436 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



lisli deists, of such German thinkers as Herder, Kant, and Les- 

 sing ; and while here and there some writer on the theological side, 

 like Perrin, amused thinking men by his flounderings in this 

 great chaos, all remained without form and void.* 



Nothing reveals to us better the darkness and duration of this 

 chaos in England than a comparison of the articles on Philology- 

 given in the successive editions of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. 

 The first edition of that great mirror of British thought was 

 printed in 1771 ; chaos reigns through the whole of its article on 

 this subject. The writer divides languages into two classes, seems 

 to indicate a mixture of divine inspiration with human inven- 

 tion, and finally escapes under a cloud. In the second edition, 

 published in 1780, some progress has been made. The author 

 states the sacred theory, and declares : " There are some divines 

 who pretend that Hebrew was the language in which God talked 

 with Adam in paradise, and that the saints will make use of it 

 in heaven in those praises which they will eternally offer to the 

 Almighty. These doctors seem to be as certain in regard to what 

 is past as to what is to come." 



This was evidently considered dangerous. It clearly outran 

 the good sound belief of the average English Philistine ; and ac- 

 cordingly we find in the third edition, published seventeen years 

 later, a new article, in which, while the author gives, as he says, 

 " the best arguments on both sides/' he takes pains to adhere to a 

 fairly orthodox theory. 



This soothing dose is repeated in the fourth and fifth editions. 

 In 1824 appeared a supplement to the fourth, fifth, and sixth edi- 

 tions, and this deals with the facts so far as they are known. 

 There is scarcely a reference to the biblical theory throughout 

 the article ; and the author refers rather contemptuously to it. 

 Three years later comes another supplement. While this Chaos 

 was fast becoming Cosmos in Germany, such a change had evi- 

 dently not gone far in England, for from this edition of the En- 

 cyclopaedia the subject of philology is omitted. In fact, Babel 

 and Philology made nearly as much trouble to encyclopedists as 



* For Hottinger, see the preface to his Etymologicuni Oricntale, Frankfort, 1661. For 

 Leibnitz, Catharine the Great, Hervas, and Adelung, see Max Miiller, as above, from whom 

 I have quoted very fully. See also Benfey, Geschiehte der Sprachwissenschaft, etc., p. 269. 

 Benfey declares that the Catalogue of Hervas is even now a mine for the philologist. For 

 the first two citations from Leibnitz, as well as for a statement of his importance in the 

 history of languages, see Max Miiller as above, pp. 135, 136. For the third quotation, 

 Leibnitz, Opera, Geneva, 1768, vi, Part. II, 232. For Nelme, see his Origin and Elements 

 of Language, London, 1772, pp. 85-100. For Rowland Jones, see The Origin of Language 

 and Nations, London, 1764, and preface. For the Origin of Languages in Brittany, see Le 

 Brigaut, Paris, 1787. For Herder and Lessing, see Canon Farrar's Treatise ; on Lessing, 

 see Sayce, as above. As to Perrin, see his C3say Sur l'Origine et l'Antiquit6 des Langues, 

 London, 1767. 



