Lectures on The Science of Language 2
There is a certain uniformity in the history of most sciences. If we read
such works as Whewell’s History of the Inductive Sciences or Humboldt’s
Cosmos, we find that the origin, the progress, the causes of failure and
success have been the same for almost every branch of human knowledge.
There are three marked periods or stages in the history of every one of
them, which we may call the _Empirical_, the _Classificatory_, and the
_Theoretical_. However humiliating it may sound, every one of our
sciences, however grand their present titles, can be traced back to the
most humble and homely occupations of half-savage tribes. It was not the
true, the good, and the beautiful which spurred the early philosophers to
deep researches and bold discoveries. The foundation-stone of the most
glorious structures of human ingenuity in ages to come was supplied by the
pressing wants of a patriarchal and semi-barbarous society. The names of
some of the most ancient departments of human knowledge tell their own
tale. Geometry, which at present declares itself free from all sensuous
impressions, and treats of its points and lines and planes as purely ideal
conceptions, not to be confounded with those coarse and imperfect
representations as they appear on paper to the human eye; geometry, as its
very name declares, began with measuring a garden or a field. It is
derived from the Greek _gē_, land, ground, earth, and _metron_, measure.
Botany, the science of plants, was originally the science of _botanē_,
which in Greek does not mean a plant in general, but fodder, from
_boskein_, to feed. The science of plants would have been called
Phytology, from the Greek _phyton_, a plant.(1) The founders of Astronomy
were not the poet or the philosopher, but the sailor and the farmer. The
early poet may have admired “the mazy dance of planets,” and the
philosopher may have speculated on the heavenly harmonies; but it was to
the sailor alone that a knowledge of the glittering guides of heaven
became a question of life and death. It was he who calculated their
risings and settings with the accuracy of a merchant and the shrewdness of
an adventurer; and the names that were given to single stars or
constellations clearly show that they were invented by the ploughers of
the sea and of the land. The moon, for instance, the golden hand on the
dark dial of heaven, was called by them the Measurer,—the measurer of
time; for time was measured by nights, and moons, and winters, long before
it was reckoned by days, and suns, and years. Moon(2) is a very old word.
It was _môna_ in Anglo-Saxon, and was used there, not as a feminine, but
as a masculine; for the moon was a masculine in all Teutonic languages,
and it is only through the influence of classical models that in English
moon has been changed into a feminine, and sun into a masculine. It was a
most unlucky assertion which Mr. Harris made in his _Hermes_, that all
nations ascribe to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a feminine
gender.(3) In Gothic moon is _mena_, which is a masculine. For month we
have in A.-S. _mónâdh_, in Gothic _menoth_, both masculine. In Greek we
find _mēn_, a masculine, for month, and _mēnē_, a feminine, for moon. In
Latin we have the derivative _mensis_, month, and in Sanskrit we find
_mâs_ for moon, and _mâsa_ for month, both masculine.(4) Now this _mâs_ in
Sanskrit is clearly derived from a root _mâ_, to measure, to mete. In
Sanskrit, I measure is _mâ-mi_; thou measurest, _mâ-si_; he measures,
_mâ-ti_ (or _mimî-te_). An instrument of measuring is called in Sanskrit
_mâ-tram_, the Greek _metron_, our metre. Now if the moon was originally
called by the farmer the measurer, the ruler of days, and weeks, and
seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord of their festivals, and the
herald of their public assemblies, it is but natural that he should have
been conceived as a man, and not as the love-sick maiden which our modern
sentimental poetry has put in his place.
It was the sailor who, before intrusting his life and goods to the winds
and the waves of the ocean, watched for the rising of those stars which he
called the Sailing-stars or _Pleiades_, from _plein_, to sail. Navigation
in the Greek waters was considered safe after the return of the Pleiades;
and it closed when they disappeared. The Latin name for the _Pleiades_ is
_Vergiliæ_, from _virga_, a sprout or twig. This name was given to them by
the Italian husbandman, because in Italy, where they became visible about
May, they marked the return of summer.(5) Another constellation, the seven
stars in the head of Taurus, received the name of _Hyades_ or _Pluviæ_ in
Latin, because at the time when they rose with the sun they were supposed
to announce rain. The astronomer retains these and many other names; he
still speaks of the pole of heaven, of wandering and fixed stars,(6) but
he is apt to forget that these terms were not the result of scientific
observation and classification, but were borrowed from the language of
those who themselves were wanderers on the sea or in the desert, and to
whom the fixed stars were in full reality what their name implies, stars
driven in and fixed, by which they might hold fast on the deep, as by
heavenly anchors.
But although historically we are justified in saying that the first
geometrician was a ploughman, the first botanist a gardener, the first
mineralogist a miner, it may reasonably be objected that in this early
stage a science is hardly a science yet: that measuring a field is not
geometry, that growing cabbages is very far from botany, and that a
butcher has no claim to the title of comparative anatomist. This is
perfectly true, yet it is but right that each science should be reminded
of these its more humble beginnings, and of the practical requirements
which it was originally intended to answer. A science, as Bacon says,
should be a rich storehouse for the glory of God, and the relief of man’s
estate. Now, although it may seem as if in the present high state of our
society students were enabled to devote their time to the investigation of
the facts and laws of nature, or to the contemplation of the mysteries of
the world of thought, without any side-glance at the practical result of
their labors, no science and no art have long prospered and flourished
among us, unless they were in some way subservient to the practical
interests of society. It is true that a Lyell collects and arranges, a
Faraday weighs and analyzes, an Owen dissects and compares, a Herschel
observes and calculates, without any thought of the immediate marketable
results of their labors. But there is a general interest which supports
and enlivens their researches, and that interest depends on the practical
advantages which society at large derives from their scientific studies.
Let it be known that the successive strata of the geologist are a
deception to the miner, that the astronomical tables are useless to the
navigator, that chemistry is nothing but an expensive amusement, of no use
to the manufacturer and the farmer—and astronomy, chemistry, and geology
would soon share the fate of alchemy and astrology. As long as the
Egyptian science excited the hopes of the invalid by mysterious
prescriptions (I may observe by the way that the hieroglyphic signs of our
modern prescriptions have been traced back by Champollion to the real
hieroglyphics of Egypt(7))—and as long as it instigated the avarice of its
patrons by the promise of the discovery of gold, it enjoyed a liberal
support at the courts of princes, and under the roofs of monasteries.
Though alchemy did not lead to the discovery of gold, it prepared the way
to discoveries more valuable. The same with astrology. Astrology was not
such mere imposition as it is generally supposed to have been. It is
counted as a science by so sound and sober a scholar as Melancthon, and
even Bacon allows it a place among the sciences, though admitting that “it
had better intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of man than
with his reason.” In spite of the strong condemnation which Luther
pronounced against astrology, astrology continued to sway the destinies of
Europe; and a hundred years after Luther, the astrologer was the
counsellor of princes and generals, while the founder of modern astronomy
died in poverty and despair. In our time the very rudiments of astrology
are lost and forgotten.(8) Even real and useful arts, as soon as they
cease to be useful, die away, and their secrets are sometimes lost beyond
the hope of recovery. When after the Reformation our churches and chapels
were divested of their artistic ornaments, in order to restore, in outward
appearance also, the simplicity and purity of the Christian church, the
colors of the painted windows began to fade away, and have never regained
their former depth and harmony. The invention of printing gave the
death-blow to the art of ornamental writing and of miniature-painting
employed in the illumination of manuscripts; and the best artists of the
present day despair of rivalling the minuteness, softness, and brilliancy
combined by the humble manufacturer of the mediæval missal.
I speak somewhat feelingly on the necessity that every science should
answer some practical purpose, because I am aware that the science of
language has but little to offer to the utilitarian spirit of our age. It
does not profess to help us in learning languages more expeditiously, nor
does it hold out any hope of ever realizing the dream of one universal
language. It simply professes to teach what language is, and this would
hardly seem sufficient to secure for a new science the sympathy and
support of the public at large. There are problems, however, which, though
apparently of an abstruse and merely speculative character, have exercised
a powerful influence for good or evil in the history of mankind. Men
before now have fought for an idea, and have laid down their lives for a
word; and many of these problems which have agitated the world from the
earliest to our own times, belong properly to the science of language.
Mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease
of language. A myth means a word, but a word which, from being a name or
an attribute, has been allowed to assume a more substantial existence.
Most of the Greek, the Roman, the Indian, and other heathen gods are
nothing but poetical names, which were gradually allowed to assume a
divine personality never contemplated by their original inventors. _Eos_
was a name of the dawn before she became a goddess, the wife of
_Tithonos_, or the dying day. _Fatum_, or fate, meant originally what had
been spoken; and before Fate became a power, even greater than Jupiter, it
meant that which had once been spoken by Jupiter, and could never be
changed,—not even by Jupiter himself. _Zeus_ originally meant the bright
heaven, in Sanskrit _Dyaus_; and many of the stories told of him as the
supreme god, had a meaning only as told originally of the bright heaven,
whose rays, like golden rain, descend on the lap of the earth, the _Danae_
of old, kept by her father in the dark prison of winter. No one doubts
that _Luna_ was simply a name of the moon; but so was likewise _Lucina_,
both derived from _lucere_, to shine. _Hecate_, too, was an old name of
the moon, the feminine of _Hekatos_ and _Hekatebolos_, the far-darting
sun; and _Pyrrha_, the Eve of the Greeks, was nothing but a name of the
red earth, and in particular of Thessaly. This mythological disease,
though less virulent in modern languages, is by no means extinct.
During the Middle Ages the controversy between Nominalism and Realism,
which agitated the church for centuries, and finally prepared the way for
the Reformation, was again, as its very name shows, a controversy on
names, on the nature of language, and on the relation of words to our
conceptions on one side, and to the realities of the outer world on the
other. Men were called heretics for believing that words such as _justice_
or _truth_ expressed only conceptions of our mind, not real things walking
about in broad daylight.
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