary instances. I weigh my words, when I deliberately assert, that such, although partially the case, is not so altogether; and that it is far less the case than is commonly imagined. In most of those instances where we lose the advantage of prior experience, by omitting the application of our knowledge of a previous similar case, the fault is less in the laxity of memory than in the original incompleteness of the observation. Observe closely, and ponder well, and the memory may take care of itself. Like a well-applied nick-name, a well-made observation will stick to you--whether you look after it or neglect it. The best way to learn to swim is to try to sink, and it is so because floatation, like memory, is natural if you set about it rightly. Let those who distrust their remembrance once observe closely, and then forget if they can.

There are good reasons for cultivating this habit at all times, but there are especial reasons why those who are on the threshold of their profession should more particularly cultivate it. Not because you have much to learn--we have all that--nor yet because you have the privilege of great opportunities--we have all that also--must you watch, and reflect, and arrange, and remember. Your time of life gives you an advantage. The age of the generality of you is an age when fresh facts are best seized: and best seized because they are fresh. Whether you are prepared to understand their whole import, as you may do at some future period, is doubtful. It is certain that the effect of their novelty is to impress them more cogently on your recollection.

And this is practice--practice in the good sense of the term, and in a sense which induces me to guard against the misconstruction of a previous application of it. A few sentences back I used the phrases _practical men_, adding that those so called were men who could be taught by practice only. I confess that this mode of expression was disparaging. For the purpose to which it was applied it was meant to be so. It is a term you must be on your guard against. _Practice_ is so good a thing of itself that its name and appellation are applied to many bad things. Slovenliness is practice; if it suits the purpose of any one to call it so; contempt for reading is practice; and bleeding on all occasions when you omit to purge is practice;--and bad practice too. Be on your guard against this: but do not be on your guard against another sort of practice: the practice of men who first observe, and then reflect, and then generalise, and then reduce to a habit their results. This is the true light for you to follow, and in this sense practice is not only _a_ safe guide but _the_ safe guide. It is experience, or, if you choose a more philosophic term, induction. Theoretical men can be taught by this, and the wisest theories _are_ taught by it. When I said that practical men were taught by practice only, I never implied that they were the only men that practice could teach. Experience makes fools wise; but fools are not the only persons who can profit by experience.

See and hear--the senses must administer to the understanding. Eye, and ear, and finger--exercise these that they may bring in learning.

See and hear--the senses must administer to their own improvement. Eye, and ear, and finger--exercise these, that they may better themselves as instruments. The knowledge is much, but the discipline is more. The knowledge is the fruit that is stored, but the discipline is the tree that yields. The one is the care that keeps, the other the cultivation that supplies.

The habit of accurate observation is by no means so difficult as is darkly signified by logicians, nor yet so easy as is vainly fancied by empirics. It is the duty of those who teach you to indicate the medium.

The tenor of some of my observations runs a risk of misrepresentation. It has been limited. It has spoken of cases, as if there was nothing in the whole range of medical study but cases; and of observation, as if the faculties of a medical man were to take a monomaniac form, and to run upon observation only; of hospitals, as if they consisted of beds and patients alone; and of clinical medicine and of clinical surgery, as if there was no such a paramount subject as physiology, and no such important subsidiary studies as chemistry and botany. It is all hospital and no school--all wards and no museum--all sickness and no health. This has been the line that I have run on; and I feel that it may be imputed to me that I have run on it too long and too exclusively. Whether I undervalue the acquisition of those branches of knowledge which are collateral and subordinate to medicine, rather than the elements of medicine itself--which are the approaches to the temple rather than the innermost shrine--will be seen in the sequel. At present I only vindicate the prominence which has been given to clinical observation, by insisting upon the subordinate character of everything that is taught away from the bed, and beyond the sensible limits of disease. No single subject thus taught is the direct and primary object of your learning. The art of healing is so. You learn other things that you may understand this; and in hospitals at least you learn them with that view exclusively. If you wish to be a physiologist, chemist, or botanist, irrespectively of the medical application of the sciences of physiology, chemistry, and botany, there are better schools than the Middlesex Hospital, or, indeed, than any hospital whatever. _There_ they may be studied as mathematics are studied at Cambridge, or as classics at Eton--simply for their own great and inherent values. But _here_ you study them differently, that is, as mathematics are taught at a military college, or as classics are taught at the College of Preceptors, for a specific purpose, and with a limited view--with a view limited to the illustration of disease, and with the specific purpose of rendering them indirect agents in therapeutics. If you could contrive the cure of disease without a knowledge of morbid processes, it would be a waste of time to trouble yourself with pathology; or if you could bottom the phenomena of diseased action without a knowledge of the actions of health, physiology would be but a noble science for philosophers; or if you could build up a system of physiology, determining the functions of organs and the susceptibilities of tissues, independent of the anatomy of those organs and those tissues, scalpels would be as irrelevant to you as telescopes; and if these three sciences received no elucidation from chemistry, and botany, and physics, then would chemistry, and botany and physics, have the value--neither more nor less--of the art of criticism or of the binomial theorem. What you are taught in the schools is taught to you, not because it is worth knowing--for Latin, and Greek, and Mathematics are worth knowing--but because, before patients can be cured, they are necessary to be learned.

And, in order to be taught at all, they must be taught systematically. It is an easy matter to ask for a certain amount of these two collateral sciences--to pick and choose just the parts wanted for use, to require just that _modicum_ of botany which illustrates the Pharmacopœia, and just those fragments of chemistry that make prescriptions safe, and urine intelligible. It is easy, I say, to ask for all this; but the art of thus teaching _per saltum_ has yet to be discovered. The whole is more manageable than the half. What it may be with others is more than I can tell; but, for my own particular teaching, I would sooner take the dullest boy from the worst school, and start him in a subject at the right end, than begin at the wrong end with the cleverest prizeman that ever flattered parent or gratified instructor. Bits of botany and crumbs of chemistry are less digestible than whole courses.

Thus much for those studies that make your therapeutics rational. Some few have spoken slightly of them--as Sydenham, in the fulness of his knowledge of symptoms, spoke slightingly of anatomy, or as a Greek sculptor, familiar with the naked figure, might dispense with dissection. They are necessary, nevertheless, for the groundwork of your practice. They must serve to underpin your observations.

And now we may ask, whether, when a medical education has been gone through, you have collected from it, over and above your professional sufficiency, any secondary advantages of that kind which are attributed to education itself taken in the abstract? Whether your knowledge is of the sort that elevates, and whether your training is of the kind that strengthens?

Upon the whole, you may be satisfied with the reflex action of your professional on your general education--that is, if you take a practical and not an ideal standard. It will do for you, in this way, as much as legal studies do for the barrister, and as much as theological reading does for the clergyman; and perhaps in those points not common to the three professions medicine has the advantage. Its chemistry, which I would willingly see more mixed with physics, carries you to the threshold of the exact sciences. Its botany is pre-eminently disciplinal to the faculty of classification; indeed, for the natural-history sciences altogether, a medical education is almost necessary. Clear ideas in physiology are got at only through an exercised power of abstraction and generalization. The phenomena of insanity can be appreciated only when the general phenomena of healthy mental function are understood, and when the normal actions of the mind are logically analyzed. Such is medical education as an instrument of self-culture: and as education stands at present, a man who has made the most of them may walk among the learned men of the world with a bold and confiding front.

I insist upon thus much justice being done to the intellectual character of my profession--viz. that it be measured by a practical, and not an ideal, standard. Too much of the spirit of exaggeration is abroad--of that sort of exaggeration which makes men see in the requisites for their own profession the requisites for half-a-dozen others--of that sort of exaggeration which made Vitruvius, himself an architect, prove elaborately that before a man could take a trowel in his hand he must have a knowledge of all the sciences and a habit of all the virtues. Undoubtedly it would elevate medicine for every member in the profession to know much more than is required of him--yet this is no reason for our requiring much more than we do. Such a notion can be entertained only through a confusion of duty on the part of those who direct medicine. Their business is the public safety; and the position of their profession is their business _only_ so far as it affects this. Trusts are intended for the benefit of any one rather than the trustee.

Two objections lie against the recommendation of extraneous branches of learning in medicine: in the first place, by insisting upon them as elements of a special course of instruction, they are, by implication, excluded from a general one; in the second place, they are no part of a three years' training.

Concentrate your attention on the essentials. I am quite satisfied that as far as the merits or demerits of an education contribute to the position of a profession, we may take ours as we find it, and yet hold our own. Nevertheless, lest the position given to medicine by its pre-eminent prominence, in conjunction with the church and bar, as one of the so-called learned professions, should encourage the idea that a multiplicity of accomplishments should be the character of a full and perfect medical practitioner, one or two important realities in respect to our position should be indicated. We are at a disadvantage as compared with both the church and the bar. We have nothing to set against such great political prizes as chancellorships and archbishoprics. We are at this disadvantage; and, in a country like England, it is a great one: so that what we gain by the connection, in the eyes of the public, is more than what we give; and the connection is itself artificial, and, as such, dissoluble. It is best to look the truth in the face--we must stand or fall by our own utility.

Proud to be useful--scorning to be more

--must be the motto of him whose integrity should be on a level with his skill, who should win a double confidence, and who, if he do his duty well, is as sure of his proper influence in society, and on society--and that influence a noble one--as if he were the member of a profession ensured to respectability by all the favours that influence can extort, and all the prerogatives that time can accumulate. As compared with that of the church and bar, our hold upon the public is by a thread--but it is the thread of life.

Such are the responsibilities, the opportunities, and the prospects, of those who are now about to prepare themselves for their future career. We who teach have our responsibilities also; we know them; we are teaching where Bell taught before us; we are teaching where ground has been lost; yet we are also teaching with good hopes, founded upon improved auguries.

ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AS A
BRANCH OF EDUCATION.

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
OF GREAT BRITAIN.

MAY 13, 1854.

The subject I have the honour of illustrating is The Importance of the Study of Language as a means of Education for all Classes.

I open it by drawing a distinction.

A little consideration will show that that difference between the study of a given subject in its general and abstract, and the study of one in its applied or concrete, form, which finds place in so many departments of human knowledge, finds place in respect to Language and Languages. It finds place in the subject before us as truly as it does in that science, which one of my able successors will have the honour of illustrating,--the science of the laws of Life--Physiology or Biology. Just as there is, therein, a certain series of laws relating to life and organization, which would command our attention, if the whole animal and vegetable world consisted of but a single species, so the study of Speech would find place in a well-devised system of education, even if the tongues of the whole wide world were reduced to a single language, and that language to a single dialect. This is because the science of life is one thing, the science of the forms under which the phenomena of life are manifested, another. And just as Physiology, or Biology, is, more or less, anterior to and independent of such departments of study as Botany and Zoology, so, in the subject under notice, there is the double division of the study of _Language_ in respect to structure and development, and the study of _Languages_ as instances of the variety of form in which the phenomenon of human speech exhibits, or has exhibited, itself. Thus--

When (as I believe once to have been the case) there was but a single language on the face of the earth, the former of these divisions had its subject-matter. And--

When (as is by no means improbable) one paramount and exclusive tongue, developed, at first, rapidly and at the expense of the smaller languages of the world, and, subsequently, slowly and at that of the more widely-diffused ones, shall have replaced the still numerous tongues of the nineteenth century; and when all the dialects of the world shall be merged into one Universal Language, the same subject-matter for the study of the structure of Language, its growth and changes, will still exist.

So that the study of Language is one thing, the study of Languages, another.

They are different; and the intellectual powers that they require and exercise are different also. The greatest comparative philologists have, generally, been but moderate linguists.

A certain familiarity with different languages they have, of course, had; and as compared with that of the special scholar--the Classic or the Orientalist, for instance--their range of language (so to say) has been a wide one; but it has rarely been of that vast compass which is found in men after the fashion of Mezzofanti, &c.--men who have spoken languages by the dozen, or the score;--but who have left comparative philology as little advanced as if their learning had been bounded by the limits of their own mother tongue.

Now this difference, always of more or less importance in itself, increases when we consider Language as an object of education; and it is for the sake of illustrating it that the foregoing preliminaries have been introduced. No opinion is given as to the comparative rank or dignity of the two studies; no decision upon the nobility or ignobility of the faculties involved in the attainment of excellence in either. The illustration of a difference is all that has been aimed at. There is a difference between the two classes of subjects, and a difference between the two kinds of mental faculties. Let us make this difference clear. Let us also give it prominence and importance.

One main distinction between the study of Language and the study of Languages lies in the fact of the value of the former being _constant_, that of the latter, _fluctuating_. The relative importance of any two languages, as objects of special attention, scarcely ever remains steady. The value, for instance, of the German--to look amongst the cotemporary forms of speech--has notably risen within the present century. And why? Because the literature in which it is embodied has improved. Because the scientific knowledge which, to all who want the key, is (so to say) locked up in it, has increased some hundred per cent.

But it may go down again. Suppose, for instance, that new writers of pre-eminent merit, ennoble some of the minor languages of Europe--the Danish, Swedish, Dutch, &c. Such a fact would divide the attention of _savans_--attention which can only be bestowed upon some second, at the expense of some first, object. In such a case, the extent to which the German language got studied would be affected much in the same way as that of the French has been by the development of the literature of Germany.

Or the area over which a language is spoken may increase; as it may, also, diminish.

Or the number of individuals that speak it may multiply--the area being the same.

Or the special application of the language, whether for the purposes of commerce, literature, science, or politics, may become changed. In this way, as well as in others, the English is becoming, day by day, more important.

There are other influences.

High as is the value of the great classical languages of Greece and Rome, we can easily conceive how that value might be enhanced. Let a manuscript containing the works of some of the lost, or imperfectly preserved, writers of antiquity be discovered. Let, for instance, Gibbon's _desiderata_--the lost _Decads of Livy_, the _Orations of Hyperides_, or the _Dramas of Menander_--be made good. The per-centage of classical scholars would increase; little or much.

Some years back it was announced that the Armenian language contained translations, made during the earlier centuries of our era, of certain classical writings, of which the originals had been lost--lost in the interval. This did not exactly make the Armenian, with its alphabet of six-and-thirty letters, a popular tongue; but it made it, by a fraction, more popular than it was in the days of Whiston and La Croze, when those two alone, of all the learned men of Europe, could read it.

Translations tell in another way. Whatever is worth reading in the Danish and Swedish is forthwith translated into German. _E. g._ Professor Retzius of Stockholm wrote a good Manual of Anatomy. He had the satisfaction of seeing it translated into German. He had the further satisfaction of hearing that the translation ran through five editions in less time than the original did through one.

Now, if the Germans were to leave off translating the value of the language in which Professor Retzius wrote his Anatomy would rise.

Upon the whole, the French is, perhaps, the most important language of the nineteenth century; yet it is only where we take into consideration the whole of its elements of value. To certain special _savans_, the German is worth more; to the artist, the Italian; to the American, the Spanish. It fell, too, in value when nations like our own insisted upon the use of their native tongues in diplomacy. It fell in value because it became less indispensable; and another cause, now in operation, affects the same element of indispensability. The French are beginning to learn the languages of other nations. Their own literature will certainly be none the worse for their so doing. But it by no means follows that that literature will be any the more studied. On the contrary, Frenchmen will learn English more, and, _pro tanto_, Englishmen learn French less.

If all this have illustrated a difference, it may also have done something more. It may have given a rough sketch, in the way of classification, of the kind of facts that regulate the value of special languages as special objects of study. At any rate (and this is the main point), the subject-matter of the present Address is narrowed. It is narrowed (in the first instance at least) to the consideration of that branch of study whereof the value is constant; for assuredly it is this which will command more than a moiety of our consideration.

This may be said to imply a preference to the study of Language as opposed to that of Languages--a _singular_ preference, as a grammarian may, perhaps, be allowed to call it. It cannot be denied that, to a certain extent, such is the case; but it is only so to a certain extent. The one is not magnified at the expense of the other. When all has been said that logic or mental philosophy can say about the high value of comparative philology, general grammar, and the like, the lowest value of the least important language will still stand high, and pre-eminently high that of what may be called the _noble_ Languages. No variations in the philological barometer, no fluctuations in the Exchange of Language, will ever bring down the advantage of studying one, two, or even more foreign languages to so low a level as to expel such tongues as the Latin, the Greek, the French, or the German, one and all, from an English _curriculum_--and _vice versâ_, English from a foreign one.

Now, if this be the case, one of the elements in the value of the _study of Language in general_ will be the extent to which it facilitates the acquirement of any one language in particular, and this element of value will be an important--though not the most important--one.

The structure of the human body is worth knowing, even if the investigator of it be neither a practitioner in medicine nor a teacher of anatomy; and, in like manner, the structure of the human language is an important study irrespective of the particular forms of speech whereof it may facilitate the acquirement.

The words on the diagram-board will now be explained. They are meant to illustrate the class of facts that comparative philology supplies.

The first runs--

_Klein_ : _Clean_ :: _Petit_ : _Petitus_.

It shows the extent to which certain ideas are associated. It shows, too, something more; it shows that such an association is capable of being demonstrated from the phenomena of language instead of being a mere _à priori_ speculation on the part of the mental philosopher.

_Klein_ is the German for _little_; _clean_ is our own English adjective, the English of the Latin word _mundus_. In German the word is _rein_.

Now, notwithstanding the difference of meaning in the two tongues, _clean_ and _klein_ are one and the same word. Yet, how are the ideas of _cleanliness_ and _littleness_ connected? The Greek language has the word _hypocorisma_, meaning a _term of endearment_, and the adjective _hypocoristic_. Now, _clean-ness_, or _neat-ness_, is one of the elements that make _hypocoristic_ terms (or terms of endearment) applicable. And so is _smallness_. We talk of _pretty little dears_, a thousand times, where we talk of _pretty big dears_ once. This, then, explains the connexion; this tells us that _clean_ in English is _klein_ in German, word for word.

You doubt it, perhaps. You shake your head, and say, that the connexion seems somewhat indefinite; that it is just one of those points which can neither be proved nor disproved. Be it so. The evidence can be amended. Observe the words _petit_ and _petitus_. _Petit_ (in French) is exactly what _klein_ is in German, _i. e._, _little_. _Petitus_ (in Latin) is very nearly what _clean_ is in English, _i. e._, _desired_, or _desirable_. That _petit_ comes from _petitus_ is undeniable.

Hence, where the German mode of thought connects the ideas of _smallness_ and _cleanness_, the Latin connects those of _smallness_ and _desirability_; so that as _petit_ is to _petitus_, so is _klein_ to _clean_. In the diagram this is given in the formula of a sum in the Rule of Three.

The words just noticed explain the connexion of ideas in the case of separate words. The forthcoming help us in a much more difficult investigation. What is the import of such sounds as that of the letter _s_ in the word father-_s_? It is the sign of the plural number.

Such is the question--such the answer; question and answer connected in the word _fathers_ solely for the sake of illustration. Any other word, and any other sign of case, number, person, or tense, would have done as well.

But _is_ the answer a real one? Is it an answer at all? How come such things as plural numbers, and signs of plural numbers, into language? How the particular plural before us came into being, I cannot say; but I can show how some plurals have. Let us explain the following--

_Ngi_ = _I_. _Ngi-n-de_ = _we_.
_Ngo_ = _thou_. _Ngo-n-da_ = _ye_.
_Ngu_ = _he_. _Nge-n-da_ = _they_.
_Da_ = _with_.
_Me-cum_ = _me_.

The _da_ (or _de_) in the second column, is the sign of the plural number in a language which shall at present be nameless. It is also the preposition _with_. Now _with_ denotes _association_, association _plurality_. Hence

_Ngi-n-de_ = _I_ + = _we_.
_Ngo-n-da_ = _thou_ + = _ye_.
_Nge-n-da_ = _he_ + = _they_.

This is just as if the Latins, instead of _nos_ and _vos_, said _me-cum_ and _te-cum_.

Such is the history of one mode of expressing the idea of plurality; we can scarcely say of a _plural number_. The words _plural number_ suggest the idea of a single word, like _fathers_, where the _s_ is inseparably connected with the root; at least so far inseparably connected as to have no independent existence of its own. _Ngi-n-de_, however, is no single word at all, but a pair of words in juxta-position, each with a separate existence of its own. But what if this juxta-position grow into _amalgamation_; What if the form in _da_ change? What if it become _t_ or _z_, or _th_, or _s_? What if, meanwhile, the separate preposition _da_ change in form also; in form or meaning, or, perhaps, in both? In such a case a true plural form is evolved, the history of its evolution being a mystery.

So much for one of the inflections of a _noun_. The remaining words illustrate one of a _verb_.

Hundreds of grammarians have suggested that the signs of the _persons_ in the verb might be neither more nor less than the personal pronouns _appended_; in the first instance, to the verb, but, afterwards amalgamated or incorporated with it. If so, the _-m_ in _inqua-m_, is the _m_ in _me_, &c. The late Mr. Garnett, a comparative philologist whose reputation is far below his merits, saw that this was not exactly the case. He observed that the appended pronoun was not so much the _Personal_ as the _Possessive_ one: that the analysis of a word like _inqua-m_ was not so much, _say_+_I_, as _saying_+_my_; in short, that the verb was a noun, and the pronoun either an adjective (like _meus_) or an oblique case (like _mei_), agreeing with, or governed by, it.

It is _certainly_ so in the words before you. In a language, which, at present, shall be nameless, instead of saying _my apple_, _thy apple_, they say what is equivalent to _apple-m_, _apple-th_, &c.; _i. e._, they append the possessive pronoun to the substantive, and by modifying its form, partially incorporate or amalgamate it. They do more than this. They do (as the diagram shows us) precisely the same with the verbs in their _personal_, as they do with the nouns in their _possessive_, relations. Hence, _olvas-om_, &c., is less _I read_ than _my-reading_; less _read_+_I_, than _reading_+_my_.

1.

_Olvas_--_om_ = _I read_. = _reading-my_.
---- _od_ = _thou readest_. = _reading-thy_.
---- _uk_ = _we read_. = _reading-our_.
---- _atok_ = _ye read_. = _reading-your_.

2.

_Almá_--_m_ = _my apple_. = _apple-my_.
---- _d_ = _thy apple_. = _apple-thy_.
---- _nk_ = _our apple_. = _apple-our_.
---- _tok_ = _your apple_. = _apple-your_.

I submit, that facts of this kind are of some value, great or small. But the facts themselves are not all. How were they got at? They were got at by dealing with the phenomena of language as we found them, by an induction of no ordinary width and compass; for many forms of speech had to be investigated before the facts came out in their best and most satisfactory form.

The illustration of the verb (_olvasom_, and _almám_, &c.) is from the Hungarian; that of the plural number (_nginde_, &c.), from the Tumali--the Tumali being a language no nearer than the negro districts to the south of Kordovan, between Sennaar and Darfur, and (as such) not exactly in the highway of literature and philology.

Now I ask whether there be, or whether there be not, certain branches of inquiry which are, at one and the same time, recognised to be of the highest importance, and yet not very remarkable for either unanimity of opinion, precision of language, or distinctness of idea on the part of their professors. I ask whether what is called, with average clearness, Mental Philosophy, and, with somewhat less clearness, Metaphysics, be not in this predicament? I ask whether, in this branch of investigation, the subject-matter do not eminently desiderate something definite, palpable, and objective, and whether these same desiderated tangibilities be not found in the wide field of Language to an extent which no other field supplies? Let this field be a training-ground. The facts it gives are of value. The method it requires is of value.

As the languages of the world, as the forms of speech mutually unintelligible, are counted by the hundred, and the dialects by the thousand, the field is a large one--one supplying much exercise, work, and labour. But the applications of the results obtained are wide also; for, as long as any form of mental philosophy remains susceptible of improvement, as long as its improved form remains undiffused, so long will a knowledge of the structure of language in general, a knowledge of comparative philology, a knowledge of general grammar (for we may choose our term), have its use and application. And, assuredly, this will be for some time.

As to its special value in the particular department of the ethnologist, high as it is, I say nothing, or next to nothing, about it; concerning myself only with its more general applications.

Let it be said, then, that the study of language is eminently disciplinal to those faculties that are tasked in the investigation of the phenomena of the human mind; the value of a knowledge of these being a matter foreign to the present dissertation, but being by no means low. High or low, however, it measures that of the studies under notice.

But how is this general philology to be taught? Are youths to seek for roots and processes in such languages as the Hungarian and the Tumali? No. The teaching must be by means of well-selected suggestive examples, whereby the student may rise from particulars to generals, and be taught to infer the uncertain from the certain. I do not say that the _s_ in _fathers_ arose exactly after the fashion of the Tumali plural; but, assuredly, its development was the same in kind, if not in detail. At all events, language must be dealt with as a _growth_.

In the first stage of speech, there are no inflections at all, separate words serving instead of them:--just as if, instead of saying _fathers_, we said _father many_, or _father father_; reduplication being one of the make-shifts (so to say) of this period. The languages allied to the Chinese belong to this class.

In the second stage, the separate words coalesce, but not so perfectly as to disfigure their originally separate character. The Hungarian persons have illustrated this. Language now becomes what is called _agglutinate_. The parts cohere, but the cohesion is imperfect. The majority of languages are agglutinate.

The Latin and Greek tongues illustrate the third stage. The parts originally separate, then agglutinate, now become so modified by contact as to look like secondary parts of a single word; these original separate substantive characters being a matter of inference rather than a patent and transparent fact. The _s_ in _fathers_ (which is also the _s_ in _patre-s_ and πάτερε-ς) is in this predicament.

Lastly, inflections are replaced by prepositions and auxiliary verbs, as is the case in the Italian and French when compared with the Latin.

Truly, then, may we say that the phenomena of speech are the phenomena of growth, evolution, or development; and as such must they be taught. A cell that grows,--not a crystal that is built up,--such is language.

But these well-devised selections of suggestive examples, whereby the student may rise from particulars to generals, &c., are not to be found in the ordinary grammars. Indeed, it is the very reverse of the present system; where there are twenty appeals to the memory in the shape of what is called a _rule_, for one appeal to the understanding in the shape of an illustrated process. So much the worse for the existing methods.

Moulds applied to growing trees--cookery-book receipts for making a natural juice--these are the parallels to the artificial systems of grammar _in their worst forms_. The _better_ can be excused, sometimes recommended; even as the Linnæan system of botanical teaching can, in certain cases, be used with safety, _provided always that its artificial character be explained beforehand, and insisted on throughout_.

To stand on the level of the Linnæan system, an artificial grammar must come under the following condition:--_It must leave the student nothing to unlearn when he comes to a natural one_.

How can this be done? It can be done, if the grammarian will be content to teach _forms_ only, leaving processes alone. Let him say (for instance) that the Latin for--

_I call_ is _voc_-o.
_Thou callest_, _voc_-as.
_Calling_, _voc_-ans.
_I called_, _voc_-avi &c.

But do not let him say that active aorists are formed from futures, and passive ones from the third person singular of the perfect. His forms, his paradigms, will be right; his rules, in nine cases out of ten, wrong. I am satisfied that languages can be taught without rules and by paradigms only.

This recognition of what has been called _artificial_ grammar for the teaching of special languages, as opposed to the general grammar of the comparative philologist, should serve to anticipate an objection. 'Would you,' it may be asked, 'leave the details of languages like the Latin, Greek, French, German, &c.--languages of eminent practical utility--untaught until such time as the student shall have dipped into Chinese, touched upon Hungarian, and taken a general idea of the third stage of development from the Latin, and of the fourth from the French? If so, the period of life when the memory for words is strongest will have passed away before any language but his own mother-tongue has been acquired.'

The recognition of such a thing as artificial grammar answers this in the negative. If a special language be wanted, let it be taught by-times: only, if it cannot be taught in the most scientific manner, let it be taught in a manner as little unscientific as possible.

In this lies an argument against the ordinary teaching (I speak as an Englishman) of English. What do we learn by it?

In the ordinary teaching of what is called the grammar of the English language there are two elements. There is something professed to be taught which is not taught, but which, if taught, would be worth learning; and there is something which, from being already learned better than any man can teach it, requires no lessons. The one (the latter) is the use and practice of the English tongue. This the Englishman has already. The other is the principles of grammar. With existing text-books this is an impossibility. What then _is_ taught? Something (I am quoting from what I have written elsewhere) undoubtedly. The facts, that language is more or less regular; that there _is_ such a thing as grammar; that certain expressions should be avoided, are all matters worth knowing. And they are all taught even by the worst method of teaching. But are these the proper objects of _systematic_ teaching? Is the importance of their acquisition equivalent to the time, the trouble, and the displacement of more valuable subjects, which are involved in their explanation? I think not. Gross vulgarity of language is a fault to be prevented; but the proper prevention is to be got from habit--not rules. The proprieties of the English language are to be learned, like the proprieties of English manners, by conversation and intercourse; and a proper school for both, is the best society in which the learner is placed. If this be good, systematic teaching is superfluous; if bad, insufficient. There _are_ undoubted points where a young person may doubt as to the grammatical propriety of a certain expression. In this case let him ask some one older and more instructed. Grammar, as a _art_, is, undoubtedly, _the art of speaking and writing correctly_--but then, as an _art_, it is only required for _foreign_ languages. For our _own_ we have the necessary practice and familiarity.

The true claim of English grammar to form part and parcel of an English education stands or falls with the value of the philological knowledge to which grammatical studies may serve as an introduction, and with the value of scientific grammar as a _disciplinal_ study. I have no fear of being supposed to undervalue its importance in this respect. Indeed, in assuming that it is very great, I also assume that wherever grammar is studied as grammar, the language which the grammar so studied should represent, must be the mother-tongue of the student; _whatever that mother-tongue may be_--English for Englishmen, Welsh for Welshmen, French for Frenchmen, German for Germans, &c. The study is the study of a theory; and for this reason it should be complicated as little as possible by points of practice. For this reason a man's mother-tongue is the best medium for the elements of scientific philology, simply because it is the one which he knows best in practice.

Limit, then, the teaching of English, except so far as it is preparatory to the study of language in general; with which view, teach as scientifically as possible.

Go further. Except in special cases, limit the teaching of the classical tongues to one out of the two. _One_, for all _disciplinal_ purposes, is enough. In this, go far. Dead though the tongue be, and object of ridicule as the occupation is becoming, go to the length of writing verses, though only in a few of the commoner metres. Go far, and go in one direction only. There are reasons for this singleness of path. I fear that there is almost a necessity. As long as men believed that the ordinary Latin and Greek grammars were good things of themselves, and that, even if they did not carry the student far into the classics, they told him something of value respecting language in general, a _little learning_ in the dead languages was a good thing. But what if the grammars are _not_ good things? What if they are absolutely bad? In such a case, the classical tongues cease to be learnt except for themselves. Now, one of the few things that is more useless than a little Latin is a little Greek.

Am I wrong in saying that, with nine out of ten who learn _both_ Latin and Greek, the knowledge of the two tongues conjointly is not greater than the knowledge of one of them singly ought to be?

Am I wrong in believing that the tendencies of the age are in favour of decreasing rather than increasing the amount of time bestowed upon classical scholarship?

Unless I be so, the necessity for a limitation is apparent.

To curtail English--to eliminate one of the classical tongues--possibly that of Pericles, at any rate, either that of Pericles or of Cicero--to substitute for the ordinary elements of a so-called classical education illustrations from the Chinese, the Hungarian, or the Tumali--this is what I have recommended.

I cannot but feel that in so doing I may seem to some to have been false to my text, which was to eulogize things philological. They may say, _Call you this backing your friends?_ I do. It is not by glorifying one's own more peculiar studies that such studies gain credit. To show the permanent, rather than the accidental, elements of their value, is the best service that can be done for them. It is also good service to show that they can be taught with a less expenditure of time and labour than is usually bestowed on them. But the best service of all is to indicate their disciplinal value; and to show that, instead of displacing other branches of knowledge, they so exercise certain faculties of the mind as to prepare the way to them.

II.

LOGICA.

ON THE WORD _DISTRIBUTED_, AS USED
IN LOGIC.

READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.

DECEMBER THE 18TH 1857.

The present paper is an attempt to reconcile the logical and etymological meanings of the word _Distributed_.

Speaking roughly, _distributed_ means _universal_: "a term is said to be _distributed_ when it is taken universally, so as to stand for everything it is capable of being applied to."--_Whately_, i. § 5.

Speaking more closely, it means _universal in one premiss_; it being a rule in the ordinary logic that no conclusion is possible unless one premiss be, either negatively or affirmatively, universal.

Assuredly there is no etymological connexion between the two words. Hence De Morgan writes:--"By _distributed_ is here meant _universally spoken of_. I do not use this term in the present work, because I do not see why, in any deducible meaning of the word _distributed_, it can be applied to universal as distinguished from particular."--_Formal Logic_, chap. vii.

Neither can it be so applied. It is nevertheless an accurate term.

Let it mean _related to more than one class_, and the power of the prefix _dis-_, at least, becomes intelligible.

For _all_ the purposes of logic this is not enough; inasmuch as the particular character of the relation (all-important in the structure of the syllogism) is not, at present, given. It is enough, however, to give import to the syllable _dis-_.

In affirmative propositions this relation is connective on both sides, _i. e._ the middle term forms part of _both_ the others. In negative propositions this relation is connective on _one_ side, disjunctive on the _other_.

In-- All men are mortal,
All heroes are men,

the middle term _men_ forms a part of the class called _mortal_, by being connected with it in the way that certain contents are connected with the case that contains them; whilst it also stands in connexion with the class of _heroes_ in the way that cases are connected with their contents. In--

No man is perfect,
Heroes are men,

the same double relation occurs. The class _man_, however, though part of the class _hero_, is no part of the class _perfect_ but, on the contrary, expressly excluded from it. Now this expression of exclusion constitutes a relation--disjunctive indeed, but still a relation; and this is all that is wanted to give an import to the prefix _dis-_ in _distributed_.