lectures on the science of language 15

lectures on the science of language 15

But we shall see that the science of language owes more than its first

impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very

apostles who were commanded “to go into all the world, and preach the

Gospel to every creature,” and their true successors, the missionaries of

the whole Christian Church. Translations of the Lord’s Prayer or of the

Bible into every dialect of the world, form even now the most valuable

materials for the comparative philologist. As long as the number of known

languages was small, the idea of classification hardly suggested itself.

The mind must be bewildered by the multiplicity of facts before it has

recourse to division. As long as the only languages studied were Greek,

Latin, and Hebrew, the simple division into sacred and profane, or

classical and oriental, sufficed. But when theologians extended their

studies to Arabic, Chaldee, and Syriac, a step, and a very important step,

was made towards the establishment of a class or family of languages.(110)

No one could help seeing that these languages were most intimately related

to each other, and that they differed from Greek and Latin on all points

on which they agreed among themselves. As early as 1606 we find

_Guichard_,(111) in his “Harmonie Etymologique,” placing Hebrew, Chaldee,

and Syriac as a class of languages by themselves, and distinguishing

besides between the Romance and Teutonic dialects.

 

What prevented, however, for a long time the progress of the science of

language was the idea that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind,

and that, therefore, all languages must be derived from Hebrew. The

fathers of the Church never expressed any doubt on this point. St. Jerome,

in one of his epistles to Damasus,(112) writes: “the whole of antiquity

(universa antiquitas) affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is

written, was the beginning of all human speech.” Origen, in his eleventh

Homily on the book of Numbers, expresses his belief that the Hebrew

language, originally given through Adam, remained in that part of the

world which was the chosen portion of God, not left like the rest to one

of His angels.(113) When, therefore, the first attempts at a

classification of languages were made, the problem, as it presented itself

to scholars such as Guichard and Thomassin, was this: “As Hebrew is

undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process

by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these

numerous dialects, such as Greek, and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be

traced back to their common source, the Hebrew?”

 

It is astonishing what an amount of real learning and ingenuity was wasted

on this question during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It

finds, perhaps, but one parallel in the laborious calculations and

constructions of early astronomers, who had to account for the movements

of the heavenly bodies, always taking it for granted that the earth must

be the fixed centre of our planetary system. But, although we know now

that the labors of such scholars as Thomassin were, and could not be

otherwise than fruitless, it would be a most discouraging view to take of

the progress of the human race, were we to look upon the exertions of

eminent men in former ages, though they may have been in a wrong

direction, as mere vanity and vexation of spirit. We must not forget that

the very fact of the failure of such men contributed powerfully to a

general conviction that there must be something wrong in the problem

itself, till at last a bolder genius inverted the problem and thereby

solved it. When books after books had been written to show how Greek and

Latin and all other languages were derived from Hebrew,(114) and when not

one single system proved satisfactory, people asked at last—“Why then

_should_ all languages be derived from Hebrew?”—and this very question

solved the problem. It might have been natural for theologians in the

fourth and fifth centuries, many of whom knew neither Hebrew nor any

language except their own, to take it for granted that Hebrew was the

source of all languages, but there is neither in the Old nor the New

Testament a single word to necessitate this view. Of the language of Adam

we know nothing; but if Hebrew, as we know it, was one of the languages

that sprang from the confusion of tongues at Babel, it could not well have

been the language of Adam or of the whole earth, “when the whole earth was

still of one speech.”(115)

 

Although, therefore, a certain advance was made towards a classification

of languages by the Semitic scholars of the seventeenth century, yet this

partial advance became in other respects an impediment. The purely

scientific interest in arranging languages according to their

characteristic features was lost sight of, and erroneous ideas were

propagated, the influence of which has even now not quite subsided.

 

The first who really conquered the prejudice that Hebrew was the source of

all language was Leibniz, the cotemporary and rival of Newton. “There is

as much reason,” he said, “for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive

language of mankind, as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who

published a work at Antwerp, in 1580, to prove that Dutch was the language

spoken in Paradise.”(116) In a letter to Tenzel, Leibniz writes: “To call

Hebrew the primitive language, is like calling branches of a tree

primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn trunks

could grow instead of trees. Such ideas may be conceived, but they do not

agree with the laws of nature, and with the harmony of the universe, that

is to say with the Divine Wisdom.”(117)

 

But Leibniz did more than remove this one great stumbling-block from the

threshold of the science of language. He was the first to apply the

principle of sound inductive reasoning to a subject which before him had

only been treated at random. He pointed out the necessity of collecting,

first of all, as large a number of facts as possible.(118) He appealed to

missionaries, travellers, ambassadors, princes, and emperors, to help him

in a work which he had so much at heart. The Jesuits in China had to work

for him. Witsen,(119) the traveller, sent him a most precious present, a

translation of the Lord’s Prayer into the jargon of the Hottentots. “My

friend,” writes Leibniz in thanking him, “remember, I implore you, and

remind your Muscovite friends, to make researches in order to procure

specimens of the Scythian languages, the Samoyedes, Siberians, Bashkirs,

Kalmuks, Tungusians, and others.” Having made the acquaintance of Peter

the Great, Leibniz wrote to him the following letter, dated Vienna,

October the 26th, 1713:—

 

“I have suggested that the numerous languages, hitherto almost entirely

unknown and unstudied, which are current in the empire of your Majesty and

on its frontiers, should be reduced to writing; also that dictionaries, or

at least small vocabularies, should be collected, and translations be

procured in such languages of the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the

Apostolic Symbolum, and other parts of the Catechism, _ut omnis lingua

laudet Dominum_. This would increase the glory of your Majesty, who reigns

over so many nations, and is so anxious to improve them; and it would,

likewise, by means of a comparison of languages, enable us to discover the

origin of those nations who from Scythia, which is subject to your

Majesty, advanced into other countries. But principally it would help to

plant Christianity among the nations speaking those dialects, and I have,

therefore, addressed the Most Rev. Metropolitan on the same subject.”(120)

 

Leibniz drew up a list of the most simple and necessary terms which should

be selected for comparison in various languages. At home, while engaged in

historical researches, he collected whatever could throw light on the

origin of the German language, and he encouraged others, such as Eccard,

to do the same. He pointed out the importance of dialects, and even of

provincial and local terms, for elucidating the etymological structure of

languages.(121) Leibniz never undertook a systematic classification of the

whole realm of language, nor was he successful in classing the dialects

with which he had become acquainted. He distinguished between a Japhetic

and Aramaic class, the former occupying the north, the latter the south,

of the continent of Asia and Europe. He believed in a common origin of

languages, and in a migration of the human race from east to west. But he

failed to distinguish the exact degrees of relationship in which languages

stood to each other, and he mixed up some of the Turanian dialects, such

as Finnish and Tataric, with the Japhetic family of speech. If Leibniz had

found time to work out all the plans which his fertile and comprehensive

genius conceived, or if he had been understood and supported by

cotemporary scholars, the science of language, as one of the inductive

sciences, might have been established a century earlier. But a man like

Leibniz, who was equally distinguished as a scholar, a theologian, a

lawyer, an historian, and a mathematician, could only throw out hints as

to how language ought to be studied. Leibniz was not only the discoverer

of the differential calculus. He was one of the first to watch the

geological stratification of the earth. He was engaged in constructing a

calculating machine, the idea of which he first conceived as a boy. He

drew up an elaborate plan of an expedition to Egypt, which he submitted to

Louis XIV. in order to avert his attention from the frontiers of Germany.

The same man was engaged in a long correspondence with Bossuet to bring

about a reconciliation between Protestants and Romanists, and he

endeavored, in his Theodicée and other works, to defend the cause of truth

and religion against the inroads of the materialistic philosophy of

England and France. It has been said, indeed, that the discoveries of

Leibniz produced but little effect, and that most of them had to be made

again. This is not the case, however, with regard to the science of

language. The new interest in languages, which Leibniz had called into

life, did not die again. After it had once been recognized as a

desideratum to bring together a complete _Herbarium_ of the languages of

mankind, missionaries and travellers felt it their duty to collect lists

of words, and draw up grammars wherever they came in contact with a new

race. The two great works in which, at the beginning of our century, the

results of these researches were summed up, I mean the Catalogue of

Languages by Hervas, and the Mithridates of Adelung, can both be traced

back directly to the influence of Leibniz. As to Hervas, he had read

Leibniz carefully, and though he differs from him on some points, he fully

acknowledges his merits in promoting a truly philosophical study of

languages. Of Adelung’s Mithridates and his obligations to Leibniz we

shall have to speak presently.

 

Hervas lived from 1735 to 1809. He was a Spaniard by birth, and a Jesuit

by profession. While working as a missionary among the Polyglottous tribes

of America, his attention was drawn to a systematic study of languages.

After his return, he lived chiefly at Rome in the midst of the numerous

Jesuit missionaries who had been recalled from all parts of the world, and

who, by their communications on the dialects of the tribes among whom they

had been laboring, assisted him greatly in his researches.

 

Most of his works were written in Italian, and were afterwards translated

into Spanish. We cannot enter into the general scope of his literary

labors, which are of the most comprehensive character. They were intended

to form a kind of Kosmos, for which he chose the title of “_Idea del

Universo_.” What is of interest to us is that portion which treats of man

and language as part of the universe; and here, again, chiefly his

Catalogue of Languages, in six volumes, published in Spanish in the year

1800.

 

If we compare the work of Hervas with a similar work which excited much

attention towards the end of the last century, and is even now more widely

known than Hervas, I mean Court de Gebelin’s “Monde Primitif,”(122) we

shall see at once how far superior the Spanish Jesuit is to the French

philosopher. Gebelin treats Persian, Armenian, Malay, and Coptic as

dialects of Hebrew; he speaks of Bask as a dialect of Celtic, and he tries

to discover Hebrew, Greek, English, and French words in the idioms of

America. Hervas, on the contrary, though embracing in his catalogue five

times the number of languages that were known to Gebelin, is most careful

not to allow himself to be carried away by theories not warranted by the

evidence before him. It is easy now to point out mistakes and inaccuracies

in Hervas, but I think that those who have blamed him most are those who

ought most to have acknowledged their obligations to him. To have

collected specimens and notices of more than 300 languages is no small

matter. But Hervas did more. He himself composed grammars of more than

forty languages.(123) He was the first to point out that the true

affinities of languages must be determined chiefly by grammatical

evidence, not by mere similarity of words.(124) He proved, by a

comparative list of declensions and conjugations, that Hebrew, Chaldee,

Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are all but dialects of one original

language, and constitute one family of speech, the Semitic.(125) He

scouted the idea of deriving all the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He

had perceived clear traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and

Finnish, three dialects now classed as members of the Turanian

family.(126) He had proved that Bask was not, as was commonly supposed, a

Celtic dialect, but an independent language, spoken by the earliest

inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish mountains and

rivers.(127) Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of

the science of language, the establishment of the Malay and Polynesian

family of speech, extending from the island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208 degrees of longitude, to the Easter Islands west of America,(128)was made by Hervas long before it was announced to the world by Humboldt.