INTEODUCTION. 



21 



individual thought of each of the three nations has found 

 refuge/ Any one who has attempted to translate from 

 one of these languages into another, be it prose or be 

 it lyrical, philosophical, or descriptive poetry, will have 

 experienced the necessity of studying minutely the 

 meaning or hidden thought which a word or a phrase 

 may signify : he will have been led to notice what is 

 common and what is peculiar to different languages. 



^ The only books which treat 

 of words in the sense mentioned 

 above, and which have come under 

 my notice, are Horne Tooke's ' Di- 

 versions of Parley ' and Archbishop 

 Trench's little volumes on 'The 

 Study of W^)rds' and 'English 

 Past and Present.' So far as the 

 use of merely philosophical terms 

 is concerned, I may refer to R. 

 Eucken, ' Geschichte der philoso- 

 phischen Terminologie,' Leipzig, 

 1879. A great deal of material 

 for a research of this kind may 

 be found in the large Dictionaries 

 of Grimm, Littre, and Murray, 

 though I do not feel sure that the 

 great change which has come over 

 language, through the expansion, 

 deepening, and dififerentiation of 

 ideas and of thought in our age, 

 has been specially taken note of. 

 The plan of Grimm's Dictionarj', 

 which aims at embracing the Ger- 

 man language in its development 

 during three centuries, beginning 

 with Lutlier and ending with 

 Goethe (see Wilh. Grimm's " Kleinere 

 Schriften,' vol. i. p. 508), almost 

 excludes the period which I am 

 reviewing. 



It is interesting to remember 

 that Diderot, the first writer who 

 attempted to collect the great body 

 of modern Thought and Learning 

 into an encyclopaedic whole, re- 

 ferred to Language very much in 

 the same manner as we do now, 

 a hundred and fifty years later. 



See the article "Encyclopedic," 

 where Diderot says that a Dic- 

 tionary is only an exact collection 

 of titles, to be filled in bj^ the Ency - 

 clopffidia ; and further on, p. 639 : 

 " Si Ton compte les hommes de 

 g^nie, et qu'on les repande sur 

 toute la duree des siecles ecoul^s, 

 il est evident qu'ils seront en petit 

 nombre dans cliaque nation et pour 

 chaque siecle, et qu'on n'eu trouvera 

 presqu'aucun qui nait perfectionne 

 la langue. Les hommes createurs 

 portent ce caractere particulier. 

 Comme ce n'est pas seulement en 

 feuilletant les productions de leur 

 contemporains qu'ils rencontrent 

 les idees qu'ils ont a employer dans 

 leurs ecrits, mais que c'est tan tot en 

 descendant profondement en eux- 

 memes, tantot eu s'elan^ant au 

 dehors, et portant des regards plus 

 attentifs et plus penetrans sur les 

 natures qu'ils environnent, ils sont 

 obliges, surtout k I'origine des 

 laugues, d'inventer des signes pour 

 rendre avec exactitude et avec force 

 ce qu'ils y decouvrent les premiers. 

 C'est la chaleur de I'imagination et 

 la meditation profonde qui enrichis- 

 sent une langue d'expressions nou- 

 velles : c'est la justesse de I'esprit 

 et la sdverite de la dialectique qui 

 en perfectionneut la syntaxe ; c'est 

 la commodite des organes de la 

 parole qui I'adoucit ; c'est la sen- 

 sibility de Toreille qui la rend har- 

 monieuse." 



