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F. Max Müller. Lectures on the Science of Language
Lectures on the Science of Language
Table of Contents
Dedication
Preface
Lecture I. The Science Of Language One Of The Physical Sciences
Lecture II. The Growth Of Language In Contradistinction To The History Of Language
Lecture III. The Empirical Stage
Lecture IV. The Classificatory Stage
Lecture V. Genealogical Classification Of Languages
Lecture VI. Comparative Grammar
Lecture VII. The Constituent Elements Of Language
Lecture VIII. Morphological Classification
Lecture IX. The Theoretical Stage, And The Origin Of Language
Index
Footnotes
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F. Max Müller
Published by Good Press, 2020
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From the name we now turn to the meaning of our science. But before we enter upon a definition of its subject-matter, and determine the method which ought to be followed in our researches, it will be useful to cast a glance at the history of the other sciences, among which the science of language now, for the first time, claims her place; and examine their origin, their gradual progress, and definite settlement. The history of a science is, as it were, its biography, and as we buy experience cheapest in studying the lives of others, we may, perhaps, guard our young science from some of the follies and extravagances inherent in youth by learning a lesson for which other branches of human knowledge have had to pay more dearly.
There is a certain uniformity in the history of most [pg 015] sciences. If we read such works as Whewell's History of the Inductive Sciences or Humboldt's Cosmos, we find that the origin, the progress, the causes of failure and success have been the same for almost every branch of human knowledge. There are three marked periods or stages in the history of every one of them, which we may call the Empirical, the Classificatory, and the Theoretical. However humiliating it may sound, every one of our sciences, however grand their present titles, can be traced back to the most humble and homely occupations of half-savage tribes. It was not the true, the good, and the beautiful which spurred the early philosophers to deep researches and bold discoveries. The foundation-stone of the most glorious structures of human ingenuity in ages to come was supplied by the pressing wants of a patriarchal and semi-barbarous society. The names of some of the most ancient departments of human knowledge tell their own tale. Geometry, which at present declares itself free from all sensuous impressions, and treats of its points and lines and planes as purely ideal conceptions, not to be confounded with those coarse and imperfect representations as they appear on paper to the human eye; geometry, as its very name declares, began with measuring a garden or a field. It is derived from the Greek gē, land, ground, earth, and metron, measure. Botany, the science of plants, was originally the science of botanē, which in Greek does not mean a plant in general, but fodder, from boskein, to feed. The science of plants would have been called Phytology, from the Greek phyton, a plant.1 The founders [pg 016] of Astronomy were not the poet or the philosopher, but the sailor and the farmer. The early poet may have admired “the mazy dance of planets,” and the philosopher may have speculated on the heavenly harmonies; but it was to the sailor alone that a knowledge of the glittering guides of heaven became a question of life and death. It was he who calculated their risings and settings with the accuracy of a merchant and the shrewdness of an adventurer; and the names that were given to single stars or constellations clearly show that they were invented by the ploughers of the sea and of the land. The moon, for instance, the golden hand on the dark dial of heaven, was called by them the Measurer—the measurer of time; for time was measured by nights, and moons, and winters, long before it was reckoned by days, and suns, and years. Moon2 is a very old word. It was môna in Anglo-Saxon, and was used there, not as a feminine, but as a masculine; for the moon was a masculine in all Teutonic languages, and it is only through the influence of classical models that in English moon has been changed into a feminine, and sun into a masculine. It was a most unlucky assertion which Mr. Harris made in his Hermes, that all nations ascribe to the sun a masculine, and to the moon a feminine gender.3 In Gothic moon is mena, which is a masculine. For month we have in A.-S. mónâdh, in Gothic menoth, both masculine. In Greek we find mēn, a masculine, for month, and mēnē, a feminine, for moon. In Latin we have the derivative mensis, month, and in Sanskrit we find mâs for moon, and mâsa for month, both [pg 017] masculine.4 Now this mâs in Sanskrit is clearly derived from a root mâ, to measure, to mete. In Sanskrit, I measure is mâ-mi; thou measurest, mâ-si; he measures, mâ-ti (or mimî-te). An instrument of measuring is called in Sanskrit mâ-tram, the Greek metron, our metre. Now if the moon was originally called by the farmer the measurer, the ruler of days, and weeks, and seasons, the regulator of the tides, the lord of their festivals, and the herald of their public assemblies, it is but natural that he should have been conceived as a man, and not as the love-sick maiden which our modern sentimental poetry has put in his place.
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