of whom died in prison.* Memorable instances of zeal and heroic endurance, male and female, are recorded in the volume before us, to which we refer our readers, in the confidence that a perusal of its pages cannot fail to increase their admiration for the character of these SPIRITUAL HEROES, and to strengthen their faith in the GOD OF THE PURITANS.

ART. VI. THE PHILOSOPHICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGE.† Les langues sont le miroir de l'entendement; et les nations qui cherchent à cultiver leur entendement, s'appliquent en même temps à la perfection de leur langue.

LEIBNITZ.

THE theme proposed in our title bears, especially in English literature, the reputation of being anything but inviting to popular attention. Does the cause pertain to the nature of the study itself, or to the ordinary and English manner of treating it?

There is an inveterate assumption, more or less common, indeed, to all countries, that to treat any subject whatever philosophically, is to place it beyond the interest or comprehension of the many. This we think to be a prejudice, shallow and supercilious, inherited from those pedantic times when memory passed for intellect, and erudition for philosophy, and the people, without the means of exercising the one or acquiring the other, were deemed incapable of all rational, or at least of systematical, thought. But they too are at length arrived at an age when, if a new mythology were possible, Reason, rather than Memory, would be made the mother of the Muses. The truth is, that System has (and from very adequate causes) a particular attraction for the undisciplined understanding. Where arrangement is defective or entirely wanting, the trained intellect may supply, from its own resources, the bond of unity which is indispensable to every act of comprehension. Whereas the mind which is itself unfurnished with general principles, can receive but passively whatever is offered *Neale, iv, 554.

[† It will be remembered that the scope of our journal, as stated in the number for October, 1848, embraces the subject of Philology. We now present the first of three papers on that topic, and assure our readers that they will find it treated with great ability and originality in these articles. We differ entirely from the writer in many of his views, and do not deem his style the best possible for popular reading: but his speculations deserve attention, notwithstanding, from all who are interested not merely in questions of philology, but of the human mind in general. With respect to his style, too, we may add, that his deviations from common usage are introduced deliberately, and as part of his system.-ED.]

to it in a crude, unorganized condition-rejecting it, if the matter be solid, with a consequent loathing for all food of the like nutritious description; or, if of the sort called "light reading," passing it off undigested, with a voracity at once insatiable and emaciating.

Arrangement then, or Theory, has always been the real want, and even the latent wish, of the popular intellect. It requires co-ordination; it desires simplicity among its body of facts, whether large or small. But this is what we conceive to be the very nature and end of philosophy. And, paradoxical though it seem, perhaps philosophers fail of this end less frequently, by being (according to the vulgar censure) too theoretical, too general, than by not being general enough; that is to say, by not bringing their principles into sufficiently explicit relation with the common sentiments and notions of the people,-sentiments and notions which in reality form the most general, and therefore the fundamental, elements of all human knowledge and science, however elevated or abstract. For whatever philosophy can teach us, that is sound and useful, rests at bottom upon facts no less familiar to the multitude than to the sage. Their principles are, and must be, substantially the same: their spheres of knowledge are necessarily concentric; all the radii possible are consequently common to both; the difference lies merely in the relative amplitude of the area.

Were the elucidation of this great central and light-giving truth the sole fruit of the following pages-instead of merely resulting, among several others, incidentally, from the course of remark-our humble labours would be deemed amply recompensed. We mention it here, however, to evince that language, in this its philosophic quality of living record or representation of whatsoever our species have felt and thought in common, ought to be, of all subjects, the best fitted to interest the popular reader-if only treated with a sound and suitable method. That it has not been so treated is, therefore, a very warrantable inference from the prevalence of the prejudice we combat. To establish this inference positively, to expose the error or insufficiency of the prevailing modes of philological research, and then to supply the conditions of a method truly scientific-such are the leading objects of the proposed dissertation.

It will be divided into three numbers, of nearly equal compass; of which the first will treat of the misapprehension, both general and local, respecting the nature and importance of the subject. After characterizing the science in its principles, it will be expedient to note some of the philosophical applications of which it is capable in almost every department of human interest or inquiry: omitting, however, those arts, such as Grammar, Logic, Rhetoric, in respect

of which the value of philology has been always recognized, although very inadequately conceived. In view of the merely English reader, -(a denomination under which we beg to be understood throughout as including the American,) in whom the prejudice in question seems to have taken deepest and widest root, as indeed it has been chiefly propagated by English writers-it may be well to add something also of its authors and occasion; the history of an error being often its most effectual corrective.

The second paper will expose what may be termed the speculative prejudice: we mean the aversion avowed (ostentatiously, even) by most English philologists, to all speculation of a scientific nature concerning the origin and theory of language. This appears to proceed no longer from the old but respectable reverence for supposed Scriptural tradition; it is owing rather to a deference, no less blind, and much more unworthy, to German authority. It will therefore be best examined in the German example, which will accordingly be considered in this paper, in its general character and results.

Our third and final essay will prosecute the examination more directly, and point out the defects, philological and logical, which seem to us to beset, fatally, even the most forward inquirers of the the Germans especially; concluding with some indications of a different theory both of doctrine and of method.

FIRST PAPER.

Man, it has been somewhere said, is the creature of words; and the expression seems to be literally exact, if duly understood of whatever distinguishes him from the mere animal. By language alone are we enabled not merely to communicate, but also to remember, or even conceive, that portion at least of our ideas termed Abstract and General. But without general ideas, the simplest act of reasoning would be strictly impossible. Thus much appears to be true universally, be the subject of thought what it may, physical or metaphysical. But in the sciences assigned to the latter category, pure or mixed; in Logic, Ethics, Jurisprudence, &c., which are creations of the mind, and composed (for the greater part, certainly, some say, wholly) of general and abstract notions-in all such inquiries, language, it is evident, is not only the "grand instrument of thought,”* and "an analytic method," but is moreover the object whereupon the Thought and the Method are employed.

Yet it is matter less of surprise perhaps than regret, that men should so imperfectly appreciate and improve this best security (as

it has been the beneficent source) of society, civilization, and science, successively. We commonly remain blind to our greatest blessings. Habit blunts the attention, especially to things, like language, of spontaneous or early acquisition and universal enjoyment. What is learned ordinarily without effort, is supposed to involve no mysteries. What has been in use immemorially, and with all mankind, can have no new properties to reveal, no defects to reform.

Besides, there is a species of prejudice against philological dissertation with respect to at least the grammatical aspect of the subject-however it may be with the logical and rhetorical. It is sup posed to be employed upon small things, and therefore incapable of literary interest. But in truth it is neither, as we hope to show, and has come to be so regarded only from being habitually treated in a small way. As Quinctilian said, (alleging, in reply to a like objection, the examples, among others, of Cæsar and Messala, who wrote treatises, the one upon Words, and the other upon the Alphabet)-Non obstant hæ disciplinæ per illas euntibus, sed circa illas hærentibus.

We are, therefore, disposed to fear more from another prepossession, already alluded to, which now remains almost peculiar, we believe, to the English reader; namely, the notion that all investigation of the nature of words or language, is essentially frivolous, if not positively mischievous. This lingering prejudice, the result of an extreme reaction against the scholastic spirit, has now disappeared entirely from the continent of Europe; where, indeed, though chiefly there originated under the auspices of Des Cartes, it ever struck but feeble root. The schoolmen, no doubt, abused the arts of dialectics and definition; or rather misused them; for the fair truth is, that these acutest of intellects brought those arts themselves to an instrumental refinement, which the modern progress of philosophy and science is not a little indebted to, and only erred in too often employing them upon subjects without reality, or for purposes without result. In consequence, however, of this misapplication, all formality in reasoning came to be decried as insidious sophistry; all nicety of verbal distinction to be stigmatized as trifling or pedantic subtlety. The just authority of the two philosophers* who have given currency to the crusade in Great Britain,† has been abused, in turn, to implant in the public mind, and, to a degree, in the language itself, a pernicious and unnatural antagonism between Logic and Truth, between Things and Words.

*Bacon and Locke.

+ Where, besides hostility to the philosophy of Aristotle, it was, perhaps, animated by hatred of the theology of Rome.

FOURTH SERIES, VOL. I.-17

Not, however, that we are without publications on the subject of language from the British press; and the number yearly increases. But while often of much irregular ability, their scope is partial and their object merely practical or preparatory. And even to this subordinate degree of interest, it required the successful talent* of Horne Tooke to stimulate the public mind. But beyond etymology, all scientific cultivation of philology seems to remain, to this day, under the anti-scholastic ban. Could we suppose this absurd confusion of the use with the abuse not merely of the same thing, but of things essentially different, to be an error of merely the literary vulgar, it might be left with their intellectual betters, who in fact communicated, also to correct it. But when English philosophers are still heard descanting upon the glory of Bacon in having superseded the Syllogistic philosophy by the inductive method-(the former of which they conceive to be the promotion of delusion by the exclusive study of words, and the latter the discovery of truth by the direct inspection of things)—it seems to us that a prejudice so obstinately perverse, cannot be denuded too repeatedly or too roughly of the great names which have been assumed, we think unfairly, as its main support.

It is due then as well to Bacon as to truth, to protest that he regarded neither of those methods in this absurd or exclusive light. He well knew that, on the contrary, they were mutually complementary in every complete process of investigation. And, moreover, he neither superseded the Syllogistic logic, for it flourishes still;† nor is he the inventor of its pretended rival, the Inductive. He was unable to deny that Aristotle had promulgated the theory of induction also; less systematically, indeed, but no less distinctly, than that of the syllogism: nay, more, that he had reduced it to practice, however imperfectly, in his Natural History. Further, Bacon recognizes that an earlier still than Aristotle-even his preceptor, Plato-affords specimens of almost perfect induction in his immortal Dialogues; discourses, it is to our purpose to note, which are mostly inquiries into the meaning of words. It appears therefore that this contempt (which might be characterized as Anglo-Saxon) for the verbal philosophy, can derive at best but equivocal countenance from Bacon. His followers, in fact, have wrought the mischief, by

*Or perhaps we should rather say, his tact; for, as is worth observing, this shrewd appreciator of his countrymen, instead of relying upon the merits, at once solid and startling, of his book, proclaims pathetically, that it was written only to rescue his life from the peril of " two prepositions and a conjunction." The life of a "freeborn Englishman," involved in the meaning of a particle! What more cogent argument for the importance of etymology?

The Treatise of Archbishop Whately has passed through many editions.