and as to M. Renan, does his silence mean more than—
Ἐμοὶ δ’ ἔλασσον Ζηνὸς ἢ μηδὲν μέλει
I confess, then, frankly that, in my heart of hearts, I am not grateful for these cruel kindnesses, and if he says that the other Serene Highnesses have been less ungrateful than I am, I fear this is again one of his over-confident assertions. My publishers in America may be grateful to him, for I am told that, owing to Professor Whitney’s articles, much more interest in my works has been excited in America than I could ever have expected. But I cannot help thinking that by the line of action he has followed, he has done infinite harm to the science which we both have at heart. In order to account somehow or other for his promiscuous onslaughts, he now tells Mr. Darwin and his friends that in the Science of Language all is chaos. That is not so, unless Mr. Whitney is here using chaos in a purely subjective sense. There are differences of opinion, as there are in every living and progressive science, but even those who differ most widely, perfectly understand and respect each other, because they know that, from the days of Plato and Aristotle, men who start from different points, arrive at different conclusions, particularly when the highest problems in every science are under consideration. I do not agree with Professor Steinthal, but I understand him; I do not agree with Dr. Bleek, but I respect him; I differ most of all from Schleicher, but I think that an hour or two of private conversation, if it were possible still, would have brought us much nearer together. At all events, in reading any of their books, I feel interested, I breathe a new atmosphere, I get new ideas, I feel animated and invigorated. I have now read nearly all that Professor Whitney has written on the Science of Language, and I have not found one single new fact, one single result of independent research, nay, not even one single new etymology, that I could have added to my Collectanea. If I am wrong, let it be proved. That language is an institution, that language is an instrument, that we learn our language from our mothers, as they learned it from their mothers and so on till we come to Adam and Eve, that language is meant for communication, all this surely had been argued out before, and with arguments, when necessary, as strong as any adduced by Professor Whitney.
Professor Whitney may not be aware of this, or have forgotten it; but a fertile writer like him ought at all events to have a good memory. In his reply, p. 262, he tells us, for instance, as one of his latest discoveries, that in studying language, we ought to begin with modern languages, and that when we come to more ancient periods, we should always infer similar causes from similar effects, and never admit new forces or new processes, except when those which we know prove totally inefficient. In my own Lectures I had laid it down as one of the fundamental principles of the Science of Language that “what is real in modern formations must be admitted as possible in ancient formations, and that what has been found true on a small scale may be true on a larger scale.” I had devoted considerable space to the elucidation of this principle, and what did Professor Whitney write at that time (1865)?
“The conclusion sounds almost like a bathos; we should have called these, not fundamental principles, but obvious considerations, which hardly required any illustration” (p. 243).
Here is another instance of failure of memory. He assures us:—
“That he would never venture to charge anybody with being influenced in his literary labors by personal vanity and a desire of notoriety, except perhaps after giving a long string of proofs—nay, not even then” (p. 274).
Yet it was he who said of (I. 131) the late Professor Goldstücker that—
“Mere denunciation of one’s fellows and worship of Hindu predecessors do not make one a Vedic scholar,”
and that, after he had himself admitted that “no one would be found to question his (Professor Goldstücker’s) immense learning, his minute accuracy, and the sincerity and intensity of his convictions.”