720 Reviews. [Oct., 
own native language becomes strong enough for the purposes of translation. 
Words and thoughts here as elsewhere go together ; and in one point of 
view the true history of religion would, as I said, be neither more nor les$ 
than an account of the various attempts at expressing the inexpressible.” 
Here, at least, it is quite clear that the words are entirely wanting 
because the ideas are unknown, but the idea must first be formed, and 
the word follows as a matter of course. To take the old metaphor, 
the shadow follows the substance ; it is quite true we cannot separate 
the one from the other; the Peter Schlemihl process is inhuman and 
monstrous, but the substance is antecedent to the shadow according to 
all logic. ‘The word dyary existed before St. Paul’s time undoubt- 
edly; here the coming event cast its shadow before; but Christian 
charity existed in the thoughts and in the life of the Apostle before 
the Epistle to the Corinthians was penned. Again, many a mathe- 
matician sees clearly the whole reasoning of the proposition without 
going through a word of it; but to put this reasoning into words is a 
long and laborious process afterwards. A glance at a diagram places 
the whole train of thought instantaneously before his mind, which it 
may require hours to reduce to words. The truth of the matter is, 
Professor Miller has for once been led away by words. Clearly as he 
is able to see the tendency that words have to cloud the brightest 
intellect, he has allowed the Greek Logos to confuse his own mind. 
The collection of instances, the conception and birth of the idea, and 
the naming, that it may be known by others, are distinct processes. 
And again, Professor Max Miller instances* a statement of Herodotus, 
“that the Pelasgians for a long time offered prayer and sacrifice to the 
gods without having names for them,” though he says this “rests on 
theory rather than fact, yet even as a theory the tradition is curious.” 
Thus a Greek, in spite of his own language (and we know how much 
the language of Greece and the fanciful derivations of its philosophers 
influenced their theories), separated the logos spoken from the logos 
unspoken. Herodotus, who, truthful and honest as he was, was not 
more clear-headed than Plato and Aristotle, yet could allow a dis- 
tinction that our great philologist, who usually knows so well the 
value of words,t mere words, does not see and will not allow. 
The second lecture enters into an elaborate account of Bishop 
Wilkins’ proposal for a universal language. The artificial is here 
plainly distinct from the natural. The next step is to go back as far 
as investigation will allow towards the origin of language. Here roots, 
not letters, seem at present to be the “ultimate residuum of complete 
analysis” of a class of languages. These roots give us all the words 
with which we are acquainted, but how these roots originated does not 
at present appear, at least so says the professor. The theory of 
onomatopoeia has been so obstructive to real philological progress, that 
we cannot be surprised that it is not allowed standing-room in the 
new science. The bow-wow theory, as Max Miiller calls it, receives 
hard treatment both in these and in the former lectures. Roots must 
* P. 435. + P. 560. “ They rule the mind, instead of being ruled by it.” 
