If a philosopher tries to begin by thinking out the methods in accordance with which he will philosophise, he is like a poet who first writes a system of æsthetics in order to poetise in accordance with it. Both of them may be compared to a man who first sings himself a tune and afterwards dances to it. The thinking mind must find its way from original tendency. Rule and application, method and achievement, must, like matter and form, be inseparable. But after we have reached the goal we may consider the path we have followed. Æsthetics and methodology are, from their nature, younger than poetry and philosophy; as grammar is younger than language, thorough bass younger than music, and logic younger than thought.
This is a fitting place to make, in passing, a remark by means of which I should like to check a growing evil while there is yet time. That Latin has ceased to be the language of all scientific investigations has the disadvantage that there is no longer an immediately common scientific literature for the whole of Europe, but national literatures. And thus every scholar is primarily limited to a much smaller public, and moreover to a public hampered with national points of view and prejudices. Then he must now learn the four principal European languages, as well as the two ancient languages. In this it will be a great assistance to him that the termini technici of all sciences (with the exception of mineralogy) are, as an inheritance from our predecessors, Latin or Greek. Therefore all nations wisely retain these. Only the Germans have hit upon the unfortunate idea of wishing to Germanise the termini technici of all the sciences. This has two great disadvantages. First, the foreign and also the German scholar is obliged to learn all the technical terms of his science twice, which, when there are many—for [pg 311] example, in Anatomy—is an incredibly tiresome and lengthy business. If the other nations were not in this respect wiser than the Germans, we would have the trouble of learning every terminus technicus five times. If the Germans carry this further, foreign men of learning will leave their books altogether unread; for besides this fault they are for the most part too diffuse, and are written in a careless, bad, and often affected and objectionable style, and besides are generally conceived with a rude disregard of the reader and his requirements. Secondly, those Germanised forms of the termini technici are almost throughout long, patched-up, stupidly chosen, awkward, jarring words, not clearly separated from the rest of the language, which therefore impress themselves with difficulty upon the memory, while the Greek and Latin expressions chosen by the ancient and memorable founders of the sciences possess the whole of the opposite good qualities, and easily impress themselves on the memory by their sonorous sound. What an ugly, harsh-sounding word, for instance, is “Stickstoff” instead of azot! “Verbum,” “substantiv,” “adjectiv,” are remembered and distinguished more easily than “Zeitwort,” “Nennwort,” “Beiwort,” or even “Umstandswort” instead of “adverbium.” In Anatomy it is quite unsupportable, and moreover vulgar and low. Even “Pulsader” and “Blutader” are more exposed to momentary confusion than “Arterie” and “Vene;” but utterly bewildering are such expressions as “Fruchthälter,” “Fruchtgang,” and “Fruchtleiter” instead of “uterus,” “vagina,” and “tuba Faloppii,” which yet every doctor must know, and which he will find sufficient in all European languages. In the same way “Speiche” and “Ellenbogenröhre” instead of “radius” and “ulna,” which all Europe has understood for thousands of years. Wherefore then this clumsy, confusing, drawling, and awkward Germanising? Not less objectionable is the translation of the technical terms in Logic, in which our gifted professors of philosophy are the creators of a new terminology, [pg 312] and almost every one of them has his own. With G. E. Schulze, for example, the subject is called “Grundbegriff,” the predicate “Beilegungsbegriff;” then there are “Beilegungsschlüsse,” “Voraussetzungsschlüsse,” and “Entgegensetzungsschlüsse;” the judgments have “Grösse,” “Beschaffenheit,” “Verhältniss,” and “Zuverlässigkeit,” i.e., quantity, quality, relation, and modality. The same perverse influence of this Germanising mania is to be found in all the sciences. The Latin and Greek expressions have the further advantage that they stamp the scientific conception as such, and distinguish it from the words of common intercourse, and the ideas which cling to them through association; while, for example, “Speisebrei” instead of chyme seems to refer to the food of little children, and “Lungensack” instead of pleura, and “Herzbeutel” instead of pericardium seem to have been invented by butchers rather than anatomists. Besides this, the most immediate necessity of learning the ancient languages depends upon the old termini technici, and they are more and more in danger of being neglected through the use of living languages in learned investigations. But if it comes to this, if the spirit of the ancients bound up with their languages disappears from a liberal education, then coarseness, insipidity, and vulgarity will take possession of the whole of literature. For the works of the ancients are the pole-star of every artistic or literary effort; if it sets they are lost. Even now we can observe from the miserable and puerile style of most writers that they have never written Latin.[24] The study of the classical authors is very properly called the study of Humanity, for through it the student first becomes a man again, for he enters [pg 313] into the world which was still free from all the absurdities of the Middle Ages and of romanticism, which afterwards penetrated so deeply into mankind in Europe that even now every one comes into the world covered with it, and has first to strip it off simply to become a man again. Think not that your modern wisdom can ever supply the place of that initiation into manhood; ye are not, like the Greeks and Romans, born freemen, unfettered sons of nature. Ye are first the sons and heirs of the barbarous Middle Ages and of their madness, of infamous priestcraft, and of half-brutal, half-childish chivalry. Though both now gradually approach their end, yet ye cannot yet stand on your own feet. Without the school of the ancients your literature will degenerate into vulgar gossip and dull philistinism. Thus for all these reasons it is my well-intended counsel that an end be put at once to the Germanising mania condemned above.
I shall further take the opportunity of denouncing here the disorder which for some years has been introduced into German orthography in an unprecedented manner. Scribblers of every species have heard something of conciseness of expression, but do not know that this consists in the careful omission of everything superfluous (to which, it is true, the whole of their writings belong), but imagine they can arrive at it by clipping the words as swindlers clip coin; and every syllable which appears to them superfluous, because they do not feel its value, they cut off without more ado. For example, our ancestors, with true tact, said “Beweis” and “Verweis;” but, on the other hand, “Nachweisung.” The fine distinction analogous to that between “Versuch” and “Versuchung,” “Betracht” and “Betrachtung,” is not perceptible to dull ears and thick skulls; therefore they have invented the word “Nachweis,” which has come at once into general use, for this only requires that an idea should be thoroughly awkward and a blunder very gross. Accordingly a similar amputation has already been proposed in innumerable [pg 314] words; for example, instead of “Untersuchung” is written “Untersuch;” nay, even instead of “allmälig,” “mälig;” instead of “beinahe,” “nahe;” instead of “beständig,” “ständig.” If a Frenchman took upon himself to write “près” instead of “presque,” or if an Englishman wrote “most” instead of “almost,” they would be laughed at by every one as fools; but in Germany whoever does this sort of thing passes for a man of originality. Chemists already write “löslich” and “unlöslich” instead of “unauflöslich,” and if the grammarians do not rap them over the knuckles they will rob the language of a valuable word. Knots, shoe-strings, and also conglomerates of which the cement is softened, and all analogous things are “löslich” (can be loosed); but what is “auflöslich” (soluble), on the other hand, is whatever vanishes in a liquid, like salt in water. “Auflösen” (to dissolve) is the terminus ad hoc, which says this and nothing else, marking out a definite conception; but our acute improvers of the language wish to empty it into the general rinsing-pan “lösen” (to loosen); they would therefore in consistency be obliged to make “lösen” also take the place everywhere of “ablösen” (to relieve, used of guards), “auslösen” (to release), “einlösen” (to redeem), &c., and in these, as in the former case, deprive the language of definiteness of expression. But to make the language poorer by a word means to make the thought of the nation poorer by a conception. Yet this is the tendency of the united efforts of almost all our writers of books for the last ten or twenty years. For what I have shown here by one example can be supported by a hundred others, and the meanest stinting of syllables prevails like a disease. The miserable wretches actually count the letters, and do not hesitate to mutilate a word, or to use one in a false sense, whenever by doing so they can gain two letters. He who is capable of no new thoughts will at least bring new words to market, and every ink-slinger regards it as his vocation to improve the language. Journalists practise [pg 315] this most shamelessly; and since their papers, on account of the trivial nature of their contents, have the largest public, indeed a public which for the most part reads nothing else, a great danger threatens the language through them. I therefore seriously advise that they should be subjected to an orthographical censorship, or that they should be made to pay a fine for every unusual or mutilated word; for what could be more improper than that changes of language should proceed from the lowest branch of literature? Language, especially a relatively speaking original language like German, is the most valuable inheritance of a nation, and it is also an exceedingly complicated work of art, easily injured, and which cannot again be restored, therefore a noli me tangere. Other nations have felt this, and have shown great piety towards their languages, although far less complete than German. Therefore the language of Dante and Petrarch differs only in trifles from that of to-day; Montaigne is still quite readable, and so also is Shakspeare in his oldest editions. For a German indeed it is good to have somewhat long words in his mouth; for he thinks slowly, and they give him time to reflect. But this prevailing economy of language shows itself in yet more characteristic phenomena. For example, in opposition to all logic and grammar, they use the imperfect for the perfect and pluperfect; they often stick the auxiliary verb in their pocket; they use the ablative instead of the genitive; for the sake of omitting a couple of logical particles they make such intricate sentences that one has to read them four times over in order to get at the sense; for it is only the paper and not the reader's time that they care to spare. In proper names, after the manner of Hottentots, they do not indicate the case either by inflection or article: the reader may guess it. But they are specially fond of contracting the double vowel and dropping the lengthening h, those letters sacred to prosody; which is just the same thing as if we wanted to banish η and ω [pg 316] from Greek, and make ε and ο take their place. Whoever writes Scham, Märchen, Mass, Spass, ought also to write Lon, Son, Stat, Sat, Jar, Al, &c. But since writing is the copy of speech, posterity will imagine that one ought to speak as one writes; and then of the German language there will only remain a narrow, mouth-distorting, jarring noise of consonants, and all prosody will be lost. The spelling “Literatur” instead of the correct “Litteratur” is also very much liked, because it saves a letter. In defence of this the participle of the verb linere is given as the root of the word. But linere means to smear; therefore the favoured spelling might actually be correct for the greater part of German bookmaking; so that one could distinguish a very small “Litteratur” from a very extensive “Literatur.” In order to write concisely let a man improve his style and shun all useless gossip and chatter, and then he will not need to cut out syllables and letters on account of the dearness of paper. But to write so many useless pages, useless sheets, useless books, and then to want to make up this waste of time and paper at the cost of the innocent syllables and letters—that is truly the superlative of what is called in English being penny wise and pound foolish. It is to be regretted that there is no German Academy to take charge of the language against literary sans-culottism, especially in an age when even those who are ignorant of the ancient language venture to employ the press. I have expressed my mind more fully on the whole subject of the inexcusable mischief being done at the present day to the German language in my “Parerga,” vol. ii. chap. 23.
In my essay on the principle of sufficient reason, § 51, I already proposed a first classification of the sciences in accordance with the form of the principle of sufficient reason which reigns in them; and I also touched upon it again in §§ 7 and 15 of the first volume of this work. I will give here a small attempt at such a classification, [pg 317] which will yet no doubt be susceptible of much improvement and perfecting:—
I. Pure a priori Sciences.
1. The doctrine of the ground of being.
(a.) In space: Geometry.
(b.) In time: Arithmetic and Algebra.
2. The doctrine of the ground of knowing: Logic.
II. Empirical or a posteriori Sciences. All based upon the ground of becoming, i.e., the law of causality, and upon the three modes of that law.