Among these precursors of Müller and Geiger, the first place belongs to Theodor Waitz, whose writings unfortunately were little regarded and less esteemed during his lifetime, when all minds were under the spell of the Schelling-Hegelian phrase-mongering, and all healthy thought was stifled. A few quotations will suffice to show that the idea of a history of the development of thought and reason had occurred to him.

"In common with Kant' (he says), 'I can only conceive the task of philosophy as that of establishing a science which should explain the foundations of experience.

"Neither criticism nor construction, nor any combined application of the two, will lead to the desired goal; nothing can do this but a history of the development of thought.

I have tried to found psychology upon unquestionable physiological facts, in order that it, and philosophy in general, might be made independent for the future of the wrangling of philosophical schools, which turns upon vague general notions as to which it is easy to dispute, because every one may attach a different meaning to them, until a preliminary history of development establishes the distinction between sound and unsuccessful attempts towards the formation of concepts. Speculation, which does not reach a ground of direct experience, is, and always will be, a subject of dispute.''

In his lectures on psychology Waitz expresses himself still more clearly; he lays down that, the function of psychology, in relation to other philosophic studies, is that of foundation, for the formation of our ideas has a collective history, upon which their sub1 Grundlegung der Psychologie. Preface.

stance is dependent. They only become scientifically serviceable when it appears that they are not merely individual or accidental products of an unconscious process, but the necessary results of development, the products of laws of universal application, i.e. of laws to which the cultivation of the inner life must be always and entirely subject.'

Waitz was thus well aware of what was required; he was only uncertain as to the means by which the goal was to be attained. With inexhaustible zeal he turned first to physiology, then to comparative psychology, and lastly to anthropology, as a contribution to which his epoch-making work, 'Die Anthropologie der Naturvölker' was compiled.

But he passed unsuspectingly by the richest, clearest, most trustworthy source upon which the historian of the development of human reason can draw. The discovery of this source was reserved for Max Müller and L. Geiger.

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CHAPTER IV.

MAX MÜLLER AND THE PROBLEM OF THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE.

HOWEVER paradoxical it may seem, I maintain that we cannot possibly know individuals, or discover any means of accurately determining the individuality of a particular thing.

'General terms are not only influential in bringing languages to perfection, but also simply indispensable to their existence. Continuous speech would be absolutely impossible if there were only the proper names (nomina propria) of individual things, and no general names (nomina appellativa).'

In enunciating these weighty truths in his Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement humain,' Leibniz threw fresh light upon the nature of language and thought. His precursor was Locke, who had declared that 'what words serve to denote are general ideas.'

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In this manner' (continues Leibniz, speaking of the formation and origin of general ideas), 'the whole doctrine of genera and species-about which so much ado is made in the schools, and which has so little influence outside themmight be reduced wholly and solely to the formation of abstract ideas of greater or less comprehensiveness to which certain names are given.'

Are not these words still worthy of laying to heart? Do they not contain the great doctrine that, before disputing about how the genera and species in the world are constituted, we should first come to an understanding as to what is meant by the words, and how such conceptions arise in thought, or in our mind? But this by the way.

If we look the problem of human language in the face, we shall be surprised and dazzled by the same marvel as in all the other creations of nature; namely, the vast and extravagant abundance and variety of forms joined with the incredible simplicity and paucity of the means. Who would believe, before his attention was called to it, that all human language has been produced by the various combinations of an insignificant number of sounds, and that all human thought is inseparably bound up with this seemingly unpromising instrument, and is accomplished solely through this simple, mechanical apparatus of articulate sound-production?

But, we have still to ask, what is the mental counterpart to this mechanism, to the word considered as a sound? What is the idea, the meaning of the words? And how does it come to pass that particular ideas come to be expressed by particular sounds and made intelligible thereby? Are they things of the outer world, which are simply retained by phonetic signs, and reproduced in the mind by their help, something in the manner of Cicero's dictum: Vocabula sunt notæ rerum,' a dictum which seemed to all antiquity,

down to the age of Leibniz and Locke, to exhaust the whole problem?

If new light is to be thrown upon the important and obscure problem of the origin of language, these questions must be submitted to renewed and serious criticism. And the time seems to have arrived when they must be more energetically and fruitfully attacked if the magnificent results of comparative philology are not to remain a mere heap of scientific material, but to prove a valuable possession for humanity and contribute to decide the ultimate and supreme questions of philosophy and anthropology.

The profound insight and philosophic temper of Max Müller is nowhere more evident than in his having been the first among the students of language to dive into these obscure abysses with the torch of empirical knowledge, which he himself had been among the first to kindle, in search of a satisfactory answer, such as is to be found nowhere else, to the question what is the origin of the human mind.

Müller took as his starting-point the view of Locke, quoted above, respecting the nature and essence of human speech. He quotes the words of the great English thinker, who, after having shown how universal ideas arise, how the mind, after having observed the same colour in chalk, in snow, and in milk, comprehends these several perceptions under the general idea of white, thus continues :

This I may be positive in, that the power of abstraction is not at all in brutes, so that the having of general ideas is