Opuscula: Essays chiefly Philological and Ethnographical
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Title: Opuscula: Essays chiefly Philological and Ethnographical
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the Preface.
* * * * *
OPUSCULA.
ESSAYS
CHIEFLY
PHILOLOGICAL AND ETHNOGRAPHICAL
BY
ROBERT GORDON LATHAM,
M.A., M.D., F.R.S., ETC.
LATE FELLOW OF KINGS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE, LATE PROFESSOR OF ENGLISH
IN UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON, LATE ASSISTANT PHYSICIAN
AT THE MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL.
WILLIAMS & NORGATE,
14 HENRIETTA STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON
AND
20 SOUTH FREDERICK STREET, EDINBURGH.
LEIPZIG, R. HARTMANN.
1860.
LEIPZIG PRINTED BY B. G. TEUBNER.
PREFACE.
The essays in the present volume are chiefly upon philological and
ethnographical subjects: though not exclusively. The earliest was
published in 1840, the latest in 1856. In some cases they have formed
separate treatises and in some Appendices to larger works. The greater
part, however, consists of papers read before the Philological Society
of London; a society which has materially promoted the growth of
Comparative Philology in Great Britain, and which, if it had merely
given to the world the valuable researches of the late Mr. Garnett,
would have done more than enough to justify its existence and to prove
its usefulness.
As a general rule these papers address themselves to some definite
and special question, which commanded the attention of the author
either because it was obscure, or because there was something in the
current opinions concerning it which, in his eyes, required correction.
Researches conducted on this principle can scarcely be invested with
any very general interest. Those who take them up are supposed to have
their general knowledge beforehand. A wide field and a clear view, they
have already taken. At the same time there are, in the distant horizon,
imperfect outlines, and in the parts nearer to the eye dim spots where
the light is uncertain, dark spots where it is wholly wanting, and,
oftener still, spots illumined by a false and artificial light. Some
of the details of the following investigations may be uninteresting
from their minuteness; some from their obscurity; the minuteness
however, and the obscurity which deprive them of general interest
make it all the more incumbent on some one to take them up: and it is
needless to add that for a full and complete system of ethnographical
or philological knowledge all the details that are discoverable should
be discovered. This is my excuse (if excuse be needed) for having
spent some valuable time upon obscure points of minute interest. Upon
the whole, they have not been superfluous. This means that I have
rarely, or never, found from any subsequent reading that they had
been anticipated. Where this has been the case, the article has been
omitted--being treated as a _non scriptum_. An elaborate train of
reasoning submitted to the Ethnographical Society has on this principle
been ignored. It was upon the line of migration by which the Polynesian
portion of the Pacific islands was peopled. It deduced Polynesia
from the Navigator's Islands; the Navigator's Islands, or Samoan
Archipelago, from the Ralik and Radak chains; the Ralik and Radak
chains from Micronesia; Micronesia from the Philippines, viâ Sonsoral
and the Pelews. Some time after the paper was read I found that Forster
has promulgated the same doctrine. I ought to have known it before.
Hence the paper is omitted: indeed it was (though read) never published.
In respect to the others the chief writers who have worked in the same
field are Dr. Scouler, Professor Turner, and Professor Buschmann,--not
to mention the bibliographical labours of Dr. Ludwig, and the second
paper of Gallatin. I have no hesitation in expressing my belief that
where they agree with me they do so as independent investigators;
claiming for myself, where I agree with them, the same consideration.
Of Hodgson and Logan, Windsor Earle, and other investigators I should
have much to say in the way of both acknowledgement and criticism,
had India and the Indian Archipelago taken as large a portion of the
present volume as is taken by North America. As it is, it is only in a
few points that I touch their domain.
The hypothesis that the Asteks (so-called) reached Mexico by sea I
retract. Again--the fundamental affinity of the Australian language
was a doctrine to which both Teichelmann and Sir G. Grey had committed
themselves when the paper on the Negrito languages was written. The
papers, however, stand as they stood: partly because they are worth
something in the way of independent evidence, and partly because they
illustrate allied subjects.
CONTENTS.
I. Pædeutica Page.
Inaugural Lecture 1
On the study of Medicine 15
On the study of Language 27
II. Logica
On the word _Distributed_ 39
III. Grammatica
On the reciprocal Pronouns, and the reflective Verb 45
On the connexion between the Ideas of Association and Plurality
as an influence in the Evolution of Inflection 57
On the word _cujum_ 60
On the Aorists in KA 64
IV. Metrica
On the Doctrine of the Cæsura in the Greek senarius 68
On the use of the signs of Accent and Quantity as guides
to the pronunciation of words derived from the classical
Languages 74
V. Chronologica
On the Meaning of the word ΣΑΡΟΣ 81
VI. Bibliographica
Notice of works on the Provincialisms of Holland 85
VII. Geographica
On the Existence of a nation bearing the name of _Seres_ 89
On the evidence of a connection between the Cimbri and
the Chersonesus Cimbrica 93
On the original extent of the Slavonic area 108
On the terms _Gothi_ and _Getae_ 129
On the Japodes and Gepidae 131
VIII. Ethnologica
On the subjectivity of certain classes in Ethnology 138
General principles of philological classification and the value
of groups, with particular reference to the Languages
of the Indo-European Class 143
Traces of a bilingual town in England 152
On the Ethnological position of certain tribes on the Garrow
hills 153
On the transition between the Tibetan and Indian Families
in respect to conformation 154
On the Affinities of the Languages of Caucasus with the
monosyllabic Languages 156
On the Tushi Language 168
On the Name and Nation of the Dacian king Decebalus,
with notices of the Agathyrsi and Alani 175
On the Language of Lancashire under the Romans 180
On the Negrito Languages 191
On the general affinities of the Languages of the oceanic
Blacks 216
Remarks on the Vocabularies of the Voyage of the Rattlesnake 223
On a Zaza Vocabulary 242
On the Personal Pronouns and Numerals of the Mallicollo
and Erromango Languages, by the Rev. C. Abraham 245
On the Languages of the Oregon Territory 249
On the Ethnography of Russian America 266
Miscellaneous contributions to the Ethnography of North
America 275
On a short Vocabulary of the Loucheux Language, by J.
A. Isbister 299
On the Languages of New California 300
On certain Additions to the ethnographical philology of
Central America, with remarks on the so-called Astek
Conquest of Mexico 317
Note upon a paper of the Hon. Captain Fitzroy on the Isthmus
of Panama 323
On the Languages of Northern, Western and Central America 326
I.
PÆDEUTICA.
INAUGURAL LECTURE
DELIVERED AT
UNIVERSITY COLLEGE, LONDON,
OCTOBER 14, 1839.
Instead of detaining you with a dissertation upon the claims and the
merits of our Language, it may perhaps be better to plunge at once into
the middle of my subject, and to lay before you, as succinctly as I am
able, the plan and substance of such Lectures as, within these walls, I
promise myself the honour of delivering. For I consider that the vast
importance of thoroughly understanding, of comprehending, in its whole
length, and breadth, and height, and depth, the language which we all
speak, we all read, and we all (in different degrees, but still each
in our degree) have occasion to write--the importance also of justly
and upon true grounds, valuing the magnificent literature of which we
are the inheritors--I consider, I say, that the vast importance of
all this is sufficiently implied by the simple single fact, that, in
this Institution, the English Language, with the English Literature,
is recognized as part and parcel of a liberal education. It may also
be assumed, without further preface, that every educated man is, at
once, ambitious of writing his own Language well; of criticizing those
who write it badly; and of taking up his admiration of our National
Literature, not upon Trust but upon Knowledge.
Thus having premised, I now proceed to the divisions and the
subdivisions of my subject. For certain practical purposes it is found
expedient to draw, between the consideration of the English Language,
and the consideration of the English Literature, a broad line of
demarcation. The knowledge of books is one thing; the knowledge of the
rules of good composition is another thing. It is one thing to know
what other men have written; it is another thing to know how you should
yourself write. The one is a point of Literary History, or of Literary
Biography; the other is a point of Rhetoric, or a point of Grammar.
I do not say that the two studies do not mutually assist each other.
All studies do so: these in a great degree. Familiarity with the works
of a Shakspeare or a Milton, is an accomplishment--an accomplishment
that depends upon our taste, and one which depends also upon our
leisure--an accomplishment which cannot be too highly valued, but still
an accomplishment. Familiarity, however, with the rules of good writing
is not a mere accomplishment. It is a necessary qualification which
comes home to us all. Now if I am convinced of one thing more than of
another, I am convinced of the truth of this assertion; _viz._: that
a good style comes not of itself; it comes not uncalled for; and it
comes neither by instinct nor by accident. It is the result of art, and
the result of practise. The Rules of good Composition are the rules of
Rhetoric; and it is very necessary that they be neither neglected nor
undervalued. Two classes of men, and two classes only, can pretend to
dispense with them--those that can write well, and those that cannot
write at all.
The English Language is pre-eminently a mixed Language. Its basis
indeed is Saxon, but upon this basis lies a very varied superstructure,
of Danish and of Norman-French, of Modern French and of Greek, of
Classical Latin and of the Latin of the Middle Ages imported at
different periods and upon different occasions. Words from these
languages are comprehended by the writer just in the proportion that
he comprehends their origin and their derivation. Hence it is that the
knowledge of isolated words is subordinate to the formation of a style;
and hence it is that the rules for their investigation are (their aim
and object being alone considered) akin to the rules of Rhetoric.
This however is but a small part of what may be our studies. It is well
to know how Time affects Languages, and in what way it modifies them.
It is well to know how one dialect grows out of another, and how its
older stages differ from its newer ones. It is well if we can perceive
that these variations are in no wise arbitrary; but it is better still
if we can discover the laws that regulate them. Yet all this is but a
knowledge of the changes that words undergo, a knowledge of the changes
in their form, and a knowledge of the changes in their meaning. Now
these points are points of Etymology, the word being used in its very
laxest and its largest sense; and points of Etymology must, in no wise,
be neglected or undervalued.
Lectures upon these questions will form the Etymological part of a
course; and Lectures upon Prose Composition the Rhetorical part of one;
whilst the two, taken together, will give a course upon the English
Language, in contradistinction to one upon the English Literature.
In respect to the latter, I shall, at regular intervals, fix upon
some new period, or some new subject, and, to the best of my power,
illustrate it.
Thus much for the divisions and subdivisions of the subject-matter.
The considerations that come next in order are the considerations of
the manner of exhibiting it, the considerations of the knowledge that
can be detailed, and the considerations of the trains of thought that
can be inculcated.
There are those who believe that a good style is not to be taught.
Many think that the habit of writing good Prose, is like the power
of creating good Poetry; a privilege that we are born to, and not a
possession that we can earn; and a wit once said that, in order to
write clearly, it was only necessary to understand what you would write
about. If this be true, then is composition an easy matter indeed; or,
to say the very least, a perspicuous style is as common as a clear
understanding. The experience of the world has, however, set aside
the decision of the wit, and the practice of inexperienced writers
has belied his dogma. To write well you must understand not only the
_matter_ but the _medium_. Thus then it is, that, with respect to the
use of books, and with respect to the use of rules, in our attempts at
the formation of a good style, some persons neglect them as unavailing,
and some despise them as superfluous.
Towards accurate writing Habit of some sort is indispensably essential.
Yet this indispensable habit is not necessarily a habit of _writing_.
A person who writes no more frequently than the common occasions of
life demand, shall eventually, provided that he will habitually write
his best, write accurately. Now the habit of criticism, and the habit
of attention essential to habits of writing our best, a second person
is, I think, able to inculcate. Such a second person should be familiar
with bad as well as with good writing; even, as the physician shall
grow conversant, not with health only, but with disease also. He should
know what are the more egregious errors in composition; he should
know also what are the more usual ones. He should be learned in the
inaccuracies of good authors, and deeply erudite in the absurdities of
bad ones; recognizing false taste under all its disguises, and holding
up, as a beacon to avoid, the pitiful ambition of mannerism and of
writing finely. The principles by which he tries these things, he can
lay before his hearers; and he can illustrate them with a prodigality
of commentary. And those who hearken shall thus grow critical. And,
mark--the reader that continually and habitually criticizes others,
soon comes to, continually and habitually, criticize himself. He grows
fastidious, as it were, perforce.
In this way two things may be done: our criticism may be sharpened,
and its edge may be turned upon ourselves. At this I aim, and not at
teaching Rhetoric systematically.
The father of Horace, as we learn from the testimony of his son, was
peculiar in his notions of education. In his eyes it was easier to
eschew Vice than to imitate Virtue. Too wise a man not to know that
an unapproachable model was no model at all, he let (for instance)
the modesty of Virgil (as modest virtues generally contrive to do)
speak for itself. But he counselled his son against the prodigality of
Barrus, and held up, with parental prudence, the detected peccadilloes
of Trebonius.
Now the system, that produces a negative excellence in morals, may
produce also a negative excellence in literature. More than this (for
the truth must be told) Art can not do. For Wit, and Vigour, and
Imagination we must be indebted to Nature.
_I know_ that the system of picking out, and holding up, either a
neighbour's foibles, or an author's inelegancies, is not a gracious
occupation; the question, however, is, not whether it be gracious or
ungracious but whether it be efficient or inefficient.
Whosoever is conversant with the writings of etymologists must be
well aware, that there are few subjects wherein men run wild to the
degree that they run wild in _Etymology_. A little learning, dangerous
everywhere, is preeminently dangerous in Etymology. There has been in
the world an excess of bad etymology for two reasons.
The discovery of remote analogies is not only mental exercise, but,
worse luck, it is a mental amusement as well. The imagination is
gratified, and Criticism thinks it harsh to interpose.
Again, there is no language that a man so willingly illustrates as he
illustrates his own. He knows it best, and he studies it with the
greatest ease. He loves it not wisely but too well. He finds in its
structure new and peculiar beauties; he overvalues its excellence, and
he exaggerates its antiquity. Such are the men who talk--in Wales, of
the ubiquity of the Celts; in Germany, of the Teutonic Origin of the
Romans; and in Ireland of the Phœnician extraction of the Milesians.
Thus then, two out of the Thousand and One causes of bad Etymology are
the reason psychological, and the reason patriotic. _Nemini credendum
de Patria sua._
I think that at the entrance upon an unsettled subject, a man should
boldly say, and say at the very onset of his career, upon whose
opinions he relies, and whose opinions he distrusts. He should profess
himself, not indeed the implicit follower of any School, but he should
name the School that he preferred. He should declare whose books he
could recommend, and whose he would eschew. Thus, if I were lecturing
upon Geology, I should say, at once, whether I were what is called
a Scriptural Geologist or a Latitudinarian one: And thus, in the
department in point, I name the writers I put faith in. In the works of
Grimm and Rask I place much trust; in those of Horne Tooke some; and in
those of Whiter and Vallancey (to name small men along with great) none
whatsoever.
In the study of the Languages that have ceased to be spoken we find,
in an Etymological view, one thing, and one thing only; words as they
_have_ been affected by previous processes of change; in other terms,
the _results_ of these processes. But in the Language that we hear
spoken around us, and, still more, in the Language that we ourselves
speak, we find something more than _results_; we find the _processes_
that give occasion to them; in other terms, we see the change _as
it takes place_. Within the lifetime of an individual, within even
a very few years, those that look may find, not only that certain
words are modified in respect to their meaning, and certain letters
modified, in respect to their pronunciation, but they may also see
_how_ these modifications are brought about, ascertaining--of words
the intermediate meanings, and of letters the intermediate sounds.
We may trace the gradations throughout. We can, of our own Language,
and in our own Times, see, with a certainty, what change our Language
more especially affects; we can observe its tendencies. And we can do
this because we can find towards what particular laxities (be they of
meaning or be they of pronunciation) ourselves and our neighbours more
especially have a bias. We can, as it were, _prophesy_. We cannot do
this with the Latin of Augustus; we cannot do it with the Greek of
Pericles.
Hence it is that what we will know, to a certainty, of Etymological
processes, must be collected from Cotemporary Languages. Those who look
for them elsewhere seek for the Living among the Dead; arguing from
things unknown (at least unknown to a certainty), and so speculating
laxly, and dogmatizing unphilosophically. Hence it is, that in
Cotemporary Languages, and of those Cotemporary Languages, in our own
most especially, we may lay deep and strong, and as the only true
substratum of accurate criticism, the foundations of our knowledge of
Etymological Processes. And, observe, we can find them in a sufficient
abundance provided that we sufficiently look out for them. For
Processes, the same in kind, though not the same in degree, are found
in all languages alike. No process is found in any one language that
is not also found (in some degree or other) in our own; and no process
can be found in our own language which does not (in some degree or
other) exist in all others beside. There are no such things as Peculiar
Processes: since Languages differ from each other, not in the nature
of their Processes, but in the degrees of their development. These are
bold, perhaps novel, assertions, but they are not hasty ones.[1]
Simply considered as an _Instrument_ of Etymology I imagine that the
study of Cotemporary Languages is, in its importance, of the very
first degree; while next in value to this (considered also, as an
_Instrument_ of Etymology,) is the study of Languages during what may
be called their breakings-up, or their transitions.
There are two stages in Language. Through these two stages all
Languages, sooner or later, make their way; some sooner than others,
but all sooner or later. Of this the Latin language may serve as an
illustration. In the time of Augustus it expressed the relations of
Time and Place, in other words, its Cases and Tenses, by Declension
and Conjugation, or, broadly speaking, by Inflexion. In the time of
Dante there was little or no Inflexion, but there was an abundance
of Auxiliary Verbs, and an abundance of Prepositions in its stead.
The expression of Time and Place by independent words superseded the
expression by Inflections. Now in all Languages the inflectional stage
comes first. This is a Law. There are Languages that stay for ever (at
least for an indefinite time) in their earlier stage. Others there are
again, that we never come in contact with before they have proceeded
to their later one. Languages of this latter kind are of subordinate
value to the Etymologist. Those that he values most are such as he sees
in the two stages: so being enabled to watch the breaking-up of one,
the constitution of the other, and the transition intermediate to the
two.
Now our own language (the Anglo Saxon being borne in mind) comes under
the conditions that constitute a good and sufficient language as a
disciplinal foundation in Etymology. _It can be studied in two stages._
When we come to the Times of the Conquest we must gird up our loins for
the acquisition of a new Language.
The Breaking-up of the Latin (I speak for the sake of illustration
and comparison) is a study in itself. It is a study complete and
sufficient; not, however, more so than is the study of the Breaking-up
of the Gothic. For in this stock of Tongues, not only did the Saxon
pass into the English, but the Mœso-Gothic, the Scandinavian, and
the Frisian, each gave origin to some new Tongue; the first to the
High German, the second to the Languages of Scandinavia, and the third
to the Modern Dutch. The study then of the Languages of the Gothic
stock is something more than a sufficient disciplinal foundation in
Etymology.[2]
In matters of pronunciation, living Languages have an exclusive
advantage. For dead Languages speak but to the eye; and it is not
through the eye that the ear is to be instructed.
It is well for the Geologist to classify rocks, and to arrange strata,
to distinguish minerals, and to determine fossils; but it is far
better if, anterior to this, he will study the Powers of Nature, and
the Processes that are their operations: and these he can only study
as he sees them in the times wherein he lives, or as he finds them
recorded in authentic and undisputed histories. With this knowledge he
can criticize, and construct; without it he may invent and imagine.
Novel and ingenious he may, perchance, become; but he can never be
philosophical, and he can never be Scientific. So it is with the
Etymologist. Whenever, in a dead Language, he presumes a Process, which
he has looked for in vain in a living one, he outruns his data. The
basis of Etymology is the study of existing Processes.
Our Language has had its share; I must hasten to the consideration of
our Literature.
The Early Literature of most modern Nations consists of the same
elements; of Legends concerning their Saints, of Chronicles, and of
Hymns and Romances. Too much of this fell into the hands of the Monks;
and these were, too often, the prosaic writers of barbarous Latinity;
for Prose (if not in language at least in idea) was, with them, the
rule; and Poetry the exception. Such is the general character of the
Early Modern Literature; in which, however, our Saxon ancestors were,
somewhat (indeed much) more fortunate than their neighbours. Monkish
writing was with them an important element; but it was not the only
one. They had an originality besides. And the Scandinavians were more
fortunate still. The worshippers of Odin and Thor had a _Mythology_;
and Mythologies are the Creators and Creations of Poetry. The Norse
Mythology is as poetical as the Grecian. I speak this advisedly. Now
this Mythology was common to all the Gothic Tribes. The Saxon and
the Norse Literatures dealt (each in their degree) with the same
materials; they breathed the same spirit; and they clothed it in an
allied Language. But the Saxon Mythology is fragmentary; while the
Norse Mythology is a whole. For this reason Scandinavian (or Norse)
Literature is not extraneous to my subject.
These, the primeval and Pagan times of our ancestors, must claim and
arrest our attention; since it is from these that our characteristic
modes of Thought (call them Gothic, or call them Romantic) are derived.
In the regions of Paganism lie the dark fountains of our Nationality.
Beside this, I consider that, even in the matter of Language, the
direct Scandinavian element of the English is much underrated;[3] and
still more underrated is the indirect Scandinavian element of the
Norman-French. And here, again, when we come to the Conquest, we must
grapple with new dialects, irregular imaginations, and mystical and
mysterious Mythologies; for the things that have a value in Language,
have a value in History also.
Now come, in due order, and in lineal succession, the formation of
our Early English Literature, and the days of Chaucer; and then those
of Spenser: periods necessary to be illustrated, but which may be
illustrated at a future time. And after these the Æra of Elizabeth,
fertile in great men, and fertile in great poets; so much so, that (the
full view being too extensive) it must be contemplated by instalments
and in sections.
There are many reasons for choosing as a subject for illustration the
Dramatic Poets of this Period. They stood as great men amid a race of
great men; so doing, they have a claim on our attention on the simple
solitary grounds of their own supereminent excellence. But, besides
this, they are, with the exception of their one great representative,
known but imperfectly. Too many of us consider the Age of Elizabeth
as the Age of Shakspeare exclusively. Too many of us have been misled
by the one-sided partiality of the Shakspearian commentators. These
men, in the monomania of their idolatry, not only elevate their author
into a Giant, but dwarve down his cotemporaries into pigmies. And who
knows not how (on the moral side of the question) their writings are
filled even to nauseousness, with the imputed malignity of Ben Jonson?
Themselves being most malignant.
This, however, has been, by the labor of a late editor, either wholly
done away with, or considerably diluted. Be it with us a duty, and
be it with us a labour of love, to seek those commentators who have
rescued great men from the neglect of Posterity; and be our sympathies
with the diligent antiquarian, who shows that obloquy has originated
unjustly; and be our approbation with those who have corrected the
errors of Fame, loosely adopted, and but lately laid aside.
Yet here we must guard against a reaction. Malone, and his compeers,
valued, or seemed to value, the Elizabethan Drama, just for the light
that it threw upon the text of their idol. Gifford, goaded into scorn
by injustice, fought the fight on the other side, with strength and
with spirit; but he fought it like a partizan; reserving (too much,
but as Editors are wont to do,) his admiration and his eulogy for
those whom he himself edited. Next came Hazlitt and Charles Lamb; who
found undiscovered beauties in poets still more neglected. I think,
however, that they discovered these beauties, or at any rate that they
exaggerated them, in a great degree on account of their being neglected.
Be there here a more Catholic criticism! be there here eulogies more
discriminate! be there here tastes less exclusive!
The Elizabethan Drama is pre-eminently independent, it is pre-eminently
characteristic, it is also pre-eminently English. It is deeply, very
deeply, imbued, with the colours and complexion of the age that gave it
origin. It has much Wisdom, and much Imagination. The last of our Early
Dramatists is Shirley. With him terminates the School of Shakspeare.
The transition hence is sudden and abrupt. Imagination decays; Wit
predominates. Amatory poets write as though they wore their hearts in
their heads. Wit is perfected. It had grown out of a degeneracy of
Imagination; it will soon be sobered into Sense; Sense the predominant
characteristic of the writers under Queen Anne. The school of Dryden
passes into that of Pope, Prior being, as it were, intermediate. The
Æra of the Charleses comprises two Schools; the School of Cowley,
falsely called Metaphysical, with an excess of Fancy, and a deficiency
of Taste, and the School of Dryden, whose masculine and fiery
intellectuality simulates, aye! and _is_, genius. Tragedy has run
retrograde; but Comedy is evolving itself towards a separate existence,
and towards its full perfection. The Spirit of Milton stands apart from
his cotemporaries; reflecting nothing of its age but its self-relying
energy, moral and intellectual.
Now, although, the Schools of Cowley and the Schools of Dryden, differ
essentially from that particular section of the Elizabethan Æra,
which we have just contemplated, they do not differ, essentially,
from another section of that same æra. Be this borne in mind. There
are in Literature, no precipitate transitions. The greatest men, the
most original thinkers, the most creative spirits stand less alone
than the world is inclined to imagine. Styles of composition, that
in one generation are rife and common, always exist in the age that
went before. They were not indeed its leading characteristics, but
still they were existent within it. The metrical Metaphysics of Cowley
were the metrical metaphysics of Donne: the versified Dialectics of
Dryden may be found, with equal condensation but less harmony, in the
Elizabethan writings of Sir John Davies. The section of one age is the
characteristic of the next. This line of criticism is a fair reason
(one out of many) for never overlooking and never underrating obscure
composers and obsolete literature.
The School of Pope, and the School of our own days, are too far in the
prospective to claim any immediate attention.
And here I feel myself obliged to take leave of a subject, that
continually tempts me to grow excursive.
There are two sorts of lecturers; those that absolutely teach, and
those that stimulate to learn; those that exhaust their subject, and
those that indicate its bearings; those that infuse into their hearers
their own ideas, and those that set them a-thinking for themselves.
For my own part, it is, I confess, my aim and ambition to succeed in
the latter rather than in the former object. To carry such as hear me
through a series of Authors, or through a course of Languages, in full
detail, is evidently, even if it were desirable, an impossibility;
but it is no impossibility to direct their attention to the prominent
features of a particular subject, and to instil into them the imperious
necessity of putting forth their own natural powers in an independent
manner, so as to read for themselves, and to judge for themselves.
Now as I would rather see a man's mind active than capacious; and, as
I love Self-reliance better than Learning, I have no more sanguine
expectation, than, that instead of exhausting my subject I may move
you to exhaust it for yourselves, may sharpen criticism, may indicate
original sources, and, above all, suggest trains of honest, earnest,
patient and persevering reflection.
NOTES.
NOTE 1, p. 6. l. 24.
To be heard with confidence we must prove that we have anticipated
objections. There are those who shew reason for believing that the
inflectional elements were once independent roots: in other words
(or rather in a formal expression) that a given case = the root+a
preposition, and that a given tense = the root+the substantive verb. Now
believing that, although two forms may be thus accounted for, the third
may have a very different origin, in other words, drawing a difference
between _a_ method of accounting for a given part of speech, and _the_
method of so doing, I find that the bearings of the objection are as
follows:--
The independent words, anterior to their amalgamation with the root,
and anterior to their power as elements in inflection were either, like
the present prepositions and the verb substantive, exponents of the
relations of Time and Place, or they were, like the present nouns and
verbs, names expressive of ideas: and presuming the former to have been
the case, the old inflected Languages may have grown out of Languages
like our own; and, _vice versa_, Languages uninflected (or at least
comparatively so), like our own, may give rise to inflected ones like
the Latin: in which case, a Cycle is established, and the assertion
concerning the sequence falls to the ground.
Now the assertion concerning the _two_ stages professes to be true only
as far as it goes. The fact that certain nations are even now evolving
a rudimentary inflection out of a vocabulary of independent roots,
gives us, as an etymological phenomenon, a _third_, and an earlier
stage of Language; a stage, however, of which cognizance, out of a
work on Etymology, would have been superfluous. The independent roots,
however, in these Languages coincide, not with the prepositions and the
verbs substantive of (comparatively) uninflected Languages, but with
their Nouns and Verbs.
To an objector of another sort who should inquire (for instance) where
was the Passive Voice in English, or the Definite Article in Latin,
the answer would be that the question shewed a misapprehension of the
statement in the text, which is virtually this: not that there is
either in English or Latin, respectively, Passive Voices, or Definite
Articles, but that there are in the two Languages the processes that
evolve them. It may also be added, that (an apparent truism) the
quantity of Processes depends upon the _capacity_ of the Language. A
dialect consisting (as some do) of about ten-score words can _bear_
but a proportionate number of Processes. The truth, however, of the
statements in question depends upon this: viz. that all the processes
there existing are the processes that exist elsewhere, and that all
processes which, with a given increase of Language may at any future
time be developed, shall coincide, in kind, with the processes of other
Languages.
It may be satisfactory to the Author of the Principles of Geology to
discover that his criticism affects other sciences besides his own.
Notwithstanding the industry, and acumen of continental critics, it may
be doubted whether the Principles of Etymology (as a _Science_) have
not yet to be exhibited. I use the word _exhibited_ intentionally. That
many Etymologists _apply_ them I am most certain; where, however, do we
find them detailed in system, or recognised as tests?
We draw too much upon the Philologists of Germany; and where men draw
indefinitely they trust implicitly. I believe that the foundations
of Etymology are to be laid upon the study of existing processes;
and I grow sanguine when I remember that by no one so well as by an
Englishman can these processes be collected. With the exception of the
Russian (a doubtful exception) we come in contact with more Languages
than any nation under the Sun. Here then we have an advantage in
externals. The details of Etymology I can willingly give up to the
scholars of the Continent; in these they have already reaped a harvest:
but for the _Principles_ of Etymology, I own to the hope that it may
be the English School that shall be the first to be referred to and
the last to be distrusted. In sketching the outline of a system of
Scientific Etymology, I again borrow my analogies from Geology. Its
primary divisions would be two: 1stly, The processes that change the
_form_ of words, or the _formal_ processes. 2ndly, The processes that
change their _meanings_, or the _Logical_ processes. The first of these
would be based upon the affinities and interchanges of _sounds_, the
second upon the affinities and interchanges of _ideas_: the sciences
(amongst others) which they were erected on being, respectively,
those of Acoustics and Metaphysics; and the degrees of Etymological
probability would then coincide with the correspondence of the two
sorts of processes.
Few Etymologists have any conception of the enormous influence of
small and common processes, provided that the extent of Language that
they affect be considerable. In the very generalizing classification
of Languages into Monosyllabic, Triliteral, and Polysynthetic, I
put no trust; for I can refer (to my own satisfaction at least) the
differences that are generally attributed to an original diversity of
composition, to a diversity in the development of processes: in other
words, I know of processes which with a given degree of development
render the three classes convertible each in the other. With these
notions I, of course, take exceptions to the _Principle_ of the
classification; for I deny that the _Form_ of a Language is, in any
degree, an essential characteristic. The axiom is not _Propter formam
Lingua est id quod est_, but _Propter elementa Lingua est id quod est_.
The question concerning the Classification in point is analogous to the
question concerning the Chemical and the Natural-History Classification
in Mineralogy.
NOTE 2, p. 7. l. 22.
Were it not for the admixture of other questions, the present Lecture
might have been entitled _The Sufficiency of the English Language as
a Disciplinal Study in Grammar and Etymology, irrespective of the
fact of its being the native Language of Englishmen_. The appended
qualification is in no wise a superfluity. Our native Language is the
best instrument in Disciplinal Study simply because it is our native
one; and a Pole, a Spaniard, or Hungarian can best lay in their ideas
of General Grammar from the special study of the Polish, Spanish, and
Hungarian Languages respectively. The very palpable reason for this
is that, before we can advantageously study the System of a Language,
we must have acquired a certain quantity of the detail of it. Now,
in the attempt to collect ideas of General Grammar from the study of
a Foreign Language, we shall find that the Theory will be swamped by
the Practice; in other words, that, by attempting to do two things at
once, we shall do one of them badly. Merely, then, to have predicated
in England, of the English Language, that it was a good and sufficient
Disciplinal Instrument would have been to have remained silent as to
its _abstract_ merits as such.
Of these abstract merits the degree depends upon the chronological
extent of Language that we make use of. To get them at their _maximum_
the Two Stages must be taken in: and the Two Stages being taken in, it
is more on a par with the Languages of Classical Antiquity, than it
has generally been considered to be. Still (considered thus far only)
it is inferior to them. For the Greek and Latin, exceeding it in the
quantity of original Inflection, have run through an equal quantity of
change. Considering, however, not the English only, but the whole range
of allied Languages forming the Gothic Stock, the question takes a
different shape. As a Magazine of Processes and Principles, the Gothic
Stock not only equals the Classical, but exceeds, by far, the Greek
Branch of it. The Hebrew from its _quasi_-symbolic form has Disciplinal
merits of its own.
Let the Languages of Greece and Italy be learned for their own sake;
and by those who have the privilege to appreciate them. One might think
that the works of Homer and Demosthenes, of Lucretius and Cæsar, were
a sufficient reason for turning with diurnal and nocturnal hands the
copies that exhibit them. But let us not (as we often are) be told
that it is necessary to study the Latin or the Greek Accidence for the
sake of learning grammar in general. The self-deception that in taking
up Latin and Greek we are studying a Grammar, instead of beginning a
Literature, is too often the excuse for concluding our studies just
where they might advantageously begin, and for looking with complacency
upon limited acquirements just where limited acquirements are
pre-eminently of little use.
NOTE 3, p. 8, l. 27.
I feel that the assertion here made requires modifying and explaining.
I should be sorry to be supposed to have made it, under the old notion
that in any written records of the Saxon Literature there is any
ostensible admixture of Danish (_i. e._ Scandinavian); still less do I
participate in the belief of the early Gothic Scholars in the existence
of their so-called Dano-Saxon Dialect. I recognize, moreover, the
criticism that refers the apparent Danish (Scandinavian) element of
the East-Anglian, and Northumbrian Glossaries to the original affinity
between the extreme Low German and the extreme Scandinavian Dialects:
thus making it _indirect_. It was once my opinion (one which I have
since modified but not given up) that in the present English, and
consequently in the Low Germanic Branch of the Gothic Stock, obscure
traces of the great Scandinavian characteristics (_viz._ the existence
of a Passive Middle or Reflective Voice, and the peculiar expression of
the sense of the Definite Article) could be discovered: but it was not
upon this idea that I founded the assertion in the text.
The question has its peculiar difficulties. Words that have long
passed for Scandinavian, are continually being detected in the Saxon;
so that the Philologist who should say _this word is Scandinavian
and not Saxon_ has the difficult task of proving a negative. Again,
the point is one upon which no single person's assertion should be
received. Hastiness of Induction, in favour of particular Languages,
when we know these Languages (as every Language, indeed as every kind
of Knowledge, must be known) at the expense of some other, comes upon
us unconsciously. The Languages of the Gothic Stock that I know best
are those of Scandinavia; the Provincial Dialect of England which
I have most studied is that of Lincolnshire, and the neighbouring
maritime Counties. Here the preeminence of the Danish (Scandinavian)
element being acknowledged, the question is whether it be _Direct_ or
_Indirect_. I am free to confess that this circumstance sharpens my
sight for the perception (true or false) of direct Danish elements.
As a counterbalance, however, the consciousness of it engenders a
proportionate self-distrust.
Upon the whole, I would rather that the sentence had run thus: _the
Direct Scandinavian element in the English is still to be determined,
and here (as in many other places) there is open ground for the
original investigator_.
INTRODUCTORY LECTURE,
DELIVERED
AT THE MIDDLESEX HOSPITAL,
OCTOBER 1, 1847.
There are certain facts of such paramount importance, that they not
only bear, but require, repetition. The common duties of every-day
life, and the common rules of social policy, are matters which no
moralist states once for all: on the contrary, they are reiterated as
often as occasion requires--and occasion requires them very often.
Now it is from the fact of certain medical duties, both on the part of
those who teach and those who learn, being of this nature, that, with
the great schools of this metropolis, every year brings along with it
the necessity of an address similar to the one which I have, on this
day, the honour of laying before you.
You that come here to learn, come under the pressure of a cogent
responsibility--in some cases of a material, in others of a moral
nature--in all, however, most urgent and most imperative.
To the public at large--to the vast mass of your fellow-creatures
around you--to the multitudinous body of human beings that sink under
illness, or suffer from pain--to the whole of that infinite family
which has bodily, not unmixed with mental affliction, for its heritage
upon earth--to all who live, and breathe, and feel, and share with
yourselves the common lot of suffering--here, in their whole height
and depth, and length and breadth, are your responsibilities of one
kind. You promise the palliation of human ailment: but you break that
high promise if you act unskilfully. You call to you all those that are
oppressed; but you may aggravate the misery that you should comfort
and relieve. You bear with you the outward and visible signs, if not
of the high wisdom that heals, at least of the sagacious care that
alleviates. Less than this is a stone in the place of bread; and less
than this is poison in the fountain-springs of hope.
Not at present, indeed, but within a few brief years it will be so.
Short as is human life, the period for the learning of your profession
is but a fraction of the time that must be spent in the practice of it.
A little while, and you may teach where you now learn. Within a less
period still, you will practise what you are now taught.
And practice must not be begun before you have the fitness that is
sufficient for it. Guard against some of the current commonplaces of
carelessness, and procrastination. Lawyers sometimes say "that no
man knows his profession when he begins it." And what lawyers say of
law, medical men repeat about physic. Men of that sort of standing in
medicine which, like the respectability of an old error, is measured by
time alone, are fondest of talking thus; and men of no standing of any
sort are fondest of being their echoes. It is the current paradox of
your practical men, _i. e._ of men who can be taught by practice alone.
Clear your heads of this nonsense. It will make you egotists, and it
will make you empirics: it will make you men of one idea: it will make
you, even when you fancy it would do you just the contrary, the wildest
of speculators. The practice of practical men, in the way I now use the
words, is a capital plan for making anything in the world, save and
except practitioners.
Well! this has seemed excursive, but it is not so: it is a reason
against the putting off of your learning-time. When your first case
comes, you must be as fit for it as you are ready for it.
A difference between old practitioners and beginners there always will
be--so long at least as there is value in experience, and a difference
between age and youth; but this difference, which is necessary,
must be limited as much as possible, must be cut down to its proper
dimensions, and must by no means whatever be permitted to exaggerate
itself into an artificial magnitude. If it do so, it is worse than a
simple speculative error,--it is a mischievous delusion: it engenders a
pernicious procrastination, justifies supineness, and creates an excuse
for the neglect of opportunities: it wastes time, which is bad, and
encourages self-deception, which is worse.
A difference between old practitioners and beginners there always will
be: but it should consist not so much in the quality of their work
as in the ease with which it is done. It should be the gain of the
practitioner, not the loss of the patient.
Now, if I did those whom I have the honour to address the injustice
of supposing that the moral reasons for disciplinal preparation,
during the course of study now about to be entered into, were thrown
away upon their minds and consciences, I should be at liberty to make
short work of this part of my argument, and to dispose of much of it
in a most brief and summary manner. I should be at liberty to say, in
language more plain and complimentary, and more cogent than persuasive,
that you _must_ be up to your work when you begin it. If you stumble
at the threshold, you have broken down for after-life. A blunder at
the commencement is failure for the time to come. Furthermore; mala
praxis is a misdemeanor in the eyes of the law, for which you may first
be mulcted by a jury, and afterwards be gibbeted by the press. This
fact, which there is no denying, ought to be conclusive against the
preposterous doctrine which I have exposed: conclusive, however, as it
is, it is one which I have not chosen to put prominent. Let a better
feeling stand instead of it. Honesty is the best policy; but he is not
honest who acts upon that policy only.
All this may be true; yet it may be said that the responsibility is
prospective. "'Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof.' We'll
think about this when we have got through the Halls and Colleges.
You must give us better reasons for sacrificing our inclinations to
our duty than those of a _paulo-post-futurum_ responsibility." Be it
so: you have still a duty, urgent and absolute--not prospective, but
immediate--not in the distance, with contingent patients, but close
at hand, with the realities of friend and family--not abroad with the
public, but at home with your private circle of parents, relatives, and
guardians. By them you are entrusted here with the special, definite,
unequivocal, undoubted object--an object which no ingenuity can refine
away, and no subtlety can demur to--of instruction, discipline,
preparation. You not only _come_ up here to learn, but you are _sent_
up to do so: and anxious wishes and reasonable hopes accompany you. You
are commissioned to avail yourself of a time which experience has shewn
to be sufficient, and of opportunities which are considered necessary:
and there is no excuse for neglect.
Great as are the opportunities, they are not numerous enough to be
wasted; and limited as is the time in the eyes of those who only know
it in its misapplication, it is the period that a considerable amount
of experience has sanctioned as a fair and average time for fair and
average abilities, and for fair and average industry:--not a _minimum_
period made for iron assiduity on the one hand, or for fiery talent
on the other, but a period adapted to the common capacities of the
common mass of mankind--a common-sense time,--a time too long or too
short only for the extremes of intellect--too short for the slowness of
confirmed dulness, too long for the rapid progress of extraordinary and
rarely-occurring genius.
Of this time you are bound to make the most. It is your interest to do
so for your own sakes; it is your duty to do so for the sake of your
friends.
You come to the hospital to _learn_--you come to the hospital to learn
in the strictest sense of the word. You come to learn medicine, as
you would go--if instead of physic your profession were the law--to
the chambers of a special pleader, a common lawyer, or an equity
draughtsman. In this strict sense does your presence here imply
study--study exclusive, and study without any loss of time, and without
any division of attention. You do not come here as a clergyman goes to
the University; but as artists go to Rome--not to keep terms, but to do
work.
I must here guard against the misinterpretation of an expression used a
few sentences back. I wish to let nothing drop that may encourage the
germs of an undue presumption. I expressed an opinion--which I meant to
be a decided one--that the time allowed for your medical studies was
full, fair, and sufficient,--so much so that if it prove _in_sufficient
the fault must lie in the neglect of it. _Sufficient_, however, as it
is, it gives no opportunity for any superfluous leisure. It must not
be presumed on. You have no odd months, or weeks, or days, or even
hours, to play with. It is a sufficient space for you to lay in that
knowledge of your profession which the experience and opinion of your
examining boards have thought proper to require. I believe the amount
thus required, to be, like the time granted for the acquisition of
it, a fair amount. But it is not a high one, and it is not right that
it should be so. Standards of fitness that are set up for the measure
of a body of students so numerous as those in medicine, rarely err
on the side of severity. They favour mediocrity; and they ought to
favour it. It is safe: and that is all they have a right to look to.
What they profess is never very formidable; and what they require is
generally less than what is professed. But the time that is sufficient
for this _modicum_ (or _minimum_) of professional learning is not the
time sufficient for the formation of a practitioner of that degree of
excellence which the competition of an open profession, like that of
medicine, requires as the guarantee of success. An examining board
has but one point to look to--it must see that you can practise
with safety to the public. It never ensures, or professes to ensure,
that you shall practise with success to yourself, or even that you
shall practise at all. In the eyes of an Examiner, as in those of a
commissioner of lunacy, there are but two sorts of individuals; those
that can be let loose upon the public, and those that cannot. In the
eyes of the public there is every degree of excellence, and every
variety of comparative merit or demerit.
Now as to the way of attaining these higher degrees of merit, and the
rewards, moral or material, which they ensure--which follow them as
truly as satisfaction follows right actions, and as penalties follow
wrong ones. The opportunity we have spoken of. It consists in the whole
range of means and appliances by which we here, and others elsewhere,
avail ourselves of those diseases that humanity has suffered, and
is suffering, for the sake of alleviating the misery that they seem
to ensure for the future. Disease with us is not only an object of
direct and immediate relief to the patient who endures it, but it is
an indirect means of relief to sufferers yet untouched. Out of evil
comes good. We make the sick helpful to the sound; the dead available
to the living. Out of pestilence comes healing, and out of the
corruption of death the laws and rule of life. Suffering we have, and
teaching we have, and neither must be lost upon you. It is too late
to find that these objects, and objects like them, are repugnant and
revolting. These things should have been thought of before. Your choice
is now taken, and it must be held to. The discovery that learning
is unpleasant is the discovery of a mistake in the choice of your
profession; and the sooner you remedy such a mistake the better--the
better for yourselves, the better for your friends, the better for the
public, and the better for the profession itself.
Steady work, with fair opportunities--this is what makes practitioners.
The one without the other is insufficient. There is an expenditure of
exertion where your industry outruns your materials, and there is a
loss of useful facts when occasions for observation are neglected.
See all you can, and hear all you can. It is not likely that cases will
multiply themselves for your special observations, and it is neither
the policy nor the practice of those who are commissioned with your
instruction to open their mouths at random.
See all you can. If the case be a common one, you get so much
familiarity with a phenomenon that it will be continually presenting
itself. If a rare one, you have seen what you may seldom see again.
There is every reason for taking the practice of the hospital exactly
as you find it. It represents the diseases of the largest class of
mankind--the poor; and, although in some of the details there may be a
difference, upon the whole the forms of disease that are the commonest
in hospitals are the commonest in the world at large; and _vice versâ_.
Hence, what you see here is the rule rather than the exception for
what you will see hereafter. The diseases are not only essentially the
same, but the proportion which they bear to one another is nearly so. I
mention this, because there is often a tendency to run after rare cases
to the neglect of common ones; whilst, on the other hand, remarkable
and instructive forms of disease are overlooked, simply because they
are thought the curiosities rather than the elements of practice. You
may carry your neglect of common cases, on the strength of their being
common, too far. You may know all about catalepsy and hydrophobia, and
nothing about itch or measles. You may find that, of the two parties
concerned, the patient and yourself, it is the former that knows the
most about his complaint. You may live to have your diagnosis corrected
by the porter, your prognosis criticised by the nurse. On the other
hand, by missing single instances of rare disease, you may miss the
opportunity of being able to refer to your memory rather than to your
library.
I have given you reasons against being afraid of over-observation, and
against the pernicious habit of neglecting this case because it is
common, and that because it is rare--a common excuse for neglecting
_all_ diseases, and a popular reason for doing so. _Medicus sum,
nihil in re medicâ a me alienum puto_, &c. Some minds, indeed, are so
constituted that they can make much, very much, out of single cases,
out of solitary specimens of diseases. The power of minute analysis is
the characteristic of this sort of observation. It is just possible so
to seize upon the true conditions of a disease, as to satisfy yourself,
once for all, of its real permanent attribute--of its essence, if I may
so express myself. And this being seen, you may, for certain purposes,
have seen enough; seen it at one glance; seen it at a single view as
well as others see it at a hundred. I say that certain minds are thus
constituted; but they are rarely the minds of many men in a single
generation, and never the minds of beginners. Before this power is
attained your observation must be disciplined into the accuracy and the
rapidity of an instinct; and to this power of observation--attainable
only by long practice, and after long practice--a high power of
reflection must be superadded.
No such power must be presumed on. If the student delude himself, the
disease will undeceive him. The best practitioners, in the long run,
are those whose memory is stored with the greatest number of individual
cases--individual cases well observed, and decently classified. It
is currently stated that the peculiar power of the late Sir Astley
Cooper was a power of memory of this sort, and I presume that no better
instance of its value need be adduced. Now the memory for cases implies
the existence of cases to remember; and before you arrange them in
the storehouse of your thoughts you must have seen and considered;
must have used both your senses and your understanding; must have
seen, touched, and handled with the one, and must have understood and
reflected with the other.
I am talking of these things as they exist in disciplined intellects,
and in retentive memories; and, perhaps, it may be objected that I
am talking of things that form the exception rather than the rule;
that I am measuring the power of common men by those of extraordinary
instances. I weigh my words, when I deliberately assert, that such,
although partially the case, is not so altogether; and that it is far
less the case than is commonly imagined. In most of those instances
where we lose the advantage of prior experience, by omitting the
application of our knowledge of a previous similar case, the fault
is less in the laxity of memory than in the original incompleteness
of the observation. Observe closely, and ponder well, and the memory
may take care of itself. Like a well-applied nick-name, a well-made
observation will stick to you--whether you look after it or neglect it.
The best way to learn to swim is to try to sink, and it is so because
floatation, like memory, is natural if you set about it rightly. Let
those who distrust their remembrance once observe closely, and then
forget if they can.
There are good reasons for cultivating this habit at all times, but
there are especial reasons why those who are on the threshold of their
profession should more particularly cultivate it. Not because you have
much to learn--we have all that--nor yet because you have the privilege
of great opportunities--we have all that also--must you watch, and
reflect, and arrange, and remember. Your time of life gives you an
advantage. The age of the generality of you is an age when fresh facts
are best seized: and best seized because they are fresh. Whether you
are prepared to understand their whole import, as you may do at some
future period, is doubtful. It is certain that the effect of their
novelty is to impress them more cogently on your recollection.
And this is practice--practice in the good sense of the term, and in
a sense which induces me to guard against the misconstruction of a
previous application of it. A few sentences back I used the phrases
_practical men_, adding that those so called were men who could be
taught by practice only. I confess that this mode of expression was
disparaging. For the purpose to which it was applied it was meant to
be so. It is a term you must be on your guard against. _Practice_ is
so good a thing of itself that its name and appellation are applied
to many bad things. Slovenliness is practice; if it suits the purpose
of any one to call it so; contempt for reading is practice; and
bleeding on all occasions when you omit to purge is practice;--and bad
practice too. Be on your guard against this: but do not be on your
guard against another sort of practice: the practice of men who first
observe, and then reflect, and then generalise, and then reduce to a
habit their results. This is the true light for you to follow, and in
this sense practice is not only _a_ safe guide but _the_ safe guide. It
is experience, or, if you choose a more philosophic term, induction.
Theoretical men can be taught by this, and the wisest theories _are_
taught by it. When I said that practical men were taught by practice
only, I never implied that they were the only men that practice could
teach. Experience makes fools wise; but fools are not the only persons
who can profit by experience.
See and hear--the senses must administer to the understanding. Eye, and
ear, and finger--exercise these that they may bring in learning.
See and hear--the senses must administer to their own improvement. Eye,
and ear, and finger--exercise these, that they may better themselves
as instruments. The knowledge is much, but the discipline is more. The
knowledge is the fruit that is stored, but the discipline is the tree
that yields. The one is the care that keeps, the other the cultivation
that supplies.
The habit of accurate observation is by no means so difficult as is
darkly signified by logicians, nor yet so easy as is vainly fancied by
empirics. It is the duty of those who teach you to indicate the medium.
The tenor of some of my observations runs a risk of misrepresentation.
It has been limited. It has spoken of cases, as if there was nothing
in the whole range of medical study but cases; and of observation,
as if the faculties of a medical man were to take a monomaniac form,
and to run upon observation only; of hospitals, as if they consisted
of beds and patients alone; and of clinical medicine and of clinical
surgery, as if there was no such a paramount subject as physiology,
and no such important subsidiary studies as chemistry and botany. It
is all hospital and no school--all wards and no museum--all sickness
and no health. This has been the line that I have run on; and I feel
that it may be imputed to me that I have run on it too long and too
exclusively. Whether I undervalue the acquisition of those branches
of knowledge which are collateral and subordinate to medicine, rather
than the elements of medicine itself--which are the approaches to the
temple rather than the innermost shrine--will be seen in the sequel.
At present I only vindicate the prominence which has been given to
clinical observation, by insisting upon the subordinate character of
everything that is taught away from the bed, and beyond the sensible
limits of disease. No single subject thus taught is the direct and
primary object of your learning. The art of healing is so. You learn
other things that you may understand this; and in hospitals at
least you learn them with that view exclusively. If you wish to be
a physiologist, chemist, or botanist, irrespectively of the medical
application of the sciences of physiology, chemistry, and botany,
there are better schools than the Middlesex Hospital, or, indeed, than
any hospital whatever. _There_ they may be studied as mathematics are
studied at Cambridge, or as classics at Eton--simply for their own
great and inherent values. But _here_ you study them differently, that
is, as mathematics are taught at a military college, or as classics
are taught at the College of Preceptors, for a specific purpose,
and with a limited view--with a view limited to the illustration of
disease, and with the specific purpose of rendering them indirect
agents in therapeutics. If you could contrive the cure of disease
without a knowledge of morbid processes, it would be a waste of time to
trouble yourself with pathology; or if you could bottom the phenomena
of diseased action without a knowledge of the actions of health,
physiology would be but a noble science for philosophers; or if you
could build up a system of physiology, determining the functions of
organs and the susceptibilities of tissues, independent of the anatomy
of those organs and those tissues, scalpels would be as irrelevant to
you as telescopes; and if these three sciences received no elucidation
from chemistry, and botany, and physics, then would chemistry, and
botany and physics, have the value--neither more nor less--of the art
of criticism or of the binomial theorem. What you are taught in the
schools is taught to you, not because it is worth knowing--for Latin,
and Greek, and Mathematics are worth knowing--but because, before
patients can be cured, they are necessary to be learned.
And, in order to be taught at all, they must be taught systematically.
It is an easy matter to ask for a certain amount of these two
collateral sciences--to pick and choose just the parts wanted for
use, to require just that _modicum_ of botany which illustrates the
Pharmacopœia, and just those fragments of chemistry that make
prescriptions safe, and urine intelligible. It is easy, I say, to ask
for all this; but the art of thus teaching _per saltum_ has yet to be
discovered. The whole is more manageable than the half. What it may
be with others is more than I can tell; but, for my own particular
teaching, I would sooner take the dullest boy from the worst school,
and start him in a subject at the right end, than begin at the wrong
end with the cleverest prizeman that ever flattered parent or gratified
instructor. Bits of botany and crumbs of chemistry are less digestible
than whole courses.
Thus much for those studies that make your therapeutics rational.
Some few have spoken slightly of them--as Sydenham, in the fulness
of his knowledge of symptoms, spoke slightingly of anatomy, or as a
Greek sculptor, familiar with the naked figure, might dispense with
dissection. They are necessary, nevertheless, for the groundwork of
your practice. They must serve to underpin your observations.
And now we may ask, whether, when a medical education has been gone
through, you have collected from it, over and above your professional
sufficiency, any secondary advantages of that kind which are attributed
to education itself taken in the abstract? Whether your knowledge is of
the sort that elevates, and whether your training is of the kind that
strengthens?
Upon the whole, you may be satisfied with the reflex action of
your professional on your general education--that is, if you take
a practical and not an ideal standard. It will do for you, in this
way, as much as legal studies do for the barrister, and as much as
theological reading does for the clergyman; and perhaps in those
points not common to the three professions medicine has the advantage.
Its chemistry, which I would willingly see more mixed with physics,
carries you to the threshold of the exact sciences. Its botany is
pre-eminently disciplinal to the faculty of classification; indeed,
for the natural-history sciences altogether, a medical education is
almost necessary. Clear ideas in physiology are got at only through an
exercised power of abstraction and generalization. The phenomena of
insanity can be appreciated only when the general phenomena of healthy
mental function are understood, and when the normal actions of the mind
are logically analyzed. Such is medical education as an instrument of
self-culture: and as education stands at present, a man who has made
the most of them may walk among the learned men of the world with a
bold and confiding front.
I insist upon thus much justice being done to the intellectual
character of my profession--viz. that it be measured by a practical,
and not an ideal, standard. Too much of the spirit of exaggeration
is abroad--of that sort of exaggeration which makes men see in the
requisites for their own profession the requisites for half-a-dozen
others--of that sort of exaggeration which made Vitruvius, himself an
architect, prove elaborately that before a man could take a trowel in
his hand he must have a knowledge of all the sciences and a habit of
all the virtues. Undoubtedly it would elevate medicine for every member
in the profession to know much more than is required of him--yet this
is no reason for our requiring much more than we do. Such a notion
can be entertained only through a confusion of duty on the part of
those who direct medicine. Their business is the public safety; and
the position of their profession is their business _only_ so far as it
affects this. Trusts are intended for the benefit of any one rather
than the trustee.
Two objections lie against the recommendation of extraneous branches
of learning in medicine: in the first place, by insisting upon them as
elements of a special course of instruction, they are, by implication,
excluded from a general one; in the second place, they are no part of a
three years' training.
Concentrate your attention on the essentials. I am quite satisfied
that as far as the merits or demerits of an education contribute to
the position of a profession, we may take ours as we find it, and yet
hold our own. Nevertheless, lest the position given to medicine by
its pre-eminent prominence, in conjunction with the church and bar,
as one of the so-called learned professions, should encourage the
idea that a multiplicity of accomplishments should be the character
of a full and perfect medical practitioner, one or two important
realities in respect to our position should be indicated. We are at
a disadvantage as compared with both the church and the bar. We have
nothing to set against such great political prizes as chancellorships
and archbishoprics. We are at this disadvantage; and, in a country like
England, it is a great one: so that what we gain by the connection, in
the eyes of the public, is more than what we give; and the connection
is itself artificial, and, as such, dissoluble. It is best to look the
truth in the face--we must stand or fall by our own utility.
Proud to be useful--scorning to be more
--must be the motto of him whose integrity should be on a level with
his skill, who should win a double confidence, and who, if he do his
duty well, is as sure of his proper influence in society, and on
society--and that influence a noble one--as if he were the member of a
profession ensured to respectability by all the favours that influence
can extort, and all the prerogatives that time can accumulate. As
compared with that of the church and bar, our hold upon the public is
by a thread--but it is the thread of life.
Such are the responsibilities, the opportunities, and the prospects,
of those who are now about to prepare themselves for their future
career. We who teach have our responsibilities also; we know them; we
are teaching where Bell taught before us; we are teaching where ground
has been lost; yet we are also teaching with good hopes, founded upon
improved auguries.
ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AS A
BRANCH OF EDUCATION.
A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION
OF GREAT BRITAIN.
MAY 13, 1854.
The subject I have the honour of illustrating is The Importance of the
Study of Language as a means of Education for all Classes.
I open it by drawing a distinction.
A little consideration will show that that difference between the
study of a given subject in its general and abstract, and the study
of one in its applied or concrete, form, which finds place in so many
departments of human knowledge, finds place in respect to Language
and Languages. It finds place in the subject before us as truly as it
does in that science, which one of my able successors will have the
honour of illustrating,--the science of the laws of Life--Physiology or
Biology. Just as there is, therein, a certain series of laws relating
to life and organization, which would command our attention, if the
whole animal and vegetable world consisted of but a single species,
so the study of Speech would find place in a well-devised system of
education, even if the tongues of the whole wide world were reduced
to a single language, and that language to a single dialect. This is
because the science of life is one thing, the science of the forms
under which the phenomena of life are manifested, another. And just as
Physiology, or Biology, is, more or less, anterior to and independent
of such departments of study as Botany and Zoology, so, in the subject
under notice, there is the double division of the study of _Language_
in respect to structure and development, and the study of _Languages_
as instances of the variety of form in which the phenomenon of human
speech exhibits, or has exhibited, itself. Thus--
When (as I believe once to have been the case) there was but a single
language on the face of the earth, the former of these divisions had
its subject-matter. And--
When (as is by no means improbable) one paramount and exclusive
tongue, developed, at first, rapidly and at the expense of the
smaller languages of the world, and, subsequently, slowly and at
that of the more widely-diffused ones, shall have replaced the still
numerous tongues of the nineteenth century; and when all the dialects
of the world shall be merged into one Universal Language, the same
subject-matter for the study of the structure of Language, its growth
and changes, will still exist.
So that the study of Language is one thing, the study of Languages,
another.
They are different; and the intellectual powers that they require and
exercise are different also. The greatest comparative philologists
have, generally, been but moderate linguists.
A certain familiarity with different languages they have, of course,
had; and as compared with that of the special scholar--the Classic or
the Orientalist, for instance--their range of language (so to say) has
been a wide one; but it has rarely been of that vast compass which is
found in men after the fashion of Mezzofanti, &c.--men who have spoken
languages by the dozen, or the score;--but who have left comparative
philology as little advanced as if their learning had been bounded by
the limits of their own mother tongue.
Now this difference, always of more or less importance in itself,
increases when we consider Language as an object of education; and it
is for the sake of illustrating it that the foregoing preliminaries
have been introduced. No opinion is given as to the comparative rank or
dignity of the two studies; no decision upon the nobility or ignobility
of the faculties involved in the attainment of excellence in either.
The illustration of a difference is all that has been aimed at. There
is a difference between the two classes of subjects, and a difference
between the two kinds of mental faculties. Let us make this difference
clear. Let us also give it prominence and importance.
One main distinction between the study of Language and the study of
Languages lies in the fact of the value of the former being _constant_,
that of the latter, _fluctuating_. The relative importance of any two
languages, as objects of special attention, scarcely ever remains
steady. The value, for instance, of the German--to look amongst the
cotemporary forms of speech--has notably risen within the present
century. And why? Because the literature in which it is embodied has
improved. Because the scientific knowledge which, to all who want the
key, is (so to say) locked up in it, has increased some hundred per
cent.
But it may go down again. Suppose, for instance, that new writers of
pre-eminent merit, ennoble some of the minor languages of Europe--the
Danish, Swedish, Dutch, &c. Such a fact would divide the attention of
_savans_--attention which can only be bestowed upon some second, at
the expense of some first, object. In such a case, the extent to which
the German language got studied would be affected much in the same way
as that of the French has been by the development of the literature of
Germany.
Or the area over which a language is spoken may increase; as it may,
also, diminish.
Or the number of individuals that speak it may multiply--the area being
the same.
Or the special application of the language, whether for the purposes of
commerce, literature, science, or politics, may become changed. In this
way, as well as in others, the English is becoming, day by day, more
important.
There are other influences.
High as is the value of the great classical languages of Greece and
Rome, we can easily conceive how that value might be enhanced. Let a
manuscript containing the works of some of the lost, or imperfectly
preserved, writers of antiquity be discovered. Let, for instance,
Gibbon's _desiderata_--the lost _Decads of Livy_, the _Orations of
Hyperides_, or the _Dramas of Menander_--be made good. The per-centage
of classical scholars would increase; little or much.
Some years back it was announced that the Armenian language contained
translations, made during the earlier centuries of our era, of certain
classical writings, of which the originals had been lost--lost in the
interval. This did not exactly make the Armenian, with its alphabet
of six-and-thirty letters, a popular tongue; but it made it, by a
fraction, more popular than it was in the days of Whiston and La Croze,
when those two alone, of all the learned men of Europe, could read it.
Translations tell in another way. Whatever is worth reading in the
Danish and Swedish is forthwith translated into German. _E. g._
Professor Retzius of Stockholm wrote a good Manual of Anatomy. He
had the satisfaction of seeing it translated into German. He had the
further satisfaction of hearing that the translation ran through five
editions in less time than the original did through one.
Now, if the Germans were to leave off translating the value of the
language in which Professor Retzius wrote his Anatomy would rise.
Upon the whole, the French is, perhaps, the most important language of
the nineteenth century; yet it is only where we take into consideration
the whole of its elements of value. To certain special _savans_, the
German is worth more; to the artist, the Italian; to the American, the
Spanish. It fell, too, in value when nations like our own insisted
upon the use of their native tongues in diplomacy. It fell in value
because it became less indispensable; and another cause, now in
operation, affects the same element of indispensability. The French
are beginning to learn the languages of other nations. Their own
literature will certainly be none the worse for their so doing. But it
by no means follows that that literature will be any the more studied.
On the contrary, Frenchmen will learn English more, and, _pro tanto_,
Englishmen learn French less.
If all this have illustrated a difference, it may also have done
something more. It may have given a rough sketch, in the way of
classification, of the kind of facts that regulate the value of special
languages as special objects of study. At any rate (and this is the
main point), the subject-matter of the present Address is narrowed. It
is narrowed (in the first instance at least) to the consideration of
that branch of study whereof the value is constant; for assuredly it is
this which will command more than a moiety of our consideration.
This may be said to imply a preference to the study of Language as
opposed to that of Languages--a _singular_ preference, as a grammarian
may, perhaps, be allowed to call it. It cannot be denied that, to
a certain extent, such is the case; but it is only so to a certain
extent. The one is not magnified at the expense of the other. When all
has been said that logic or mental philosophy can say about the high
value of comparative philology, general grammar, and the like, the
lowest value of the least important language will still stand high, and
pre-eminently high that of what may be called the _noble_ Languages.
No variations in the philological barometer, no fluctuations in the
Exchange of Language, will ever bring down the advantage of studying
one, two, or even more foreign languages to so low a level as to expel
such tongues as the Latin, the Greek, the French, or the German, one
and all, from an English _curriculum_--and _vice versâ_, English from a
foreign one.
Now, if this be the case, one of the elements in the value of the
_study of Language in general_ will be the extent to which it
facilitates the acquirement of any one language in particular, and
this element of value will be an important--though not the most
important--one.
The structure of the human body is worth knowing, even if the
investigator of it be neither a practitioner in medicine nor a teacher
of anatomy; and, in like manner, the structure of the human language
is an important study irrespective of the particular forms of speech
whereof it may facilitate the acquirement.
The words on the diagram-board will now be explained. They are meant to
illustrate the class of facts that comparative philology supplies.
The first runs--
_Klein_ : _Clean_ :: _Petit_ : _Petitus_.
It shows the extent to which certain ideas are associated. It shows,
too, something more; it shows that such an association is capable of
being demonstrated from the phenomena of language instead of being a
mere _à priori_ speculation on the part of the mental philosopher.
_Klein_ is the German for _little_; _clean_ is our own English
adjective, the English of the Latin word _mundus_. In German the word
is _rein_.
Now, notwithstanding the difference of meaning in the two tongues,
_clean_ and _klein_ are one and the same word. Yet, how are the ideas
of _cleanliness_ and _littleness_ connected? The Greek language has
the word _hypocorisma_, meaning a _term of endearment_, and the
adjective _hypocoristic_. Now, _clean-ness_, or _neat-ness_, is one of
the elements that make _hypocoristic_ terms (or terms of endearment)
applicable. And so is _smallness_. We talk of _pretty little dears_,
a thousand times, where we talk of _pretty big dears_ once. This,
then, explains the connexion; this tells us that _clean_ in English is
_klein_ in German, word for word.
You doubt it, perhaps. You shake your head, and say, that the connexion
seems somewhat indefinite; that it is just one of those points which
can neither be proved nor disproved. Be it so. The evidence can be
amended. Observe the words _petit_ and _petitus_. _Petit_ (in French)
is exactly what _klein_ is in German, _i. e._, _little_. _Petitus_ (in
Latin) is very nearly what _clean_ is in English, _i. e._, _desired_,
or _desirable_. That _petit_ comes from _petitus_ is undeniable.
Hence, where the German mode of thought connects the ideas of
_smallness_ and _cleanness_, the Latin connects those of _smallness_
and _desirability_; so that as _petit_ is to _petitus_, so is _klein_
to _clean_. In the diagram this is given in the formula of a sum in the
Rule of Three.
The words just noticed explain the connexion of ideas in the case
of separate words. The forthcoming help us in a much more difficult
investigation. What is the import of such sounds as that of the letter
_s_ in the word father-_s_? It is the sign of the plural number.
Such is the question--such the answer; question and answer connected in
the word _fathers_ solely for the sake of illustration. Any other word,
and any other sign of case, number, person, or tense, would have done
as well.
But _is_ the answer a real one? Is it an answer at all? How come such
things as plural numbers, and signs of plural numbers, into language?
How the particular plural before us came into being, I cannot say; but
I can show how some plurals have. Let us explain the following--
_Ngi_ = _I_. _Ngi-n-de_ = _we_.
_Ngo_ = _thou_. _Ngo-n-da_ = _ye_.
_Ngu_ = _he_. _Nge-n-da_ = _they_.
_Da_ = _with_.
_Me-cum_ = _me_.
The _da_ (or _de_) in the second column, is the sign of the plural
number in a language which shall at present be nameless. It is also
the preposition _with_. Now _with_ denotes _association_, association
_plurality_. Hence
_Ngi-n-de_ = _I_ + = _we_.
_Ngo-n-da_ = _thou_ + = _ye_.
_Nge-n-da_ = _he_ + = _they_.
This is just as if the Latins, instead of _nos_ and _vos_, said
_me-cum_ and _te-cum_.
Such is the history of one mode of expressing the idea of plurality;
we can scarcely say of a _plural number_. The words _plural
number_ suggest the idea of a single word, like _fathers_, where
the _s_ is inseparably connected with the root; at least so far
inseparably connected as to have no independent existence of its own.
_Ngi-n-de_, however, is no single word at all, but a pair of words in
juxta-position, each with a separate existence of its own. But what
if this juxta-position grow into _amalgamation_; What if the form in
_da_ change? What if it become _t_ or _z_, or _th_, or _s_? What if,
meanwhile, the separate preposition _da_ change in form also; in form
or meaning, or, perhaps, in both? In such a case a true plural form is
evolved, the history of its evolution being a mystery.
So much for one of the inflections of a _noun_. The remaining words
illustrate one of a _verb_.
Hundreds of grammarians have suggested that the signs of the _persons_
in the verb might be neither more nor less than the personal pronouns
_appended_; in the first instance, to the verb, but, afterwards
amalgamated or incorporated with it. If so, the _-m_ in _inqua-m_, is
the _m_ in _me_, &c. The late Mr. Garnett, a comparative philologist
whose reputation is far below his merits, saw that this was not exactly
the case. He observed that the appended pronoun was not so much the
_Personal_ as the _Possessive_ one: that the analysis of a word like
_inqua-m_ was not so much, _say_+_I_, as _saying_+_my_; in short, that
the verb was a noun, and the pronoun either an adjective (like _meus_)
or an oblique case (like _mei_), agreeing with, or governed by, it.
It is _certainly_ so in the words before you. In a language, which,
at present, shall be nameless, instead of saying _my apple_, _thy
apple_, they say what is equivalent to _apple-m_, _apple-th_, &c.; _i.
e._, they append the possessive pronoun to the substantive, and by
modifying its form, partially incorporate or amalgamate it. They do
more than this. They do (as the diagram shows us) precisely the same
with the verbs in their _personal_, as they do with the nouns in their
_possessive_, relations. Hence, _olvas-om_, &c., is less _I read_ than
_my-reading_; less _read_+_I_, than _reading_+_my_.
1.
_Olvas_--_om_ = _I read_. = _reading-my_.
---- _od_ = _thou readest_. = _reading-thy_.
---- _uk_ = _we read_. = _reading-our_.
---- _atok_ = _ye read_. = _reading-your_.
2.
_Almá_--_m_ = _my apple_. = _apple-my_.
---- _d_ = _thy apple_. = _apple-thy_.
---- _nk_ = _our apple_. = _apple-our_.
---- _tok_ = _your apple_. = _apple-your_.
I submit, that facts of this kind are of some value, great or small.
But the facts themselves are not all. How were they got at? They were
got at by dealing with the phenomena of language as we found them, by
an induction of no ordinary width and compass; for many forms of speech
had to be investigated before the facts came out in their best and most
satisfactory form.
The illustration of the verb (_olvasom_, and _almám_, &c.) is from
the Hungarian; that of the plural number (_nginde_, &c.), from the
Tumali--the Tumali being a language no nearer than the negro districts
to the south of Kordovan, between Sennaar and Darfur, and (as such) not
exactly in the highway of literature and philology.
Now I ask whether there be, or whether there be not, certain branches
of inquiry which are, at one and the same time, recognised to be of the
highest importance, and yet not very remarkable for either unanimity of
opinion, precision of language, or distinctness of idea on the part of
their professors. I ask whether what is called, with average clearness,
Mental Philosophy, and, with somewhat less clearness, Metaphysics,
be not in this predicament? I ask whether, in this branch of
investigation, the subject-matter do not eminently desiderate something
definite, palpable, and objective, and whether these same desiderated
tangibilities be not found in the wide field of Language to an extent
which no other field supplies? Let this field be a training-ground. The
facts it gives are of value. The method it requires is of value.
As the languages of the world, as the forms of speech mutually
unintelligible, are counted by the hundred, and the dialects by the
thousand, the field is a large one--one supplying much exercise, work,
and labour. But the applications of the results obtained are wide also;
for, as long as any form of mental philosophy remains susceptible of
improvement, as long as its improved form remains undiffused, so long
will a knowledge of the structure of language in general, a knowledge
of comparative philology, a knowledge of general grammar (for we may
choose our term), have its use and application. And, assuredly, this
will be for some time.
As to its special value in the particular department of the
ethnologist, high as it is, I say nothing, or next to nothing, about
it; concerning myself only with its more general applications.
Let it be said, then, that the study of language is eminently
disciplinal to those faculties that are tasked in the investigation
of the phenomena of the human mind; the value of a knowledge of these
being a matter foreign to the present dissertation, but being by no
means low. High or low, however, it measures that of the studies under
notice.
But how is this general philology to be taught? Are youths to seek
for roots and processes in such languages as the Hungarian and the
Tumali? No. The teaching must be by means of well-selected suggestive
examples, whereby the student may rise from particulars to generals,
and be taught to infer the uncertain from the certain. I do not say
that the _s_ in _fathers_ arose exactly after the fashion of the Tumali
plural; but, assuredly, its development was the same in kind, if not
in detail. At all events, language must be dealt with as a _growth_.
In the first stage of speech, there are no inflections at all,
separate words serving instead of them:--just as if, instead of saying
_fathers_, we said _father many_, or _father father_; reduplication
being one of the make-shifts (so to say) of this period. The languages
allied to the Chinese belong to this class.
In the second stage, the separate words coalesce, but not so perfectly
as to disfigure their originally separate character. The Hungarian
persons have illustrated this. Language now becomes what is called
_agglutinate_. The parts cohere, but the cohesion is imperfect. The
majority of languages are agglutinate.
The Latin and Greek tongues illustrate the third stage. The parts
originally separate, then agglutinate, now become so modified by
contact as to look like secondary parts of a single word; these
original separate substantive characters being a matter of inference
rather than a patent and transparent fact. The _s_ in _fathers_
(which is also the _s_ in _patre-s_ and πάτερε-ς) is in this
predicament.
Lastly, inflections are replaced by prepositions and auxiliary verbs,
as is the case in the Italian and French when compared with the Latin.
Truly, then, may we say that the phenomena of speech are the phenomena
of growth, evolution, or development; and as such must they be taught.
A cell that grows,--not a crystal that is built up,--such is language.
But these well-devised selections of suggestive examples, whereby the
student may rise from particulars to generals, &c., are not to be found
in the ordinary grammars. Indeed, it is the very reverse of the present
system; where there are twenty appeals to the memory in the shape of
what is called a _rule_, for one appeal to the understanding in the
shape of an illustrated process. So much the worse for the existing
methods.
Moulds applied to growing trees--cookery-book receipts for making
a natural juice--these are the parallels to the artificial systems
of grammar _in their worst forms_. The _better_ can be excused,
sometimes recommended; even as the Linnæan system of botanical teaching
can, in certain cases, be used with safety, _provided always that
its artificial character be explained beforehand, and insisted on
throughout_.
To stand on the level of the Linnæan system, an artificial grammar must
come under the following condition:--_It must leave the student nothing
to unlearn when he comes to a natural one_.
How can this be done? It can be done, if the grammarian will be content
to teach _forms_ only, leaving processes alone. Let him say (for
instance) that the Latin for--
_I call_ is _voc_-o.
_Thou callest_, _voc_-as.
_Calling_, _voc_-ans.
_I called_, _voc_-avi &c.
But do not let him say that active aorists are formed from futures, and
passive ones from the third person singular of the perfect. His forms,
his paradigms, will be right; his rules, in nine cases out of ten,
wrong. I am satisfied that languages can be taught without rules and by
paradigms only.
This recognition of what has been called _artificial_ grammar for the
teaching of special languages, as opposed to the general grammar of
the comparative philologist, should serve to anticipate an objection.
'Would you,' it may be asked, 'leave the details of languages like
the Latin, Greek, French, German, &c.--languages of eminent practical
utility--untaught until such time as the student shall have dipped into
Chinese, touched upon Hungarian, and taken a general idea of the third
stage of development from the Latin, and of the fourth from the French?
If so, the period of life when the memory for words is strongest will
have passed away before any language but his own mother-tongue has been
acquired.'
The recognition of such a thing as artificial grammar answers this
in the negative. If a special language be wanted, let it be taught
by-times: only, if it cannot be taught in the most scientific manner,
let it be taught in a manner as little unscientific as possible.
In this lies an argument against the ordinary teaching (I speak as an
Englishman) of English. What do we learn by it?
In the ordinary teaching of what is called the grammar of the English
language there are two elements. There is something professed to be
taught which is not taught, but which, if taught, would be worth
learning; and there is something which, from being already learned
better than any man can teach it, requires no lessons. The one (the
latter) is the use and practice of the English tongue. This the
Englishman has already. The other is the principles of grammar.
With existing text-books this is an impossibility. What then _is_
taught? Something (I am quoting from what I have written elsewhere)
undoubtedly. The facts, that language is more or less regular; that
there _is_ such a thing as grammar; that certain expressions should
be avoided, are all matters worth knowing. And they are all taught
even by the worst method of teaching. But are these the proper objects
of _systematic_ teaching? Is the importance of their acquisition
equivalent to the time, the trouble, and the displacement of more
valuable subjects, which are involved in their explanation? I think
not. Gross vulgarity of language is a fault to be prevented; but the
proper prevention is to be got from habit--not rules. The proprieties
of the English language are to be learned, like the proprieties of
English manners, by conversation and intercourse; and a proper school
for both, is the best society in which the learner is placed. If this
be good, systematic teaching is superfluous; if bad, insufficient.
There _are_ undoubted points where a young person may doubt as to
the grammatical propriety of a certain expression. In this case let
him ask some one older and more instructed. Grammar, as a _art_, is,
undoubtedly, _the art of speaking and writing correctly_--but then, as
an _art_, it is only required for _foreign_ languages. For our _own_ we
have the necessary practice and familiarity.
The true claim of English grammar to form part and parcel of an English
education stands or falls with the value of the philological knowledge
to which grammatical studies may serve as an introduction, and with the
value of scientific grammar as a _disciplinal_ study. I have no fear of
being supposed to undervalue its importance in this respect. Indeed, in
assuming that it is very great, I also assume that wherever grammar is
studied as grammar, the language which the grammar so studied should
represent, must be the mother-tongue of the student; _whatever that
mother-tongue may be_--English for Englishmen, Welsh for Welshmen,
French for Frenchmen, German for Germans, &c. The study is the study
of a theory; and for this reason it should be complicated as little as
possible by points of practice. For this reason a man's mother-tongue
is the best medium for the elements of scientific philology, simply
because it is the one which he knows best in practice.
Limit, then, the teaching of English, except so far as it is
preparatory to the study of language in general; with which view, teach
as scientifically as possible.
Go further. Except in special cases, limit the teaching of the
classical tongues to one out of the two. _One_, for all _disciplinal_
purposes, is enough. In this, go far. Dead though the tongue be, and
object of ridicule as the occupation is becoming, go to the length of
writing verses, though only in a few of the commoner metres. Go far,
and go in one direction only. There are reasons for this singleness
of path. I fear that there is almost a necessity. As long as men
believed that the ordinary Latin and Greek grammars were good things
of themselves, and that, even if they did not carry the student far
into the classics, they told him something of value respecting language
in general, a _little learning_ in the dead languages was a good
thing. But what if the grammars are _not_ good things? What if they
are absolutely bad? In such a case, the classical tongues cease to be
learnt except for themselves. Now, one of the few things that is more
useless than a little Latin is a little Greek.
Am I wrong in saying that, with nine out of ten who learn _both_ Latin
and Greek, the knowledge of the two tongues conjointly is not greater
than the knowledge of one of them singly ought to be?
Am I wrong in believing that the tendencies of the age are in favour
of decreasing rather than increasing the amount of time bestowed upon
classical scholarship?
Unless I be so, the necessity for a limitation is apparent.
To curtail English--to eliminate one of the classical tongues--possibly
that of Pericles, at any rate, either that of Pericles or of Cicero--to
substitute for the ordinary elements of a so-called classical education
illustrations from the Chinese, the Hungarian, or the Tumali--this is
what I have recommended.
I cannot but feel that in so doing I may seem to some to have been
false to my text, which was to eulogize things philological. They
may say, _Call you this backing your friends?_ I do. It is not by
glorifying one's own more peculiar studies that such studies gain
credit. To show the permanent, rather than the accidental, elements of
their value, is the best service that can be done for them. It is also
good service to show that they can be taught with a less expenditure of
time and labour than is usually bestowed on them. But the best service
of all is to indicate their disciplinal value; and to show that,
instead of displacing other branches of knowledge, they so exercise
certain faculties of the mind as to prepare the way to them.
II.
LOGICA.
ON THE WORD _DISTRIBUTED_, AS USED
IN LOGIC.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
DECEMBER THE 18TH 1857.
The present paper is an attempt to reconcile the logical and
etymological meanings of the word _Distributed_.
Speaking roughly, _distributed_ means _universal_: "a term is said
to be _distributed_ when it is taken universally, so as to stand for
everything it is capable of being applied to."--_Whately_, i. § 5.
Speaking more closely, it means _universal in one premiss_; it being a
rule in the ordinary logic that no conclusion is possible unless one
premiss be, either negatively or affirmatively, universal.
Assuredly there is no etymological connexion between the two words.
Hence De Morgan writes:--"By _distributed_ is here meant _universally
spoken of_. I do not use this term in the present work, because I do
not see why, in any deducible meaning of the word _distributed_, it can
be applied to universal as distinguished from particular."--_Formal
Logic_, chap. vii.
Neither can it be so applied. It is nevertheless an accurate term.
Let it mean _related to more than one class_, and the power of the
prefix _dis-_, at least, becomes intelligible.
For _all_ the purposes of logic this is not enough; inasmuch as the
particular character of the relation (all-important in the structure
of the syllogism) is not, at present, given. It is enough, however, to
give import to the syllable _dis-_.
In affirmative propositions this relation is connective on both sides,
_i. e._ the middle term forms part of _both_ the others. In negative
propositions this relation is connective on _one_ side, disjunctive on
the _other_.
In-- All men are mortal,
All heroes are men,
the middle term _men_ forms a part of the class called _mortal_, by
being connected with it in the way that certain contents are connected
with the case that contains them; whilst it also stands in connexion
with the class of _heroes_ in the way that cases are connected with
their contents. In--
No man is perfect,
Heroes are men,
the same double relation occurs. The class _man_, however, though part
of the class _hero_, is no part of the class _perfect_ but, on the
contrary, expressly excluded from it. Now this expression of exclusion
constitutes a relation--disjunctive indeed, but still a relation; and
this is all that is wanted to give an import to the prefix _dis-_ in
_distributed_.
Wherever there is distribution there is inference, no matter whether
the distributed term be universal or not. If the ordinary rules for
the structure of the syllogism tell us the contrary to this, they only
tell the truth, so far as certain assumptions on which they rest are
legitimate. These limit us to the use of three terms expressive of
quantity,--_all_, _none_, and _some_; and it is quite true that, with
this limitation, universality and distribution coincide.
Say that Some Y is X,
Some Z is Y,
and the question will arise whether the Y that is X is also the Y that
is Z. That _some_ Y belongs to both classes is clear; whether, however,
it be the same Y is doubtful. Yet unless it be so, no conclusion can
be drawn. And it may easily be different. Hence, as long as we use the
word _some_, we have no assurance that there is any distribution of the
middle term.
Instead, however, of _some_ write _all_, and it is obvious that some Y
must be both X and Z; and when such is the case--
Some X must be Z, and
Some Z must be X.
Universality, then, of the middle term in one premiss is, by no
means, the _direct_ condition that gives us an inference, but only a
_secondary_ one. The direct condition is the distribution. Of this,
the universality of the middle term is only a _sign_, and it is the
only sign we have, because _all_ and _some_ are the only words we have
to choose from. If others were allowed, the appearance which the two
words (_distributed_ and _universal_) have of being synonymous would
disappear. And so they do when we abandon the limitations imposed
upon us by the words _all_ and _some_. So they do in the numerically
definite syllogism, exemplified in--
More than half Y is X,
More than half Y is Z,
Some Z is X.
So, also, they do when it is assumed that the Y's which are X and the
Y's which are Z are identical.
Y is X,
The same Y is Z,
Some Z is X.
In each of these formulæ there is distribution without universality,
_i. e._ there is distribution with a quality other than that of
universality as its criterion. The following extract not only explains
this, but gives a fresh proof, if fresh proof be needed, that
_distributed_ and _universal_ are used synonymously. The "comparison
of each of the two terms must be equally with the whole, or with the
same part of the third term; and to secure this, (1) either the middle
term must be distributed in one premiss at least, or (2) the two terms
must be compared with the same specified part of the middle, or (3), in
the two premises taken together, the middle must be distributed, and
something more, though not distributed in either singly."--_Thompson,
Outline of the Laws of Thought_, § 39.
Here _distributed_ means _universal_; Mr. Thompson's being the ordinary
terminology. In the eyes of the present writer "distributed in one
premiss" is a contradiction in terms.
Of the two terms, _distributed_ is the more general; yet it is not the
usual one. That it has been avoided by De Morgan has been shown. It may
be added, that from the Port Royal Logic it is wholly excluded.
The statement that, in negative propositions, the relation is
connective on _one_ side, and disjunctive on the _other_, requires
further notice. It is by no means a matter of indifference on which
side the connexion or disjunction lies.
(_a._) It is the class denoted by the major, of which the middle term
of a negative syllogism is expressly stated to form _no_ part, or from
which it is disjoined. (_b._) It is the class denoted by the minor, of
which the same middle term is expressly stated to form part, or with
which it is connected.
No man is perfect--
here the proposition is a major, and the middle term _man_ is expressly
separated from the class _perfect_.
All heroes are men--
here it is a minor, and the middle term _man_ is expressly connected
with class _hero_.
A connective relation to the major, and a disjunctive relation to the
minor are impossible in negative syllogisms. The exceptions to this
are only apparent. The two most prominent are the formulæ _Camestres_
and _Camenes_, in both of which it is the minor premiss wherein the
relation is disjunctive. But this is an accident; an accident arising
out of the fact of the major and minor being convertible.
_Bokardo_ is in a different predicament. _Bokardo_, along with
_Baroko_, is the only formula containing a particular negative as a
premiss. Now the particular negatives are, for so many of the purposes
of logic, particular affirmatives, that they may be neglected for the
present; the object at present being to ascertain the rules for the
structure of truly and unquestionably negative syllogisms. Of these we
may predicate that--their minor proposition is always either actually
affirmative or capable of becoming so by transposition.
To go further into the relations between the middle term and the minor,
would be to travel beyond the field under present notice; the immediate
object of the present paper being to explain the import of the word
_distributed_. That it may, both logically and etymologically, mean
_related to two classes_ is clear--clear as a matter of fact. Whether,
however, _related to two classes_ be the meaning that the history of
logic gives us, is a point upon which I abstain from giving an opinion.
I only suggest that, in elementary treatises, the terms _universal_ and
_distributed_ should be separated more widely than they are; one series
of remarks upon--
_a._ Distribution as a condition of inference, being followed by
another on--
_b._ Universality of the middle term in one premiss as a sign of
distribution.
So much for the extent to which the present remarks suggest the purely
practical question as to how the teaching of Aristotelian logic may
be improved. There is another, however, beyond it; one of a more
theoretical, indeed of an eminently theoretical, nature. It raises
doubts as to the propriety of the word _all_ itself; doubts as to the
propriety of the term _universal_.
The existence of such a word as _all_ in the premiss, although existing
therein merely as a contrivance for reconciling the evidence of the
distribution of the middle term with a certain amount of simplicity in
the way of terminology, could scarcely fail, in conjunction with some
of its other properties, to give it what is here considered an undue
amount of importance. It made it look like the opposite to _none_.
Yet this is what it is not. The opposite to _none_ is _not-none_, or
_some_; the opposite to _all_ is _one_. In _one_ and _all_ we have
the highest and lowest numbers of the individuals that constitute a
class. In _none_ and _some_ we have the difference between existence
and non-existence. That _all_ is a mere mode of _some_, has been
insisted on by many logicians, denied by few or none. Between _all_
and _some_, there is, at best, but a difference of degree. Between
_some_ and _none_, the difference is a difference of kind. _Some_
may, by strengthening, be converted into _all_. No strengthening may
obliterate the difference between _all_ and _not-all_. From this it
follows that the logic of _none_ and _some_, the logic of connexion and
disjunction (the logic of _two_ signs), is much more widely different
from the logic of _part_ and _whole_ (the logic of _three_ signs) than
is usually admitted; the former being a logic of pure _quality_, the
latter a logic of _quality_ and _quantity_ as well.
Has the admixture done good? I doubt whether it has. The logic of pure
and simple Quality would, undoubtedly, have given but little; nothing
but negative conclusions on one side, and possible particulars on the
other. Nevertheless it would have given a logic of the Possible and
Impossible.
Again, as at present constituted, the Quantitative logic, the logic of
_all_ and _some_, embraces either too much or too little. _All_ is, as
aforesaid, only a particular form of _more than none_. So is _most_.
Now such syllogisms as--
Most men are fallible,
Most men are rational,
Some men are both frail and fallible;
_or_,
Some frail things are fallible,
are inadmissible in the Aristotelian paradigms. A claim, however,
is set up for their admission. Grant it, and you may say instead of
_most_--
Fifty-one per cent., &c.;
but this is only a particular instance. You may combine any two numbers
in any way you like, provided only that the sum be greater than unity.
Now this may be arithmetic, and it may be fact; but it is scarcely
formal logic; at any rate it is anything but general.
It is the logic of _some_ and its modifications _one_, _all_, and
_anything between one and all_, as opposed to the logic of the
simple absolute _some_ (_some_ the opposite to _none_), and a little
consideration will show that it is also the logic of the _probable_,
with its modification the _proven_, (_proven_ is _probable_, as
_all_ is _some_,) as opposed to the logic of the _possible_ and
_impossible_. Let, in such a pair of propositions as--
Some of the men of the brigade were brave,
Some of the men of the brigade were killed,
the number expressed by _some_, as well as the number of the men of the
_brigade_, be known, and the question as to whether
Some brave men were killed,
is a problem in the doctrine of chances. One per cent. of each will
make it very unlikely that the single brave man was also the single
killed one. Forty-nine per cent. of each will make it highly probable
that more than one good soldier met his fate. With fifty on one side,
and fifty-one on the other, we have _one_ at least. With _all_ (either
_killed_ or _brave_), we have the same; and that without knowing any
numbers at all.
III.
GRAMMATICA.
ON THE RECIPROCAL PRONOUNS,
AND
ON THE RECIPROCAL POWER OF THE
REFLECTIVE VERB.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 22. 1844.
The present paper is upon the reciprocal pronouns, and upon certain
forms of the verb used in a reciprocal sense. It is considered
that these points of language have not been put forwards with that
prominence and care which their value in the solution of certain
problems in philology requires. Too often the terms Reciprocal and
Reflective have been made synonymous. How far this is true may be
determined by the fact that the middle verbs in the Icelandic language
have been called by so great a philologist as Rask _reciprocal_ instead
of _reflective_. This is equivalent to treating sentences like _we
strike ourselves_, and _we strike each other_, as identical. Yet the
language with which Rask was dealing (the Icelandic) was the one of all
others wherein the difference in question required to be accurately
drawn, and fully pointed out. (See Anvisning till Isländskan, pp. 281,
283.)
In all sentences containing the statement of a reciprocal or mutual
action there are in reality two assertions, viz. the assertion that
A _strikes_ (or _loves_) B, and the assertion that B _strikes_ (or
_loves_) A; the action forming one, the reaction another. Hence,
if the expression exactly coincided with the fact signified, there
would always be two propositions. This, however, is not the habit of
language. Hence arises a more compendious form of expression, giving
origin to an ellipsis of a peculiar kind. Phrases like _Eteocles and
Polynices killed each other_ are elliptical for _Eteocles and Polynices
killed_--_each the other_. Here the second proposition expands and
explains the first, whilst the first supplies the verb to the second.
Each, however, is elliptic. The first is without the object, the second
without the verb. That the verb must be in the plural (or dual) number,
that one of the nouns must be in the nominative case, and that the
other must be objective, is self-evident from the structure of the
sentence; such being the conditions of the expression of the idea. An
aposiopesis takes place after a plural verb, and then there follows a
clause wherein the verb is supplied from what went before.
When words equivalent to _each other_ coalesce, and become compound;
it is evident that the composition is of a very peculiar kind. Less,
however, for these matters than for its value in elucidating the origin
of certain deponent verbs does the expression of reciprocal action
merit the notice of the philologist. In the latter part of the paper
it will appear that for one branch of languages, at least, there is
satisfactory evidence of a reflective form having become reciprocal,
and of a reciprocal form having become deponent; this latter word being
the term for those verbs whereof the meaning is active, and the form
passive.
Beginning with those methods of denoting mutual action where the
expression is the least explicit and unequivocal, it appears that in
certain languages the reciprocal character of the verb is implied
rather than expressed. _Each man looked at his brother_--or some
equivalent clause, is the general phraseology of the Semitic languages.
More explicit than this is the use of a single pronoun (personal,
possessive, or reflective) and of some adverb equivalent to the
words _mutually_, _interchangeably_, &c. This is the habit of the
Latin language,--_Eteocles et Polynices invicem se trucidaverunt_:
also of the French, although not invariably, e. g. _s'entr'aimer_,
_s'entredire_, _s'entrebattre_: also of the Mœso-Gothic--galeikái
sind barnam tháim vôpjandam seina _missô_ = ὅμοιοί εἰσι παιδίοις
τοῖς προσφωνούσιν ἀλλήλοις = loquentibus ad invicem.--Luc. vii. 32.
Deutsche Grammatik, iv. 322, and iii. 13. The Welsh expressions are
of this kind; the only difference being that the adverb coalesces
with the verb, as an inseparable particle, and so forms a compound.
These particles are _dym_, _cym_, or _cy_ and _ym_. The former is
compounded of _dy_, signifying _iteration_, and _ym_ denoting _mutual
action_; the latter is the Latin _cum_. Hence the reciprocal power of
these particles is secondary: e. g. _dymborthi_, to aid mutually;
_dymddadlu_, to dispute; _dymgaru_, to love one another; _dymgoddi_,
to vex one another; _dymgredu_, to trust one another, or confide;
_dymguraw_, to strike one another, or fight; _çyçwennys_, to desire
mutually; _cydadnabod_, to know one another; _cydaddawiad_, to promise
mutually; _cydwystlaw_, to pledge; _cydymadrawn_, to converse;
_cydymdaith_, to accompany; _ymadroddi_, to discourse; _ymaddaw_, to
promise; _ymavael_, to struggle; _ymdaeru_, to dispute, &c.
The form, which is at once current, full, and unequivocal, is the one
that occurs in our own, and in the generality of languages. Herein
there are two nouns (generally pronouns), and the construction is of
the kind exhibited above--ἀλλήλους, _each other_, _einander_, _l'un
l'autre_, &c.
Sometimes the two nouns remain separate, each preserving its
independent form. This is the case in most of the languages derived
from the Latin, in several of the Slavonic and Lithuanic dialects, and
in (amongst others) the Old Norse, the Swedish, and the Danish,--l'un
l'autre, French; uno otro, Span.; geden druheho, Bohemian; ieden
drugiego, Polish; wiens wienâ, Lith.; weens ohtru, Lettish; hvert annan
(masc.), hvert annat (neut.) Old Norse. See D. G. iii. 84.
Sometimes the two nouns coalesce, and form words to which it would be
a mere refinement to deny the name of compounds: this is the case with
the Greek--ἀλλήλων, ἀλλήλοις, ἀλλήλους.
Sometimes it is doubtful whether the phrase consist of a compound word
or a pair of words. This occurs where, from the want of inflection,
the form of the first word is the same in composition as it would have
been out of it. Such is the case with our own language: _each-other_,
_one-another_.
Throughout the mass of languages in general the details of the
expression in question coincide; both subject and object are almost
always expressed by pronouns, and these pronouns are much the same
throughout. _One_, or some word equivalent, generally denotes the
subject. _Other_, or some word equivalent, generally denotes the
object, _e. g._ they struck _one another_. The varieties of expression
may be collected from the following sketch:--
1. _a._ The subject is expressed by _one_, or some word equivalent,
in most of the languages derived from the Latin, in several of the
Slavonic dialects, in Lithuanic and Lettish, in Armenian, in German,
in English, and doubtlessly in many other languages--_l'un_ l'autre,
Fr.; _uno_ otro, Sp.; _ieden_ drugiego, Polish; _wiens_ wienâ, Lith.;
_weens_ ohtru, Lett.; _me_ mæants, Armenian; _einander_, Germ.; _one_
another, Engl.
_b._ By _each_, or some equivalent term, in English, Dutch, and the
Scandinavian languages--_each_ other, English; _elkander_, Dutch;
_hver_andre, Icelandic, Danish, Swedish.
_c._ By _this_, or some equivalent term, in Swedish and Danish
(_hin_anden); in Lithuanic (_kitts_ kittâ), and in Lettish (_zitts_
zittu).
_d._ By _other_, or some equivalent term, in Greek and Armenian;
ἁλλήλους, _ir_ærats.
_e._ By _man_, used in an indefinite sense and compounded with _lik_ in
Dutch, _malk_ander (mal-lik manlik).
_f._ By a term equivalent to _mate_ or _fellow_ in Laplandic--_gòim_
gòimeme.--Rask, 'Lappisk Sproglære,' p. 102. Stockfleth, 'Grammatik,'
p. 109.
2. _a._ In the expression of the object the current term is _other_ or
some equivalent word. Of this the use is even more constant than that
of _one_ expressive of the subject--l'un l'_autre_, French; uno _otro_,
Spanish; ἁλλήλους, Greek; geden _druheho_, Bohemian; ieden _drugiego_,
Polish; weens _ohtru_, Lettish; iræ_rats_, Armenian; ein_ander_,
German; each _other_, one an_other_, English.
_b._ In Lithuanic the term in use is _one_; as, wiens _wienâ_. The same
is the case for a second form in the Armenian mi_mœa_n.
_c._ In Laplandic it is denoted in the same as the subject; as gòim
_gòimeme_.
Undoubtedly there are other varieties of this general method of
expression. Upon those already exhibited a few remarks, however, may be
made.
1. In respect to languages like the French, Spanish, &c., where the
two nouns, instead of coalescing, remain separate, each retaining
its inflection, it is clear that they possess a greater amount of
perspicuity; inasmuch as (to say nothing of the distinction of gender)
the subject can be used in the singular number when the mutual action
of two persons (_i. e._ of _one_ upon _another_) is spoken of, and in
the plural when we signify that of more than two; e. g. _ils_ (_i.
e._ A and B) _se battaient_--_l'un l'autre_: but _ils_ (A, B, C and
D,) _se battaient_--_les uns les autres_. This degree of perspicuity
might be attained in English and other allied languages by reducing to
practice the difference between the words _each_ and _one_; in which
case we might say _A and B struck one another_, but _A, B and C struck_
each _other_. In the Scandinavian languages this distinction is real;
where _hin_anden is equivalent to _l'un l'autre_, French; _uno otro_,
Spanish: whilst _hver_andre expresses _les uns les autres_, French;
_unos otros_, Spanish. The same is the case in the Laplandic.--See
Rask's Lappisk Sproglære, p. 102.
2. An analysis of such an expression as _they praise one another's_
(or _each other's_) _conduct_, will show the lax character of certain
forms in the Swedish. Of the two pronouns it is only the latter that
appears in an oblique case, and this necessarily; hence the Swedish
form _hvarsannars_ is illogical. It is precisely what _one's another's_
would be in English, or ἄλλων ἄλλων for ἁλλήλων in Greek. The same
applies to the M. H. G. _einen anderen_. D. G. iii. 83.
3. The term expressive of the object appears in three forms, viz.
preceded by the definite article (l'un _l_'autre), by the indefinite
article (one _an_other), and finally, standing alone (each other,
einander). Of these three forms the first is best suited for expressing
the reciprocal action of two persons (one out of two struck the other);
whilst the second or third is fittest for signifying the reciprocal
action of more than two (one out of many struck, and was struck by,
some other).
The third general method of expressing mutual or reciprocal action is
by the use of some particular form of the verb. In two, and probably
more, of the African languages (the Woloff and Bechuana) this takes
place. In the Turkish there is also a reciprocal form: as _sui-mek_,
to love; _baki-mek_, to look; _sui-sh-mek_, to love one another;
_baki-sh-mek_, to look at one another; _su-il-mek_, to be loved;
_sui-sh-il-mek_, to be loved mutually.--_David's Turkish Grammar._
The fourth form of expression gives the fact alluded to at the
beginning of the paper: viz. an instrument of criticism in
investigating the origin of certain deponent verbs. In all languages
there is a certain number of verbs denoting actions, reciprocal or
mutual to the agents. Such are the words _embrace_, _converse_, _strive
against_, _wrestle_, _fight_, _rival_, _meet_, and several more. There
are also other words where the existence of two parties is essential
to the idea conveyed, and where the notion, if not that of reciprocal
action, is akin to it; viz. _reproach_, _compromise_, _approach_, &c.
Now in certain languages (the Latin and Greek) some of these verbs have
a passive form; _i. e._ they are deponents,--_loquor_, _colloquor_,
_luctor_, _reluctor_, _amplector_, _suavior_, _osculor_, _suspicor_,
Latin: φιλοτιμέομαι, φιλοφρονέομαι, μάχομαι, διαλέγομαι, ἁλέομαι,
διαλύομαι, ἁμείβομαι &c., Greek. Hence arises the hypothesis, that it
is to their reciprocal power on the one hand, and to the connexion
between the passive, reflective and reciprocal forms on the other, that
these verbs owe their deponent character. The fact essential to the
probability of this hypothesis is the connexion between the reflective
forms and the reciprocal ones.
Now for one branch of languages this can be shown most satisfactorily.
In Icelandic the middle voice is formed from the active by the addition
of the reflective pronoun, _mik_, me, _sik_, him or self. Hence it is
known by the terminations _mc_ and _sc_, and by certain modifications
of these affixes, viz. _st_, _s_, _z_, _mz_, _ms_. In the oldest
stage of the language the reflective power of the middle voice, to
the exclusion of a passive sense, is most constant: _e. g. hann var
nafnadr_ = he had the name given him; _hann nefnist_ = he gave as his name,
or named himself. It was only when the origin of the middle form became
indistinct that its sense became either passive or deponent; as it
generally is in the modern tongues of Denmark, Norway and Sweden. Now
in the modern Scandinavian languages we have, on the one hand, certain
deponent forms expressive of reciprocal action; whilst on the other
we have, even in the very earliest stages of the Old Norse, middle or
reflective forms used in a reciprocal sense. Of some of these, examples
will be given: but the proof of their sense being reciprocal will
not be equally conclusive in all. Some may perhaps be looked on as
deponents (_ættust_, _beriast_, _skiliast_, _mödast_); whilst others
may be explained away by the assumption of a passive construction
(_fundoz_ = they were found, not they found each other). Whatever may be
the case with the words taken from the middle and modern stages of the
language, this cannot be entertained in regard to the examples drawn
from the oldest Norse composition, the Edda of Sæmund. For this reason
the extracts from thence are marked _Edd. Sæm._, and of these (and
these alone) the writer has attempted to make the list exhaustive. The
translations in Latin and Danish are those of the different editors.
1. Ættust, _fought each other_.
2. Beriaz, _strike each other_.
brödur muno _beriaz_.
fratres invicem pugnabunt.
Voluspa, 41. Edd. Sæm.
This word is used in almost every page of the Sagas as a deponent
signifying _to fight_: also in the Feroic dialect.
3. Bregþaz, _interchange_.
orþom at _bregþaz_.
verba commutare.
Helga-Qviþa Hundlingsbana, i. 41. ii. 26. Edd. Sæm.
4. Drepiz, _kill one another_.
finnuz þeir báder daudir---- en ecki vapn höfþu þeir nema bitlana af
hestinum, ok þat hygia menn at þeir (Alrek and Eirek) hafi _drepiz_
þar med. Sva segir Ðiodolfr.; "_Drepaz_ kvádu."--Heimskringla.
Ynglinga-Saga, p. 23.
The brothers were found dead--and no weapons had they except the bits
of their horses, and men think they (Alrek and Eirek) had _killed each
other_ therewith. So says Thiodolf.: "They said that they _killed each
other_."
5. Um-faþmaz, _embrace each other_. See Atla-Quiþa hin Grænslenzko,
42.--_Edd. Sæm._
6. Földes, _fell in with each other_.--Om morgonet effter _földes_ wy
in Kobenhaffn.--Norwegian Letters in 1531, A. D. See Samlingar til det
Norske Folks Sprog og Historie, I. 2. 70. The morning after we _fell in
with each other_ in Copenhagen.
7. Funduz, _found each other_, _met_. See Vafþrudnis-mal
17.--Sigurd-Quiþ. i. 6. Edd. Sæm.--Fareyingar-Saga, p. 44. _Ðeir
funduz_ is rendered _de fandt hverandre_ = _they found each other_, in
Haldorsen's Lexic. Island.
ef iþ Gymer _finniz_.
if you and Gymer meet.
Harbards-l: 24. Edd. Sæm.
8. Gættuz, _consult each other_. See Voluspa, 6. 9. 21. 23. _Edd. Sæm._
9. Glediaz, _rejoice each other_.
vapnom ok vádom
skulo vinir _glediaz_,
þæt er á sialfom sæmst:
vidr-géfendr ok endi gefendr
_erost_ lengst vinir
ef þat biþr at verþa vel. Rigsmal. 41.
armis ac vestibus
amici _mutuo se delectent_,
queîs in ipso (datore) forent conspicua:
pretium renumerantes et remunerantes
_inter se diutissime sunt_ amici
si negotium feliciter se dat.
The middle form and reciprocal sense of _erost_ is remarkable in this
passage.
10. Hauggvaz, _hack each other_, _fight_.
allir Einheriar
Oþins túnom i
_hauggvaz_ hverian dag.
all the Einheriar
in Odin's towns
_hack each other_ every day.
Vafþrudnis-Mal. 41. Edd. Sæm.
ef þeir _högvaz_ orþom á.
si se maledictis invicem insectentur.
Sig-Qvið. ii. 1. Edd. Sæm.
11. Hættaz, _cease_.
_hættomc_ hættingi.
_cessemus utrinque_ a minaciis.
Harbardslióð, 51. Edd. Sæm.
Such is the translation of the editors, although the reciprocal power
is not unequivocal.
12. Hittaz, _hit upon each other_, _meet_. Hittoz, Voluspa, 7. Hittomk,
Hadding-skata, 22. Hittaz, Solar-l: 82. Edd. Sæm. Hittust, Ol. Trygv.
Sag. p. 90. Hittuz oc beriaz, Heimskringla, Saga Halfd. Svart. p. 4.
Hittuz, Yngl. Sag. p. 42. _alibi passim þeir hittu_ is rendered, in
Bjorn Haldorsen's Islandic Lexicon, _de traf hinanden_, _they hit upon
each other_.
13. Kiempis, _fight each other_,
gaar udi gaarden oc _kiempis_, oc nelegger hver hinanden, goes out in
the house and _fight each the other_, and each knocks down the other.
Such is the translation by Resenius, in modern Danish, of the following
extract from Snorro's _Edda_, p. 34.--Ganga ut i gardinn og _beriast_,
og fellar huor annar. Here the construction is not, _they fell_ (or
knock down) _each the other_, but _each fells the other_; since
_fellar_ and _nelegger_ are singular forms.
14. Mælast, _talk to each other_, _converse_. Talast, _ditto_.
_Mæliz_ þu. Vafþrudnismal, 9.
_melomc_ i sessi saman = colloquamur sedentes. ib. 19. Edd. Sæm.
_mælast_ þeir _vid_, ádr þeir _skiliast_, at þeir mundi þar _finnast_
þa,--Fóstbrædra-Saga, p. 7.
they _said to each other_ before they _parted from each other_ that
they should _meet each other_ there.
Yngvi ok Bera satu ok _töluduz_ vidr.--Heimskr. Yngl. S. p. 24.
Griss mælti; hverír ero þessir menn er sva _tulast vid_ bliðliga?
Avàldi svarar; þa er Hallfreydr Ottarson ok Kolfinna dóthir min. Ol.
Trygyv. Saga, p. 152. Griss said, who are these persons who _talk
together_ so blithely? Avaldi answers, they are Halfrid Ottarson and
Kolfinna my daughter. _Talast_ is similarly used in Feroic. _Kvödust_,
bespoke each other, occurs in the same sense--þat var einn dag at Brand
ok Finbogi _fundust_ ok _kvödust_ blídliga.--Vatnsdæla-Sag. p. 16.
15. Mettæst, _meet each other_, _meet_.
Kungen aff Ffranchriche, kungen aff England, oc kungen aff Schottland
skule _motes_ til Chalis.--Letter from Bergen in 1531, from Samlinger
til det Norske Folks Sprog og Historie, i. 2. p. 53. The king of
France, the king of England, and the king of Scotland should _meet each
other_ at Calais.
Throughout the Danish, Swedish and Feroic, this verb is used as a
deponent.
16. Rekaz, _vex each other_.
gumnar margir
_erosc_ gagn-hollir,
enn at virþi _rekaz_. Rigsmal. 32. Edd. Sæm.
multi homines
_sunt inter se_ admodum benevoli,
sed tamen _mutuo se_ (vel) in convivio _exagitant_.
17. Sakaz, _accuse each other_, _recriminate_.
at vit mynim siafrum _sacaz_,
ut nos ipsi mutuo insectemur. Hamdis-Mal. 28.
ef viþ einir scolom
sáryrþom _sacaz_.
si nobis duobus usu veniat
amarulentis dicteriis invicem
nos lacessere. Ægis-drecka, 5.
sculoþ inni her
sáryrþom _sacaz_. Ibid. 19. Edd. Sæm.
18. Saz, _looked at each other_.
_saz_ i augv
fadir ok módir. Rigsmal. 24.
they looked at each other in the eyes,
father and mother.
19. Sættaz, _settle between each other_, _reconcile_.--Atla-Mal. 45.
Edd. Sæm.
Komu vinir þveggia þvi vid, at þeir _sættuz_, ok lögdu konungar stefnu
med _sér_, ok _hittuz_ ok gérdo frit mellum sin.--Heimsk. Yngling-S. 42.
There came friends of both in order that they should be _reconciled_,
and the kings sent messages between them, and _met_ and made peace
between them.--Also Vatnsd. S. p. 16.
20. Seljas, _to give to each other_.
_seldz_ eiþa. Sig. Qv. iii. 1. Edd. Sæm.
juramenta dederunt inter se.
21. Sendaz, _send, or let pass between each other_.
sato samtýnis,
_senduz_ fár-hugi,
_henduz_ heipt-yrþi
hvarki _sér_ undi. Atla-Mal. 85.
They sat in the same town (dwelling),
They _sent between each other_ danger-thoughts,
They _fetched between each other_ hate-words,
Not _either way_ did they love _each other_.
Here, over and above the use of _senduz_ and _henduz_, _ser_ is
equivalent to _hinanden_.
22. Skiliaz, _part from each other_.
_Skiliumz._ Solar-Lioð. 82.
_Skiliaz._ Sigurd-Qviþ. i. 24.
_Skiliomc._ Ibid. 53. Edd. Sæm.
Vit _sjiljiast, we two part_--
Occurs in the poem Brinilda (st. 109) in the Feroic dialect. In Danish
and Swedish the word is deponent.
23. Skiptust, _interchange_.
Ðeir _skiptust_ mörgum giöfum _vid_ um vetrinn--Vatns-dæla-S. 10. they
_made interchanges with each other_ with many gifts for the winter.
Also in the Feroic.
24. Strujast, _strike one another_, _fight_. Feroic.
og _mötast_ tair, og _strujast_ avlaji lanji.--Fareying-Sag. 18. Feroic
text.
ok _mætast_ þeir, ok berjast mjök leingi.--Icelandish text.
de _mödtes_ og strede meget længe imod hinanden.--Danish text.
they _met_ and _fought_ long against _each other_.
at e vilde vid _gjordust_ stålbröir, og _strujast_ ikkji
longur.--Feroic text, p. 21.
at við _gerðimst_ fèlagar, en _berjumst_ eigi leingr.--Icelandic text.
at vi skulle blive Stalbröde og ikke _slaaes_ længer--Danish text.
that we should become comrades and not _fight_ longer.
The active form occurs in the same dialect:
_tajr struija nú langji._ 18.
25. Truasc, _trust each other_.
vel mættern þæir _truazc_. För Skirnis. Edd. Sæm.
26. Unnaz. _See_ Veittaz.
27. Vegiz, _attack_ each _other_.
vilcat ec at iþ reiþir _vegiz_. Ægisdrecka 18. Edd. Sæm.
I will not that ye two angry _attack each other_.
28. Veittaz, _contract mutually_.
þav Helgi ok Svava _veittuz_ varar, ok _unnoz_ forþo mikit = Helgius et
Svava pactum sponsalitium _inter se contraxerunt_, et _alter alterum_
mirifice _amarunt_.--Haddingia-Sk. between 29 and 30.
29. Verpaz, _throw between each other_.
_urpuz_ á orþom. Atl.-M. 39. Edd. Sæm.
verba inter se jaciebant.
Such is a portion of the examples that prove the reciprocal power of
the reflective or middle verb in the language of Scandinavia; and
that, during all its stages and in each of its derived dialects. It
cannot be doubted that to this circumstance certain verbs in Danish and
Swedish owe their deponent form: viz. _vi slåss_, we fight (strike one
another); _vi brottas_, we wrestle; _vi omgass_, we have intercourse
with; _vi mötas_, we meet, Swedish; _vi slaaes_, we fight; _vi
skilles_, we part; _vi mödes_, we meet, Danish. In the latest Swedish
grammar, by C. L. Daae, this reciprocal (vekselvirkende) power is
recognized and exhibited. See Udsigt over det Svenske Sprogs Grammatik.
Christiana, 1837. The same is the Molbech's Danske Ordbog in vv.
_skilles_, _slaaes_, _mödes_.
Next to the Norse languages the French affords the best instances of
the reciprocal power of the reflective verb; as _se battre_, _s'aimer_,
_s'entendre_, _se quéreller_, _se reconcilier_, _se disputer_, and
other words of less frequent occurrence.
Ces enfans _s'aimaient_, _s'adoraient_, se sont jetés à mes pieds en
pleurant.--Les Inséparables, A. 1. S. 1.
Les Républics Italiens acharnés à _se détruire_.--Pardessus II. 65.
This has been recognized by an old grammarian, Restaut, who insists
upon the use of the adverb _entre_, in order to avoid the ambiguity of
such phrases as "vous _vous_ dites des injures;" "nous _nous_ écrivons
souvent;" "Pierre et Antoine _se_ louent à tout moment."
By a writer in the Museum Criticum the reciprocal power of the Greek
middle has been indicated. For the classical languages the question has
not met with the proper investigation. Passages where the sense is at
least as reciprocal as in the line
Χεῖρος τ' ἁλλήλων λαβήτην καὶ μιστώσαντο.--Il. vi. 233,
must be numerous.
In the Dutch language the use of _zich_ for _elkander_ is a peculiarity
of the Guelderland and Overyssel dialects; as "zij hebt _zich_
eslagen," for "zij hebben _elkander_ geslagen." See Opmerkingen omtrent
den Gelderschen Tongval, in Taalkundig Magazijn ii. 14. p. 403.
Of the use of _ser_ for _hinanden_ or _hverandre_, when uncombined
with the verb, we have, amongst other, the following example in the
Icelandic version of the Paradise Lost:--
Ef frá tilsyndar-
punkti hleyptu _ser_
planetur fram,
ok _mættust_ miklum gny
ó midjum himni. B. 6.
Similar to this are the phrases _vi se os igjen_, we see us (each
other) again, in Danish, and _wir sehen uns wieder_, in German.
Examples from the M. H. G. are given in the D. G. iv. The Turkish sign
of the reciprocal verb is identical with the demonstrative pronoun, _i.
e._ [Turkish: şin]. This may possibly indicate a connection between
the two forms.
Other points upon the subject in hand may be collected from the
Deutsche Grammatik, iii. 13. 82; iv. 454. Here the adverbial character
of the M. H. G. _einander_ for _einandern_, the omission of _ein_, as
in _anander_ for _an einander_, and the omission (real or supposed) of
_ander_ in "_wider ein_ = _wider einander_," are measures of the laxity
of language caused by the peculiarity of the combination in question.
At present it is sufficient to repeat the statement, that for one
group of languages at least there is satisfactory proof of certain
deponents having originally been reciprocal, and of certain reciprocal
expressions having originally been reflective.
ON THE CONNEXION BETWEEN THE
IDEAS OF ASSOCIATION AND PLURALITY
AS AN INFLUENCE IN THE EVOLUTION
OF INFLECTION.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
MARCH 9, 1849.
It is well-known that by referring to that part of the Deutsche
Grammatik which explains those participial forms which (like _y-cleped_
in English, and like _ge-sprochen_ and the participles in general in
German) begin with _ge_ or _y_, the following doctrines respecting this
same prefix may be collected:--
1. That it has certainly grown out of the fuller forms _ka_ or _ga_.
2. That it has, probably, grown out of a still fuller form _kam_ or
_gam_.
3. That this fuller form is the Gothic equivalent of the Latin
_cum_ = _with_.
Such are the views respecting the _form_ of the word in question.
Respecting its _meaning_, the following points seem to be made out:--
1. That when prefixed to nouns (as is, not rarely, the case), it
carries with it the idea of _association_ or _collection_:--M. G.
_sinþs_ = _a journey_, _ga-sinþa_ = _a companion_; O. M. G. _perc_ =
_hill_; _ki-pirki_ = (_ge-birge_) _a range of hills_.
2. That it has also a _frequentative_ power. Things which recur
frequently recur with a tendency to collection or association:--M. H.
G. _ge-rassel_ = _rustling_; _ge-rumpel_ = _crumpling_.
3. That it has also the power of expressing the possession of a
quality:--
A.-S. Eng. A.S. Latin.
feax _hair_, _ge_-feax _comatus_.
heorte _heart_, _ge_-heort _cordatus_.
This is because every object is associated with the object that
possesses it--_a sea with waves_ = _a wavy sea_.
The present writer has little doubt that the Tumali grammar of Dr.
Tutshek supplies a similar (and at the same time a very intelligible)
application of a particle equivalent to the Latin _cum_.
He believes that the Tumali word = _with_ is what would commonly be
called the sign of the plural number of the personal pronouns; just
as _me-cum_ and _te-cum_ would become equivalents to _nos_ and _vos_,
if the first syllables were nominative instead of oblique, and if the
preposition denoted indefinite conjunction. In such a case
_mecum_ would mean _I conjointly_ = _we_,
_tecum_ would mean _thou conjointly_ = _ye_.
Such is the illustration of the possible power of a possible
combination. The reasons for thinking it to have a reality in one
language at least lie in the following forms:--
1. The Tumali word for _with_ is _da_.
2. The Tumali words for _I_, _thou_, and _he_ respectively are _ngi_,
_ngo_, _ngu_.
3. The Tumali words for _we_, _ye_, _they_ are _ngin-de_, _ngon-da_,
_ngen-da_ respectively.
4. The Tumali substantives have no such plural. With them it is formed
on a totally different principle.
5. The Tumali adjectives have no plural at all.
6. The Tumali numerals (even those which express more than unity and
are, therefore, _naturally_ plural) _have_ a plural. When, however, it
occurs, it is formed on the same principle as that of the plurals of
the substantive.
7. The word _da_ = _with_ is, in Tumali, of a more varied application
than any other particle; and that both as a _pre_-position and
a _post_-position:--_daura_ = _soon_ (_da_ = _in_, _aura_ =
_neighbourhood_); _datom_ = _in_ (_with_) _front_ (_face_); _d-ondul_ =
_roundabout_ (_ondul_ = _circle_); _dale_ = _near_ (_le_ = _side_), &c.
8. Prepositions, which there is every reason to believe are already
compounded with _da_, allow even a second _da_, to precede the word
which they govern:--_daber deling_ = _over the earth_ (_ber_ = _earth_).
9. The ideas _with me_, _with thee_, _with him_, are expressed by
_ngi-dan_, _ngo-dan_, and _ngu-dan_ respectively; but the ideas of
_with us_, _with you_, _with them_ are _not_ expressed by _nginde-dan_,
_ngonda-dan_, _ngenda-dan_; but by peculiar words--_tinem_ = _with us_;
_toman_ = _with you_; _tenan_ = _with them_.
On the other hand, the following fact is, as far as it goes, against
this view, a fact upon which others may lay more stress than the
present writer. "_Da_ admits of a very varied application. Respecting
its form the following should be observed: (_a._) That _a_ may be
elided when it happens to stand as a preposition before words which
begin with a vowel: for instance, _ardgen_, 'the valley'; _dardgen_,
'in the valley'; _ondul_, 'the circle'; _dondul_, 'round about in
the circle'. (_b._) It changes its _a_ into _ê_, _e_, _i_, _o_, _u_,
according to the vowel of the syllable before which the _da_ is
placed, or even without any regard to it. Instances of this are found
in _diring_, _dorong_, &c.; further instances are, _doromko_, 'into
the hut' (_rom_); _dètum_ or _dotum_, 'in the grave.' (_c._) As a
postposition it appends an _n_: _adgdan_, 'on the head'; _aneredan_,
'on the day.'" Taking the third of these rules literally, the plural
pronouns should end in _dan_ rather than in _da_ and _de_.
It is considered that over and above the light that this particular
formation (if real) may throw upon the various methods by which an
inflection like that of the plural number may be evolved, and more
especially upon the important but neglected phænomena of the so-called
_inclusive_ and _exclusive_ plurals, many other points of general
grammar may be illustrated.
ON THE WORD _CUJUM_.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 9, 1849.
The writer wishes to make the word _cujum_, as found in a well-known
quotation from the third eclogue of Virgil,--
Dic mihi Damæta _cujum_ pecus?
the basis of some remarks which are meant to be suggestions rather than
doctrines.
In the second edition of a work upon the English language, he devoted
an additional chapter to the consideration of the grammatical position
of the words _mine_ and _thine_, respecting which he then considered
(and still considers) himself correct in assuming that the current
doctrine concerning them was, that they were, in origin, genitive or
possessive cases, and that they were adjectives only in a secondary
sense. Now whatever was then written upon this subject was written
with the view of recording an opinion in favour of exactly the
opposite doctrine, viz. that they were originally adjectives, but that
afterwards they took the appearance of oblique cases. Hence for words
like _mine_ and _thine_ there are two views:--
1. That they were originally _cases_, and _adjectives_ only in a
secondary manner.
2. That they were originally _adjectives_, and _cases_ only in a
secondary manner.
In which predicament is the word _cujum_? If in the first, it supplies
a remarkable instance of an unequivocally adjectival form, as tested by
an inflection in the way of gender, having grown out of a case. If in
the second, it shows how truly the converse may take place, since it
cannot be doubted that whatever in this respect can be predicated of
_cujus_ can be predicated of _ejus_ and _hujus_ as well.
Assuming this last position, it follows that if _cujus_ be originally a
case, we have a proof how thoroughly it may _take_ a gender; whereas if
it be originally an adjective, _ejus_ and _hujus_ (for by a previous
assumption they are in the same category) are samples of the extent to
which words like it may _lose_ one.
Now the termination _-us_ is the termination of an adjective, and is
_not_ the termination of a genitive case; a fact that fixes the _onus
probandi_ with those who insist upon the genitival character of the
words in question. But as it is not likely that every one lays so
much value upon this argument as is laid by the present writer, it is
necessary to refer to two facts taken from the Greek:--
1. That the class of words itself is not a class which (as is often
the case) naturally leads us to expect a variation from the usual
inflections. The forms οὗ, οἷ, ἕ, and ὅς, οὗ, ὧ, are perfectly usual.
2. That the adjectives ὃς = ἑὸς,[1] κοῖος = ποῖος, and ὁῖος, are not
only real forms, but forms of a common kind. Hence, if we consider the
termination _-jus_ as a case-ending, we have a phænomenon in Latin
for which we miss a Greek equivalent; whilst on the other hand, if
we do not consider it as adjectival, we have the Greek forms ὁῖος,
κοῖος = ποῖος and ὃς = ἑὸς, without any Latin ones. I do not say that
this argument is, when taken alone, of any great weight. In doubtful
cases, however, it is of value. In the present case it enables us to
get rid of an inexplicable genitival form, at the expense of a slight
deflection from the usual power of an adjective. And here it should be
remembered that many of the arguments in favour of a case becoming an
adjective are (to a certain extent) in favour of an adjective becoming
a case--_to a certain extent_ and _to a certain extent_ only, because a
change in one direction by no means necessarily implies a change in the
reverse one, although it is something in favour of its probability.
[Footnote 1: hora for wora, κοῖος = _cujus_; ὁῖος = _hujus_; ἑὸς =
_ejus_ (1859).]
Probably _unius_, _ullius_, _illius_, and _alterius_, are equally,
as respects their origin, adjectival forms with _ejus_, _cujus_, and
_hujus_.
Now it must not be concealed that one of the arguments which apply to
words like _mine_ and _thine_ being adjectives rather than genitives,
does not apply to words like _ejus_, _cujus_, and _hujus_. The reason
is as follows; and it is exhibited in nearly the same words which
have been used in the work already mentioned.--The idea of partition
is one of the ideas expressed by the genitive case. The necessity for
expressing this idea is an element in the necessity for evolving a
genitive case. With personal pronouns of the singular number the idea
of partition is of less frequent occurrence than with most other
words, since a personal pronoun of the _singular_ number is the name
of a unity, and, as such, the name of an object far less likely to be
separated into parts than the name of a collection. Phrases like _some
of them_, _one of you_, _many of us_, _any of them_, _few of us_, &c.,
have no analogues in the singular number, such as _one of me_, _a
few of thee_, &c. The partitive words that can combine with singular
pronouns are comparatively few, viz. _half_, _quarter_, _part_, &c.;
and they can all combine equally with plurals--_half of us_, _a quarter
of them_, _a portion of us_. The partition of a singular object with a
pronominal name is of rare occurrence in language. This last statement
proves something more than appears at first sight. It proves that no
argument in favour of the so-called _singular_ genitives, like _mine_
and _thine_, can be drawn from the admission (if made) of the existence
of the true plural genitives _ou-r_, _you-r_, _the-ir_. The two ideas
are not in the same predicament.
Again, the convenience of expressing the difference between _suus_
and _ejus_, is, to a certain extent, a reason for the evolution of
a genitive case to words like _is_; but it is a reason to a certain
extent only, and that extent a small one, since an equally convenient
method of expressing the difference is to be found in the fact of there
being two roots for the pronouns in question, the root from which we
get _ea_, _id_, _eum_, _ejus_, &c., and the root from which we get
_sui_, _sibi_, _suus_, &c.
Here the paper should end, for here ends the particular suggestion
supplied by the word in question. Two questions however present
themselves too forcibly to be wholly passed over:--
I. The great extent to which those who look in Latin for the same
inflections that occur in Greek, must look for them under new names.
That two tenses in Greek (the aorist like ἔ-τυπ-σα, and the perfect
like τέ-τυφ-α) must be looked for in the so-called _double_ form of a
_single_ tense in Latin (_vic-si_, _mo-mordi_) is one of the oldest
facts of this sort. That the Greek participle in -μενος (τυπτόμενος)
must be sought for in the passive persons in _-mini_ is a newer notice.
II. The fact that the character of the deflection that takes place
between case and adjective is not _single_ but _double_. It goes both
ways. The change from case to adjective is one process in philology;
the change from adjective to case another; and both should be
recognized. This is mentioned for the sake of stating, that except in a
few details, there is nothing in the present remarks that is meant to
be at variance with the facts and arguments of five papers already laid
before this Society, viz. those of Mr. Garnett on the Formation of
Words from Inflected Cases, and on the Analysis of the Verb.
The papers alluded to really deal with two series of facts:--(A.)
_Deflection with identity of form._--In this the inflection is still
considered an inflection, but is dealt with as one different from what
it really is, _i. e._ as a nominative instead of an oblique one. Some
years back the structure of the Finlandic suggested to the present
writer:--
1. A series of changes in meaning whereby such a term as _with waves_
might equal _wavy_.
2. The existence of a class of words of which _sestertium_ was the
type, where an oblique case, _with a convertible termination_, becomes
a nominative.
3. The possible evolution of forms like _fluctuba_,
_fluctubum_ = _fluctuosa_, _fluctuosum_, from forms like _fluctubus_.
Mr. Garnett has multiplied cases of this kind; his illustrations
from the Basque being pre-eminently typical, _i. e._ like the form
_sestertium_. If the modern vehicle called an _omnibus_ had been
invented in ancient Rome, if it had had the same name as it has now,
and if its plural form had been _omnibi_, it would also have been a
typical instance.
Words of the hypothetical form _fluctuba_, _fluctubum_, have not
been discovered. They would have existed if the word just quoted had
been (if used in ancient Rome at all) used as an adjective, _omnibus
currus_, _omniba esseda_, _omnibum plaustrum_.
(B.) _Deflection with superaddition._--Here the inflection is dealt
with as if it were not inflectional but radical. This is the case with
ἴφιος. Words like _it-_, as proved by the genitive _i-t-s_, and the
so-called _petrified_ (_versteinerte_) nominative cases of the German
grammarians, are of this class.
ON THE AORISTS IN -KA.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
MARCH 11, 1853.
A well-known rule in the Eton Greek Grammar may serve to introduce the
subject of the present remarks:--"Quinque sunt aoristi primi qui futuri
primi characteristicam non assumunt: ἔθηκα _posui_, ἔδωκα _dedi_, ἥκα
_misi_, εἴπα _dixi_, ἥνεγκα _tuli_." The absolute accuracy of this
sentence is no part of our considerations: it has merely been quoted
for the sake of illustration.
What is the import of this abnormal κ? or, changing the expression,
what is the explanation of the aorist in -κα? Is it certain that it
_is_ an aorist? or, granting this, is it certain that its relations to
the future are exceptional?
The present writer was at one time inclined to the doubts implied by
the first of these alternatives, and gave some reasons[2] for making
the form a _perfect_ rather than an aorist. He finds, however, that
this is only shifting the difficulty. How do _perfects_ come to end in
-κα? The typical and unequivocal perfects are formed by a reduplication
at the beginning, and a modification of the final radical consonant at
the end of words, τύπ(τ)ω, τέ-τυφ-α; and this is the origin of the χ
in λέλεχα, &c., which represents the γ of the root. Hence, even if we
allow ourselves to put the κ in ἔθηκα in the same category with the κ
in ὀμώμοκα, &c., we are as far as ever from the true origin of the form.
[Footnote 2: English Language, p. 489.]
In this same category, however, the two words--and the classes they
represent--_can_ be placed, notwithstanding some small difficulties of
detail. At any rate, it is easier to refer ὀμώμοκα and ἔθηκα to the
same tense than it is to do so with ὀμώμοκα and τέτυφα.
The next step is to be sought in Bopp's Comparative Grammar. Here we
find the following extract:--"The old Slavonic _dakh_ 'I gave,' and
analogous formations remind us, through their guttural, which _takes
the place of a sibilant_, of the Greek aorists ἔθηκα, ἔδωκα, ἧκα. That
which in the old Slavonic has become a rule in the first person of
the three numbers, viz. the _gutturalization of an original s_, may
have occasionally taken place in the Greek, but carried throughout all
numbers. No conjecture lies closer at hand than that of regarding ἔδωκα
_as a corruption of_ ἔδωσα," &c.... "The Lithuanian also presents a
form which is akin to the Greek and Sanscrit aorist, in which, as it
appears to me, _k assumes the place of an original s_." (vol. ii. p.
791, Eastwick's and Wilson's translation.) The italics indicate the
words that most demand attention.
The old Slavonic inflection alluded to is as follows:--
SINGULAR. DUAL. PLURAL.
1. Nes-_och_ Nes-_ochowa_ Nes-_ochom_.
2. Nes-_e_ Nes-_osta_ Nes-_oste_.
3. Nes-_e_ Nes-_osta_ Nes-_osza_.
Now it is clear that the doctrine to which these extracts commit the
author is that of the secondary or derivative character of the form
of κ and the primary or fundamental character of the forms
in σ. The former is deduced from the latter. And this is the
doctrine which the present writer would reverse. He would just reverse
it, agreeing with the distinguished scholar whom he quotes in the
identification of the Greek form with the Slavonic. So much more
common is the change from _k_, _g_ and the allied sounds, to _s_, _z_,
&c., than that from _s_, _z_, &c. to _k_, _g_, that the _à priori_
probabilities are strongly against Bopp's view. Again, the languages
that preeminently encourage the change are the Slavonic; yet it is just
in these languages that the form in _k_ is assumed to be secondary. For
_s_ to become _h_, and for _h_ to become _k_ (or _g_), is no improbable
change: still, as compared with the transition from _k_ to _s_, it is
exceedingly rare.
As few writers are better aware of the phænomena connected with the
direction of letter-changes than the philologist before us, it may be
worth while to ask, why he has ignored them in the present instances.
He has probably done so because the Sanscrit forms were in _s_; the
habit of considering whatever is the more Sanscrit of two forms to
be the older being well-nigh universal. Nevertheless, the difference
between a language which is old because it is represented by old
samples of its literature, and a language which is old because it
contains primary forms, is manifest upon a very little reflection.
The positive argument, however, in favour of the _k_ being the older
form, lies in the well-known phænomenon connected with the vowels _e_
and _i_, as opposed to _a_, _o_, and _u_. All the world over, _e_ and
_i_ have a tendency to convert a _k_ or _g_, when it precedes them,
into _s_, _z_, _sh_, _zh_, _ksh_, _gzh_, _tsh_, and _dzh_, or some
similar sibilant. Hence, as often as a sign of tense consisting of
_k_, is followed by a sign of person beginning with _e_ or _i_, an
_s_ has chance of being evolved. In this case such a form as ἐφίλησα,
ἐφίλησας, ἐφίλησε, may have originally run ἐφίληκα, ἐφίληκας, ἐφίληκε.
The modified form in σ afterwards extends itself to the other persons
and numbers. Such is the illustration of the hypothesis. An objection
against it lies in the fact of the person which ends in a small vowel,
being only one out of seven. On the other hand, however the third
person singular is used more than all the others put together. With
this influence of the small vowel other causes may have cooperated.
Thus, when the root ended in κ or γ, the combination κ _radical_, and κ
_inflexional_ would be awkward. It would give us such words as ἔλεκ-κα,
&c.; words like τέτυπ-κα, ἔγραπ-κα, being but little better, at least
in a language like the Greek.
The suggestions that now follow lead into a wide field of inquiry; and
they may be considered, either on their merits as part of a separate
question, or as part of the proof of the present doctrine. In this
latter respect they are not altogether essential, _i. e._ they are more
confirmatory if admitted than derogatory if denied. What if the future
be derived from the aorist, instead of the aorist from the future?
In this case we should increase what may be called our _dynamics_,
by increasing the points of contact between a _k_ and a small vowel;
this being the influence that determines the evolution of an _s_. All
the persons of the future, except the first, have ε for one (at
least) of these vowels--
τύψ-σ-ω, τύψ-σ-εις, τύψ-σ-ει, τύψ-ε-τον, &c.
The moods are equally efficient in the supply of small vowels.
The doctrine, then, now stands that _k_ is the older form, but that,
through the influence of third persons singular, future forms, and
conjunctive forms, so many _s_-es became developed, as to supersede
it except in a few instances. The Latin language favours this view.
There, the old future like _cap-s-o_, and the preterites like _vixi_
(_vic-si_) exhibit a small vowel in _all_ their persons, _e. g._
_vic-s-i_, _vic-s-isti_, _vic-s-it_, &c. Still the doctrine respecting
this influence of the small vowel in the way of the developement of
sibilants out of gutturals is defective until we find a real instance
of the change assumed. As if, for the very purpose of illustrating
the occasional value of obscure dialects, the interesting language of
the Serbs of Lusatia and Cotbus supplies one. Here the form of the
preterite is as follows; the Serb of Illyria and the Lithuanic being
placed in juxtaposition and contrast with the Serb of Lusatia. Where a
small vowel follows the characteristic of the tense the sound is that
of _sz_; in other cases it is that of _ch_ (_kh_)
LUSATIAN. ILLYRIAN. LITHUANIC. LETTISH.
Sing. 1. nos_zach_ _do_neso, donije nesziau nessu.
2. nosz_esze_ _do_nese, donije nesziei nessi.
3. nosz_esze_ _do_nese, donije nesziei nesse.
Dual 1. nosz_achwe_ nesziewa
2. nosz_estaj_ neszieta
3. nosz_estaj_ neszie
Plur. 1. nosz_achmy_ _do_nesosmo, donijesmo neszieme nessam.
2. nosz_eśće_ _do_nesoste, donijeste nesziete nessat.
3. nosz_achu_ _do_nesosze, donijesze neszie nesse.
IV.
METRICA.
ON THE DOCTRINE OF THE CAESURA IN
THE GREEK SENARIUS.
FROM THE
TRANSACTIONS OF THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY,
JUNE 23, 1843.
In respect to the cæsura of the Greek tragic senarius, the rules, as
laid down by Porson in the Supplement to his Preface to the Hecuba, and
as recognised, more or less, by the English school of critics, seem
capable of a more general expression, and, at the same time, liable to
certain limitations in regard to fact. This becomes apparent when we
investigate the principle that serves as the foundation to these rules;
in other words, when we exhibit the _rationale_, or doctrine, of the
cæsura in question. At this we can arrive by taking cognizance of a
second element of metre beyond that of quantity.
It is assumed that the element in metre which goes, in works of
different writers, under the name of ictus metricus, or of arsis,
is the same as accent _in the sense of that word in English_. It is
this that constitutes the difference between words like _týrant_
and _resúme_, or _súrvey_ and _survéy_; or (to take more convenient
examples) between the word _Aúgust_, used as the name of a month, and
_augúst_ used as an adjective. Without inquiring how far this coincides
with the accent and accentuation of the classical grammarians, it may
be stated that, in the forthcoming pages, arsis, ictus metricus, and
accent (_in the English sense of the word_), mean one and the same
thing. With this view of the arsis, or ictus, we may ask how far, in
each particular foot of the senarius, it coincides with the quantity.
_First Foot._--In the first place of a tragic senarius it is a matter
of indifference whether the arsis fall on the first or second syllable,
that is, it is a matter of indifference whether the foot be sounded as
_týrant_ or as _resúme_, as _Aúgust_ or as _augúst_. In the following
lines the words ἡκω, παλαι, εἰπερ, τινας, may be pronounced either as
ἥκω, πάλαι, εἴπερ, τίνας, or as ἡκώ, παλαί, εἰπέρ, τινάς, without any
detriment to the character of the line wherein they occur.
Ἥκω νεκρον κευθμωνα και σκοτου ρυλας.
Πάλαι κυνηγετουντα και μετρουμενον.
Είπερ δικαιος εστ' εμος τα πατροθεν.
Τίνας ποθ' ἑδρας τασδε μοι θοαζετε.
or,
Ἡκώ νεκρον κευθμωνα και σκοτου ρυλας.
Παλαί κυνηγετουντα και μετρουμενον.
Ειπέρ δικαιος εστ' εμος τα πατροθεν.
Τινάς ποθ' ἑδρας τασδε μοι θοαζετε.
_Second Foot._--In the second place, it is also matter of indifference
whether the foot be sounded as _Aúgust_ or as _augúst_. In the first of
the four lines quoted above we may say either νέκρων or νεκρών, without
violating rhythm of the verse.
_Third Foot._--In this part of the senarius it is no longer a matter of
indifference whether the foot be sounded as _Aúgust_ or as _augúst_;
that is, it is no longer a matter of indifference whether the arsis and
the quantity coincide. In the circumstance that the last syllable of
the third foot _must_ be accented (in the English sense of the word),
taken along with a second fact, soon about to be exhibited, lies the
doctrine of the penthimimer and hephthimimer cæsuras.
The proof of the coincidence between the arsis and the quantity in
the third foot is derived partly from _à posteriori_, partly from _à
priori_ evidence.
1. In the Supplices of Æschylus, the Persæ, and the Bacchæ, three
dramas where licences in regard to metre are pre-eminently common,
the number of lines wherein the sixth syllable (_i. e._ the last half
of the third foot) is without an arsis, is at the highest sixteen,
at the lowest five; whilst in the remainder of the extant dramas the
proportion is undoubtedly smaller.
2. In all lines where the sixth syllable is destitute of ictus, the
iambic character is violated: as--
Θρηκην περαράντες μογις πολλῳ πονῳ.
Δυοιν γεροντοίν δε στρατηγειται φυγη.
These are facts which may be verified either by referring to the
tragedians, or by constructing senarii like the lines last quoted. The
only difficulty that occurs arises in determining, in a dead language
like the Greek, the absence or presence of the arsis. In this matter
the writer has satisfied himself of the truth of the two following
propositions:--1. That the accentuation of the grammarians denotes some
modification of pronunciation other than that which constitutes the
difference between _Aúgust_ and _augúst_; since, if it were not so,
the word ἅγγελον would be sounded like _mérrily_, and the word ἁγγέλων
like _disáble_; which is improbable. 2. That the arsis lies upon
radical rather than inflectional syllables, and out of two inflectional
syllables upon the first rather than the second; as βλέπ-ω, βλεψ-άσ-α,
not βλεπ-ώ, βλεψ-ασ-ά. The evidence upon these points is derived from
the structure of language in general. The _onus probandi_ lies with
the author who presumes an arsis (accent in the English sense) on a
_non_-radical syllable.
Doubts, however, as to the pronunciation of certain words, leave the
precise number of lines violating the rule given above undetermined. It
is considered sufficient to show that, wherever they occur, the iambic
character is violated.
The circumstance, however, of the last half of the third foot
requiring an arsis, brings us only half way towards the doctrine of
the cæsura. With this must be combined a second fact arising out of
the constitution of the Greek language in respect to its accent. In
accordance with the views just exhibited, the author conceives that no
Greek word has an arsis upon the last syllable, except in the three
following cases:--
1. Monosyllables, not enclitic; as σφών, πάς, χθών, δμώς, νών, νύν, &c.
2. Circumflex futures; as νεμώ, τεμώ, &c.
3. Words abbreviated by apocope; in which case the penultimate is
converted into a final syllable; δώμ', φειδέσθ', κεντείτ', εγώγ', &c.
Now the fact of a syllable with an arsis being, in Greek, rarely
final, taken along with that of the sixth syllable requiring an arsis,
gives, as a matter of necessity, the circumstance that, in the Greek
drama, the sixth syllable shall occur anywhere rather than at the end
of a word; and this is only another way of saying, that, in a tragic
senarius, the syllable in question shall generally be followed by other
syllables in the same word. All this the author considers as so truly a
matter of necessity, that the objection to his view of the Greek cæsura
must lie either against his idea of the nature of the accents, or
nowhere; since, that being admitted, the rest follows of course.
As the sixth syllable must not be final, it must be followed in the
same word by one syllable, or by more than one.
1. _The sixth syllable followed by one syllable in the same
word._--This is only another name for the seventh syllable occurring at
the end of a word, and it gives at once the hephthimimer cæsura: as--
Ἡκω νεκρων κευθμώνα και σκοτου πυλας.
Ἱκτηριοις κλαδοίσιν εξεστεμμενοι.
Ὁμου τε παιανών τε και στεναγματων.
2. _The sixth syllable followed by two (or more) syllables in the same
word._--This is only another name for the eighth (or some syllable
after the eighth) syllable occurring at the end of a word; as--
Οδμη βροτειων ἅιματων με προσγελα.
Λαμπρους δυναστας έμπρεποντας αιθερι.
Now this arrangement of syllables, taken by itself, gives anything
rather than a hephthimimer; so that if it were at this point that our
investigations terminated, little would be done towards the evolution
of the _rationale_ of the cæsura. It will appear, however, that in
those cases where the circumstance of the sixth syllable being followed
by two others in the same words, causes the eighth (or some syllable
after the eighth) to be final, either a penthimimer cæsura, or an
equivalent, will, with but few exceptions, be the result. This we may
prove by taking the eighth syllable and counting back from it. What
_follows_ this syllable is immaterial: it is the number of syllables in
the same word that _precedes_ it that demands attention.
1. _The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by nothing._--This is
equivalent to the seventh syllable at the end of the preceding word: a
state of things which, as noticed above, gives the hephthimimer cæsura.
Ανηριθμον γελάσμα παμ|μητορ δε γη.
2. _The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by one
syllable._--This is equivalent to the sixth syllable at the end of
the word preceding; a state of things which, as noticed above, rarely
occurs. When, however, it does occur, one of the three conditions under
which a final syllable can take an arsis must accompany it. Each of
these conditions requires notice.
α). With a non-enclitic _mono_-syllable the result is a penthimimer
cæsura; since the syllable preceding a monosyllable is necessarily
final.
Ἡκω σεβίζων σόν Κλύται|μνηστρα κρατος.
No remark has been made by critics upon lines constructed in this
manner, since the cæsura is a penthimimer, and consequently their rules
are undisturbed.
β). With _poly_-syllabic circumflex futures constituting the third
foot, there would be a violation of the current rules respecting
the cæsura. Notwithstanding this, if the views of the present paper
be true, there would be no violation of the iambic character of the
senarius. Against such a line as
Κα'γω το σον νεμώ ποθει|νον αυλιον
there is no argument _à priori_ on the score of the iambic character
being violated; whilst, in respect to objections derived from evidence
_à posteriori_, there is sufficient reason for such lines being rare.
γ). With _poly_-syllables abbreviated by apocope, we have the state
of things which the metrists have recognised under the name of
quasi-cæsura; as--
Κεντειτε μη φειδέσθ' εγω | 'τεκον Παριν.
3.--_The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by two
syllables._--This is equivalent to the fifth syllable occurring at
the end of the word preceding: a state of things which gives the
penthimimer cæsura; as--
Οδμη βροτειων αἵματῶν | με προσγελα.
Λαμπρους δυναστας εμ'πρεπον|τας αιθερι.
Απσυχον εικω πρόσγελω|σα σωματος.
4. _The eighth syllable preceded in the same word by three or more than
three syllables._--This is equivalent to the fourth (or some syllable
preceding the fourth) syllable occurring at the end of the word
preceding; a state of things which would include the third and fourth
feet in one and the same word. This concurrence is denounced in the
Supplement to the Preface to the Hecuba, where, however, the rule, as
in the case of the quasi-cæsura, from being based upon merely empirical
evidence, requires limitation. In lines like--
Και τἁλλα πολλ' επέικασαι | δικαιον ην,
or (an imaginary example),
Τοις σοισιν ασπιδήστροφοισ|ιν ανδρασι,
there is no violation of the iambic character, and consequently no
reason against similar lines having been written; although from the
average proportion of Greek words like επεικασαι and ασπιδηστροποισιν,
there is every reason for their being rare.
After the details just given the recapitulation is brief.
1. It was essential to the character of the senarius that the sixth
syllable, or latter half of the third foot, should have an arsis,
ictus metricus, or accent in the English sense. To this condition
of the iambic rhythm the Greek tragedians, either consciously or
unconsciously, adhered.
2. It was the character of the Greek language to admit an arsis on the
last syllable of a word only under circumstances comparatively rare.
3. These two facts, taken together, caused the sixth syllable of a line
to be anywhere rather than at the end of a word.
4. If followed by a single syllable in the same word, the result was a
hephthimimer cæsura.
5. If followed by more syllables than one, some syllable in an earlier
part of the line ended the word preceding, and so caused either a
penthimìmer, a quasi-cæsura, or the occurrence of the third and fourth
foot in the same word.
6. As these two last-mentioned circumstances were rare, the general
phenomenon presented in the Greek senarius was the occurrence of either
the penthimimer or hephthimimer.
7. Respecting these two sorts of cæsura, the rules, instead of being
exhibited in detail, may be replaced by the simple assertion that there
should be an arsis on the sixth syllable. From this the rest follows.
8. Respecting the non-occurrence of the third and fourth feet in the
same word, the assertion may be withdrawn entirely.
9. Respecting the quasi-cæsura, the rules, if not altogether withdrawn,
may be extended to the admission of the last syllable of circumflex
futures (or to any other polysyllables with an equal claim to be
considered accented on the last syllable) in the latter half of the
third foot.
REMARKS ON THE USE OF THE SIGNS OF
ACCENT AND QUANTITY AS GUIDES TO
THE PRONUNCIATION OF WORDS DERIVED
FROM THE CLASSICAL LANGUAGES,
WITH PARTICULAR REFERENCE TO
ZOOLOGICAL AND BOTANICAL
TERMS.
FROM THE
ANNALS AND MAGAZINE OF NATURAL HISTORY,
JUNE, 1859.
The text upon which the following remarks have suggested themselves
is the Accentuated List of the British Lepidoptera, with Hints on the
Derivation of the Names, published by the Entomological Societies
of Oxford and Cambridge; a useful contribution to scientific
terminology--useful, and satisfied with being so. It admits that
naturalists may be unlearned, and provides for those who, with a
love for botany or zoology, may have been denied the advantage of a
classical education. That there are many such is well known; and it is
also well known that they have no love for committing themselves to the
utterance of Latin and Greek names in the presence of investigators who
are more erudite (though, perhaps, less scientific) than themselves.
As a rule, their pronunciation is inaccurate. It is inaccurate without
being uniform--- for the ways of going wrong are many. Meanwhile, any
directions toward the right are welcome.
In the realities of educational life there is no such thing as a
book for unlearned men--at least no such thing as a good one. There
are make-shifts and make-believes _ad_ _infinitum_; but there is
no such an entity as an actual book. Some are written down to the
supposed level of the reader--all that are so written being useless
and offensive. Others are encumbered with extraneous matter, and, so
encumbered, err on the side of bulk and superfluity. Very rarely is
there anything like consistency in the supply of information.
The work under notice supposes a certain amount of ignorance--ignorance
of certain accents and certain quantities. It meets this; and it meets
it well. That the work is both a safe and reliable guide, is neither
more nor less than what we expect from the places and persons whence it
has proceeded.
It is likely, from its very merits, to be the model on which a long
line of successors may be formed. For this reason the principles of its
notation (for thus we may generalize our expression of the principle
upon which we use the signs of accent and quantity as guides to
pronunciation) may be criticised.
In the mind of the present writer, the distinction between accent and
quantity has neither been sufficiently attended to nor sufficiently
neglected. This is because, in many respects, they are decidedly
contrasted with, and opposed to, each other; whilst, at the same
time--paradoxical as it may appear--they are, for the majority of
practical purposes, convertible. That inadvertence on these points
should occur, is not to be wondered at. Professional grammarians--men
who deal with the purely philological questions of metre and
syllabification--with few exceptions, confound them.
In English Latin (by which I mean Latin as pronounced by Englishmen)
there is, in practice, no such a thing as quantity; so that the sign by
which it is denoted is, in nine cases out of ten, superfluous. _Mark
the accent, and the quantity will take care of itself._
I say that there is no such a thing in English Latin as quantity. I
ought rather to have said that
_English quantities are not Latin quantities._
In Latin, the length of the syllable is determined by the length of
the _vowels and consonants combined_. A long vowel, if followed in the
same word by another (_i. e._ if followed by no consonant), is short.
A short vowel, if followed by two consonants, is long. In English, on
the other hand, long vowels make long, whilst short vowels make short,
syllables; so that the quantity of a syllable in English is determined
by the quantity of the vowel. The _i_ in _pius_ is short in Latin. In
English it is long. The _e_ in _mend_ is short in English, long in
Latin.
This, however, is not all. There is, besides, the following metrical
paradox. A syllable may be made long by the very fact of its being
short. It is the practice of the English language to signify the
shortness of a vowel by doubling the consonant that follows. Hence we
get such words as _pitted_, _knotty_, _massive_, &c.--words in which
no one considers that the consonant is actually doubled. For do we not
pronounce _pitted_ and _pitied_ alike? Consonants that appear double to
the _eye_ are common enough. Really double consonants--consonants that
sound double to the ear--are rarities, occurring in one class of words
only--viz. in compounds whereof the first element ends with the same
sound with which the second begins, as _soul-less_, _book-case_, &c.
The doubling, then, of the consonant is a conventional mode of
expressing the shortness of the vowel that precedes, and it addresses
itself to the eye rather than the ear.
But does it address itself to the _eye_ only? If it did, _pitied_ and
_pitted_, being sounded alike, would also be of the same quantity. We
know, however, that to the English writer of Latin verses they are
not so. We know that the first is short (_pĭtied_), the latter
long (_pītted_). For all this, they are sounded alike: so that the
difference in quantity (which, as a metrical fact, really exists) is,
to a great degree, conventional. At any rate, we arrive at it by a
secondary process. We know how the word is spelt; and we know that
certain modes of spelling give certain rules of metre. Our senses here
are regulated by our experience.
Let a classical scholar hear the first line of the Eclogues read--
Patulæ tu Tityre, &c.,
and he will be shocked. He will also believe that the shock fell on his
ear. Yet his ear was unhurt. No sense was offended. The thing which
was shocked was his knowledge of the rules of prosody--nothing more.
To English ears there is no such a thing as quantity--not even in
hexameters and pentameters. There is no such thing as quantity except
so far as it is accentual also. Hence come the following phænomena--no
less true than strange,--viz. (1) that any classical metre written
according to the rules of quantity gives (within certain narrow
limits) a regular recurrence of accents; and (2) that, setting aside
such shocks as affect our knowledge of the rules of prosody, verses
written according to their accents only give metrical results. English
hexameters (such as they are) are thus written.
In the inferences from these remarks there are two assumptions: 1st,
that the old-fashioned mode of pronunciation be adhered to; 2nd, that
when we pronounce Greek and Latin words as they are pronounced in the
recitation of Greek and Latin poetry, we are as accurate as we need be.
It is by means of these two assumptions that we pronounce _Tityre_ and
_patulæ_ alike; and I argue that we are free to do so. As far as the
ear is concerned, the _a_ is as long as the _i_, on the strength of the
double _t_ which is supposed to come after it. It _does_ not indeed
so come; but if it did, the sound would be the same, the quantity
different (for is not _patulæ_ pronounced _pattule_?). It would be a
quantity, however, to the eye only.
This pronunciation, however, may be said to be exploded; for do not
most men under fifty draw the distinction which is here said to be
neglected? Do not the majority make, or fancy they make, a distinction
between the two words just quoted? They may or they may not. It is only
certain that, subject to the test just indicated, it is immaterial what
they do. Nine-tenths of the best modern Latin verses were written under
the old system--a system based not upon our ear, but on our knowledge
of certain rules.
Now it is assumed that the accuracy sufficient for English Latin is
all the accuracy required. Ask for more, and you get into complex and
difficult questions respecting the pronunciation of a dead language.
Do what we will, we cannot, on one side, pronounce the Latin like the
ancient Romans. Do what we will, so long as we keep our accents right,
we cannot (speaking Latin after the fashion of Englishmen) err in the
way of quantity--at least, not to the ear. A short vowel still gives
a long syllable; for the consonant which follows it is supposed to be
doubled.
Let it be admitted, then, that, for practical purposes, _Tityre_ and
_patulæ_ may be pronounced alike, and the necessity of a large class of
marks is avoided. Why write, as the first word in the book is written,
_Papiliō´nidæ_? Whether the initial syllable be sounded _papp-_ or
_pape-_ is indifferent. So it is whether the fourth be uttered as
_-own-_, or _-onn-_. _As far as the ear is concerned_, they are both
long, because the consonant is doubled. In Greek,πᾰππιλλιόννιδαι is as
long as πᾱππιλλιόννιδαι.
Then comes _Machā´on_, where the sign of quantity is again useless,
the accent alone being sufficient to prevent us saying either _Mákkaon_
or _Makaón_. The _a_ is the _a_ in _fate_. We could not sound it as the
_a_ in _fat_ if we would.
_Pīeridæ._--What does the quantity tell us here? That the _i_ is
pronounced as the _i_ in the Greek πίονος, rather than as the
_i_ in the Latin _pius_. But, in English Latin, we pronounce both
alike. Surely _Pī´eris_ and _Pie´ridæ_ tell us all that is needed.
_Cratæ´gī._--Whether long or short, the _i_ is pronounced the same.
_Sinā´pis_, _Rā´pæ_, and _Nā´pi_.--The (̄) here prevents us from
saying _Ráppæ_ and _Náppi_. It would certainly be inelegant and
unusual to do so. Tested, however, by the ear, the words _ráppæ_
and _náppi_ take just the same place in an English Latin verse as
_rápe-æ_ and _nápe-i_. Is any one likely to say _sináppis_? Perhaps.
There are those who say _Dianna_ for _Diana_. It is very wrong to do
so--wrong, not to say vulgar. For the purposes of metre, however, one
is as good as the other; and herein (as aforesaid) lies the test. The
real false quantities would be _Diana_ and _sinnapis_; but against
these the accent protects us. Nor is the danger of saying _sináppis_
considerable. Those who say _Diánna_ are those who connect it with
_Anna_ and would, probably, spell it with two _n's_.
_Cardamī´nēs._--All that the first (̄) does here is to prevent us
saying _cardami´nnes_. The real false quantity would be _carda´mmines_.
The accent, however, guards against this.
The second (̄) is useful. It is certainly better to say _cardamín-ees_
than _cardamín-ess_, because the _e_ is from the Greek η. And this
gives us a rule. Let the (̄) be used to distinguish η from ε, and ω
from ο, and in no other case. I would not say that it is necessary
to use it even here. It is better, however, to say _Macháōn_ than
_Macháŏn_. By a parity of reasoning, the (̆), rejected in the work
before us, is sometimes useful. Let it be used in those derivatives
where ε replaces η, and ο replaces ω; _e. g._ having written _Machaōn_,
write, as its derivative, _Machaŏnidæ_--_i. e._ if the word be wanted.
This is the utmost for which the signs of quantity are wanted for
English Latin. I do not say that they are wanted even for this.
One of the mechanical inconveniences arising from the use of the signs
of quantity is this--when a long syllable is accented, two signs fall
upon it. To remedy this, the work before us considers that the stress
is to be laid on the syllable _preceding the accent_. Yet, if an accent
mean anything, it means that the stress fall on the syllable which it
stands _over_.
A few remarks upon words like _Pīeridæ_, where the accent was
omitted.--Here two short syllables come between two long ones. No
accent, however, is placed over either. Evidently, quantity and accent
are so far supposed to coincide, that the accentuation of a short vowel
is supposed to make it look like a long one. It is a matter of fact,
that if, on a word like _Cassiŏpe_, we lay an accent on the last
syllable but one, we shock the ears of scholars, especially metrical
ones. Does it, however, lengthen the vowel? The editors of the work in
question seem to think that it does, and, much more consistent than
scholars in general, hesitate to throw it back upon the preceding
syllable, which is short also. Metrists have no such objection; their
practice being to say _Cassíope_ without detriment to the vowel. The
entomologists, then, are the more consistent.
They are, however, more consistent than they need be. If an accent
is wanted, it may fall on the shortest of all possible syllables.
Granting, however, that _Cassiópe_ (whether the _o_ be sounded as
in _nōte_ or _nŏt)_ is repugnant to metre, and _Cassíope_ to
theory, what is their remedy? It is certainly true that _Cássiope_ is
pronounceable. Pope writes--
"Like twinkling stars the _miscellanies_ o'er."
No man reads this _miscéllanies_; few read it _míscellánies_. The mass
say _mis´cellanies_. Doing this, they make the word a quadrisyllable;
for less than this would fall short of the demands of the metre. They
also utter a word which makes _Cas´siope_ possible. Is _Cássiope_,
however, the sound? Probably not. And here authors must speak for
themselves:--
"Take, _e. g._, _Cassiope_ and _Corticea_: in words like the former
of these, in which the last syllable is long, there is no greater
difficulty of pronunciation in laying the stress upon the first
syllable than upon the second."
True! but this implies that we say _Cássiopé_. Is _-e_, however, one
bit the longer for being accented, or can it bear one iota more of
accent for being long? No. Take _-at_ from _peat_, and _-t_ from _pet_,
and the result is _pe_--just as long or just as short in one case as
the other.
The same power of accenting the first syllable is "particularly the
case in those words in which the vowel _i_ can assume the power of _y_.
Latin scholars are divided as to the proper accentuation of _mulieres_,
_Tulliola_, and others: though custom is in favour of _mulíeres_,
_mul´ieres_ appears to be more correct." Be it so. Let _mulieres_ be
_múlyeres_. What becomes, however, of the fourth syllable? The word
is no quadrisyllable at all. What is meant is this:--not that certain
quadrisyllables with two short vowels in the middle are difficult to
accentuate, but that they are certain words of which it is difficult to
say whether they are trisyllables or quadrisyllables.
For all practical purposes, however, words like _Cassiope_ are
quadrisyllables. They are, in the way of metre, choriambics; and a
choriambic is a quadrisyllable foot. They were pronounced _Cassíope_,
&c., by English writers of Latin verses--when Latin verses were written
well.
Let the pronunciation which was good enough for Vincent Bourne
and the contributors to the Musæ Etonenses be good enough for the
entomologists, and all that they will then have to do is not to
pronounce _cratægum_ like _stratagem_, _cardamines_ like _Theramenes_,
and _vice versâ_. Against this, accent will ensure them--accent
single-handed and without any sign of quantity--_Cardamínes_,
_Therámenes_, _cratæ´gum_, _strátagem_.
V.
CHRONOLOGICA.
ON THE MEANING OF THE WORD ΣΑΡΟΣ.
READ
BEFORE THE PHILOLOGICAL SOCIETY.
APRIL 11, 1845.
The words σάρος and _sarus_ are the Greek and Latin forms of a certain
term used in the oldest Babylonian chronology, the meaning of which
is hitherto undetermined. In the opinion of the present writer, the
_sarus_ is a period of 4 years and 340 days.
In the way of direct external evidence as to the value of the epoch in
question, we have, with the exception of an unsatisfactory passage in
Suidas, at the hands of the ancient historians and according to the
current interpretations, only the two following statements:--
1. That each _sarus_ consisted of 3600 years (ἔτη).
2. That the first ten kings of Babylon reigned 120 _sari_, equal to
432,000 years; or on an average 43,200 years apiece.
With _data_ of this sort, we must either abandon the chronology
altogether, or else change the power of the word _year_. The first
of these alternatives was adopted by Cicero and Pliny, and doubtless
other of the ancients--_contemnamus etiam Babylonios et eos qui e
Caucaso cœli signa observantes numeris et motubus stellarum cursus
persequuntur; condemnemus inquam hos aut stultitiæ aut vanitatis aut
impudentiæ qui_ CCCCLXX _millia annorum, ut ipsi dicunt, monumentis
comprehensa continent_.--_Cic. de Divinat._, from Cory's _Ancient
Fragments_. Again--_e diverso Epigenes apud Babylonios_ DCCXX _annorum
observationes siderum coctilibus laterculis inscriptas docet, gravis
auctor in primis: qui minimum Berosus et Critodemus_ CCCCLXXX
_annorum_.--Pliny, vii. 56. On the other hand, to alter the value of
the word ἔτος or _annus_ has been the resource of at least one
modern philologist.
Now if we treat the question by what may be called the _tentative_
method, the first step in our inquiry will be to find some division
of time which shall, at once, be _natural_ in itself, and also short
enough to make 10 _sari_ possible parts of an average human life. For
this, even a _day_ will be too long. _Twelve hours_, however, or half a
νυχθήμερον, will give us possible results.
Taking this view therefore, and leaving out of the account the 29th of
February, the words ἔτος and _annus_ mean, not a year, but the 730th
part of one; 3600 of which make a _sarus_. In other words, a _sarus_
= 1800 day-times and 1800 night-times, or 3600 half νυχθήμερα, or 4
years+340 days.
The texts to which the present hypothesis applies are certain passages
in Eusebius and Syncellus. These are founded upon the writings of
Alexander Polyhistor, Apollodorus, Berosus, and Abydenus. From hence we
learn the length of the ten reigns alluded to above, viz. 120 _sari_ or
591 years and odd days. _Reigns_ of this period are just possible. It
is suggested, however, that the _reign_ and _life_ are dealt with as
synonymous; or at any rate, that some period beyond that during which
each king sat singly on his throne has been recorded.
The method in question led the late Professor Rask to a different power
for the word _sarus_. In his _Ældste Hebraiske Tidregnung_ he writes as
follows: "The meaning of the so-called _sari_ has been impossible for
me to discover. The ancients explain it differently. Dr. Ludw. Ideler,
in his _Handbuch der mathematischen und technischen Chronologie_, i.
207, considers it to mean some lunar period; without however defining
it, and without sufficient closeness to enable us to reduce the 120
_sari_, attributed to the ten ancient kings, to any probable number of
real years. I should almost believe that the _sarus_ was a year of 23
months, so that the 120 _sari_ meant 240 natural years." _p._ 32. Now
Rask's hypothesis has the advantage of leaving the meaning of the word
_reign_ as we find it. On the other hand, it blinks the question of ἔτη
or _anni_ as the parts of a _sarus_. Each doctrine, however, is equally
hypothetical; the value of the _sarus_, in the present state of our
inquiry, resting solely upon the circumstance of its giving a plausible
result from plausible assumptions. The _data_ through which the present
writer asserts for his explanation the proper amount of probability are
contained in two p
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