528 
Prof. August Schleicher, of Jena, whose lamented death 
a year ago,* at the early age of forty-eight, is a severe loss 
to European science, was an ardent supporter of the doc- 
trine of variability of species. Besides being a most eminent 
linguist, he had long been interested in practical botany ; 
and asa cultivator of ferns he had enjoyed many oppor- 
tunities of observing the apparent transformation of 
natural subdivisions. It was not, however, as a botanist 
that Mr. Darwin’s book was mainly interesting to him, but 
far more from the light which his theories seemed to throw 
on the phenomena of language. The first edition of the 
“ Origin of Species” appeared in November 1859,and Prof. 
Schleicher, three years before he had met with Brown’s 
German translation of it, had in his book, “‘ Die Deutsche 
Sprache” (pp. 43, 44), called attention to the struggle for 
existence among words, the disappearance of primitive 
forms, and the immense development and differentiation 
which may be produced by ordinary causes in a single 
family of speech. On receiving Mr. Darwin’s book from 
his friend Prof. Hackel, he wrote him a letter, which has 
since been published, on “Die Darwinsche Theorie und 
die Sprachwissenschaft ;” and in answer to the objection 
that he had, in this letter, assumed that languages were 
material existences, having a real natural life, he wrote a 
second pamphlet on the “Importance of Language for 
the Natural History of Mankind.” 
The general line of illustration which he adopts had 
probably struck others, and it had certainly struck me 
before I read or heard of Prof. Schleicher’s pamphlet ; 
but as that little work is as yet but slightly known in Eng- 
land, it will probably be interesting to some readers if I 
sketch the outline of his arguments. There was nothing 
fanciful or precipitous in Schleicher’s writings. He was 
one of the most strenuous supporters of the strictly scien- 
tific character of all true linguistic inquiry; one of the 
most severe opponents of those vague fancies, imaginative 
theories, hazardous etymologies, and @ friorz inferences 
which have thrown suspicion on philological work. He 
had owed much, even in the study of language, to such 
books as Schleiden’s “ Scientific Botany,” and the “ Phy- 
siological Letters” of Carl Vogt ; and he wished to found 
linguistic science on the structure of the organs of articu- 
lation and on recognised vital laws. He regarded lan- 
guages as natural organisms which, in accordance with 
definite physical influences, and independently of human 
will, are produced and developed, grow old and die, and 
therefore manifest the series of phenomena to which we 
give the name of “life.” Hence he regarded Compara- 
tive Philology, not as an hzsforical, but as a natural 
science ; and we think that his views will be shared by all 
who have added to their linguistic inquiries some sound 
knowledge of either zoology or botany. 
The researches of Sir Charles Lyell have shown that 
the present condition of the earth’s surface is due, not to 
cataclysms and conflagrations, but to the slow result of 
natural laws continuing to act during thousands of years. 
Similarly, Mr. Darwin showed that the existing conditions 
of species might have been originated by continuous in- 
sensible modifications, working for an indefinite period of 
time. It was the main object of Prof. Schleicher to show 
that in all essential particulars the working of similar laws 
accounted for the existing phenomena of languages. The 
* He died on Dec. 6, 1868. 
NATO TO 
[March 24, 1870 
principles of classification apply to language no less than 
to animal and vegetable organisms. A genus corresponds 
to a linguistic stem ; classes to linguistic families ; sub- 
species to dialects ; varieties to minor dialectic pecu- 
liarities ; and, finally, individuals to those special modes 
of varying utterances which distinguish man from man. 
Mr. Darwin has constructed an ingenious diagram* to 
illustrate the immense scope which must be allowed for 
gradual divergence of characters in animal and vegetable 
species derived by natural selection from an original 
genus. Schleicher has made an exactly similar table to 
serve as a genealogical tree for the Aryan Families of 
language. But here the philologist has a distinct advan- 
tage, and the study of his results may be most suggestive 
to the naturalist : for the Darwinian diagram is to a great 
extent ideal and hypothetical ; while the table of languages 
is merely an expression of indisputable discoveries. Any 
one who has clearly understood the certainty of the fact, 
that languages at first sight so different as Greek and 
French, Icelandic and Portuguese, Sanskrit and Lithu- 
anian, are yet connected with each other by close bonds 
of union, and that the phenomena they exhibit are due to 
gradual differentiation from a single stock, will undoubtedly 
be more able to conceive the possibility of Newfoundlands, 
and Greyhounds, and King Charles’s Spaniels, and 
Wolves being lineal representatives of a common type. 
And further than this, the philologist has another very 
positive advantage over the naturalist. The ethnologist 
can not only frove, where the naturalist must be content 
to conjecture, but can also more easily exemplify the birth 
of new forms out of anterior ones, and can carry out his 
examination on a greater scale. There are some lan- 
guages and families of languages which have been under 
close observation for two thousand years, and which 
furnish us with written specimens of forms which have 
undergone immense subsequent modification. In com- 
paring modern French with the Latin of the XII. Tables, 
or Mahratti with the Sanskrit of the Vedas, we have a 
sure and solid basis of observation, in which, by the aid 
of records incapable of falsification, we can observe the 
corroding and modifying influence of time on human 
speech. The effects of foreign influences on different 
languages even furnish us with some analogy to crossing, 
which is so important an element in all zoological 
inquiries. In point of fact, the possession of written 
materials extending over many ages led philologists to be 
among the first to deny the sudden origin of separate 
species. The Science of Language offers the most demon- 
strable and instructive examples of the gradual growth of 
species from common primitive forms, although it is as 
impossible in language as it is in zoology to draw certain 
and definite lines of demarcation between genera, species, 
and varieties. 
It may be asked whether the science of language is 
able at present to demonstrate the growth of all families 
from one primitive mother-tongue? The answer must be 
frankly in the negative, and perhaps one reason for this 
may he in the fact that there is not any linguistic family 
except the Aryan, of which the archetypal forms have been 
reconstructed from their derivatives.| But, on the other 
hand, as regards the morphology of language, we are 
* Origin of Species, p. 130. (4th edition.) 
+ To effect this was the object of Prof. Schleicher’s Compendium der 
Vergleichende Grammatik. 
