540 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



language has likewise been stated to be no longer a 

 historical or a philosophical, but to have become a 

 physical, science. It is true that, as with other natural 

 sciences, so also in this case, the morphological, genetic, 

 and biological aspects can be specially studied ; also 

 analogies can be drawn between geology and glossology 

 as to their mode of inductive reasoning. The great 

 authority who first took up this novel position was the 

 late Prof. August Schleicher of Jena, and the same has 

 to a great extent been simultaneously adopted by Max 

 Miiller in his celebrated ' Lectures on the Science of 

 Language.' It is interesting to note that Schleicher 

 wrote on the ' Morphology of Language ' in the same 

 year in which the ' Origin of Species ' appeared, and that 

 he recognised very early the importance of Darwin's 

 work for the science of language. 1 This became still 

 more evident on the publication, twelve years later, 

 of the ' Descent of Man,' and of ' The Expression of the 



1 On August Schleicher (1821- 

 68) see a very valuable article in 

 the 'Allgemeine Deutsche Bio- 

 graphie' (vol. xxxi. p. 402 sqq.) by 

 Johannes Schmidt. Very different 

 currents of modern thought, such 

 as we shall in the sequel frequently 

 have to represent as opposed to 

 .each other, the study of the classical 

 and of the modern languages, of 

 .critical and comparative philology, 

 the historical and the exact spirit, 

 Hegelianism and Darwinism i.e., 

 logical and mechanical evolution 

 the influence of Grimm, Ritschl, 

 and Bopp, of botany and gram- 

 mar, combined to generate in this 

 remarkable man the conception 

 of linguistic as a natural science 

 in contradistinction from phil- 

 xjlogy as a historical science. The 



principal works in which he de- 

 veloped his original view were : 

 ' Die deutsche Sprache ' (1860) ; 

 ' Compendium der vergleichenden 

 Grammatik der indogermanischeu 

 Sprachen' (1861) ; 'Die Darwin'sche 

 Theorie und die Sprachwissenschaf t' 

 (1863) ; and 'Ueber die Bedeutung 

 der Sprache fur die Naturgeschichte 

 des Menschen ' (1865). Schleicher's 

 ideas have been taken up in France, 

 notably by Abel Hovelacque ( ' La 

 Linguistique,' 4* me ed., 1857), who 

 says of him that " he had com- 

 pletely liberated himself from meta- 

 physical aspirations" (p. 6). On 

 the one - sidedness of the purely 

 physical theory of language see 

 Sayce, ' Introd. to the Science of 

 Language ' (1880), vol. i. p. 76, 

 &c. 



