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From Fraser's Magazine. LECTURES ON MR. DARWIN'S PHILOSO

PHY OF LANGUAGE.

BY PROFESSOR MAX MULLER.

FIRST LECTURE,

DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION,
MARCH 22, 1873.

Spencer. Nor does it seem right to use the name of Darwinism in that vague and undefined sense in which it has been used so frequently of late, comprehending under that title not only the carefully worded conclusions of that great observer and thinker, but likewise the bold generaliza tions of his numerous disciples. I shall PHILOSOPHY is not, as is sometimes mention only one, but a most important supposed, a mere intellectual luxury; it point, on which so-called Darwinism has is, under varying disguises, the daily evidently gone far beyond Mr. Darwin. bread of the whole world. Though the It is well known that, according to Mr. workers and speakers must always be Darwin, all animals and plants have defew, those for whom they work and speak scended from about eight or ten progeniare many; and though the waves run tors. He is satisfied with this and dehighest in the centres of literary life, the clines to follow the deceitful guidance of widening circles of philosophic thought analogy, which would lead us to the adreach in the end to the most distant mission of but one prototype. And he shores. What is thought-out and written adds that even if he were to infer from down in the study, is soon taught in the analogy that all the organic beings which schools, preached from the pulpits, and had ever lived on this earth had dediscussed at the corners of the streets. scended from some one primordial form, There are at the present moment materi- he would hold that life was first breathed alists and spiritualists, realists and ideal- into that primordial form by the Creator. ists, postivists and mystics, evolutionists Very different from this is the conclusion and specialists to be met with in the proclaimed by Professor Haeckel, the workshops as well as in the lecture- most distinguished and most streuuous rooms, and it may safely be asserted that advocate of Mr. Darwin's opinions in the intellectual vigour and moral health Germany. He maintains that in the of a nation depend no more on the estab-present state of physiological knowledge, lished religion than on the dominant the idea of a Creator, a Maker, a Lifephilosophy of the realm.

giver has become unscientific; that the admission of one primordial form is sufficient; and that that first primordial form was a Moneres, produced by selfgeneration.

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No one who at the present moment watches the state of the intellectual atmosphere of Europe, can fail to see that we are on the eve of a storm which will shake the oldest convictions of the world, I know, indeed, of no name sufficiently and upset everything that is not firmly comprehensive for this broad stream of rooted. Whether we look to England, philosophic thought, but the name of France, or Germany, everywhere we see, Evolutionary Materialism" is perhaps in the recent manifestoes of their phil- the best that can be framed. I am afraid osophers, the same thoughts struggling that it will be objected to by those who for recognition thoughts not exactly imagine that materialism is a term of renew, but presented in a new and start-proach. It is so in a moral sense, but no ling form. There is everywhere the same real student of the history of philosophy desire to explain the universe, such as would use the word for such a purpose. we know it, without the admission of any plan, any object, any superintendence; a desire to remove all specific barriers, not only those which separate man from the animal, and the animal from the plant, but those also which separate organic from inorganic bodies; lastly, a desire to explain life as a mode of chemical action, and thought as a movement of nervous molecules.

In the historical evolution of philosophy, materialism has as much right as spiritualism, and it has taught us many lessons for which we ought to be most grateful. To say that materialism degrades mind to the level of matter is a false accusation, because what the materialist means by matter is totally different from what the spriritualist means by it, and from what it means in common parlance. The It is difficult to find a general name for matter of the materialist contains, at least these philosophic tendencies, particularly potentially, the highest attributes that as their principal representatives differ can be assigned to any object of knowlwidely from each other. It would be un-edge; the matter of the spiritualists is fair to class the coarse materialism of simply an illusion; while, in common Büchner with the thoughtful realism of parlance, matter is hardly more than

Stuff and rubbish. Let each system of and our scientific convictions will not philosophy be judged out of its own submit to being kept in quarantine. If mouth, and let us not wrangle about we once embark on board the Challenger, words more than we can help. Philo- we cannot rest with one foot on dry land. sophical progress, like political progress, prospers best under party government, and the history of philosophy would lose half its charm and half its usefulness, if the struggle between the two great parties in the realm of thought, the spiritualist and the materialist, the idealist and the realist, were ever to cease. As thunderstorms are wanted in nature to clear the air and give us breath, the human mind, too, stands in need of its tempests, and never does it display greater vigour and freshness than after it has passed through one of the decisive battles in the world of thought.

Wherever it leads us, we must follow; wherever it lands us there we must try to live. Now, it does make a difference whether we live in the atmosphere of Africa or of Europe, and it makes the same difference whether we live in the atmosphere of spiritualism or materialism. The view of the world and of our place in it, as indicated by Mr. Darwin, and more sharply defined by some of his followers, does not touch scientific interests only; it cuts to the very heart, and must become to every man to whom truth, whether you call it scientific or religious, is sacred, a question of life and death, in the deepest and fullest sense of the word.

But though allowing to the materialist philosophers all the honour that is due to a great and powerful party, the spiritual- In the short course of three Lectures ist may hate and detect materialism with which I have undertaken to give this the same hatred with which the conserva- year in this Institution, I do not intend tive hates radicalism, or at all events wtih to grapple with the whole problem of such a modicum of hatred as a philoso- Evolutionary Materialism. My object is pher is capable of; and he has a perfect simply to point out a strange omission, right to oppose, by all the means at his and to call attention to one kind of evidisposal, the exclusive sway of material-dence-I mean the evidence of lanistic opinions. Though from a purely guage which has been most unaccountphilosophical point of view, we may ad-ably neglected, both in studying the demit that spiritualism is as one-sided as velopment of the human intellect, and in materialism, that they are both but two determining the position which man holds faces of the same head, that each can see in the system of the world. Is it not exbut one half of the world, yet no one who traordinary, for instance, that in the latest has worked his way honestly through the work on Psychology, language should problems of materialism and spiritualism hardly ever be mentioned, language withwould deny that the conclusions of Hume out which no thought can exist, or at all are more disheartening than those of events, without which no thought has Berkeley, and that the strongest natures ever been realized or expressed? It only can live under the pressure of such does not matter what view of language opinions as those which were held by La- we take; under all circumstances its inmetrie or Schopenhauer. To some people, timate connection with thought cannot I know, such considerations will seem be- be doubted. Call language a mass of imside the point. They hold that scientific itative cries, or a heap of conventional research, whatever its discoveries may signs; let it be the tool or the work of be, is never to be allowed to touch the thought; let it be the mere garment or deeper convictions of our souls. They the very embodiment of mind-whatseem to hold that the world may have ever it is, surely it has something to do been created twice, once according to with the historical or paleontological, Moses, and once according to Darwin. and with the individual or embryological I confess I cannot adopt this artificial evolution of the human self. It may be distinction, and I feel tempted to ask very interesting to the psychologist to those cold-blooded philosophers the know the marvellous machinery of the same question which the German peasant senses, beginning with the first formaasked his bishop, who, as a prince, was tion of nervous channels, tracing the amusing himself on week-days, and, as a process in which the reflex action of the bishop, praying on Sundays. "Your molecules of the afferent nerves produces Highness, what will become of the bishop, a reaction in the molecules of the efferif the Devil comes and takes the prince? ent nerves, following up the establishScientific research is not intended for ment of nervous centres and nervous intellectual exercise and amusement only, plexuses, and laying bare the whole net

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work of the telegraphic wires through | not forget that the whole network of the which messages are flashed from station nerves is outside the mind. A state of to station. Yet much of that network nervous action may be parallel, but it and its functions admits, and can admit, never is identical with a state of conof an hypothetical interpretation only; sciousness (Principles of Psychology, II. while we have before us another network 592), and even the parallelism between I mean language in its endless va- nervous states and states of consciousriety, where every movement of the mind, ness is, when we come to details, beyond from the first tremor to the last calm ut- all comprehension (Ib. I. 140). Language, terance of our philosophy, may be studied on the contrary, is not outside the mind, as in a faithful photograph. And while but is the outside of the mind. Language we know the nervous system only such without thought is as impossible as as it is, or, if we adopt the system of evo- thought without language; and although lution, such as it has gradually been we may by abstraction distinguish bebrought from the lowest to the highest tween what the Greeks called inward and state of organization, but are never able outward Logos, yet in reality and full to watch the actual historical or palæon- actuality language is one and indivisible tological process of its formation, we -language is very thought. On this know language, not only as it is, but can more hereafter. watch it in its constant genesis, and in Just at the end of his interesting work its historical progress from simplicity to on the Principles of Psychology, Mr. complexity, and again from complexity Herbert Spencer shows, by one remark, to simplicity. For let us not forget that that he is well aware of the importance language has two aspects. We, the his- of language for a proper study of psytorical races of mankind, use it, we speak chology.* "Whether it be or be not a and think it, but we do not make it. true saying," he writes, "that mythology Though the faculty of language may be is a disease of language, it may be said congenital, all languages are traditional. with truth that metaphysics, in all its The words in which we think are chan-anti-realistic developments, is a disease nels of thought which we have not dug of language." No doubt it is; but think ourselves, but which we found ready- of the consequences that flow from this made for us. The work of making lan- view of language for a proper study of guage belongs to a period in the history psychology! If a disease of language of mankind beyond the reach of tradition, can produce such hallucinations as myand of which we, in our advanced state thology and metaphysics, what then is of mental development, can hardly form the health of language, and what its beara conception. Yet that period must have │ing on the healthy functions of the mind? had an historical reality as much as the Is this no problem for the psychologist? period during which small annual deposits Nervous or cerebral disorders occupy a formed the strata of the globe on which large portion in every work on psycholwe live. As during enormous periods ogy; yet they are in their nature obof time the Earth was absorbed in pro- scure, and must always remain so. Why ducing the abundant carboniferous vege- a hardening or softening of the brain tation which still supplies us with the should interfere with thought will never means of warmth, light, and life, there be explained, beyond the fact that the must have been a period during which wires are somehow damaged, and do not the human mind had no other work but properly receive and convey the nervous that of linguistic vegetation, the produce currents. But what we call a disease of of which still supplies the stores of our language is perfectly intelligible; nay, it grammars and dictionaries. After the has been proved to be natural, and almost great bulk of language was finished, a inevitable. In a lecture delivered in this new work began, that of arranging and Institution some time ago, I endeavoured defining it, and of now and then coining to show that mythology, in the widest a new word for a new thought. And all sense of the word, is the power exercised this we can still see with our own eyes, by language on thought in every possias it were, in the quarries opened by the ble sphere of mental activity, including Science of Language. No microscope metaphysics as well as religion; and I will ever enable us to watch the forma- called the whole history of philosophy, tion of a new nervous ganglion, while the from Thales down to Hegel, one uninterScience of Language shows us the for- rupted battle against mythology, a conmation of new mental ganglia in the formation of every new word. Besides, let us

* Spencer, Principles of Psychology, Vol. II. p. 502.

stant protest of thought against language. Not till we understand the real nature of language shall we understand the real nature of the human Self; and those who want to read the true history of the development of the soul of man, must learn to read it in language, the primeval and never-ending autobiography of our race.

Berkeley, may be attacked afresh, but it
cannot be, and it ought not to be, ig-
nored. Kant's answer was not simply
the answer of one German professor, it
was a vote carried in a full house, and at
the time accepted as decisive by the
whole world.

The circumstances under which Kant In order to show the real bearing of the wrote his Criticism of Pure Reason show Philosophy of Language on the problem that his success was due, not only to his which occupies us at present, viz. the po- own qualifications, great as they were, sition of man in the animal world, it is but to the fact that the tide of materialabsolutely necessary to go back to Hume ism was on the turn, that a reaction had and Kant. Nothing seems to me so set in in the minds of independent thinkmuch to be regretted in the philosophical ers, so that, when he wrote his great and discussions of our time as the neglect decisive work, he was but lending the which is shown for the history of former most powerful expression to the silent struggles in which the same interests convictions of the world's growing majorwere at stake, and in which the same ity. Unless we keep this in view, the problems were discussed, not without success of Kant's philosophy would be leaving, one would have thought, some- inexplicable. He was a Professor in a thing that is still worth remembering. small university of Eastern Prussia. He A study of the history of philosophy can- had never been out of his native province, not, at the present moment, be too strong- never but once out of his native town. ly recommended, when one sees men of He began to lecture at Königsberg as a the highest eminence in their special Privat-Docent in 1755, just a year before spheres of study, approaching the old the beginning of the Seven Years' War, problems of mankind as if they had never when other questions rather, and not the been discussed before, and advancing certainty of synthetic judgments à priopinions such as Sokrates would not ori, would seem to have interested the have dared to place in the mouths of his public mind of Germany. Kant worked antagonists. Even if a study of ancient on for sixteen years as an unpaid Univerphilosophy, and particularly of Oriental sity lecturer; in 1766 he took a Librarianphilosophy, should appear too heavy a ship which yielded him about 10l. a year, task, it seems at all events indispensable, and it was not till he was forty-six years that those who take an active part in the of age (1770) that he succeeded in obcontroversies on the theory of general taining a Professorship of Logic and Metevolution and development, as opposed aphysics with a salary of about 60l. a year. to specific variety and a reign of law, He lectured indefatigably on a great should be familiar with the final results variety of subjects: -on Mathematics, of that great debate which, about one Physics, Logic, Metaphysics, Natural hundred years ago, was carried on on Law, Morals, Natural Religion, Physical very similar, nay, essentially the same Geography, and Anthropology. He entopics, by such giants as Berkeley, Hume, joyed a high reputation in his own Uniand Kant. In the permanent philosophi- versity, but no more than many other procal parliament of the world there is, and fessors in the numerous universities of there must be, an order of business. The Germany. His fame had certainly never representatives of the highest interests spread beyond the academic circles of of mankind cannot be discussing all his own country, when in the year 1781, things at all times. At all events, if an at the age of fifty-seven, he published at old question is to be opened again, let it Riga his Critik der reinen Vernunft (The be opened in that form in which it was Criticism of Pure Reason), a work which left at the end of the last debate. in the onward stream of philosophic In order to appreciate the full import thought has stood, and will stand for of the questions now agitated by posi- ever, like the rocks of Niagara. There is tivist and evolutionist philosophers, in nothing attractive in that book, nothing order to understand their antecedents, startling; far from it. It is badly writand to do justice to their claims, we must ten, in a heavy style, full of repetitions, go back to Hume and Kant. The posi- all grey in grey, with hardly a single ray tion which Kant took and maintained of light and sunshine from beginning to against the materialist philosophy of end. And yet that book soon became Hume and the idealist philosophy of known all over Europe, at a time when

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literary intelligence travelled much more slowly than at present. Lectures were given in London on Kant's new system, even at Paris the philosopher of Königsberg became an authority, and for the first time in the history of human thought the philosophical phraseology of the age became German.

branche, Leibniz, and Wolf might influence the opinions of hard-working students and independent thinkers, but their language was hardly understood by the busy world outside the lecture-rooms; while the writings of Locke, and still more those of Hume and his French followers, penetrated alike into boudoirs How is this to be explained? I believe and club-rooms. Never, perhaps, in the simply by the fact that Kant spoke the whole history of philosophy did the penword which the world had been waiting dulum of philosophic thought swing so for. No philosopher, from Thales down violently as in the middle of the eighteenth to Hegel, has ever told, has ever taken century, from one extreme to the other, and held his place in the history of philos- from Berkeley to Hume; never did pure ophy, whose speculations, however ab- spiritualism and pure materialism find struse in appearance, however far re- such outspoken and uncompromising admoved at first sight from the interests of vocates as in the Bishop of Cloyne,—who ordinary mortals, have not answered considered it the height of absurdity to some deep yearning in the hearts of his imagine any object as existing without, or fellow-men. What makes a philosopher independent of, that which alone will progreat, or, at all events, what makes him duce an object, viz., the subject,* — and really powerful, is what soldiers would the Librarian of the Advocates' Library call his feeling for the main body of the at Edinburgh, who looked upon the conarmy in its advance from truth to truth; ception of a subjective mind as a mere his perfect understanding of the human illusion, founded on nothing but on that solicitudes of his age, his sympathy with succession of sensations to which we the historical progress of human thought. wrongly assign a sentient cause. But it is At the time of Kant's great triumph, the easy to see, in the literature of the ages, conclusions of Locke and Hume had re- that of these two solutions of the riddle of mained unanswered for a long time, and mind and matter, that which explained the seemed almost unanswerable. But for mind as the mere outcome of matter, as that very reason people longed for an the result of the impressions made on the answer. The problems which then dis-senses, was far more in harmony with the quieted not only philosophers, but all to general taste of the age than that which whom their "Being and Knowing were looked upon matter as the mere outcome matters of real concern, were not new of the mind. The former was regarded problems. They were the old problems by the world as clever, the latter almost of the world, the questions of the possi- as silly. bility of absolute certainty in the evidence of the senses, of reason, or of faith, the questions of the beginning and end of our existence, the question whether the Infinite is the shadow of a dream, or the substance of all substances. The same problems had exercised the sages of India, the thinkers of Greece, the students of Rome, the dreamers of Alexandria, the divines and scholars of the Middle Ages, the Realists and Nominalists, and again the schools of Descartes and Leibniz, in their conflict with the schools of Locke and Hume. But these old problems had in Kant's time, as in our own, assumed a new form and influence. If, in spite of its ever varying aspects, we may characterize the world-wide struggle by one word, as a struggle for the primacy between matter and mind, we can clearly see that in the middle of the last as again in the middle of our own century the materialistic view had gained the upper hand over the spiritualistic. Descartes, Male

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That all-powerful, though most treacherous ally of philosophy, Common Sense, was stoutly opposed to Berkeley's idealism, and the typical representative of Common Sense, Dr. Samuel Johnson, maintained that he had only to strike his foot with characteristic force against a stone in order to convince the world that he had thoroughly refuted Berkeley and all idealists. Voltaire, a less sincere believer in Common Sense, joked about ten thousand cannon balls and ten thousand dead men, being only ten thousand ideas; while Dean Swift is accused of having committed the sorry joke of keeping Bishop Berkeley, on a rainy day, waiting before his door, giving orders not to open it, because, he said, if his philosophy is true, he can as easily enter with the door shut as with the door open. Though at present philosophers are inclined to do more

Berkeley's Works, ed. Fraser, Vol. IV. p. 376. ↑ Berkeley's Works, Vol. IV. p. 368.

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