mâs in Sanskrit is clearly derived from a root mâ, to measure, to meet. 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. It was the sailor who, before entrusting his life and goods to the winds and the waves of the ocean, watched for the rising of those stars which he called the Sailing-stars or Pleiades, from plein, to sail. Navigation in the Greek waters was considered safe after the return of the Pleiades; and it closed when they disappeared. The Latin name for the Pleiades is Vergilia, from virga, a sprout or twig. This name was given to them by the Italian husbandman, because in Italy, where they became visible about May, they marked the return of summer." Another constellation, the seven stars in the head of Taurus, received the name of Hyades or Pluvia in Latin, because at the time when they rose with the sun they were supposed to announce rain. The astronomer retains these and many other names; he still speaks of the pole of heaven, of wandering and fixed stars †, but he is apt to forget that these terms were * • Ideler, Handbuch der Chronologie, b. i. s. 241, 242. As early as the times of Anaximenes of the Ionic, and Alemæon of the Pythagorean, schools, the stars had been divided not the result of scientific observation and classification, but were borrowed from the language of those who themselves were wanderers on the sea or in the desert, and to whom the fixed stars were in full reality what their name implies, stars driven in and fixed, by which they might hold fast on the deep, as by heavenly anchors. But although historically we are justified in saying that the first geometrician was a ploughman, the first botanist a gardener, the first mineralogist a miner, it may reasonably be objected that in this early stage a science is hardly a science yet: that measuring a field is not geometry, that growing cabbages is very far from botany, and that a butcher has no claim to the title of comparative anatomist. This is perfectly true, yet it is but right that each science should be reminded of these its more humble beginnings, and of the practical requirements which it was originally intended to answer. A science, as Bacon says, should be a rich storehouse for the glory of God, and the relief of man's estate. Now, although it may seem as if in the present high state of our society students were enabled to devote their time to the investigation of the facts and laws of nature, or to the contemplation of the mysteries of the world of thought, without any side-glance at the practical results of their labours, no science and no art have long prospered and flourished among us, unless they were in some way subservient to the practical in into travelling (άστρα πλανώμενα or πλανητά), and non-travelling stars (ἀπλανεῖς ἀστέρες, οι απλανῆ ἄστρα). Aristotle first used ἄστρα ἐνδεδεμένα, or fixed stars. (See Humboldt, Cosmos, vol. iii. p. 28.) Hóλos, the pivot, hinge, or the pole of the heaven. terests of society. It is true that a Lyell collects and arranges, a Faraday weighs and analyses, an Owen dissects and compares, a Herschel observes and calculates, without any thought of the immediate marketable results of their labours. But there is a general interest which supports and enlivens their researches, and that interest depends on the practical advantages which society at large derives from their scientific studies. Let it be known that the successive strata of the geologist are a deception to the miner, that the astronomical tables are useless to the navigator, that chemistry is nothing but an expensive amusement, of no use to the manufacturer and the farmer-and astronomy, chemistry, and geology would soon share the fate of alchemy and astrology. As long as the Egyptian science excited the hopes of the invalid by mysterious prescriptions (I may observe by the way that the hieroglyphic signs of our modern prescriptions have been traced back by Champollion to the real hieroglyphics of Egypt*) — and as long as it instigated the avarice of its patrons by the promise of the discovery of gold, it enjoyed a liberal support at the courts of princes, and under the roofs of monasteries. Though alchemy did not lead to the discovery of gold, it prepared the way to discoveries more valuable. The same with astrology. Astrology was not such mere imposition as it is generally supposed to have been. It is counted as a science by so sound and sober a scholar as Melancthon, and even Bacon allows it a place among the sciences, though admitting that "it had better intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of man than with his * Bunsen's Egypt, vol. iv. p. 108. reason." In spite of the strong condemnation which Luther pronounced against astrology, astrology continued to sway the destinies of Europe; and a hundred years after Luther, the astrologer was the counsellor of princes and generals, while the founder of modern astronomy died in poverty and despair. In our time the very rudiments of astrology are lost and forgotten.* Even real and useful arts, as soon as they cease to be useful, die away, and their secrets are sometimes lost beyond the hope of recovery. When after the Reformation our churches and chapels were divested of their artistic ornaments, in order to restore, in outward appearance also, the simplicity and purity of the Christian church, the colours of the painted windows began to fade away, and have never regained their former depth and harmony. The invention of printing gave the death-blow to the art of ornamental writing and of miniature-painting employed in the illumination of manuscripts; and the best artists of the present day despair of rivalling the minuteness, softness, and brilliancy combined by the humble manufacturer of the mediæval missal. I speak somewhat feelingly on the necessity that every science should answer some practical purpose, because I am aware that the science of language has but little to offer to the utilitarian spirit of our age. It does not profess to help us in learning languages * According to a writer in "Notes and Queries" (2nd Series, vol. x. p. 500,) astrology is not so entirely extinct as we suppose. "One of our principal writers," he states, "one of our leading barristers, and several members of the various antiquarian societies, are practised astrologers at this hour. But no one cares to let his studies be known, so great is the prejudice that confounds an art requiring the highest education with the jargon of the gipsy fortune-teller." more expeditiously, nor does it hold out any hope of ever realising the dream of one universal language. It simply professes to teach what language is, and this would hardly seem sufficient to secure for a new science the sympathy and support of the public at large. There are problems, however, which, though apparently of an abstruse and merely speculative character, have exercised a powerful influence for good or evil in the history of mankind. Men before now have fought for an idea, and have laid down their lives for a word; and many of these problems which have agitated the world from the earliest to our own times, belong properly to the science of language. Mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease of language. A mythe means a word, but a word which, from being a name or an attribute, has been allowed to assume a more substantial existence. Most of the Greek, the Roman, the Indian, and other heathen gods are nothing but poetical names, which were gradually allowed to assume a divine personality never contemplated by their original inventors. Eos was a name of the dawn before she became a goddess, the wife of Tithonos, or the dying day. Fatum, or fate, meant originally what had been spoken; and before Fate became a power, even greater than Jupiter, it meant that which had once been spoken by Jupiter, and could never be changed,—not even by Jupiter himself. Zeus originally meant the bright heaven, in Sanskrit Dyaus; and many of the stories told of him as the supreme god, had a meaning only as told originally of the bright heaven, whose rays, like golden rain, descend on the lap of the earth, the Danae of old, kept by her father in the dark prison of winter. No one |