THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY. 335 



When it is said that the roots in question ah-eady presented 

 abstract concepts, it becomes a contradiction to add that " the 

 first foundations of language and thought were laid by- 

 applying the category of substance to the roots." For, if 

 these roots already presented abstract concepts, they already 

 presented the distinctive feature of human " thought," whose 

 " foundations," therefore, must have been " laid " somewhere 

 further back in the history of mankind. But, besides this 

 inherent contradiction, we have here an emphatic re-statement 

 of the two radical errors which I previously mentioned, and 

 which everywhere mar the philosophical value of Professor 

 Max Muller's work. The first is his tacit assumption that the 

 roots of Aryan speech represent the original elements of 

 articulate language. The second is that, upon the basis of 

 this assumption, the science of language has proved, by 

 irrefragable evidence, that human thought proceeded from 

 the abstract to the concrete — or, in other words, that it 

 sprang into being Minerva-like, already equipped with the 

 divine inheritance of conceptual wisdom. Now, in entertain- 

 ing this theory, Professor Max M tiller is not only in direct 

 conflict with all his philological brethren, but likewise, as we 

 have previously seen, often compelled to be irreconcilably 

 inconsistent with himself* Moreover, as we have likewise 

 seen, his assumption as to the aboriginal nature of Aryan 

 roots, on which his transcendental doctrine rests, is intrinsi- 

 cally absurd, and thus does not really require the united voice 

 of professed philologists for its condemnation. Therefore, 

 what the science of language does prove "by irrefragable 

 evidence " is, not that these roots of the Aryan branch of 

 language are the aboric^n'nal elements of human speech, or 

 indices of the aboriginal condition of human ideation; but 

 that, being the survivals of incalculably more primitive and 

 immeasurably more remote phases of word-formation, tlicy 

 come before us as the already-matured products of conceptual 

 thought — and, a fortiori, that on the basis of these roots alone 

 the science of language has absolutely no evidence at all to 



* Pp. 281, 2S2, noli.-. 



