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NATURE 



\yune I, 1876 



need be very few. Lastly, inspectors might fairly be 

 appointed to see that not only in the actual experiments, 

 but in the feeding, housing, and general treatment of the 

 laboratory animals there was neither parsimony nor care- 

 lessness. The licence would be given on suitable recom- 

 mendation by the Home Secretary, with power of revok- 

 ing it for abuse, subject to appeal, as suggested in the 

 Poyal Commissioners' Report. 



Under such an Act physiologists might fairly be 

 expected to make it a point of honour that its provisions 

 were fully carried out in spirit as well as in letter. The 

 framcrs of the present Bill, by their disregard of phy- 

 siology as an independent science, to be taught like any 

 other, do their best to render its progress impossible ; 

 while, by their absurdly minute limitations, they would 

 make original research almost as impossible as efficient 

 teaching, and deprive the art of medicine of its only safe 

 foundation. 



The efforts of all who care for the advance of human 

 knowledge or the alleviation of human misery should be 

 directed to bring the scope of the Government Bill back 

 to that indicated by the Report of the Royal Commission. 



THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE 



Language and its Study. By Prof. Whitney ; edited by 

 Dr. R. Morris. (London : Triibner and Co., 1876.) 



Leaves from a Word-hunter's Note-book. By the Rev. 

 A. S. Palmer. (London : Triibner and Co., 1876.) 



The Aryan Origin of the Gaelic Race and Language, 

 By the Very Rev. U. J. Bourke (London : Longmans, 

 Green, and Co., 1875.) 



THESE three books are very fairly characteristic of 

 the present position of comparative philology. The 

 first is a reprint of the first seven chapters of Prof. 

 Whitney's well-known work on the science of language, 

 and has been admirably edited by Dr. Morris with notes 

 and introduction, with special reference to a scientific 

 study of English. The second is just what it professes to 

 be, extracts from a commonplace book on the etymology 

 of various words, and it illustrates very well the influence 

 exercised by a comparative treatment of language upon 

 what used to be the pastime of literary dilettanti. Mr. 

 Palmer's derivations have been traced with full regard to 

 the scientific method, and besides being accompanied by 

 a wealth of quotations, rest for the most part on a secure 

 foundation. " The Aryan Origin of the Gaelic Race," 

 again, is one of those books which a few years back 

 would have teemed with the wildest vagaries ; the author, 

 it is plain, has little critical judgment, but a diligent 

 study of works like those of Zeuss or Max Miiller has kept 

 him in the right path, and though he startles us now and 

 then with such assertions as that the Aryan is "the 

 primeval language of man," or that " there had been only 

 seventeen letters in Greek at the earliest period," his views 

 are in general just and sound. We may doubt whether 

 his theory of the Pagan origin of the Round Towers will 

 be widely accepted, and complain of his prolixity, but 

 the book is a striking example of the extent to which a 

 knowledge of Comparative Philology has spread, and the 

 wholesome influence its principles have exerted. 



When we consider that the science of language is a 



science of not more than fifty years' growth, as well as 

 the vast amount of details that had to be collected and 

 classified before its creation became possible, its present 

 advanced condition must be a matter of surprise. No 

 doubt there is still very much to be done ; some of the 

 main questions connected with the study of language still 

 remain unsettled, and new questions are starting up that 

 will have to be answered hereafter. It is even possible 

 that fresh knowledge and investigation will modify some 

 of the hypotheses which have been accepted as funda- 

 mental truths. 



Thus it might have been thought that the first question 

 to be settled would be whether the science is to be includ- 

 ed among the physical or the historical sciences, and yet 

 this is even now a matter of dispute. There is much to 

 be said in favour of both views. If we look merely to the 

 fact that it lays dow'n the laws in accordance with which 

 thought endeavours to express itself in speech, it must be 

 regarded as a historical science ; if on the other hand, we 

 consider that thought can only be expressed in speech 

 by the help of physiological machinery, we are bound to 

 class it among the physical sciences. If we make phon- 

 ology not only the beginning, but also the end of linguis- 

 tic science, linguistic science will differ but little from 

 physiology in aim as well as in method ; but if we re- 

 member that the various sounds which it is the province 

 of phonology to determine and classify do not become lan- 

 guage until they embody a meaning, the science of lan- 

 guage will have to be grouped among those other sciences 

 which deal with the history of human development. The 

 same difficulty meets us again in the case of geology, 

 which traces the history of the earth, and if with Prof. 

 Whitney we prefer to regard the science of language as a 

 historical science, while we call geology a physical science, 

 it is because the element of mind enters more largely into 

 the one, and the element of matter into the other. The 

 laws which govern matter remain always the same ; those 

 which govern thought and life are modified by a process 

 of internal development. 



The science of language, otherwise called glotology or 

 linguistic science, should, strictly speaking, be distin- 

 guished from comparative philology. The latter, by com- 

 paring words and grammatical forms within separate 

 groups of languages, and thereby ascertaining the nature 

 of these several groups and the laws which govern their 

 growth and formation, provides the materials for the 

 science of language. This takes the results obtained by 

 comparative philology in the various species and genera or 

 families of speech, and with the help of the comparative 

 method determines from them the laws of speech gene- 

 rally. Inasmuch as we have to compare phenomena 

 belonging not only to the same period, but also to differ- 

 ent periods in the history of language, that part of linguis- 

 tic research which is not purely phonological has to assume 

 a historical character, so that to discover the causes of 

 the phenomena is to explain their origin and process of 

 growth. Now the phenomena of language are words and 

 sentences, phonetic utterances, that is, which are or have 

 been significant. 



Perhaps the most important result of the science of lan- 

 guage has been the demonstration that even language, 

 even those " winged words " over which men once fancied 

 they had the most complete control, are as much subject 



