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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY.— SUPPLEMENT. 



gans who, having discovered that their gods are 

 wood and stone, want to displace them from their 

 shrines, but approach the sacred places with a 

 nervous dread lest, after all, they should be com- 

 mitting some terrible offense against mysterious 

 powers. 



This conservative instinct reveals itself in 

 many directions. From what I know of Oxford 

 and Cambridge, I am inclined to believe that in 

 neither of them is the conservative temper so 

 strong as at Yale. I mean that at Yale there is 

 less disposition to try adventurous experiments, 

 and to turn aside from the old paths ; there is a 

 more deeply-rooted belief in the " wisdom of our 

 ancestors," and a greater reverence for methods 

 of education which are sanctioned by the exam- 

 ple and authority of past generations. At Har- 



vard, however, there is far less reluctance to try 

 new schemes, and I imagine that the changes 

 which have been made there during the last few 

 years would almost satisfy the most advanced 

 liberals in our own universities. 



It is possible for a nation with republican 

 institutions to be intensely conservative, and it 

 is possible for a nation with monarchical institu- 

 tions to be earnestly liberal. I do not say that, 

 on the whole, America is more conservative than 

 England, but there is a strength of conservative 

 sentiment in America which some English states- 

 men would be very glad to transfer to this coun- 

 try. But what I have to say about the political 

 spirit and character of the American people must 

 be reserved for another paper. — Nineteenth Cen- 

 tury. 



ON THE ORIGIN OF REASON". 



By Professor MAX MULLER. 



THE book to which I should wish to call the 

 attention of English philosophers bears the 

 title of " The Origin of Language," by L. Noire. 1 

 More clearly, however, than by the title, the real 

 purpose of the book is set forth by a short sen- 

 tence from the late Lazar Geiger's work " On the 

 Origin of Language and Reason," printed as a 

 motto on the title-page — "Language has created 

 Reason; before there was Language, man was with- 

 out Reason.'''' Indeed, the more appropriate title 

 of Prof. Noire's book would have been, " On the 

 Origin of Reason." It is a work which stands 

 apart from the large class of treatises lately pub- 

 lished by comparative philologists on the begin- 

 ning of human speech, most of which, though 

 containing the fruits of original thought and the 

 results of careful research, are disappointing for 

 one and the same reason, their authors not having 

 perceived that the problem of the origin of lan- 

 guage cannot be treated by itself, but must be 

 viewed as an integral part, nay, as the corner- 

 stone, of a complete system of philosophy. 



THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGES, AND THE ORIGIN OF 

 LANGUAGE. 



It is one thing to trace one language, or a 

 number of languages, or, it may be, all languages, 

 back to their first beginnings ; it is quite another 



1 " Der Ursprung der Sprache," von Ludwig Noire" : 



Mainz, 1877. 



to investigate the origin of language. How lan- 

 guages can be arranged into families, and how all 

 the languages and dialects belonging to one fam- 

 ily can be broken up into their simplest constit- 

 uent elements, may be seen in any of the numer- 

 ous books published during the last twenty years 

 on the science of language. "While engaged in 

 these researches, we feel that we are on firm 

 ground. We are simply carrying on a process 

 of analysis, and as in a chemical experiment we 

 arrive in the end at residua, which resist further 

 separation, so in dealing with language we find 

 that, after having explained all that can be ex- 

 plained in the growth of words, there remain at 

 the bottom of our crucible certain elements which 

 cannot be further dissolved. It matters little how 

 we call these stubborn residua, whether roots, or 

 phonetic types, or elements of language. What 

 is important is, that, when we have removed all 

 that can be removed, the whole crust of historical 

 growth in words, when we have broken up every 

 compound, and separated every suffix, prefix, and 

 infix, there remain certain simple substances, the 

 results, not of synthetic speculation, but of ex- 

 perimental analysis. These simple substances 

 being granted, we can fully understand how out 

 of them the whole wealth of language, as treasured 

 up in its dictionaries and grammars, could have 

 been brought together. "We can unmake a lan- 

 guage and make it again, and it was this process 



