I understood perfectly well what Mr. Whitney meant, when he, like nearly all scholars before him, claimed the Science of Language as an historical or a moral science. Man is an amphibious creature, and all the sciences concerning man, will be more or less amphibious sciences. I did not rush into print, because he took the opposite side to the one I had taken. On the contrary, having myself laid great stress on the fact that language was not to be treated as an artful creation of the individual, I was glad that the artistic element in language, such as it is, should have found so eloquent an advocate. But I confess, I was disappointed when I saw that, with the exception of a few purely sentimental protests, there was nothing in Mr. Whitney’s treatment of the subject that differed from my own. I proved this, if not to his satisfaction, at least to that of others, by giving verbatim extracts from his Lectures, and what is the consequence? As he can no longer deny his own words, he uses the only defense which remained, he now accuses me of garbling quotations and thus misrepresenting him. This, of course, may be said of all quotations, short of reprinting a whole chapter. Yet to my mind the charge is so serious, that I feel in duty bound to repel it, not by words, but by facts.
This is the way in which Professor Whitney tries to escape from the net in which he had entangled himself. In his reply to my argument he says:—
“He chooses even more than once a sentence, in order to prove that I maintain an opinion, directly from an argument in support of the opposite opinion; for instance, in quoting my words, ‘that languages are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull,’ he overlooks the preceding parts of the same sentence: ‘as opposed to the objects which he, the linguist, follows in his researches, and the results which he wishes to attain.’ The whole is a part of a section which is to prove that the absence of reflection and conscious intent, takes away from the facts of language the subjective character which would otherwise belong to them as products of the voluntary action.”
Very well. We now have what Professor Whitney says that he said. Let us now read what he really said (p. 51):—
“The linguistic student feels that he is not dealing with the artful creations of individuals. So far as concerns the purposes for which he examines them, and the results he would derive from them, they are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull.”
To render “so far as concerns the purposes” by “Gegenüber den Zwecken, die er bei seinen Untersuchungen verfolgt,” is a strong measure. But even thus, the facts remain as I, not as he, had stated them. There was no garbling on my part, but something worse than garbling on his, and all this for no purpose whatever, except for one which I do not like to suggest. As a linguistic student Professor Whitney feels what I had felt, ‘that we are not dealing with the artful creations of individuals.’ What Professor Whitney may feel besides about language, does not concern us, but it does concern us, and it does still more concern him, that he should not endeavor to impart to scientific language that character which, as he admits, it has not, viz., that of being the very artful creation of an individual.
I am quite willing to admit, and I have done so before on several occasions, that I may have laid too great stress on those characteristics of the Science of Language by which it belongs to the physical sciences. I have explained why I did so at the time. In fact these are not new questions. Because I had said, as Dr. Whewell had said before me,—
“That there are several large provinces of speculation which concern subjects belonging to man’s immaterial nature, and which are governed by the same laws as sciences altogether physical,”
it did not follow, as Professor Whitney seems to think, that I regarded language as something like a cow or a potato. I cannot defend myself against such puerilities.
In reviewing Schleicher’s essay, “On Darwinism tested by the Science of Language,” I had said:—