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 w^as the 

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

 to a great extent been simultaneously adopted by Max 

 ]\Iuller 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.-^ 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- 

 graphic' (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- 

 ology 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 indogermanischen 

 Sprachen' (1861); 'Die Darwin'sche 

 Theorie und dieSprachwissenschaft' 

 (1863) ; and ' Ueber die Bedeutung 

 der Sprache fiir die Naturgeschichte 

 des Menschen ' (1865). Schleicher's 

 ideas have been taken up in France, 

 notably by Abel Hovelacque ('La 

 Linguistique,' 4^'"^' 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 

 jjhysical theorj' of language see 

 Sayce, ' Introd. to the Science of 

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

 &c. 



