X.

IN SELF-DEFENSE.

PRESENT STATE OF SCIENTIFIC STUDIES.

IT has been remarked by many observers that in all branches of physical as well as historical learning there is at the present moment a strongly pronounced tendency towards special researches. No one can hold his own among his fellow-workers who cannot point to some discovery, however small, to some observation, to some decipherings, to some edition of a text hitherto unpublished, or, at least, to some conjectural readings which are, in the true sense of the word, his property. A man must now have served from the ranks before he is admitted to act as a general, and not even Darwin or Mommsen would have commanded general attention for their theories on the ancient history of Rome, or on the primitive development of animal life, unless they had been known for years as sturdy workers in their respective quarries.

On the whole, I believe that this state of public opinion has produced a salutary effect, but it has also its dangers. An army that means conquest, cannot always depend on its scouts and pioneers, nor must it be broken up altogether into single detachments of tirailleurs. From time to time, it has to make a combined movement in advance, and for that purpose

H

it wants commanders who know the general outlines of the battle-field, and are familiar with the work that can best be done by each branch of the service.

EVOLUTIONISM.

If we look upon scholars, historians, students of physical science, and abstract philosophers, as SO many branches of the great army of knowledge which has been fighting its way for centuries for the conquest of truth, it might be said, if we may follow up our comparison a little further, that the light cavalry of physical science had lately made a quick movement in advance, and detached itself too much from. the support of the infantry and heavy artillery. The charge was made against the old impregnable fortress, the Origin of Life, and to judge from the victorious hurrahs of the assaulting squadron, we might have thought that a breach had at last been effected, and that the keys to the long hidden secrets of creation and development had been surrendered. As the general commanding this attack, we all recognize Mr. Darwin, supported by a brilliant staff of dashing officers, and if ever general was well chosen for victory, it was the author of the " Origin of Species."

There was indeed for a time a sanguine hope, shared by many a brave soldier, that the old warfare of the world would, in our time, be crowned with success, that we should know at last what we are, whence we came, and whither we go; that, beginning with the simplest elementary substances, we should be able to follow the process of combination and division, leading by numberless and imperceptible changes from the lowest Bathybios to the highest Hypsibios, and that we should succeed in establishing

by incontrovertible facts what old sages had but guessed, viz., that there is nowhere anything hard and specific in nature, but all is flowing and growing, without an efficient cause or a determining purpose, under the sway of circumstances only, or of a selfcreated environment. Πάντα ῥεῖ.

But that hope is no longer so loudly and confidently expressed as it was some years ago. For a time all seemed clear and simple. We began with Protoplasm, which anybody might see at the bottom of the sea, developing into Moneres, and we ended with the bimanous mammal called Homo, whether sapiens or insipiens, everything between the two being matter of imperceptible development.

DIFFICULTIES IN EVOLUTIONISM.

The difficulties began where they generally begin, at the beginning and at the end. Protoplasm was a name that produced at first a soothing effect on the inquisitive mind, but when it was asked, whence that power of development, possessed by the Protoplasm which begins as a Moneres and ends as Homo, but entirely absent in other Protoplasm, which resists all mechanical manipulation, and never enters upon organic growth, it was seen that the problem of development had not been solved, but only shifted, and that, instead of simple Protoplasm, very peculiar kinds of Protoplasm were required, which under circumstances might become and remain a Moneres, and under circumstances might become and remain Homo forever. That which determined Protoplasm to enter upon its marvelous career, the first kɩoûv åkшvytóv, remained as unknown as ever. It was open to call it an internal and unconscious, or an external and con

H

scious power, or both together: physical, metaphysical, and religious mythology were left as free as ever. The best proof of this we find in the fact that Mr. Darwin himself retained his belief in a personal Creator, while Haeckel denies all necessity of admitting a conscious agent; and Von Hartmann 1 sees in what is called the philosophy of evolutionism the strongest confirmation of idealism, "all development being in truth but the realization of the unconscious reason of the creative idea."

GLOTTOLOGY AND EVOLUTIONISM.

While the difficulty at the beginning consists in this that, after all, nothing can be developed except what was enveloped, the difficulty at the end is this that something is supposed to be developed that was not enveloped. It was here where I thought it became my duty to draw Mr. Darwin's attention to difficulties which he had not suspected at all, or which, at all events, he had allowed himself to under-value. Mr. Darwin had tried to prove that there was nothing to prevent us from admitting a possible transition from the brute to man, as far as their physical structure was concerned, and it was natural that he should wish to believe that the same applied to their mental capacities. Now, whatever difference of opinion there might be among philosophers as to the classification and naming of these capacities, and as to any rudimentary traces of them to be discovered in animals, there had always been a universal consent that language was a distinguishing characteristic of man. Without inquiring what was implied by

1 See a very remarkable article by Von Hartmann on Haeckel, in the Deutsche Rundschau, July, 1875.

language, so much was certain, that language was something tangible, present in every man, absent in every brute. Nothing, therefore, was more natural than that Mr. Darwin should wish to show that this was an error: that language was nothing specific in man, but had its antecedents, however imperfect, in the signs of communication among animals. Influenced, no doubt, by the works of some of his friends and relatives on the origin of language, he thought that it had been proved that our words could be derived directly from imitative and interjectional sounds. If the Science of Language has proved anything, it has proved that this is not the case. We know that, with certain exceptions, about which there can be little controversy, all our words are derived from roots, and that every one of these roots is the expression of a general concept. "Without roots, no language; without concepts, no roots," these are the two pillars on which our philosophy of language stands, and with which it falls.

MR. WEDGWOOD'S DICTIONARY.

Any word taken from Mr. Wedgwood's Dictionary Iwill show the difference between those who derive words directly from imitative and interjectional sounds, and those who do not. For instance, s. V. to plunge, we read:

"Fr. plonger Du. plotsen, plonssen, plonzen, to fall into the water-Kil.; plotsen, also to fall suddenly on the ground. The origin, like that of plump, is a representation of the noise made by the fall. Swiss bluntschen, the sound of a thick heavy body falling into the water." Under plump we read, "that the radical image is the sound made by a compact body falling into the water, or of a mass of wet falling to the ground. He smit den sten in't water, plump! seg dat, He threw the stone into the