THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY, 



JANUARY, 1891. 



NEW CHAPTERS IN THE WARFARE OF SCIENCE. 



XI. FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. 



By ANDREW DICKSON WHITE, LL. D., L. H. D., 



EX-PRESIDENT OF CORNELL UNIVERSITY. 



PART I. 



AMONG the sciences which have served as entering wedges 

 into the heavy mass of ecclesiastical orthodoxy, to cleave it, 

 disintegrate it, and let the light of Christianity into it, none per- 

 haps has done a more striking work than Comparative Philology. 

 In one very important respect the history of this science differs 

 from that of any other ; for it is the only one whose results the- 

 ologians have at last fully adopted as the result of their own 

 studies. This adoption teaches a great lesson, since, while it has 

 destroyed theological views cherished during many centuries, 

 and obliged the Church to accept conclusions directly contrary to 

 the plain letter of our sacred books, the result is clearly seen to 

 have helped Christianity rather than to have hurt it. It has cer- 

 tainly done much to clear our religious foundations of the dog- 

 matic rust which was eating into their structure. 



How this result was reached, and why the Church has so fully 

 accepted it, I shall endeavor to show in the present chapter. 



In the very beginnings of recorded history we find explana- 

 tions of the diversity of tongues, and naturally such explanations 

 resort to supernatural intervention. The "law of wills and 

 causes," formulated by Comte, is exemplified here as in so many 

 other cases. That law is, that when men do not know the natural 

 causes of things, they simply attribute them to wills like their 

 own; thus they obtain a theory which provisionally takes the 

 place of science, and this theory is very generally theological. 



Examples of this recur to any thinking reader of history. 

 vol. xxxvin. 20 



