250 The Origin of Language. [SEPT; 



guagc held by the Translator, remind us more of the abstraction of an 

 Indian Joghi, than of any thing like English thought or inquiry ; and, 

 after glancing over the whole work, we recal, without surprise, the saying 

 of Frederick the Great, who, breathing the atmosphere of German philo- 

 sophy and mysticism, averred, that man was made to be a postillion, and 

 not a philosopher! The Translator, in anticipation of any charge of 

 deficiency in his translation, reminds us of the richness of the German lan- 

 guage, in words appertaining to the sphere of speculation and deeply 

 excited feeling, while the English language is more copious in the sphere 

 of action and observation. Now all this is exceedingly just, and, in itself, 

 offers much that is valuable to the true philosophy of language ; but does 

 not so important a contrast forbid the hope of amalgamation between men 

 whose tongues hold language so opposite, only because their minds are 

 so differently engaged ? What is intended by the phrases that follow is 

 doubtless very true ; but are not the English estranged from the Germans 

 (we speak of the thinking part of both nations) at once by phraseology, 

 and by those modes of thinking, or of philosophising, of which that 

 phraseology is the result ? " The sphere of the deepest internal existence" 

 says the Translator, at the outset of his Introduction, " is where the Ger- 

 man is most at home here he has become most intellectually enlightened ; 

 while the Englishman, from the active spirit which characterizes his coun- 

 try, has made greater progress in the external ivorld." 



We shall readily grant that much of the obscurity which presents itself 

 in these and similar pages, is capable of dissipation through a proper change 

 of German for English idioms, and of terms employed by the German 

 philosopher for those in use with the English ; but ; these concessions made, 

 and these changes supposed, what is an Englishman to pursue? An inquiry 

 into the " Origin of Language," amid reveries, fantasies, abstractions, 

 modes of expression, and style of argument, so peculiarly exotic, as those 

 which, for example, present themselves, as well in the text of Herder, as 

 in the " Introduction" of his German translator into English ! The fol- 

 lowing paragraphs from the " Introduction," will contribute, among other 

 things, to explain the German distinction between " internal and external 

 existence :' : 



" This translation of Herder's masterly treatise, c Upon the Origin of Lan- 

 guage,' is offered to the cultivated of the English nation, as the commencement 

 of a series of selections, from the philosophical literature of the Germans." 



" The Germans and the English have, indeed, entered so deeply into, and 

 effected so much in the opposite spheres of speculative and practical life, that, by 

 the strenuousness of their strongly contrasted exertions, they are become more 

 closely connected than they imagine; and more intimately related, than ever 

 nations were before. Internal and external existence have value and true signi- 

 fication only when viewed in relation to each other. 



" The necessary connection, in which every created thing stands, with the 

 infinite and multifold variety of all created things and beings ; the infinite fullness 

 of power, which constantly streams in, incessantly and progressively effecting a 

 higher development : this constitutes the internal state of all existence. But 

 that limitation, which manifests itself in a visible form, arising from the play of 

 action and re-action, in short, that finite nature which is appointed as the sphere 

 of exercise for life in every stage, that is the external state of all creation. 



" We should feel, think, and act as finite beings, but at the same time, by con- 

 tinual solution of all opposition, in the limited sphere allotted to us, should 

 elevate ourselves towards the next above, and thus approach nearer to divine light, 

 to more unsullied joy, and to a nobler state of being. Our nature is both finite 

 and infinite ; by withdrawing ourselves from our finite nature, we should fall into 

 a confused, phantastic state of unconsciousness ; or by estranging ourselves from 

 our infinite nature, should sink into a kind of morbid insensibility, whose limited 



