536 



SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. 



in its individual and collective existence — has proceeded 

 when separated from that of nature. This survey will 

 start with exactly that movement of thought which was 

 so distasteful to Herder, the critical inquiry of Kant, 

 and it will follow this up to the point when in our days 

 a junction has again been attempted, not unlike in spirit 

 to that dreamt of by Herder, though very much more 

 accurate and precise in method. There is, moreover, one 

 special problem where this has been markedly the case ; 

 one phenomenon stands out pre-eminently ; it belongs 

 equally to the realm of nature and of mind. After 

 being independently attacked by philosophers, naturalists, 

 travellers, philologists, and latterly by physicists, it has 

 revealed itself as the psycho-physical problem 'par ex- 

 cellence ; and it is exactly that which Herder himself 

 45. treated with special attention. This phenomenon is that 

 of language, of human spccch — the problem of language.-^ 



^ The problem of language and 

 the question of its origin inde- 

 pendently occupied thinkers in the 

 three countries in the latter half of 

 the eighteenth century. In France 

 the followers of Locke, notablj- 

 Condillac (' Essai sur I'origine des 

 connaissances humaines,' vol. ii.), 

 wrote on the subject, while Rousseau 

 opposed them ('Sur I'inegalitd 

 parnii les homines,' 1754). In 

 Germany the Pastor Siissmilch, of 

 whom I shall have more to say in 

 the next chapter, wrote an elab- 

 orate work to prove the divine 

 origin of language ( ' Beweis dass 

 der Ursprung der Menschlichen 

 Sprache Gottlich sei,' Berlin, 1776). 

 In order to settle the question the 

 Academy of Berlin offered, in the 

 year 1769, a prize in the following 

 terms : " En supposant les hommes 

 abandonn(5s a leurs facultes natu- 



relles, sont-ils en dtat d'inventer 

 le langage ? et par quels moj^ens 

 parviendront-ilsd'eux-memesixcette 

 invention ? " a problem wliich Her- 

 der characterised as a " truly philo- 

 sophical one, and one eminently 

 suited for me." He had already — 

 following Hamann — thought much 

 about the subject, and lie proposes, 

 in his prize essaj-, which was sub- 

 sequently crowned by the Academy, 

 " to prove the necessary genesis of 

 language as a firm philosophical 

 truth." A short time after Her- 

 der had written his essay (1771), 

 there appeared in England, by 

 James Burnett, Lord Monboddo, a 

 work ' On the Origin and Progress 

 of Language' (1773), in which he 

 refers to the ideas of James Harris 

 in his work ' Hermes ; or a Philo- 

 sophical Enquiry concerning Lan- 

 guage and Universal Grammar' 



