XL.] HABIT AND VARIATION IN HISTORY. 



175 



the more profoundly both comparative morphology and 

 comparative grammar are understood, the more funda- 

 mental resemblances do their students discover xinder the 

 external appearance of total unlikeness. The science of and 

 language also resembles morphology in being a science of sciences of 

 progressive change. I do not say of development or of sive 

 embryology, because we know nothing yet, as far as I am '^ ^^^^' 

 aware, about language in its embryonic state ; though the The em- 

 embryology of language, that is to say the history of its of lan- 

 origin and earliest development, would be a subject ofS'^'^S®^^ 

 science, and a most interesting one, if the facts could be known, 

 ascertained. But as morphology traces not only the 

 graduated resemblances and differences between different 

 species and different classes, but also the progressive 

 changes during the life of the individual; so the science 

 of language traces not only the graduated resemblances 

 and differences between the same or allied words in 

 different languages, but also the progressive changes in 

 the same language from century to century, amounting 

 sometimes to total apparent transformation — such as, 

 to mention one of the most remarkable of all per- 

 fectly well-known cases, the transformation of Latin into 

 French. 



The same remarks apply, without more modification Historical 

 than the difference of the subjects renders necessary, to the'e^e" 

 the science of the Fine Arts. I speak of the scientific arts, 

 study of their history : their theory is a different subject. 

 Concerning the theory of the Fine Arts not much is yet 

 established, with the exception of the theory of music, 

 wliich is well understood, at least in a technical sense ; but 

 though there must be a profound connexion between the 

 laws both of visual beauty and of music with the laws of 

 mind, yet the laws of this connexion have not yet be- 

 come a subject of science, and conseq^uently we have not 

 yet any science of beauty ; nor have we as yet, in the truest 

 sense, a science of those arts — namely, the Fine Arts — 

 which consist in the embodiment of man's ideas of beauty involving 



,^ T .1 ,• p 1 • • IT -I-, • tne same 



through the action of nis intelligence. But a scientific principles 



