June 1, 1887.] 



♦ KNOWLEDGE ♦ 



187 



If the six plane faces of a room (all rectangular) be 

 mirrored throughout their extent, an observer in the room, 

 besides twelve images in the edge-i and eight in the corners, 

 will see six images in the six faces (not to count reduplica- 

 tions — which can never be fully seen), or twenty-six images 

 in all. 



THE SCIENCE OF THOUGHT," 

 MULLER.^^ 



BY F. MAX 



HIS new work of Professor Max Muller's will 

 not find favour with .«uch a lai-ge circle of 

 readers as his charming " Lectures on the 

 Science of Language," which have done so 

 much to popularise the study of comparative 

 philology in this country. '' The Science of 

 Thought " is a trifle too scholastic, .abstract, 

 and philosophical to captivate the general 

 reader, but the linguistic student will find it worth studying 

 on account of the valuable and interesting philological 

 matter it contains. More than three hundred pages are 

 devoted to the origin and growth of speech, to roots and 

 formation of words. 



Our author still fondly clings to the belief that we cannot 

 think without words — " that language and thought are in- 

 separably united." This is one of the idols of Professor 

 Max Miiller. It may be that we are now such slaves to 

 words that we think in and with them, but it was not 

 always so. And surely our own experience in this matter 

 counts for something, in spite of the dicta of logicians to 

 whom thought and language are inseparable. Are we not 

 conscious of thoughts too deep for utterance, and of imagin- 

 ings that soar far bej'ond the reach of speech ? Do not oiu- 

 words call up thoughts and feelings of the past and produce 

 sensations of pleasure or pain ] We cnnnot regard language, 

 highly as we value it as a mark of intelligence, as the only 

 " true history of mankind." Is not language, written or 

 unwritten, only one phase of mentxl activity 1 Are not 

 works of art, inventions, ka., indications of mental growth as 

 well as language ? 



The science of thought is, in our opinion, quite distinct 

 from the science of language ; each may throw light upon 

 the other, but the genesis of the word will by no me;ins 

 explain the genesis of the antecedent thought. Each has 

 its own history, and the development of the one is inde- 

 pendent of the other. Philologists have, for the most part, 

 left untouched the " origin of sjieech," and have confined 

 themselves to the origin of roots — products of grammatical 

 analysis — none the less real, on that account, than are the 

 elements which are arrived at by a chemical analysis. We 

 are glad to find that Prof. Max Miiller is of opinion that 

 the linguistic student should not lose sight of the beginnings 

 of speech, but should be on the look-out for whatever may 

 throw light upon what may be regarded as the most fasci- 

 nating part of philology. 



The bow-wowists and pooh-poohists get, as usual, some 

 hard raps from the Pi-ofessor, but we are rejoiced to learn 

 " that interjections and imitations of natural sounds deserve 

 the serious attention " of those who have to do with the 

 origin of roots, the ultimate elements of language. In fixct, 

 he concedes more than we expected, for he is bold enough to 

 declare the Sk. root pii;/ (in Lat. ^)j«s, puHo ; Eng. foul, 

 itc.) " was very likely the residuum of a number of sounds 

 accompanying the acts of primitive men when rejecting 

 something unpleasant and expressing their disgust." 



The ding-dong theory, first started by Prof. Heyse, " that 

 everything which is struck rings," is now given up in favour 



* Longmans, Green, & Co. London. 1887. 



of Noire's more recent theory of the origin of roots and 

 concepts. " Noire," says Prof Max Miiller, " begins his 

 argument by pointing out a well-known fact, that when- 

 ever our senses are excited and our muscles hard at work, 

 we feel a kind of relief in uttering sounds . . . particularly 

 when people work together, when peasants dig or thresh, 

 when sailors row, when women spin, when soldiers march, 

 they are inclined to accompany their occupations with certain 

 more or less rhythmical utterances. These utterances, noises, 

 shouts, hummings, or songs are a kind of natural reaction 

 against the inward disturbance caused by muscular efibrt. 

 They are almost involuntary vibrations of the voice, corre- 

 sponding to the more or less regular movements of our 

 whole bodily frame. They are a relief rather than an 

 effort, a moderation or modulation of the quickened breath 

 in its escape through the mouth. They may end in dance, 

 song, or poetry , . . . These sounds possess two great advan- 

 tages — they are signs of repeated acts, acts performed by our- 

 selves, and .... continuing in our memory as signs of such 

 acts .... These sounds being uttered from the beginning, 

 not by one solitary individual only, but by men associated 

 in a common work and united b\' a common purpose, possess 

 the great advantage of being understood by all" (p. 300-1). 

 On p. bXi'l we are told that roots owe their origin to the 

 clamor concomitans of our early social acts. . . . The history 

 of language dates " fi'om the first appearance of roots or 

 signs of self-willed acts, because it was by these roots only 

 that afterwards the objective products of such acts could at 

 one and the same time be both conceived and named. . . . 

 The very fact that roots had to be explained as sounds 

 accompanying the acts of many people working in common, 

 would explain the original variety of such sounds — a variety 

 due quite as much to the actual variety of individual sounds 

 as to the more or less delicate perceptive remembrance and 

 power of imitation possessed by different members of the 

 same gang. Xo doubt every one of these sounds was 

 uttered at first by one individual only, for everything in the 

 world is at first done by one individual only ; but that 

 individual must be a leader of men, and the true leader of 

 men is he who leads while being led. From the process of 

 leading while being led, two results would natui-ally follow : — 

 If these sounds were to answer their social purpose, that is, 

 if they were to be understood, it was necessary either that 

 one individual sound should in the end prevail and the rest 

 vanish, or that by a kind of friction and compromise 

 the various sounds which had been started should be 

 merged into one. The result in both cases would be 

 much the same ; the fittest sound would survive, the 

 others would slowly vanish unless they could be made 

 to answer some new and special purpose" (p. 302). 



This view of Noire's is but one aspect of the subject, and 

 does not appear to us a satisfactory solution of the problem 

 how men first began to speak. AVe may still hear men in 

 gangs working together and uttering inarticulate sounds, 

 but they do not appear to have any special importance in 

 relation to language noi' seem better adapted, as the first 

 elements of speech, than other cries and exclamations. We 

 cannot believe that speech was wanting to men until they 

 had so far progressed as to make tools and to work in gangs 

 or companies. Hunting would probably be as primitive an 

 occupation as digging, but the hunter would not give utter- 

 ance to his emotions if he desired his efforts to be successful. 

 The vocable for " dig " arose long before men worked together 

 with spades or hoes. The Saiiskrit root khan, to dig, is an 

 attempt to imitate the scratching or scraping sound pro- 

 duced by primitive man in making a hole with his fingers 

 or with a flint or bone scraper (cf. the Sk. kha7«akhanaya, to 

 rustle — i.e., to make the sound kha«a-khana). 



Our English words di(/ and dike can be traced to a root, 



