[1.]See Jessen, Was heisst Botanik? 1861.[2.]Kuhn's Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung, b. ix. s. 104.[3.]Horne Tooke, p. 27, note.[4.]See Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, s. 297.[5.]Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, b. i. s. 241, 242.[6.]As early as the times of Anaximenes of the Ionic, and Alcmæon of the Pythagorean, schools, the stars had been divided into travelling (ἄστρα πλανώμενα or πλανητά), and non-travelling stars (ἀπλανεῖς ἀστέρες, or ἀπλανῆ ἄστρα). Aristotle first used ἄστρα ἐνδεδεμένα, or fixed stars. (See Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 28.) Πόλος, the pivot, hinge, or the pole of the heaven.[7.]Bunsen's Egypt, vol. iv. p. 108.[8.]According to a writer in “Notes and Queries” (2d Series, vol. x. p. 500,) astrology is not so entirely extinct as we suppose. “One of our principal writers,” he states, “one of our leading barristers, and several members of the various antiquarian societies, are practised astrologers at this hour. But no one cares to let his studies be known, so great is the prejudice that confounds an art requiring the highest education with the jargon of the gypsy fortune-teller.”[9.]“Man has two faculties, or two passive powers, the existence of which is generally acknowledged; 1, the faculty of receiving the different impressions caused by external objects, physical sensibility; and 2, the faculty of preserving the impressions caused by these objects, called memory, or weakened sensation. These faculties, the productive causes of thought, we have in common with beasts.... Everything is reducible to feeling.”—Helvetius.[10.]“The generative organs being those which are most remotely related to the habits and food of an animal, I have always regarded as affording very clear indications of its true affinities.”—Owen, as quoted by Darwin, Origin of Species, p. 414.[11.]Die Pflanze und ihr Leben, von M. T. Schleiden. Leipzig, 1858.[12.]Sir J. Stoddart, Glossology, p. 22.[13.]Dr. Whewell classes the science of language as one of the palaitiological sciences; but he makes a distinction between palaitiological sciences treating of material things, for instance, geology, and others respecting the products which result from man's imaginative and social endowments, for instance, comparative philology. He excludes the latter from the circle of the physical sciences, properly so called, but he adds: “We began our inquiry with the trust that any sound views which we should be able to obtain respecting the nature of truth in the physical sciences, and the mode of discovering it, must also tend to throw light upon the nature and prospects of knowledge of all other kinds;—must be useful to us in moral, political, and philological researches. We stated this as a confident anticipation; and the evidence of the justice of our belief already begins to appear. We have seen that biology leads us to psychology, if we choose to follow the path; and thus the passage from the material to the immaterial has already unfolded itself at one point; and we now perceive 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 is not our business to dwell on the prospects which our philosophy thus opens to our contemplation; but we may allow ourselves, in this last stage of our pilgrimage among the foundations of the physical sciences, to be cheered and animated by the ray that thus beams upon us, however dimly, from a higher and brighter region.”—Indications of the Creator, p. 146.[14.]Gen. ii. 19.[15.]St. Basil was accused by Eunomius of denying Divine Providence, because he would not admit that God had created the names of all things, but ascribed the invention of language to the faculties which God had implanted in man. St. Gregory, bishop of Nyssa in Cappadocia (331-396), defended St. Basil. “Though God has given to human nature its faculties,” he writes, “it does not follow that therefore He produces all the actions which we perform. He has given us the faculty of building a house and doing any other work; but we surely are the builders, and not He. In the same manner our faculty of speaking is the work of Him who has so framed our nature; but the invention of words for naming each object is the work of our mind.” See Ladevi-Roche, De l'Origine du Langage: Bordeaux, 1860, p. 14. Also, Horne Tooke, Diversions of Purley, p. 19.[16.]D. Stewart, Works, vol. iii. p. 27.[17.]History of Inductive Sciences, vol. iii. p. 531.[18.]Names ending in ic, are names of classes as distinct from the names of single languages.[19.]Lectures on the English Language, by G. P. Marsh: New York, 1860, p. 263 and 630. These lectures embody the result of much careful research, and are full of valuable observations.[20.]Marsh, p. 532, note.[21.]Marsh, p. 589.[22.]Sir J. Stoddart, Glossology, p. 60.[23.]Trench, English Past and Present, p. 114; Marsh, p. 397.[24.]As several of my reviewers have found fault with the monk for using the genitive neutri, instead of neutrius, I beg to refer to Priscianus, 1. vi. c. i. and c. vii. The expression generis neutrius, though frequently used by modern editors, has no authority, I believe, in ancient Latin.[25.]Castelvetro, in Horne Tooke, p. 629, note.[26.]Bopp, Comparative Grammar, § 320. Schleicher, Deutsche Sprache, s. 233.[27.]Foucaux, Grammaire Tibetaine, p. 27, and Preface, p. x.[28.]Fuchs, Romanische Sprachen, s. 355.[29.]Quint., v. 10, 52. Bonâ mente factum, ideo palam; malâ, ideo ex insidiis.[30.]Sanskrit s = Persian h; therefore svasar = hvahar. This becomes chohar, chor, and cho. Zend, qaņha, acc. qaņharem, Persian, kháher. Bopp, Comp. Gram. § 35.[31.]Schleicher, Beiträge, b. ii. s. 392: dci = dŭgti; gen. dcere = dŭgtere.[32.]Hui = hodie, Ital. oggi and oggidi; jour = diurnum, from dies.[33.]See M. M.'s Letter to Chevalier Bunsen, On the Turanian Languages, p. 67.[34.]See Marsh, p. 678; Sir John Stoddart's Glossology, s. 31.[35.]Glossology, p. 33.[36.]Ibid., p. 29.[37.]Nea Pandora, 1859, Nos. 227, 229. Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung, x. s. 190.[38.]Grimm, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, p. 668: Marsh, p. 379.[39.]“Some people, who may have been taught to consider the Dorset dialect as having originated from corruption of the written English, may not be prepared to hear that it is not only a separate offspring from the Anglo-Saxon tongue, but purer, and in some cases richer, than the dialect which is chosen as the national speech.”—Barnes, Poems in Dorset Dialect, Preface, p. xiv.[40.]Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, s. 833.[41.]Pliny, vi. 5; Hervas, Catalogo, i. 118.[42.]Pliny depends on Timosthenes, whom Strabo declares untrustworthy (ii. p. 93, ed. Casaub.) Strabo himself says of Dioscurias, συνέρχεσθαι ἐς αὐτὴν ἐβδομήκοντα, οἱ δὲ καὶ τριακόσια ἔθνη φασίν οἴς οὐδὲν τῶν ὄντων υέλει (x. p. 498). The last words refer probably to Timosthenes.[43.]Du Ponceau, p. 110.[44.]S. F. Waldeck, Lettre à M. Jomard des environs de Palenqué, Amérique Centrale. (“Il ne pouvait se servir, en 1833, d'un vocabulaire composé avec beaucoup de soin dix ans auparavant.”)[45.]Catalogo, i. 393.[46.]Turanian Languages, p. 114.[47.]Ibid., p. 233.[48.]Turanian Languages, p. 30.[49.]Quintilian, ix. 4. “Nam neque Lucilium putant uti eadem (s) ultima, cum dicit Serenu fuit, et Dignu loco. Quin etiam Cicero in Oratore plures antiquorum tradit sic locutos.” In some phrases the final s was omitted in conversation; e.g. abin for abisne, viden for videsne, opu'st for opus est, conabere for conaberis.[50.]Marsh, Lectures, pp. 133, 368.[51.]“There are fewer local peculiarities of form and articulation in our vast extent of territory (U. S.), than on the comparatively narrow soil of Great Britain.”—Marsh, p. 667.[52.]Marsh, Lectures, pp. 181, 590.[53.]The Gothic forms sijum, sijuth, are not organic. They are either derived by false analogy from the third person plural sind, or a new base sij was derived from the subjunctive sijau, Sanskrit syâm.[54.]Some excellent statistics on the exact proportion of Saxon and Latin in various English writers, are to be found in Marsh's Lectures on the English Language, p. 120, seq. and 181, seq.[55.]“En este estado, que es el primer paso que las naciones dan para mudar de lengua, estaba quarenta años ha la araucana en las islas de Chiloue (como he oido á los jesuitas sus misioneros), en donde los araucanos apénas proferian palabra que no fuese española; mas la proferian con el artificio y órden de su lengua nativa, llamada araucana.”—Hervas, Catalogo, t. i. p. 16. “Este artificio ha sido en mi observacion el principal medio de que me he valido para conocer la afinidad ó diferencia de las lenguas conocidas, y reducirlas á determinadas classes.”—Ibid., p. 23.[56.]Colebrooke, Miscellaneous Essays, i. 32. The following verses are pronounced by Vâch, the goddess of speech, in the 125th hymn of the 10th book of the Rig-Veda: “Even I myself say this (what is) welcome to Gods and to men: ‘Whom I love, him I make strong, him I make a Brahman, him a great prophet, him I make wise. For Rudra (the god of thunder) I bend the bow, to slay the enemy, the hater of the Brahmans. For the people I make war; I pervade heaven and earth. I bear the father on the summit of this world; my origin is in the water in the sea; from thence I go forth among all beings, and touch this heaven with my height. I myself breathe forth like the wind, embracing all beings; above this heaven, beyond this earth, such am I in greatness.’ ” See also Atharva-Veda, iv. 30; xix. 9, 3. Muir, Sanskrit Texts, part iii. pp. 108, 150.[57.]Sir John Stoddart, Glossology, p. 276.[58.]The Turks applied the Polish name Niemiec to the Austrians. As early as Constantinus Porphyrogeneta, cap. 30, Νεμέτζιοι was used for the German race of the Bavarians. (Pott, Indo-Germ. Sp. s. 44. Leo, Zeitschrift für Vergleichende Sprachforschung, b. ii. s. 258.) Russian, njemez'; Slovenian, nĕmec; Bulgarian, némec; Polish, niemiec; Lusatian, njemc, mean German. Russian, njemo, indistinct; njemyi, dumb; Slovenian, nĕm, dumb; Bulgarian, nêm, dumb; Polish, njemy, dumb; Lusatian, njemy, dumb.[59.]Leo, Zeitschrift für Vergl. Sprachf. b. ii. s. 252.[60.]Humboldt's Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 141.[61.]This shows how difficult it would be to admit that any influence was exercised by Indian on Greek philosophers. Pyrrhon, if we may believe Alexander Polyhistor, seems indeed to have accompanied Alexander on his expedition to India, and one feels tempted to connect the scepticism of Pyrrhon with the system of Buddhist philosophy then current in India. But the ignorance of the language on both sides must have been an insurmountable barrier between the Greek and the Indian thinkers. (Fragmenta Histor. Græc., ed. Müller, t. iii. p. 243, b.; Lasson, Indische Alterthumskande, b. iii. s. 380.)[62.]On the supposed travels of Greek philosophers to India, see Lassen, Indische Alterthumskunde, b. iii. s. 379; Brandis, Handbuch der Geschichte der Philosophie, b. i. s. 425. The opinion of D. Stewart and Niebuhr that the Indian philosophers borrowed from the Greeks, and that of Görres and others that the Greeks borrowed from the Brahmans, are examined in my Essay on Indian Logic, in Thomson's Laws of Thought.[63.]See Niebuhr, Vorlesungen über Alte Geschichte, b. i. s. 17.[64.]The translation of Mago's work on agriculture belongs to a later time. There is no proof that Mago, who wrote twenty-eight books on agriculture in the Punic language, lived, as Humboldt supposes (Cosmos, vol. ii. p. 184), 500 b. c. Varro de R. R. i. 1, says: “Hos nobilitate Mago Carthaginiensis præteriit Pœnica lingua, quod res dispersas comprehendit libris xxix., quos Cassius Dionysius Uticensis vertit libris xx., Græca lingua, ac Sextilio prætori misit: in quæ volumina de Græcis libris eorum quos dixi adjecit non pauca, et de Magonis dempsit instar librorum viii. Hosce ipsos utiliter ad vi. libros redegit Diophanes in Bithynia, et misit Dejotaro regi.” This Cassius Dionysius Uticencis lived about 40 b. c. The translation into Latin was made at the command of the Senate, shortly after the third Punic war.[65.]Ptolemæus Philadelphus (287-246 b. c.), on the recommendation of his chief librarian (Demetrius Philaretes), is said to have sent a Jew of the name of Aristeas, to Jerusalem, to ask the high priest for a MS. of the Bible, and for seventy interpreters. Others maintain that the Hellenistic Jews who lived at Alexandria, and who had almost forgotten their native language, had this translation made for their own benefit. Certain it is, that about the beginning of the third century b. c. (285), we find the Hebrew Bible translated into Greek.[66.]Plin. xxx. 2. “Sine dubio illa orta in Perside a Zoroastre, ut inter auctores convenit. Sed unus hic fuerit, an postea et alius, non satis constat. Eudoxus qui inter sapientiæ sectas clarissimam utilissimamque eam intelligi voluit, Zoroastrem hunc sex millibus annorum ante Platonis mortem fuisse prodidit. Sic et Aristoteles. Hermippus qui de tota ea arte diligentissime scripsit, et vicies centum millia versuum a Zoroastre condita, indicibus quoque voluminum ejus positis explanavit, præceptorem a quo institutum disceret, tradidit Azonacem, ipsum vero quinque millibus annorum ante Trojanum bellum fuisse.”—“Diogenes Laertius Aristotelem auctorem facit libri τὸ Μαγικόν. Suidas librum cognovit, dubitat vero a quo scriptus sit.” See Bunsen's Egypten, Va, 101.[67.]M. M.'s History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 163.[68.]ἄρθρον προτασσόμενον, ἄρθρον ὑποτασσόμενον.[69.]Suidas, s. v. Διονύσιος. Διονύσιος Ἀλεξανδρεός, Θρᾷξ δὲ ἀπὸ πατρὸς τούνομα κληθεὶς, Ἀριστάρχου μαθητὴς, γραμματικὸς ὁς ἐσοφίστευσεν ἐν Ῥώμη ἐπὶ Πομπηιοῦ τοῦ Μεγάλου.[70.]Quintilian, i. 1, 12.[71.]See Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, b. i. s. 197. “The Latin alphabet is the same as the modern alphabet of Sicily; the Etruscan is the same as the old Attic alphabet. Epistola, letter, charta, paper, and stilus, are words borrowed from Greek.”—Mommsen, b. i. s. 184.[72.]Mommsen, Römische Geschichte, b. i. s. 186. Statera, the balance, the Greek στατήρ; machina, an engine, μηχανή; númus, a silver coin, νόμος, the Sicilian νοῦμμος; groma, measuring-rod, the Greek γνώμων or γνῶμα: clathri, a trellis, a grate, the Greek κλῆθρα, the native Italian word for lock being claustra.[73.]Gubernare, to steer, from κυβεονᾶν; anchora, anchor, from ἀγκῦρα; prora, the forepart, from πρῶρα. Navis, remus, velum, &c., are common Aryan words, not borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks, and show that the Italians were acquainted with navigation before the discovery of Italy by the Phocæans.[74.]Mommsen, i. 154.[75.]Ibid. i. 408.[76.]Mommsen, i. 165.[77.]Sibylla, or sibulla, is a diminutive of an Italian sabus or sabius, wise; a word which, though not found in classical writers, must have existed in the Italian dialects. The French sage presupposes an Italian sabius, for it cannot be derived either from sapiens or from sapius.—Diez, Lexicon Etymologicum, p. 300. Sapius has been preserved in nesapius, foolish. Sibulla therefore meant a wise old woman.[78.]Mommsen, i. 256.[79.]Ibid. i. 425, 444.[80.]Ibid. i. 857.[81.]Mommsen, i. 902.[82.]Mommsen, i. 892.[83.]Ibid. i. 843, 194.[84.]Ibid. i. 911.[85.]Mommsen, ii. 407.[86.]Mommsen, ii. 410.[87.]Ibid. ii. 408.[88.]Ibid. ii. 437, note; ii. 430.[89.]Zeno died 263; Epicurus died 270; Arcesilaus died 241; Carneades died 129.[90.]Mommsen, ii. 417, 418.[91.]Ibid. i. 845.[92.]Ibid. ii. 415, 417.[93.]Mommsen, ii. 413, 426, 445, 457. Lucius Ælius Stilo wrote a work on etymology, and an index to Plautus.—Lersch, Die Sprachphilosophie der Alten, ii. 111.[94.]Lersch, ii. 113, 114, 143.[95.]Lersch, iii. 144.[96.]Mommsen, iii. 557. 48 b. c.[97.]Lersch, ii. 25. Περὶ σημαινόντων, or περὶ φώνης; and περὶ σημαινομένον, or περὶ πραγμάτων.[98.]Beiträge zur Geschichte der Grammatik, von Dr. K. E. A. Schmidt. Halle, 1859. Uber den Begriff der γενικὴ πτῶσις, s. 320.[99.]In the Tibetan languages the rule is, “Adjectives are formed from substantives by the addition of the genitive sign,” which might be inverted into, “The genitive is formed from the nominative by the addition of the adjective sign.” For instance, shing, wood; shing gi, of wood, or wooden: ser, gold; ser-gyi, of gold, or golden: mi, man; mi-yi, of man, or human. The same in Garo, where the sign of the genitive is ni, we have; mánde-ní jak, the hand of man, or the human hand; ambal-ní ketháli, a wooden knife, or a knife of wood. In Hindustání the genitive is so clearly an adjective, that it actually takes the marks of gender according to the words to which it refers. But how is it in Sanskrit and Greek? In Sanskrit we may form adjectives by the addition of tya. (Turanian Languages, p. 41, seq.; Essay on Bengálí, p. 333.) For instance, dakshiņâ, south; dakshiņâ-tya, southern. This tya is clearly a demonstrative pronoun, the same as the Sanskrit syas, syâ, tyad, this or that. Tya is a pronominal base, and therefore such adjectives as dakshiņâ-tya, southern, or âp-tya, aquatic, from âp, water, must have been conceived originally as “water-there,” or “south-there.” Followed by the terminations of the nominative singular, which was again an original pronoun, âptyas would mean âp-tya-s, i.e., water-there-he. Now, it makes little difference whether I say an aquatic bird or a bird of the water. In Sanskrit the genitive of water would be, if we take udaka, udaka-sya. This sya is the same pronominal base as the adjective termination tya, only that the former takes no sign for the gender, like the adjective. The genitive udakasya is therefore the same as an adjective without gender. Now let us look to Greek. We there form adjectives by σιος, which is the same as the Sanskrit tya or sya. For instance, from δῆμος, people, the Greeks formed δημόσιος, belonging to the people. Here ος, α, ον, mark the gender. Leave the gender out, and you get δημοσιο. Now, there is a rule in Greek that an ς between two vowels, in grammatical terminations, is elided. Thus the genitive of γένος is not γένεσος, but γένεος, or γένους; hence δημόσιο would necessarily become δήμοιο. And what is δήμοιο but the regular Homeric genitive of δῆμος, which in later Greek was replaced by δήμου? Thus we see that the same principles which governed the formation of adjectives and genitives in Tibetan, in Garo, and Hindustání, were at work in the primitive stages of Sanskrit and Greek; and we perceive how accurately the real power of the genitive was determined by the ancient Greek grammarians, who called it the general or predicative case, whereas the Romans spoiled the term by wrongly translating it into genitivus.[100.]See M. M.'s History of Ancient Sanskrit Literature, p. 158.[101.]
The following and some other notes were kindly sent to me by the first Chinese scholar in Europe, M. Stanislas Julien, Membre de l'Institut.
The Chinese do not decline their substantives, but they indicate the cases distinctly—
A. By means of particles.
B. By means of position.
1. The nominative or the subject of a sentence is always placed at the beginning.
2. The genitive may be marked—
(a) By the particle tchi placed between the two nouns, of which the first is in the genitive, the second in the nominative. Example, jin tchi kiun (hominum princeps, literally, man, sign of the genitive, prince.)
(b) By position, placing the word which is in the genitive first, and the word which is in the nominative second. Ex. koue (kingdom) jin (man) i.e., a man of the kingdom.
3. The dative may be expressed—
(a) By the preposition yu, to. Ex. sse (to give) yen (money) yu (to) jin (man).