Part 9

The Greeks never thought of applying the principle of classification to the varieties of human speech. They only distinguished between Greek on one side, and all other languages on the other, comprehended under the convenient name of “Barbarous.” They succeeded, indeed, in classifying four of their own dialects with tolerable correctness,(105) but they applied the term “barbarous” so promiscuously to the other more distant relatives of Greek, (the dialects of the Pelasgians, Carians, Macedonians, Thracians, and Illyrians,) that, for the purposes of scientific classification, it is almost impossible to make any use of the statements of ancient writers about these so-called barbarous idioms.(106)

Plato, indeed, in his Cratylus (c. 36), throws out a hint that the Greeks might have received their own words from the barbarians, the barbarians being older than the Greeks. But he was not able to see the full bearing of this remark. He only points out that some words, such as the names of _fire_, _water_, and _dog_, were the same in Phrygian and Greek; and he supposes that the Greeks borrowed them from the Phrygians (c. 26). The idea that the Greek language and that of the barbarians could have had a common source never entered his mind. It is strange that even so comprehensive a mind as that of Aristotle should have failed to perceive in languages some of that law and order which he tried to discover in every realm of nature. As Aristotle, however, did not attempt this, we need not wonder that it was not attempted by any one else for the next two thousand years. The Romans, in all scientific matters, were merely the parrots of the Greeks. Having themselves been called barbarians, they soon learnt to apply the same name to all other nations, except, of course, to their masters, the Greeks. Now _barbarian_ is one of those lazy expressions which seem to say everything but in reality say nothing. It was applied as recklessly as the word _heretic_ during the Middle Ages. If the Romans had not received this convenient name of barbarian ready made for them, they would have treated their neighbors, the Celts and Germans, with more respect and sympathy: they would, at all events, have looked at them with a more discriminating eye. And, if they had done so, they would have discovered, in spite of outward differences, that these barbarians were, after all, not very distant cousins. There was as much similarity between the language of Cæsar and the barbarians against whom he fought in Gaul and Germany as there was between his language and that of Homer. A man of Cæsar’s sagacity would have seen this, if he had not been blinded by traditional phraseology. I am not exaggerating. For let us look at one instance only. If we take a verb of such constant occurrence as _to have_, we shall find the paradigms almost identical in Latin and Gothic:—

I have in Latin is habeo, in Gothic haba. Thou hast in Latin is habes, in Gothic habais. He has in Latin is habet, in Gothic habaiþ. We have in Latin is habemus, in Gothic habam. You have in Latin is habetis, in Gothic habaiþ. They have in Latin is habent, in Gothic habant.

It surely required a certain amount of blindness, or rather of deafness, not to perceive such similarity, and that blindness or deafness arose, I believe, entirely from the single word _barbarian_. Not till that word barbarian was struck out of the dictionary of mankind, and replaced by brother, not till the right of all nations of the world to be classed as members of one genus or kind was recognized, can we look even for the first beginnings of our science. This change was effected by Christianity. To the Hindú, every man not twice-born was a Mlechha; to the Greek, every man not speaking Greek was a barbarian; to the Jew, every person not circumcised was a Gentile; to the Mohammedan, every man not believing in the prophet is a Giaur or Kaffir. It was Christianity which first broke down the barriers between Jew and Gentile, between Greek and barbarian, between the white and the black. _Humanity_ is a word which you look for in vain in Plato or Aristotle; the idea of mankind as one family, as the children of one God, is an idea of Christian growth; and the science of mankind, and of the languages of mankind, is a science which, without Christianity, would never have sprung into life. When people had been taught to look upon all men as brethren, then, and then only, did the variety of human speech present itself as a problem that called for a solution in the eyes of thoughtful observers; and I, therefore, date the real beginning of the science of language from the first day of Pentecost. After that day of cloven tongues a new light is spreading over the world, and objects rise into view which had been hidden from the eyes of the nations of antiquity. Old words assume a new meaning, old problems a new interest, old sciences a new purpose. The common origin of mankind, the differences of race and language, the susceptibility of all nations of the highest mental culture, these become, in the new world in which we live, problems of scientific, because of more than scientific, interest. It is no valid objection that so many centuries should have elapsed before the spirit which Christianity infused into every branch of scientific inquiry produced visible results. We see in the oaken fleet which rides the ocean the small acorn which was buried in the ground hundreds of years ago, and we recognize in the philosophy of Albertus Magnus,(107) though nearly 1200 years after the death of Christ, in the aspirations of Kepler,(108) and in the researches of the greatest philosophers of our own age, the sound of that key-note of thought which had been struck for the first time by the apostle of the Gentiles:(109) “_For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead_.”

But we shall see that the science of language owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded “to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature,” and their true successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian Church. Translations of the Lord’s Prayer or of the Bible into every dialect of the world, form even now the most valuable materials for the comparative philologist. As long as the number of known languages was small, the idea of classification hardly suggested itself. The mind must be bewildered by the multiplicity of facts before it has recourse to division. As long as the only languages studied were Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, the simple division into sacred and profane, or classical and oriental, sufficed. But when theologians extended their studies to Arabic, Chaldee, and Syriac, a step, and a very important step, was made towards the establishment of a class or family of languages.(110) No one could help seeing that these languages were most intimately related to each other, and that they differed from Greek and Latin on all points on which they agreed among themselves. As early as 1606 we find _Guichard_,(111) in his “Harmonie Etymologique,” placing Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac as a class of languages by themselves, and distinguishing besides between the Romance and Teutonic dialects.

What prevented, however, for a long time the progress of the science of language was the idea that Hebrew was the primitive language of mankind, and that, therefore, all languages must be derived from Hebrew. The fathers of the Church never expressed any doubt on this point. St. Jerome, in one of his epistles to Damasus,(112) writes: “the whole of antiquity (universa antiquitas) affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is written, was the beginning of all human speech.” Origen, in his eleventh Homily on the book of Numbers, expresses his belief that the Hebrew language, originally given through Adam, remained in that part of the world which was the chosen portion of God, not left like the rest to one of His angels.(113) When, therefore, the first attempts at a classification of languages were made, the problem, as it presented itself to scholars such as Guichard and Thomassin, was this: “As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek, and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common source, the Hebrew?”

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 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 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 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, _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 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_ 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 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.

The second work which represents the science of language at the beginning of this century, and which is, to a still greater extent, the result of the impulse which Leibniz had given, is the Mithridates of Adelung.(131) Adelung’s work depends partly on Hervas, partly on the collections of words which had been made under the auspices of the Russian government. Now these collections are clearly due to Leibniz. Although Peter the Great had no time or taste for philological studies, the government kept the idea of collecting all the languages of the Russian empire steadily in view.(132) Still greater luck was in store for the science of language. Having been patronized by Cæsar at Rome, it found a still more devoted patroness in the great Cesarina of the North, Catherine the Great (1762-1796). Even as Grand-duchess Catherine was engrossed with the idea of a Universal Dictionary, on the plan suggested by Leibniz. She encouraged the chaplain of the British Factory at St. Petersburg, the Rev. Daniel Dumaresq, to undertake the work, and he is said to have published, at her desire, a “Comparative Vocabulary of Eastern Languages,” in quarto; a work, however, which, if ever published, is now completely lost. The reputed author died in London in 1805, at the advanced age of eighty-four. When Catherine came to the throne, her plans of conquest hardly absorbed more of her time than her philological studies; and she once shut herself up nearly a year, devoting all her time to the compilation of her Comparative Dictionary. A letter of hers to Zimmermann, dated the 9th of May, 1785, may interest some of my hearers:—