that there may be a dealing with language such as to us appears too infantine, too irrational, to be possible. Words are with us wedded to sense, and we cannot treat them as mere sounds-as mere sounds to be modified at our pleasure. The first English wag who, from the top of a stage-coach er omnibus, called the driver a brick, was struck by some analogy between the solidity of a brick and the solid qualities of the driver. But the Indian wag whom Mr. Bates encountered was satisfied with distorting the names, the articulate sounds attached to things; and these alterations, if they pleased his simple companions, were repeated, and took the place of the original word, or were added to the vocabulary. The Tahitians and the Kafir women find no difficulty in arbitrarily substituting one syllable for another through a considerable number of words, and adopting for language what at first must have sounded like gibberish. All this makes it easy to comprehend that there was a time when the coinage of new words, as they were really wanted, would sometimes proceed on the simple plan of merely altering or transposing the syllables of words already in use. There is no necessity for us to imagine (as our lecturer seems to think there is) that these early linguists were in the habit of repeating to themselves a list of merely articulate sounds, and then, as occasion required, choosing one of these for the new name that was wanted. "There never was, he says, "an independent array of determinate conceptions waiting to be matched with an independent array of articulate sound." No one, we believe, ever made so fanciful a supposition. The mere articulate sound would have no independent prior existence for the savage; he would call it into existence at the time he first made use of it for the purposes of language. Max Müller seems to have reasoned himself into the persuasion that Thought "It matters not whether the sound is articulate or not; articulate sound without meaning is even more unreal than inarticulate sound. If, then, these articulate sounds, or what we may call the body of language, exist nowhere, have no independent reality, what fol lows? I think it follows that this so-called body of language could never have been taken up anywhere by itself, without; from which it would follow and added to our conceptions from again that our conceptions, which are now always clothed in the garment of language, could never have existed in a naked state. This would be perfectly correct reasoning if applied to any thing else; nor do I see that it can be objected to as bearing on thought and language. If we never find skins except as the integuments of animals, we may safely conclude that animals cannot exist without skins." Leaving these obscurities behind us, we have to thank the lecturer for a brief and clear account of the mechanism of speech, for his investigation of the a'phabet, of the various vowels and consonants which compose articolate sounds, and for much interesting informa tion as to the distribution of these through the various languages spoken on the earth. The early language of every people was probably very limited in its repertory of sounds. "Where we find very abundant alphabets," he remarks, "as, for instance, in Hindustani and English, different languages have been mixed, each retaining for a time its phonetic peculiarity." There are some languages which dispense with what to us seem the most elementary sounds, in which our labials are absent, or exist in a very obscure rudimentary state. "We are so accustomed to look upon pa and ma as the most natural articulations that we can hardly imagine a language without them. We have been told over and over again that the names for father and mother in all languages are derived from the first cry of recognition which an infant can articulate, and that it could at that early age articulate none but those formed by the mere opening and closing of the lips. It is a fact, nevertheless, that the Mo hawks, of whom I knew an interesting specimen at Oxford, never, either as infants or grown-up people, articulate with their lips. They have no p, b, m, f, v, w-no labials of any kind; and although their own name Mohawk would seem to bear witness against this, that name is not a word of their own language, but was given to them by their neighbours. Nor are they the only people who always keep their mouths open, and abstain from articulating labials. They share this peculiarity with the five other tribes who together form the so-called Six Nations. The Hurons likewise have no labials, and there are other languages in America with a similar deficiency." The gutturals are seldom altogether absent; yet they are so in the Society Islands, and the first English name their inhabitants had to pronounce, Captain Cook, could not be approached nearer than Tute. The dis never used by the Chinese; neither is the r. They say Eulope for Europe; Ya-me li-ka for Ame. rica, and the name of Christ is distorted into Ki-li-yse-tu. If we in Englind are rich in our alphabet, we make the very wildest and most extravagant use of it in our written language. Our orthography is the most anomalous, we believe, on the face of the earth. Those who have at heart its reformation, will rejoice to be able to quote the authority of Max Mü ler in their favour. Assuredly, if we could once get over the grotesque effect that novelty has in this instance, we should all become reformers here, All we should all be advocates for a "I ought not to omit to mention here the valuable services rendered by those who for nearly twenty years have been labouring in England to turn the results of scientific research to practical use, in devising and propagating a new system of Brief Writing and True Spelling,' best known under the name of the Phonetic Reform. I am far from underrat ing the difficulties that stand in the way of such a reform, and I am not so sanguine as to indulge in any hopes of seeing it carried for the next three or four generations. But I feel convinced of the truth and reasonableness of the principles on which that reform rests; and as the innate regard for truth and reason, however dorinant or timid at times, has always proved irresistible in the end, enabling men to part with all they hold most dear and sacred, whether corn-laws or Stuart dynasties, or Papal legates or heathen idols, I doubt not but that the effete and corrupt or thography will follow in their train, Nations have before now changed their numerical figures, their letters, their chronology, their weights and measures; and though Mr. Pitman (or Mr. Ellis*) may not live to see the results of his * We insert this gentleman's name because, without disparaging the claim of any one else, we believe that no one has wrought with greater zeal in this matter, or with more self-sacrifice. persevering and disinterested exertions, it requires no prophetic power to perceive that what at present is pooh-poohed by the many will make its way in the end, unless met by arguments stronger than those hitherto levelled at the Fonetic Nuz.' One argument which might be supposed to weigh with the student of language—viz, the obscuration of the etymological structure of words-I cannot consider very formidable. The pronunciation of languages changes aecording to fixed laws; the spelling has , changed in the most arbitrary manner; so that if our spelling followed the pronunciation of words, it would in reality be a greater help to the critical student of language than the present uncertain and unscientific mode of writing." It is not the poor man only, or the country lad, who would receive a benefit from this phonetic reform. The competitive examinations have revealed-if the revelation was wanted-what a plague to all classes is the present mode of spelling. It is a case of sheer arbitrary memory. How often does one hear it said, "I can spell the word if you do not ask me; I shall spell it right if I do not think about it." And, by the way, is it quite so equitable as it is supposed to be, to make bad spelling a fatal blot in these examinations? When, in the House of Commons, some remarks were made on the unnecessary severity of those examinations which the candidate for the civil service has to pass through, it was thought sufficient answer to reply that a large portion of the rejected were rejected on account of their spelling. If this were the sole cause of their failure, the answer is not to us at all satisfactory. It is a mistake to suppose that immaculate spelling is a sure test of general education, or the want of it a sure sign of general ignorance. With such an orthography as we have, it is mere habit and a mechanical memory that insure good pelling. Many minds are so constitut ed that while they can remember a train of thought, or a fact of interesting knowledge, they cannot retain a mere sequence of words or figures. Such men shall discourse well and ingeniously of the origin and development of the British constitution, and all their lives long they shall not be master of a single date in English history. If they know it to-day, they will have forgotten it to-morrow. We have heard it said-we cannot ourselves vouch for its truth-that more than one literary man of eminence has felt himself plagued all his days by the anomalies in our spelling. Many a faithful servant of the public spells well enough, but he requires the moral aid of a Johnson's Dictionary within reach: it is seldom that he consults it, but he would immediately begin to feel alarmed if he knew that his oracle was removed. Set such a man down to a dictation, and his fear of blundering would inevitably produce a large crop of blunders. We can only hope that the examiners are not so given over to pedantry as to prevent & shrewd, honest young fellow from obtaining his promised clerkship merely because he doubled his p or his t at the wrong place, or substitutede for i. In one of these Lectures we have an interesting account of Bishop Wilkins's scheme for a universal language. In 1668 the Bishop published his 'E-say towards a Real Character and a Philosophical Language. By a real character be means (what the Chinese are said to possess) a character which should stand for things, and not for the words of things, so that all people throughout the world, without knowing any language but their own, might communicate together through this written character. This part of the Bishop's project does not appear impracticable. what extent such a written character would be useful is another question; there must be some manifest utility to rompt the natives of different countries to make themselves acquainted with it. Jones, Brown, and Robinson, would have found it useful on their Continental tour; but we doubt if To nounced by living lips. In this they would have given themselves the trouble to learn it. Shy men, and men who are accustomed to speak their own language with accuracy, and who are annoyed at the consciousness that in a foreign language they are making themselves ridiculous by vile pronunciation, if not by false grammar, would be delighted with such a mode of communication. Many a man would travel, and sojourn in foreign cities, who now sulks at home, if wherever he went he could take out his pencil and his pocketbook, and express himself clearly by a written character, and not be reduced to stammer something which will make him look like a fool or an idiot. But this class is not so numerous in the various countries of the world that a new written Amongst the most instructive of character would be generally learnt these Lectures is the one "On the for their accommodation; and if it Root Mar." It is an admirable were not generally known, it would, illustration of the modern science of course, be useless. The idea has of etymology, as contrasted with been lately taken up by Don, Sini- that hap-hazard etymology which baldo de Mas in his 'Idéographie;' allowed itself to be guided simply "a memoir on the possibility of by the sound and the meaning of forming a written character in words. What Voltaire intended as which people of all nations, with- a sarcasm- -"L'étymologie est une out understanding each other's science où les voyelles ne font rien, language, can communicate." Why et les consonnes fort peu de chose" not adopt at once for this purpose is boldly accepted by the modern the Chinese characters, or so many of them as would be necessary? Thus we should be at once at home in China, and the difficulty would be obviated of obtaining the general concurrence to any arbitrary system of signs. Let all educated people in Europe forthwith set about learning so much of the Chinese character as to be able to hold written communication therein. This might be the germ of a written language common to all the civilised world. Perhaps Don Sinibaldo de Mas, as he went on some dip'omatic mission to China, has fully considered this. We have not had an opportunity of learning the details of his scheme. But Bishop Wilkins had projected not only his real character, but a philosophical language to be pro etymologist. Similarity of sound or meaning is but of secondary importance. "We know words,' says our lecturer, "to be of the same origin which have not a single letter in common, and which differ in meaning as much as black and white." The rules by which letters are changed one for the other are deduced from a wide examination of the languages in question; and the application of these rules enables the etymologist to detect the same roots under various forms. These forms, again, by the habit we have of thinking in metaphors, come to represent most opposite ideas. A word, for instance, which signified soft, might become in one form to mean something lovable, in another something foolish-ideas altogether antagonistic. We will not venture to quote any of the illustrations here given, because their force and pertinency would not be felt unless the whole lecture were perused. Under the guidance of the scientific etymologist it becomes highly interesting to trace (so far as his successful labours at present enable u-) the same elements of speech as they appear in the different languages of man and in the most remote regions of the world. For within our historic period, and amongst the civilised nations known to us, there appears to be no such thing as an absolutely new coinage of speech. Whatever may have passed in a prehistoric period, or whatever may now be going on amongst some voluble savages, we know of nothing new in language that is not a reconstruction of the old. Everything that has a date has also a derivation. It seems here as if we had lost the faculty of making bricks from the original clay, and could only build by redisposing the bricks which our ancestors had moulded. In the following quotation the reader will easily perceive the modification we should make "since the beginning of the world" is not the expression we should have used, but the general drift of the passage we are very far from dispusing. "We thus see," says Max Müller, "how languages reflect the history of nations, and how, if properly analyzed, almost every word will tell us of many vicissitudes through which it passed on its way from Central Asia to India or to Persia, to Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy; to Russia, Gaul, Germany, the British Isles, America, New Zealand; nay, back again, in its world-encompassing higrations, to India and the Himalayan regions from which it start ed. Many a word has thus gone the round of the world, and it may go the same round again and again. For although words change in sound and meaning to such an extent that not a single letter remains the same, and that their meaning becomes the very opposite of what it originally was, yet it is important to observe that since the beginning of the world no new addition has ever been made to the substantial elements of speech any more than to the substantial elements of nature. There is a constant change in language, a coming and a going of words; but no man can ever invent an entirely new word, We speak to all intents and purposes substantially the of our race; and, guided by the hand same language as the earliest ancestors of scientific etymology, we may pass on from century to century through the darkest periods of the world's history, till the stream of language on which we ourselves are moving carries us back to those distant regions where we seem to feel the presence of our earliest forefathers, and to hear the voices of the earth-born SODS of Manu." to the We commit our readers, and ourselves too, with great confidence to the guidance of Mix Müller on should hesitate long before we dismatters strictly philological. We had received the sanction of his puted any rule of etymology which judgment; and even individual derivations which startle us at first, we are willing to receive on his authority; we receive them at least till substituted by others still more cogently supported. But in that province which is common psychologist and the philologist, whenever the lecturer discourses on the nature and functions of language itself, we are compelled to observe that a safer guidance will be found in many an old-established author amongst us, Scotch or English. No one can deal with the wide subject of mental philosophy without being compelled to discuss, with more or less fulness, the nature of the connection between Thought and Language. Now, glancing back in memory at the list of our metaphysical writers of repute, we must say that there is hardly one of them from whom a student would not derive more precise and intelligible views on this subbefore us. ject than he will from the Lectures lecturer is very vague. We, in our On this subject the part of the island, who have had in our universities a Metaphysical |
