Phonetic Rules
Mr. Max Müller argues at length (and, to my ignorance, persuasively) in favour of a genial laxity in the application of phonetic rules to old proper names. Do they apply to these as strictly as to ordinary words? ‘This is a question that has often been asked . . . but it has never been boldly answered’ (i. 297). Mr. Max Müller cannot have forgotten that Curtius answered boldly—in the negative. ‘Without such rigour all attempts at etymology are impossible. For this very reason ethnologists and mythologists should make themselves acquainted with the simple principles of comparative philology.’ [{109}]
But it is not for us to settle such disputes of scholars. Meanwhile their evidence is derived from their private interpretations of old proper names, and they differ among themselves as to whether, in such interpretations, they should or should not be governed strictly by phonetic laws. Then what Mr. Max Müller calls ‘the usual bickerings’ begin among scholars (i. 416). And Mr. Max Müller connects Ouranos with Vedic Varuna, while Wackernagel prefers to derive it from ουρον, urine, and this from ουρεω=Sk. Varshayâmi, to rain (ii. 416, 417), and so it goes on for years with a glorious uncertainty. If Mr. Max Müller’s equations are scientifically correct, the scholars who accept them not must all be unscientific. Or else, this is not science at all.