Lectures on The Science of Language 3

Lectures on The Science of Language 3

If, therefore, the science of language gives us an insight into that

which, by common consent, distinguishes man from all other living beings;

if it establishes a frontier between man and the brute, which can never be

removed, it would seem to possess at the present moment peculiar claims on

the attention of all who, while watching with sincere admiration the

progress of comparative physiology, yet consider it their duty to enter

their manly protest against a revival of the shallow theories of Lord

Monboddo.

 

But to return to our survey of the history of the physical sciences. We

had examined the empirical stage through which every science has to pass.

We saw that, for instance, in botany, a man who has travelled through

distant countries, who has collected a vast number of plants, who knows

their names, their peculiarities, and their medicinal qualities, is not

yet a botanist, but only a herbalist, a lover of plants, or what the

Italians call a _dilettante_, from _dilettare_, to delight. The real

science of plants, like every other science, begins with the work of

classification. An empirical acquaintance with facts rises to a scientific

knowledge of facts as soon as the mind discovers beneath the multiplicity

of single productions the unity of an organic system. This discovery is

made by means of comparison and classification. We cease to study each

flower for its own sake; and by continually enlarging the sphere of our

observation, we try to discover what is common to many and offers those

essential points on which groups or natural classes may be established.

These classes again, in their more general features, are mutually

compared; new points of difference, or of similarity of a more general and

higher character, spring to view, and enable us to discover classes of

classes, or families. And when the whole kingdom of plants has thus been

surveyed, and a simple tissue of names been thrown over the garden of

nature; when we can lift it up, as it were, and view it in our mind as a

whole, as a system well defined and complete, we then speak of the science

of plants, or botany. We have entered into altogether a new sphere of

knowledge where the individual is subject to the general, fact to law; we

discover thought, order, and purpose pervading the whole realm of nature,

and we perceive the dark chaos of matter lighted up by the reflection of a

divine mind. Such views may be right or wrong. Too hasty comparisons, or

too narrow distinctions, may have prevented the eye of the observer from

discovering the broad outlines of nature’s plan. Yet every system, however

insufficient it may prove hereafter, is a step in advance. If the mind of

man is once impressed with the conviction that there must be order and law

everywhere, it never rests again until all that seems irregular has been

eliminated, until the full beauty and harmony of nature has been

perceived, and the eye of man has caught the eye of God beaming out from

the midst of all His works. The failures of the past prepare the triumphs

of the future.

 

Thus, to recur to our former illustration, the systematic arrangement of

plants which bears the name of Linnæus, and which is founded on the number

and character of the reproductive organs, failed to bring out the natural

order which pervades all that grows and blossoms. Broad lines of

demarcation which unite or divide large tribes and families of plants were

invisible from his point of view. But in spite of this, his work was not

in vain. The fact that plants in every part of the world belonged to one

great system was established once for all; and even in later systems most

of his classes and divisions have been preserved, because the conformation

of the reproductive organs of plants happened to run parallel with other

more characteristic marks of true affinity.(10) It is the same in the

history of astronomy. Although the Ptolemæan system was a wrong one, yet

even from its eccentric point of view, laws were discovered determining

the true movements of the heavenly bodies. The conviction that there

remains something unexplained is sure to lead to the discovery of our

error. There can be no error in nature; the error must be with us. This

conviction lived in the heart of Aristotle when, in spite of his imperfect

knowledge of nature, he declared “that there is in nature nothing

interpolated or without connection, as in a bad tragedy;” and from his

time forward every new fact and every new system have confirmed his faith.

 

The object of classification is clear. We understand things if we can

comprehend them; that is to say, if we can grasp and hold together single

facts, connect isolated impressions, distinguish between what is essential

and what is merely accidental, and thus predicate the general of the

individual, and class the individual under the general. This is the secret

of all scientific knowledge. Many sciences, while passing through this

second or classificatory stage, assume the title of comparative. When the

anatomist has finished the dissection of numerous bodies, when he has

given names to each organ, and discovered the distinctive functions of

each, he is led to perceive similarity where at first he saw dissimilarity

only. He discovers in the lower animals rudimentary indications of the

more perfect organization of the higher; and he becomes impressed with the

conviction that there is in the animal kingdom the same order and purpose

which pervades the endless variety of plants or any other realm of nature.

He learns, if he did not know it before, that things were not created at

random or in a lump, but that there is a scale which leads, by

imperceptible degrees, from the lowest infusoria to the crowning work of

nature,—man; that all is the manifestation of one and the same unbroken

chain of creative thought, the work of one and the same all-wise Creator.

 

In this way the second or classificatory leads us naturally to the third

or final stage—the theoretical, or metaphysical. If the work of

classification is properly carried out, it teaches us that nothing exists

in nature by accident; that each individual belongs to a species, each

species to a genus; and that there are laws which underlie the apparent

freedom and variety of all created things. These laws indicate to us the

presence of a purpose in the mind of the Creator; and whereas the material

world was looked upon by ancient philosophers as a mere illusion, as an

agglomerate of atoms, or as the work of an evil principle, we now read and

interpret its pages as the revelation of a divine power, and wisdom, and

love. This has given to the study of nature a new character. After the

observer has collected his facts, and after the classifier has placed them

in order, the student asks what is the origin and what is the meaning of

all this? and he tries to soar, by means of induction, or sometimes even

of divination, into regions not accessible to the mere collector. In this

attempt the mind of man no doubt has frequently met with the fate of

Phaeton; but, undismayed by failure, he asks again and again for his

father’s steeds. It has been said that this so-called philosophy of nature

has never achieved anything; that it has done nothing but prove that

things must be exactly as they had been found to be by the observer and

collector. Physical science, however, would never have been what it is

without the impulses which it received from the philosopher, nay even from

the poet. “At the limits of exact knowledge” (I quote the words of

Humboldt), “as from a lofty island-shore, the eye loves to glance towards

distant regions. The images which it sees may be illusive; but, like the

illusive images which people imagined they had seen from the Canaries or

the Azores, long before the time of Columbus, they may lead to the

discovery of a new world.”

 

Copernicus, in the dedication of his work to Pope Paul III. (it was

commenced in 1517, finished 1530, published 1543), confesses that he was

brought to the discovery of the sun’s central position, and of the diurnal

motion of the earth, not by observation or analysis, but by what he calls

the feeling of a want of symmetry in the Ptolemaic system. But who had

told him that there _must_ be symmetry in all the movements of the

celestial bodies, or that complication was not more sublime than

simplicity? Symmetry and simplicity, before they were discovered by the

observer, were postulated by the philosopher. The first idea of

revolutionizing the heavens was suggested to Copernicus, as he tells us

himself, by an ancient Greek philosopher, by Philolaus, the Pythagorean.

No doubt with Philolaus the motion of the earth was only a guess, or, if

you like, a happy intuition. Nevertheless, if we may trust the words of

Copernicus, it is quite possible that without that guess we should never

have heard of the Copernican system. Truth is not found by addition and

multiplication only. When speaking of Kepler, whose method of reasoning

has been considered as unsafe and fantastic by his contemporaries as well

as by later astronomers, Sir David Brewster remarks very truly, “that, as

an instrument of research, the influence of imagination has been much

overlooked by those who have ventured to give laws to philosophy.” The

torch of imagination is as necessary to him who looks for truth, as the

lamp of study. Kepler held both, and more than that, he had the star of

faith to guide him in all things from darkness to light.

 

In the history of the physical sciences, the three stages which we have

just described as the empirical, the classificatory, and the theoretical,

appear generally in chronological order. I say, generally, for there have

been instances, as in the case just quoted of Philolaus, where the results

properly belonging to the third have been anticipated in the first stage.

To the quick eye of genius one case may be like a thousand, and one

experiment, well chosen, may lead to the discovery of an absolute law.

Besides, there are great chasms in the history of science. The tradition

of generations is broken by political or ethnic earthquakes, and the work

that was nearly finished has frequently had to be done again from the

beginning, when a new surface had been formed for the growth of a new

civilization. The succession, however, of these three stages is no doubt

the natural one, and it is very properly observed in the study of every

science. The student of botany begins as a collector of plants. Taking

each plant by itself, he observes its peculiar character, its habitat, its

proper season, its popular or unscientific name. He learns to distinguish

between the roots, the stem, the leaves, the flower, the calyx, the

stamina, and pistils. He learns, so to say, the practical grammar of the

plant before he can begin to compare, to arrange, and classify.

 

Again, no one can enter with advantage on the third stage of any physical

science without having passed through the second. No one can study _the_

plant, no one can understand the bearing of such a work as, for instance,

Professor Schleiden’s “Life of the Plant,”(11) who has not studied the

life of plants in the wonderful variety, and in the still more wonderful

order, of nature. These last and highest achievements of inductive

philosophy are possible only after the way has been cleared by previous

classification. The philosopher must command his classes like regiments

which obey the order of their general. Thus alone can the battle be fought

and truth be conquered.

 

After this rapid glance at the history of the other physical sciences, we

now return to our own, the science of language, in order to see whether it

really is a science, and whether it can be brought back to the standard of

the inductive sciences. We want to know whether it has passed, or is still

passing, through the three phases of physical research; whether its

progress has been systematic or desultory, whether its method has been

appropriate or not. But before we do this, we shall, I think, have to do

something else. You may have observed that I always took it for granted