“It is not very creditable to the students of the Science of Language that there should have been among them so much wrangling as to whether that science is to be treated as one of the natural or as one of the historical sciences. They, if any one, ought to have seen that they were playing with language, or rather that language was playing with them, and that unless a proper definition is first given of what is meant by nature and by natural science, the pleading for and against the admission of the Science of Language to the circle of the natural sciences, may be carried on ad infinitum. It is, of course, open to anybody so to define the meaning of nature as to exclude human nature, and so to narrow the sphere of the natural sciences, as to leave no place for the Science of Language. It is also possible so to interpret the meaning of growth that it becomes inapplicable alike to the gradual formation of the earth’s crust, and to the slow accumulation of the humus of language. Let the definition of these terms be plainly laid down, and the controversy, if it will not cease at once, will at all events become more fruitful. It will then turn on the legitimate definition of such terms as nature and mind, necessity and free-will, and it will have to be determined by philosophers rather than by scholars. Unless appearances deceive us, it is not the tendency of modern philosophy to isolate human nature, and to separate it by impassable barriers from nature at large, but rather to discover the bridges which lead from one bank to the other, and to lay bare the hidden foundations which, deep beneath the surface, connect the two opposite shores. It is, in fact, easy to see that the old mediæval discussions on necessity and free-will are turning up again in our own time, though slightly disguised, in the discussions on the proper place which man holds in the realm of nature; nay, that the same antinomies have been at the root of the controversy from the days when Greek philosophers maintained that language existed φύσει or θέσει, to our own days, when scholars range themselves in two hostile camps, claiming for the Science of Language a place either among the physical or the historical branches of knowledge.”
And again:—
“At all events we should never allow ourselves to forget that, if we speak of languages as natural productions, and of the Science of Language as one of the natural sciences, what we chiefly wish to say is, that languages are not produced by the free-will of individuals, and that, if they are works of art, they are works of what may be called a natural or unconscious art—an art in which the individual, though he is the agent, is not a free agent, but checked and governed from the very first breath of speech by the implied cooperation of those to whom his language is addressed, and without whose acceptance language, not being understood, would cease to be language.”
In the first lecture which I delivered at Strassburg, I dwelt on the same problem, and said:—
“There is, no doubt, in language a transition from the material to the spiritual; the raw material of language belongs to nature, but the form of language, that which really makes language, belongs to the spirit. Were it possible to trace human language directly back to natural sounds, to interjections or imitations, the question whether the Science of Language belongs to the sphere of the natural or the historical sciences would at once be solved. But I doubt whether this crude view of the origin of language counts one single supporter in Germany. With one foot language stands, no doubt, in the realm of nature, but with the other in the realm of spirit. Some years ago, when I thought it necessary to bring out as clearly as possible the much neglected natural element in language, I tried to explain in what sense the Science of Language had a right to be called the last and the highest of the natural sciences. But I need hardly say that I did not lose sight, therefore, of the intellectual and historical character of language; and I may here express my conviction that the Science of Language will yet enable us to withstand the extreme theories of the evolutionists, and to draw a hard and fast line between spirit and matter, between man and brute.”
Professor Whitney will see, therefore, that all that can be said, and be justly said, against treating the Science of Language as a purely physical science was not so new to me as he expected; nay, his friends might possibly tell him that the pro’s and con’s of this question had been far more fully and fairly weighed before his own lectures were published than afterwards. A writer on this subject, if he wishes to win new laurels, must do more than furbish up old weapons, and fight against monsters which owe their existence to nothing but his own heated imagination.
IS GLOTTOLOGY A SCIENCE?
His knowledge of the German language ought to have kept Professor Whitney from an insinuation that I had claimed for Glottology a place among the physical sciences, because I feared that otherwise the title of “science” would be altogether denied to my researches. Now whatever artificial restriction may have been forced on the term “science” in English and American, the corresponding term in German, Wissenschaft, has, as yet, resisted all such violence, and it was as a German that I ventured to call Sprachwissenschaft by its right name in English, and did not hesitate to speak even of a Science of Mythology, a Science of Religion, and a Science of Thought.
Finally, as to my wishing to smuggle in Glottology, and to secure for it at least some small corner in the circle of the Physical Sciences, I am afraid I cannot lay claim to such modesty. When at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1847, Bunsen claimed the establishment of a separate section for Ethnology, he said:—
“If man is the apex of creation, it seems right on the one side, that a historical inquiry into his origin and development should never be allowed to sever itself from the general body of natural science, and, in particular, from physiology. But on the other hand, if man is the apex of creation, if he is the end to which all organic formations tend from the very beginning; if man is at once the mystery and the key of natural science; if that is the only view of natural science worthy of our age, then ethnologic philology, once established on principles as clear as the physiological are, is the highest branch of that science for the advancement of which this Association is instituted. It is not an appendix to physiology or to anything else; but its object is, on the contrary, capable of becoming the end and goal of the labors and transactions of a scientific association.”