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The Mumbles, near Swansea, Wales, September, 1875. |
Footnotes to Chapter IX (X):
In Self-defense
[1.] See a very remarkable article by Von Hartmann on Haeckel, in the Deutsche Rundschau. July, 1875.
[2.] Etymologische Forschungen, 1871, p. 78, tönende, d.h. weiche.
[3.] See p. 348.
[4.] Lectures, vol. ii. p. 157.
[5.] Having still that kind of faith left, that a man could not willfully say a thing which he knows to be untrue, I looked again at every passage where I have dwelt on the difference between soft and hard consonants, and I think I may have found the passage which Professor Whitney grasped at, when he thought that I knew nothing of the difference between voiced and voiceless letters, until he had enlightened me on the subject. Speaking of letters, not as things by themselves, but as acts, I sometimes speak of the process that produces the hard consonant first, and then go on to say that it can be voiced, and be made soft. Thus when speaking of s and z, I say, the former is completely surd, the latter capable of intonation, and the same expression occurs again. Could Professor Whitney have thought that I meant to say that z was only capable of intonation, but was not necessarily intonated? I believe he did, for it is with regard to s and z that, as I see, he says, “it is a marvel to find men like Max Müller, in his last lectures about language, who still cling to the old view that a z, for instance, differs from s primarily by inferior force of utterance.” Now, I admit that my expression, “capable of intonation” might be misunderstood, and might have misled a mere tiro in these matters, who alighted on this passage, without reading anything before or after. But that a professor in an American university could have taken my words in that sense is to me, I confess, a puzzle, call it intellectual or moral, as you like.
[6.] Indische Studien, x. 459.
[7.] When I saw how M. Biot, the great astronomer, treated Professor Weber du haut en bas, because, in criticising Biot’s opinion he had shown some ignorance of astronomy, I said, from a kind of fellow-feeling: “Weber’s Essays are very creditable to the author, and hardly deserved the withering contempt with which they were treated by Biot. I differ from nearly all the conclusions at which Professor Weber arrives, but I admire his great diligence in collecting the necessary evidence.” Upon this the American gentleman reads me the following lesson: First of all, I am told that my statement involves a gross error of fact; I ought to have said, Weber’s Essay, not Essays, because one of them, and the most important, was not published till after Biot’s death. I accept the reproof, but I believe all whom it concerned knew what Essay I meant. But secondly, I am told that the epithet withering is only used by Americans when they intend to imply that, in their opinion, the subject of the contempt is withered, or ought to be withered by it. This may be so in American, but I totally deny that it is so in English. “Withering contempt,” in English, means, as far as I know, a kind of silly and arrogant contempt, such, for instance, as Professor Whitney displays towards me and others, intended to annihilate us in the eyes of the public, but utterly harmless in its consequences. But let me ask the American critic what he meant when, speaking of Biot’s treatment of Weber, he said, “Biot thought that Weber’s opinions had been whiffed away by him as if unworthy of serious consideration.” Does whiff away in America mean more or less than withering? What Professor Whitney should have objected to was the adverb hardly. I wish I had said vix, et ne vix quidem.