all nations of the highest mental culture, these become, Bacon. dearning. p.st. Now: Allant: p.349. Gentiles: "For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead." But we shall see that the science of language owes more than its first impulse to Christianity. The pioneers of our science were those very apostles who were commanded "to go into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature," and their true successors, the missionaries of the whole Christian Church. Translations of the Lord's Prayer or of the Bible into every dialect of the world, form even now the most valuable materials for the comparative philologist. As long as the number of known languages was small, the idea of material as well as the spiritual all that we know and all that we know not yet for there is much to do that is yet undone." These words are all the more remarkable, because written by a man who was persecuted by theologians as a heretic, but who nevertheless was not ashamed to profess himself a Christian. I end with an extract from one of the most distinguished of living naturalists:-"The antiquarian recognizes at once the workings of intelligence in the remains of an ancient civilization. He may fail to ascertain their age correctly, he may remain doubtful as to the order in which they were successively constructed, but the character of the whole tells him they are works of art, and that men like himself originated these relics of by-gone ages. So shall the intelligent naturalist read at once in the pictures which nature presents to him, the works of a higher Intelligence; he shall recognize in the minute perforated cells of the coniferæ, which differ so wonderfully from those of other plants, the hieroglyphics of a peculiar age; in their needle-like leaves, the escutcheon of a peculiar dynasty; in their repeated appearance under most diversified circumstances, a thoughtful and thought-eliciting adaptation. He beholds, indeed, the works of a being thinking like himself, but he feels, at the same time, that he stands as much below the Supreme Intelligence, in wisdom, power, and goodness, as the works of art are inferior to the wonders of nature. Let naturalists look at the world under such impressions, and evidence will pour in upon us that all ereatures are expressions of the thoughts of Him whom we know, love and adore unseen." 1 Rom. i. 20. = classification hardly suggested itself. The mind must be bewildered by the multiplicity of facts before it has recourse to division. As long as the only languages studied were Greek, Latin, and Hebrew, the simple division. into sacred and profane, or classical and oriental, sufficed. But when theologians extended their studies to Arabic, Chaldee, and Syriac, a step, and a very important step, was made towards the establishment of a class or family of languages. No one could help seeing that these lan 1 Hervas (Catalogo, i. 37) mentions the following works, published during the sixteenth century, bearing on the science of language:- -"Introductio in Chaldaicam Linguam, Siriacam, atque Armenicam, et decem alias Linguas," a Theseo Ambrosio. Papiæ, 1539, 4to. "De Ratione communi omnium Linguarum et Litterarum Commentarius," a Theodoro Bibliandro. 7 Tiguri, 1548, 4to. It contains the Lord's Prayer in fourteen languages. Bibliander derives Welsh and Cornish from Greek, Greek having been carried there from Marseilles, through France. He states that Armenian differs little from Chaldee, and cites Postel, who derived the Turks from the Armenians, because Turkish was spoken in Armenia. He treats the Persians as descendants of Shem, and connects their language with Syriac and Hebrew. Servian and Georgian are, according to him, dialects of Greek. Other works on language published during the sixteenth century are:"Perion, Dialogorum de Linguæ Gallicæ origine ejusque cum Græca cognatione, libri quatuor." Parisiis, 1554. He says that as French is not mentioned among the seventy-two languages which sprang from the Tower of Babel, it must be derived from Greek. He quotes Cæsar (de Bello Gallico, vi. 14) to prove that the Druids spoke Greek, and then derives from it the modern French language! The works of Henri Estienne (1528-1598) stand on a much sounder basis. He has been unjustly accused of having derived French from Greek. See his "Traicté de la Conformité du Langage français avec le grec; about 1566. It contains chiefly syntactical and grammatical remarks, and its object is to show that modes of expression in Greek, which sound anomalous and difficult, can be rendered easy by a comparison of analogous expressions in French. The Lord's Prayer was published in 1548 in fourteen languages, by Bibliander; in 1591 in twenty-six languages, by Roccha (" Bibliotheca Apostolica Vaticana,” a fratre Angelo Roccha: Romæ, 1591, 4to.); in 1592 in forty languages, by Megiserus ("Specimen XL. Linguarum et Dialectorum ab Hieronymo Megisero à diversis auctoribus collectarum quibus Oratio Dominica est expressa:" Francofurti, 1592); in 1593, in fifty languages, by the same author ("Oratio Dominica L. diversis linguis," cura H. Megiseri: Francofurti, 1593, 8vo.). guages were most intimately related to each other, and that they differed from Greek and Latin on all points on which they agreed among themselves. As early as 1606 we find Guichard, in his "Harmonie Etymologique," placing Hebrew, Chaldee, and Syriac as a class of languages by themselves, and distinguishing besides between the Romance and Teutonic dialects. What prevented, however, for a long time the progress of the science of language was the idea that He, brew was the primitive language of mankind, and that, therefore, all languages must be derived from Hebrew. The fathers of the Church never expressed any doubt on this point. St. Jerome, in one of his epistles to Damasus,2 writes: "the whole of antiquity (universa antiquitas) affirms that Hebrew, in which the Old Testament is written, was the beginning of all human speech.' Origen, in his eleventh Homily on the book of Numbers, expresses his belief that the Hebrew language, origin 1 At the beginning of the seventeenth century was published "Trésor de l'Histoire des Langues de cet Univers," par Claude Duret; seconde edition: Iverdon, 1619, 4to. Hervas says that Duret repeats the mistakes of Postel, Bibliander, and other writers of the sixteenth century. Before Duret came Estienne Guichard, "l'Harmonie Etymologique des Langues Hebraique, Chaldaique, Syriaque — Greque — Latine, Françoise, Italienne, Espagnole — Allemande, Flamende, Anglaise, &c.:" Paris, 1606. Hervas only knows the second edition, Paris, 1618, and thinks the first was published in 1608. The title of his book shows that Guichard distinguished between four classes of languages, which we should now call the Semitic, the Hellenic, Italic, and Teutonic: he derives, however, Greek from Hebrew. I. I. Scaliger, in his "Diatriba de Europæorum Linguis" (Opuscula varia: Parisiis, 1610), p. 119, distinguishes eleven classes: Latin, Greek, Teutonic, Slavonic, Epirotic or Albanian, Tartaric, Hungarian, Finnic, Irish, British in Wales and Brittany, and Bask or Cantabrian. 2 "Initium oris et communis eloquii, et hoc omne quod loquimur, Hebræam esse linguam qua vetus Testamentum scriptum est, universa antiquitas tradidit." In another place (Isaia, c. 7) he writes, "Omnium enim fere linguarum verbis utuntur Hebræi." ally given through Adam, remained in that part of the world which was the chosen portion of God, not left like the rest to one of His angels.1 When, therefore, the first attempts at a classification of languages were made, the problem, as it presented itself to scholars such as Guichard and Thomassin, was this: "As Hebrew is undoubtedly the mother of all languages, how are we to explain the process by which Hebrew became split into so many dialects, and how can these numerous dialects, such as Greek, and Latin, Coptic, Persian, Turkish, be traced back to their common source, the Hebrew ? It is astonishing what an amount of real learning and ingenuity was wasted on this question during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. It finds, perhaps, but one parallel in the laborious calculations and constructions of early astronomers, who had to account for the movements of the heavenly bodies, always taking it for granted that the earth must be the fixed centre of our planetary system. But, although we know now that the labors of such scholars as Thomassin were, and could not be otherwise than fruitless, it would be a most discouraging view to take of the progress of the human race, were we to look upon the exertions of eminent men in former ages, though they may have been in a wrong direction, as mere vanity and vexation of spirit. We must not forget that the very fact of the failure of such men contributed powerfully to a general conviction that there must be something wrong in the problem itself, till at last a bolder genius inverted the problem and thereby solved it. When books after books had been 1 "Mansit lingua per Adam primitus data, ut putamus, Hebræa, in ea parte hominum, quæ non pars alicujus angeli, sed quæ Dei portio permansit." |