Lectures on the Science of Language

by F. Max Müller

It is astonishing what an amount of real learning and ingenuity was wasted on this question during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It finds, perhaps, but one parallel in the laborious calculations and constructions of early astronomers, who had to account for the movements of the heavenly bodies, always taking it for granted that the earth must be the fixed centre of our planetary system. But, although we know now that the labors of such scholars as Thomassin were, and could not be otherwise than fruitless, it would be a most discouraging view to take of the progress of the human race, were we to look upon the exertions of eminent men in former ages, though they may have been in a wrong direction, as mere vanity and vexation of spirit. We must not forget that the very fact of the failure of such men contributed powerfully to a general conviction that there must be something wrong in the problem itself, till at last a bolder genius inverted the problem and thereby solved it. When books after books had been [pg 134] written to show how Greek and Latin and all other languages were derived from Hebrew,[114] and when not one single system proved satisfactory, people asked at last—“Why then should all languages be derived from Hebrew?”—and this very question solved the problem. It might have been natural for theologians in the fourth and fifth centuries, many of whom knew neither Hebrew nor any language except their own, to take it for granted that Hebrew was the source of all languages, but there is neither in the Old nor the New Testament a single word to necessitate this view. Of the language of Adam we know nothing; but if Hebrew, as we know it, was one of the languages that sprang from the confusion of tongues at Babel, it could not well have been the language of Adam or of the whole earth, “when the whole earth was still of one speech.”[115]

Although, therefore, a certain advance was made towards a classification of languages by the Semitic scholars of the seventeenth century, yet this partial advance became in other respects an impediment. The purely scientific interest in arranging languages according to their characteristic features was lost sight of, and erroneous ideas were propagated, the influence of which has even now not quite subsided.

The first who really conquered the prejudice that [pg 135] Hebrew was the source of all language was Leibniz, the cotemporary and rival of Newton. “There is as much reason,” he said, “for supposing Hebrew to have been the primitive language of mankind, as there is for adopting the view of Goropius, who published a work at Antwerp, in 1580, to prove that Dutch was the language spoken in Paradise.”[116] In a letter to Tenzel, Leibniz writes: “To call Hebrew the primitive language, is like calling branches of a tree primitive branches, or like imagining that in some country hewn trunks could grow instead of trees. Such ideas may be conceived, but they do not agree with the laws of nature, and with the harmony of the universe, that is to say with the Divine Wisdom.”[117]

But Leibniz did more than remove this one great stumbling-block from the threshold of the science of language. He was the first to apply the principle of sound inductive reasoning to a subject which before him had only been treated at random. He pointed [pg 136] out the necessity of collecting, first of all, as large a number of facts as possible.[118] He appealed to missionaries, travellers, ambassadors, princes, and emperors, to help him in a work which he had so much at heart. The Jesuits in China had to work for him. Witsen,[119] the traveller, sent him a most precious present, a translation of the Lord's Prayer into the jargon of the Hottentots. “My friend,” writes Leibniz in thanking him, “remember, I implore you, and remind your Muscovite friends, to make researches in order to procure specimens of the Scythian languages, the Samoyedes, Siberians, Bashkirs, Kalmuks, Tungusians, and others.” Having made the acquaintance of Peter the Great, Leibniz wrote to him the following letter, dated Vienna, October the 26th, 1713:—

“I have suggested that the numerous languages, hitherto almost entirely unknown and unstudied, which are current in the empire of your Majesty and on its frontiers, should be reduced to writing; also that dictionaries, or at least small vocabularies, should be collected, and translations be procured in such languages of the Ten Commandments, the Lord's Prayer, the Apostolic Symbolum, and other parts of the Catechism, [pg 137] ut omnis lingua laudet Dominum. This would increase the glory of your Majesty, who reigns over so many nations, and is so anxious to improve them; and it would, likewise, by means of a comparison of languages, enable us to discover the origin of those nations who from Scythia, which is subject to your Majesty, advanced into other countries. But principally it would help to plant Christianity among the nations speaking those dialects, and I have, therefore, addressed the Most Rev. Metropolitan on the same subject.”[120]

Leibniz drew up a list of the most simple and necessary terms which should be selected for comparison in various languages. At home, while engaged in historical researches, he collected whatever could throw light on the origin of the German language, and he encouraged others, such as Eccard, to do the same. He pointed out the importance of dialects, and even of provincial and local terms, for elucidating the etymological structure of languages.[121] Leibniz never undertook a systematic classification of the whole realm of language, nor was he successful in classing the dialects with which he had become acquainted. He distinguished between a Japhetic and Aramaic class, the former occupying the north, the latter the south, of the continent of Asia and Europe. He believed in a common origin of languages, and in a migration of the human race from east to west. But he failed to distinguish [pg 138] the exact degrees of relationship in which languages stood to each other, and he mixed up some of the Turanian dialects, such as Finnish and Tataric, with the Japhetic family of speech. If Leibniz had found time to work out all the plans which his fertile and comprehensive genius conceived, or if he had been understood and supported by cotemporary scholars, the science of language, as one of the inductive sciences, might have been established a century earlier. But a man like Leibniz, who was equally distinguished as a scholar, a theologian, a lawyer, an historian, and a mathematician, could only throw out hints as to how language ought to be studied. Leibniz was not only the discoverer of the differential calculus. He was one of the first to watch the geological stratification of the earth. He was engaged in constructing a calculating machine, the idea of which he first conceived as a boy. He drew up an elaborate plan of an expedition to Egypt, which he submitted to Louis XIV. in order to avert his attention from the frontiers of Germany. The same man was engaged in a long correspondence with Bossuet to bring about a reconciliation between Protestants and Romanists, and he endeavored, in his Theodicée and other works, to defend the cause of truth and religion against the inroads of the materialistic philosophy of England and France. It has been said, indeed, that the discoveries of Leibniz produced but little effect, and that most of them had to be made again. This is not the case, however, with regard to the science of language. The new interest in languages, which Leibniz had called into life, did not die again. After it had once been recognized as a desideratum to bring together a complete Herbarium [pg 139] of the languages of mankind, missionaries and travellers felt it their duty to collect lists of words, and draw up grammars wherever they came in contact with a new race. The two great works in which, at the beginning of our century, the results of these researches were summed up, I mean the Catalogue of Languages by Hervas, and the Mithridates of Adelung, can both be traced back directly to the influence of Leibniz. As to Hervas, he had read Leibniz carefully, and though he differs from him on some points, he fully acknowledges his merits in promoting a truly philosophical study of languages. Of Adelung's Mithridates and his obligations to Leibniz we shall have to speak presently.

Hervas lived from 1735 to 1809. He was a Spaniard by birth, and a Jesuit by profession. While working as a missionary among the Polyglottous tribes of America, his attention was drawn to a systematic study of languages. After his return, he lived chiefly at Rome in the midst of the numerous Jesuit missionaries who had been recalled from all parts of the world, and who, by their communications on the dialects of the tribes among whom they had been laboring, assisted him greatly in his researches.

Most of his works were written in Italian, and were afterwards translated into Spanish. We cannot enter into the general scope of his literary labors, which are of the most comprehensive character. They were intended to form a kind of Kosmos, for which he chose the title of “Idea del Universo.” What is of interest to us is that portion which treats of man and language as part of the universe; and here, again, chiefly his Catalogue of Languages, in six volumes, published in Spanish in the year 1800.

If we compare the work of Hervas with a similar work which excited much attention towards the end of the last century, and is even now more widely known than Hervas, I mean Court de Gebelin's “Monde Primitif,”[122] we shall see at once how far superior the Spanish Jesuit is to the French philosopher. Gebelin treats Persian, Armenian, Malay, and Coptic as dialects of Hebrew; he speaks of Bask as a dialect of Celtic, and he tries to discover Hebrew, Greek, English, and French words in the idioms of America. Hervas, on the contrary, though embracing in his catalogue five times the number of languages that were known to Gebelin, is most careful not to allow himself to be carried away by theories not warranted by the evidence before him. It is easy now to point out mistakes and inaccuracies in Hervas, but I think that those who have blamed him most are those who ought most to have acknowledged their obligations to him. To have collected specimens and notices of more than 300 languages is no small matter. But Hervas did more. He himself composed grammars of more than forty languages.[123] He was the first to point out that the true affinities of languages must be determined chiefly by grammatical evidence, not by mere similarity of words.[124] He proved, by a comparative [pg 141] list of declensions and conjugations, that Hebrew, Chaldee, Syriac, Arabic, Ethiopic, and Amharic are all but dialects of one original language, and constitute one family of speech, the Semitic.[125] He scouted the idea of deriving all the languages of mankind from Hebrew. He had perceived clear traces of affinity in Hungarian, Lapponian, and Finnish, three dialects now classed as members of the Turanian family.[126] He had proved that Bask was not, as was commonly supposed, a Celtic dialect, but an independent language, spoken by the earliest inhabitants of Spain, as proved by the names of the Spanish mountains and rivers.[127] Nay, one of the most brilliant discoveries in the history of the science of language, the establishment of the Malay and Polynesian family of speech, extending from the island of Madagascar east of Africa, over 208 degrees of longitude, to the Easter Islands west of America,[128] was made by Hervas long before it was announced to the world by Humboldt.

Hervas was likewise aware of the great grammatical similarity between Sanskrit and Greek, but the imperfect information which he received from his friend, the Carmelite missionary, Fra Paolino de San Bartolomeo, the author of the first Sanskrit grammar, published at Rome in 1790, prevented him from seeing the full meaning of this grammatical similarity. How near Hervas was to the discovery of the truth may be seen from his comparing such words as theos, God, in Greek, with Deva, God, in Sanskrit. He identified the Greek auxiliary verb eimi, eis, esti, I am, thou art, he is, with the Sanskrit asmi, asi, asti. He even pointed out that the terminations of the three genders[129] in Greek, os, ē, on, are the same as the Sanskrit, as, â, am. But believing, as he did, that the Greeks derived their philosophy and mythology from India,[130] he supposed that they had likewise borrowed from the Hindus some of their words, and even the art of distinguishing the gender of words.