Baron Huhboldt's Essay on the Oriental Languages. 215 



ourselves acquainted with the relation which subsists between two languages, 

 we ought to possess a thorough and profound knowledge of each of them. 

 This is a principle dictated alike by common sense and by that precision 

 acquired by the habit of scientific research. 



I do not mean to say, that, if we are unable to attain a profound know- 

 ledge of each idiom, we should on this account entirely suspend our judg- 

 ment : I only insist on it that we should not prescribe to ourselves arbitrary 

 limits, and imagine that we are forming our judgment on a firm basis, while 

 it is in reality insuflScient. 



The method of comparing a certain number of words of one existing 

 language with those of several others, has always the two-fold inconvenience 

 of neglecting entirely the grammatical relations, as if the grammar was not 

 as essential a part of the language as the words ; and of taking from the 

 language which we wish to examine isolated words, selected, not accord- 

 ing to their affinities and natural etymology, but according to the ideas 

 which they express. Sir James Mackintosh very justly observes, that the 

 affinity of two languages is much better proved when whole families of 

 words resemble each other, than when this is the case with single words 

 only. But how shall we recognize families of words in foreign languages, 

 if we only select from them two or three hundred isolated terms ? There 

 undoubtedly subsists among words of the same language an analogy of mean- 

 ings and foims of combination easy to be perceived. It is from this analogy, 

 considered in its whole extent, and compared with the analogy of the words of 

 another language, that we discover the affinity of two idioms, as far as it is 

 recognizable in their vocabularies. It is in this manner alone,* that we 

 recognize the roots and the methods by which each language forms its 

 derivatives. The comparison of two languages requires, that we should 

 examine whether, and in what degree, the roots and derivative terms are 

 common to both. It is not, then, by terms expressive of general ideas ; such 

 as sun, moon, man, woman, &c., that we must commence the comparison 

 of two languages, but by their entire dictionary critically explained. The 

 simple comparison of a certain number of words, by reducing the exami- 

 nation of languages too much to a mere mechanical labour, often leads us 

 to omit examining sufficiently the words which form the subjects of our 

 comparison ; and to avoid this defect, we are forced to enter deeply into all 

 the minutiae of grammar, separating the words from their grammatical 

 affixes, and comparing only what is really essential to the expression of the 



