214 Baron Humboldt's Essay on the Oriental Languages. 



It must be confessed that these problems are extremely difficult to solve ; 

 and it is probable that we shall never arrive at results which are quite 

 certain : we should, however, carry these researches as far as possible, and 

 the difficulty of the undertaking ought not to deter, but rather to induce 

 us to select the most solid and certain means of insuring success. This is 

 more particularly the point to which I wish to direct your attention, 

 since you have been pleased to ask my opinion respecting the methods 

 proposed by Sir James Mackintosh. It would assuredly have been very 

 desirable to execute his plan, at the period when it was formed ; we should 

 then by this time have had more complete information regarding the 

 languages of India; and should perhaps have been in the possession of 

 dialects, of the existence of which we are now ignorant. There do exist, 

 however, some works, such as Sir James calls for. Not to mention printed 

 books, I have myself seen in the library of the East-India Company a MS. 

 collection of Sanscrit words, compared in great numbers with those of the 

 other languages of India, made under the direction of Mr. Colebrooke.(l) 

 Some distinguished authors, as for instance Mr. Campbell, in his Telugu 

 Dictionary, have been at pains to mark from what foreign idiom such words 

 are derived, as are not proper to the language of which they form a part ; 

 and if these works do not embrace all the Indian idioms, they have, on the 

 other hand, the advantage of comprehending entire languages, or at least 

 of not being confined to a limited number of expressions. In the present 

 state of our knowledge of the languages of India, which is very dififerent 

 from that of 1 806, and possessing, as we now do, grammars and dictionaries 

 of most of these idioms, I should not advise our confining ourselves to a 

 plan which can only give a very imperfect idea of each of them. We can, 

 and ought, to go farther at the present day. I confess that I am 

 extremely averse to the system which proceeds on the supposition that we 

 can judge of the affinity of languages merely by a certain number of ideas 

 expressed in the diffijrent languages which we wish to compare. I beg you 

 will not suppose, however, that I am insensible to the value and utility 

 of these comparisons : on the contrary, when they afe well executed, I 

 appreciate all their importance ; but I can never deem tliem sufficient to 

 answer the end for which they have been undertaken ; they certainly form 

 a part of the data to be taken into account in deciding on the affinity of 

 languages, but we should never be guided by them alone, if we wish to 

 arrive at a solid, complete, and certain conclusion. If we would make 



