Full text of "Lectures on the science of language"

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THE

SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.

VOL. II.

LONDON : PRINTED BY

8PQTTISWOODE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE
AND PARLIAMENT STREET

LECTURES

ON THE

SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE

R MAX MtiLLEK, M.A.

PHOFE8ROR OF COMPARATIVE PHICOLOUY AT OXKUBU.
FOREIGN MEMBER OK TUB FRESCU INSTITUTE.

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NINTH EDITION.

TWO VOLUMES. VOL. 12.

LONDON :
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.

1877.

The right of trantlation is reserved.

PEEPACB.

Second Series of Lectures on the Science of
Language was delivered last year at the Royal
Institution in London. Most of the topics treated
in them had for many years formed the subject of
my public courses at Oxford. In casting my notes
into the shape of lectures to be addressed to a more
advanced audience, I left out many things that were
merely elementary, and I made several additions in
order to show the bearing of the Science of Lan-
guage on some of the more important problems of
philosophy and religion.

Whilst expressing my gratitude to the readers and
reviewers of the first series of my Lectures, to those
who differed from me even more than to those who
agreed with me, I venture to hope that this second
volume may meet with as many indulgent friends
and intelligent critics as the first.

M. M.

OXFORD: June 11, 1864.

CONTENTS

THE SECOND VOLUME.

LECTURE I.

PAGE

INTRODUCTORY LECTURE. NEW MATERIALS FOR THE

SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE, AND NEW THEORIES . 1

LECTURE II.
LANGUAGE AND REASON . . . . .47

LECTURE III.
THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ALPHABET .... 103

LECTURE IV.
PHONETIC CHANGE ...... 176

LECTURE V.
GRIMM'S LAW 216

LECTURE VI.

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF ETYMOLOGY . . . 262

Vlll CONTENTS OF THE SECOND VOLUME.

LECTURE VII.

J'AGE

ON THE POWERS OF ROOTS . . . 329

LECTURE VIII.
METAPHOR ....... 368

LECTURE IX.
THE MYTHOLOGY OF THE GREEKS .... 421

LECTURE X.

JUPITER, THE SUPREME ARYAN GOD . . . 455

LECTURE XI.
MYTHS OF THE DAWN ..... 506

LECTURE XII.
MODERN MYTHOLOGY . 572

LECTUEES.

LECTURE I.

INTRODUCTORY LECTUEE.

IN a course of lectures which I had the honour
to deliver in this Institution two years ago, I
endeavoured to show that the language which we
speak, and the languages that are and that have been
spoken in every part of our globe since the first dawn
of human life and human thought, supply materials
capable of scientific treatment. We can collect them,
we can classify them, we can reduce them to their
constituent elements, and deduce from them some of
the laws that determine their origin, govern their
growth, necessitate their decay ; we can treat them,
in fact, in exactly the same spirit in which the geolo-
gist treats his stones and petrifactions, nay, in some
respects, in the same spirit in which the astronomer
treats the stars of heaven, or the botanist the flowers
of the field. There is a Science of Language as there
is a science of the earth, its flowers and its stars ; and
though, as a young science, it is very far as yet from
that perfection which thanks to the efforts of the
intellectual giants of so many ages and many countries

II. B

2 MATERIALS FOR THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.

lias been reached in astronomy, botany, and even in
geology, it is, perhaps for that very reason, all the
more fascinating. It is a young and a growing science,
that puts forth new strength with every year, that
opens new prospects, new fields of enterprise on every
side, and rewards its students with richer harvests
than could be expected from the exhau3ted soil of the
older sciences. The whole world is open, as it were,
to the student of language. There is virgin soil close
to our door, and there are whole continents still to
conquer, if we step beyond the frontiers of the ancient
seats of civilisation. We may select a small village
in our neighbourhood to pick up dialectic varieties,
and to collect phrases, proverbs, and stories which will
disclose fragments, almost ground to dust, it is true,
yet undeniable fragments of the earliest formations of
Saxon speech and Saxon thought. 1 Or we may pro-
ceed to our very antipodes, and study the idiom of
the Hawaian islanders, and watch in the laws and
edicts of Kamehameha the working of the same human
faculty of speech which, even in its most primitive
efforts, never seems to miss the high end at which it
aims. The dialects of ancient Greece, ransacked as
they have been by classical scholars, such as Maittaire,
Giese, and Ahrens, will amply reward a fresh battue
of the comparative philologist. Their forms, which

1 A valuable essay ' On some leading Characteristics of the Dialects
spoken in the SixNorthern Counties of England, or Ancient Northumbria,
and on the Variations in their Grammar from that of Standard English,'
has lately been published by Mr. E. P. Peacock, Berlin, 1863. It is
chiefly based on the versions of the Song of Solomon into many of the
spoken dialects of England, which have of late years been executed and
published under the auspices of H.I.H. Prince Louis-Lucien Bonaparte.
It is to be hoped that the writer will continue his researches in a field of
scholarship so full of promise.

MATERIALS FOE THE SCIENCE OP LANGUAGE. 8

to the classical scholar were mere anomalies and cari-
osities, will thus assume a different aspect. They will
range themselves under more general laws, and after
receiving light by a comparison with other dialects,
they will, in turn, reflect that light with increased
power on the phonetic peculiarities of Sanskrit and
Prakrit, Zend and Persian, Latin and French. But
even were the old mines exhausted, the Science of
Language would create its own materials, and as with
the rod of the prophet smite the rocks of the desert
to call forth from them new streams of living speech.
The rock inscriptions of Persia show what can be
achieved by our science. I do not wonder that the
discoveries due to the genius and the persevering in-
dustry of Grotefend, Burnouf, Lassen, and last, not
least, of Eawlinson, should seem incredible to those
who only glance at them from a distance. Their in-
credulity will hereafter prove the greatest compliment
that could have been paid to these eminent scholars. 2
What we at present call the cuneiform inscriptions

2 A thoroughly scholar-like answer to the late Sir G-. C. Lewis's
attacks on Champollion and other decipherers of ancient inscriptions may
be seen in an article by Professor Le Page Renouf, ' Sir G. C. Lewis on
the Decipherment and Interpretation of Dead Languages,' in the Atlantis,
Nos. vii. and viii. p. 23. Though it cannot be known now whether the
late Sir Gr. C. Lewis ever modified his opinions as to the soundness of
the method through which the inscriptions of Egypt, Persia, India, and
ancient Italy have been deciphered, such was the uprightness of his
character that he would certainly have been the first to acknowledge his
mistake, had he been spared to continue his studies. Though his scepti-
cism was occasionally uncritical and unfair, his loss is a severe loss to
our studies, which, more than any others, require to be kept in order by the
watchful eye and uncompromising criticism of close reasoners and sound
scholars. An essay just published by Professor F. W. Newman, ' On the
Umbrian Language,' following after a short interval on an article in
Fraser's Magazine, Jan. 1863, does equal credit to the acumen and to the
candour of its author.

B 2

4 MATERIALS FOE THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE.

of Cyrus, Darius, Xerxes, Artaxerxes I., Darius II.,
Artaxerxes Mnemon, Artaxerxes Ochus (of which we
now have several editions, translations, grammars,
and dictionaries) what were they originally ? A mere
conglomerate of wedges, engraved or impressed 011
the solitary monument of Cyrus in the Murghab, 011
the ruins of Persepolis, on the rocks of Behistun near
the frontiers of Media, and the precipice of Van in
Armenia. When Grotefend attempted to decipher
them, he had first to prove that these scrolls were
really inscriptions, and not mere arabesques or fan-
ciful ornaments. 3 He had then to find out whether
these magical characters were to be read horizontally
or perpendicularly, from right to left, or from left to
right. Lichtenberg maintained that they must be
read in the same direction as Hebrew. Grotefend,
in 1802, proved that the letters followed each other,
as in Greek, from left to right. Even before Grote
fend, Munter and Tychsen had observed that there
was a sign to separate the words. Such a sign is of
course an immense help in all attempts at deciphering
inscriptions, for it lays bare at once the terminations
of hundreds of words, and, in an Aryan language,
supplies us with the skeleton of its grammar. Yet
consider the difficulties that had still to be overcome
before a single line could be read. It was unknown
in what language these inscriptions were composed ;
it might have been a Semitic, a Turanian, or an
Aryan language. It was unknown to what period
they belonged, and whether they commemorated the

8 Memoire de M. le comte de Caylus, sur les mines de Persepolis, dans
le tome XXIX des Memoires de V Academic des inscriptions et belles-lettres,
Histoire de F Academic, p. 118.

MATERIALS FOB, THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE. O

conquests of Cyrus, Darius, Alexander, or Sapor. It
was unknown whether the alphabet used was pho-
netic, syllabic, or ideographic. It would detain us
too long were I to relate how all these difficulties
were removed one after the other ; how the proper
names of Darius, Xerxes, Hystaspes, and of their
god Ormusd, were traced ; how from them the values
of certain letters were determined ; how with an im-
perfect alphabet other words were deciphered which
clearly established the fact that the language of
these inscriptions was ancient Persian; how then,
with the help of the Zend, which represents the
Persian language previous to Darius, and with the
help of the later Persian, a most effective cross-fire
was opened ; how even more powerful ordnance was
brought up from the arsenal of the ancient Sanskrit ;
how outpost after outpost was driven in, a practical
breach effected, till at last the fortress had to surrender
and submit to the terms dictated by the Science of
Language.

I should gladly on some future occasion give you
a more detailed account of this glorious siege and
victory. At present I only refer to it to show how,
in all quarters of the globe, and from sources where
it would least be expected, new materials are forth-
coming that would give employment to a much
larger class of labourers than the Science of Lan-
guage can as yet boast of. The inscriptions of
Babylon and Nineveh, the hieroglyphics of Egypt,
the records in the caves of India, on the monuments
of Lycia, on the tombs of Etruria, and on the broken
tablets of Unibria and Samnium, all wait to have their
spell broken or their riddle more satisfactorily read

6 CONTROVERSIES.

by the student of language. If, then, we turn our
eyes again to the yet unnumbered dialects now
spoken by the nomad tribes of Asia, Africa, America,
and the islands of the Pacific, no scholar need be
afraid for some generations to come that there will
be no language left for him to conquer.

There is another charm peculiar to the Science of
Language, or one, at least, which it shares only with
its younger sisters : I mean the vigorous contest that
is still carried on between great opposing principles.
In Astronomy, the fundamental laws of the universe
are no longer contested, and the Ptolenisean system is
not likely to find new supporters. In Geology, the
feuds between the Yulcanists and the Neptunists have
come to an end, and no unprejudiced person doubts at
the present moment whether an ammonite be a work
of nature and a flinthead a work of art. It is different
in the Science of Language. There, the controversies
about the great problems have not yet subsided. The
questions whether language is a work of nature or
a work of art, whether languages had one or many
beginnings, whether they can be classified in families,
or no, are constantly starting up ; and scholars, even
while engaged in the most minute inquiries while
carrying brick and mortar to build the walls of their
new science must have their sword girded by their
side, always ready to meet the enemy. This, no
doubt, may sometimes be tedious, but it has one good
effect it leads us to examine carefully the ground on
which we take our stand, and keeps us alive, even
while analysing mere prefixes and suffixes, to the
grandeur and the sacredness of the issues that depend
on these minutiae. The foundations of our science

THE SCIENCE OF LANGUAGE A PHYSICAL SCIENCE. 7

do not suffer from such attacks; on the contrary,
like the coral cells built up quietly and patiently from
the bottom of the sea, they become more strongly
cemented by these whiffs of spray that are dashed
across them.

Emboldened by the indulgent reception I met with
in this place, when first claiming some share of public
sympathy in behalf of the Science of Language, I
venture to-day to come again before you with a
course of lectures on the same subject 'on mere
words, on nouns, and verbs, and particles' and I
trust you will again, as you did then, make allowance
for the inevitable shortcomings of one who has to
address you with a foreign accent, and 011 a subject
foreign to the pursuits of many of the supporters of
this Institution. One thing I feel more strongly than
ever namely, that, without the Science of Language,
the circle of the physical sciences, to which this In-
stitution is more specially dedicated, would be incom-
plete. The whole natural creation tends towards
man : without man nature would be incomplete and
purposeless. The Science of Man, therefore, or, as
it is sometimes called, Anthropology, must form the
crown of all the natural sciences. And if it is lan-
guage by which man differs from all other created
things, the Science of Language has a right to hold
that place which I claimed for it when addressing
for the first time the members and supporters of
this Institution. Allow me to quote the words of one
whose memory becomes more dear and sacred to me
with every year, and to whose friendship I owe
more than I here could say. Bunsen, when address-
ing, in 1847, the newly-formed section of Ethnology,

8 ITS POSITION AMONG THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES.

at the meeting of the British Association at Oxford,
said :

If man is the apex of the creation, it seems right, on the
one side, that an historical inquiry into his origin and de-
velopment should never be allowed to sever itself from the
general body of natural science, and in particular from
physiology. But, on the other hand, if man is the apex of
the creation ; if he is the end to which all organic formations
tend from the very beginning ; if man is at once the mystery
and the key of natural science ; if that is the only view of
natural science worthy of our age, then ethnological philology,
once established on principles as clear as the physiological are,
is the highest branch of that science for the advancement of
which this Association is instituted. It is not an appendix to
physiology or to anything else ; but its object is, on the con-
trary, capable of becoming the end and goal of the labours
and transactions of a scientific association. 4

In my former course all that I could attempt to do
was to point out the principal objects of the Science
of Language, to determine its limits, and to lay before
you a general map of the ground that had been ex-
plored, with more or less success, during .the last fifty
years. That map was necessarily incomplete. It com-
prehended not much more than what in an atlas of
the ancient world is called ' Orbis Yeteribus Notus,'
where you distinguish names and boundaries only in
those parts of Europe, Asia, and Africa which formed
the primeval stage of the great drama of history ;
but where beyond the Hyperboreans in the North,
the Anthropophagi in the West, and the Ethiopians 5

* Report of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
1847, p. 257.

s The Hyperboreans, known to Homer and Herodotus as a people
living in the extreme north, beloved by Apollo, and distinguished for

SUBJECT OF SECOND SERIES. 9

in the South, you see but vaguely shadowed outlines
the New World beyond the Atlantic existing as
yet merely as the dream of philosophers.

It was at first my intention, in the present course
of lectures, to fill in greater detail the outlines of that
map. Materials for this are abundant and steadily
increasing. The works of Hervas, Adelung, Klaproth,
Balbi, Prichard, and Latham, will show you how
much more minutely the map of languages might be
coloured at present than the ancient geographical
maps of Strabo and Ptolemy. But I very soon per-
ceived that this would hardly have been a fit subject
for a course of lectures. I could only have given you
an account of the work done by others : of explorations
made by travellers or missionaries among the black
races of Africa, the yellow tribes of Polynesia, and the
red-skins of America. I should have had simply to copy
their descriptions of the manners, customs, laws, and
religions of these savage tribes, to make abstracts of
their grammars and extracts from their vocabularies.
This would necessarily have been work at second-
hand, and all I could have added of my own would
have been a criticism of their attempts at classifying

piety and happiness, were to the Greeks a mythical people, like the
Uttarakurus of the Brahmans. Their name signifies ' living beyond
the mountains,' and Boreas too, the north wind, meant originally the
wind from the mountains, and more particularly from the Khipsean
mountains. (See Preller, Griechische Mythologie, i. 157.) Soros, from
which Boreas, is another form of oros, mountain, both derived from the
same root which in Sanskrit yields giri, mountain, and in ancient Sla-
vonic gora. (See Curtius, Grundzuge der Griechischen Etymologic,
\. 314; ii. G7.)

The Ethiopians, equally known to Homer and Herodotus, were origi-
nally intended for dark-looking people in general. Aithiops, like attkops,
meant fiery-looking, from aithein, to light up, to burn, Sanskrit idh, to
kindle. (See Curtius, I. c. i. 215.)

10 NEW THEOKIES.

some of the clusters of languages in those distant
regions, to point out similarities which they might
have overlooked, or to protest against some of the
theories which they had propounded without sufficient
evidence. All who have had to examine the accounts
of new languages, or families of languages, published
by missionaries or travellers, are aware how not only
their theories, but their facts, have to be sifted, before
they can be allowed to occupy even a temporary place
in our handbooks, or before we should feel justified
in rectifying accordingly the frontiers on the great
map of the languages of mankind. I received but
the other day some papers, printed at Honolulu, 6
propounding the theory ' that all those tongues which
we designate as the Indo-European languages have
their true root and origin in the Polynesian language.'
6 1 am certain,' the author writes, ' that this is the
case as regards the Greek and Sanskrit : I find reason
to believe it to be so as to the Latin and other more
modern tongues in short, as to all European lan-
guages, old and young.' And he proceeds : ' The
second discovery which I believe I have made, and
with which the former is connected, is that the study
of the Polynesian language gives us the key to the
original function of language itself, and to its whole
mechanism.'

Strange as it may sound to hear the language of
Homer and Ennius spoken of as an offshoot of the
Sandwich Islands, mere ridicule would be a very in-
appropriate and very inefficient answer to such a
theory. It is not very long ago that all the Greek

6 The Polynesian: Honolulu, Sept. 27, Oct. 4, Oct. 11, 1862 contain-
ing an essay by Dr. J. Eae.

NEW THEORIES. 11

and Latin scholars of Europe shook their heads at the
idea of tracing the roots of the classical languages
back to Sanskrit ; and even at the present moment
there are still many persons who cannot realise the
fact that, at a very remote, but a very real period in
the history of the world, the ancestors of the Home-
ric poets and of the poets of the Ye da must have
lived together as members of one and the same race,
as speakers of one and the same idiom.

There are other theories not less startling than
this which would make the Polynesian the primi-
tive language of mankind. I received lately a
Comparative Grammar of the South-African Lan-
guages, printed at the Cape, written by a most
learned and ingenious scholar, Dr. Bleek. 7 In it
he proves that, with the exception of the Bushman
tongue, which has not yet been sufficiently studied,
the great mass of African languages may be reduced
to two families. He tries to show that the Hottentot
is a branch of the North African class of languages, 8

7 A Comparative Grammar of the South African Languages, by W.
H. J. Bleek, Ph.D. 1862.

8 When the Kev. K. Moflat was in England, a few years since, he
met with a Syrian who had recently arrived from Egypt, and in re-
ference to whom Mr. Moffat has the following note : ' On my giving
him a specimen and a description of the Hottentot language, he
remarked that he had seen slaves in the market of Cairo, brought a
great distance from the interior, who spoke a similar language, and
were not near so dark-coloured as slaves in general. This corroborates
the statement of ancient authors, whose description of a people inhabit-
ing the interior regions of Northern Africa answers to that of the Hot-
tentot and Bushman.' ' It may be conceived as possible, therefore, that
the people here alluded to form a portion of the Hottentot race, whose
progenitors remained behind in the interior country, to the south or
south-west of Egypt, whilst the general emigration continued its on-
ward course. Should this prove not incorrect, it might be reasonably
conjectured that Egypt is the country from which the Hottentot tribes

12 NEW THEORIES.

and that it was separated from its relatives by the
intrusion of the second great family, the Kafir, or, as
Appleyard calls them, Alliteral languages, which
occupy (as far as our knowledge goes) the whole
remaining portion of the South African continent,
extending on the eastern side from the Keiskamma
to the equator, and on the western side from 32
southern to about 8 northern latitude. Bat the same
author claims likewise a very prominent place for
the African idioms, in the general history of human
speech. It is perhaps not too much to say,' he
writes (preface, page viii.), 'that similar results may
at present be expected from a deeper study of such
primitive forms of language as the Kafir and the
Hottentot exhibit, as followed at the beginning of the
century, the discovery of Sanskrit, and the compara-
tive researches of Oriental scholars. The origin of
the grammatical forms, of gender and number, the
etymology of pronouns, and many other questions of
the highest interest to the philologist, find their true
solution in Southern Africa.'

But, while we are thus told by some scholars that
we must look to Polynesia and South Africa if we
would find the clue to the mysteries of Aryan speech,

originally came. This supposition, indeed, is strengthened by the
resemblance which appears to subsist between the Copts and Hotten-
tots in general appearance.' (Appleyard, The Kafir Language.. 1850.)
4 Since the Hottentot race is known only as a receding one, and traces
of its existence extend into the interior of South Africa, it may be looked
upon as a fragment of the old and properly Ethiopic population,
stretched along the mountain-spine of Africa, through the regions now
occupied by the G-alla ; but cut through and now enveloped by tribes of
a different stock.' (J. C. Adamson, in Journal of the American Oriental
Society, vol. iv. p. 449. 1854.)

NEW THEORIES. 13

we are warned by others that there is no such thing
as an Aryan or Indo-European family of languages,
that Sanskrit has no relationship with Greek, and that
Comparative Philology, as hitherto treated by Bopp
and others, is but a dream of continental professors. 9
HOW are theories and counter-theories of this kind
to be treated? However startling and paradoxical
in appearance, they must be examined before we can
either accept or reject them. ' Science,' as Bunsen 10
said, * excludes no suppositions, however strange they
may appear, which are not in themselves absurd
viz. demonstrably contradictory to its own princi-
ples.' But by what tests and rules are they to be
examined? They can only be examined by those
tests and rules which the Science of Language has
established in its more limited areas of research.
' We must begin,' as Leibniz said, 'with studying the
modern languages which are within our reach, in
order to compare them with one another, to discover
their differences and affinities, and then to proceed
to those which have preceded them in former ages ;
in order to show their filiation and their origin, and
then to ascend step by step to the most ancient of
tongues, the analysis of which must lead us to the
only trustworthy conclusions.' The principles of
comparative philology must rest on the evidence of
the best known and the best analysed dialects, and it

9 See Mr. John Crawford's essay On the Aryan or Indo- Germanic
Theory, and an article by Professor T. Hewitt Key in the Transactions
of the Philological Society, ' The Sanskrit Language, as the Basis of Lin-
guistic Science, and the Labours of the German School in that field, aro
they not overvalued ? ' An unfounded accusation by Professor Key was
answered in the Academy, 1874, p. 48.

10 L. c. p. 256.

14 SUBJECT OF SECOND SERIES.

is to them that we must look, if we wish for a com-
pass to guide us through the most violent storms and
hurricanes of philological speculation. 11

I thought it best, therefore, to devote the present
course of lectures to the examination of a very limited
area of speech to English, French, German, Latin,
and Greek, and, of course, to Sanskrit in order to
discover or to establish more firmly some of the fun-
damental principles of the Science of Language. I
believe there is no science from which we, the students
of language, may learn more than from Geology.
Now, in Geology, if we have once acquired a general
knowledge of the successive strata that form the
crust of the earth, and of the faunas and floras pre-
sent or absent in each, nothing is so instructive as
the minute exploration of a quarry close at hand, of
a cave or a mine, in order to see things with our own
eyes, to handle them, and to learn how every pebble
that we pick up points a lesson of the widest range.
I believe it is the same in the science of language.
One word, however common, of our own dialect, if
well examined and analysed, will teach us more than
the most ingenious speculations on the nature of
speech and the origin of roots. We may accept it, I
believe, as a general principle, that what is real in
modern formations is possible in more ancient
formations ; that what has been found to be true on
a small scale may be true on a larger scale. Prin-
ciples like these, which underlie the study of Geology,
are equally applicable to the study of Philology,
though in their application they require, no doubt,

11 Lectures on the Science of Language, First Series, p. 145.

SMALL PACTS AND GREAT PRINCIPLES. 15

the same circuinspectness which is the great charm
of geological reasoning.

A few instances will make my meaning clearer.
They will show how the solution of some of the
most difficult problems of Comparative Grammar may
be found at our very door, and how theories that
would seem fanciful and incredible, if applied to the
analysis of ancient languages, stand before us as real
and undeniable facts in the very words which we use
in our every-day conversation. They will at the same
time serve as a warning against too rapid generalisa-
tions, both on the part of those who have no eye for
distinctive features and see nothing but similarity in
all the languages of the world, and on the part of those
who can perceive but one kind of likeness, and who
would fain confine the whole ocean of living speech
within the narrow bars of Aryan or Semitic grammar.

We have not very far to go in order to hear such
phrases as ' he is a-going, I am a-coming, &c.,' instead
of the more usual c he is going, I am coming.' Now
the fact is, that the vulgar or dialectic expression, ( he
is a-going,' is far more correct than 'he is going.' 12
Ing, in our modern grammars, is called the termination
of the participle present, but it does not exist as such
in Anglo-Saxon. In Anglo-Saxon the termination of
that participle is ande or inde (Gothic, and-s ; Old
High-German ant-er, ent-er ; Middle High- German,
end-e; Modern High-German, end). This was pre-
served as late as Gower's and Chaucer's time, 13 though

12 Archdeacon Hare, Words corrupted by False Analogy or False Deri-
vation, p. 65.

Pointis and sieves be wel sittande
Full right and straight upon the hande.

Rom. of the Rose, 2264.

16 e A-GOTNG,' ETC.

in most cases it had then already been supplanted by
the termination ing. 1 * Now what is that termination
ing ? 15 It is clearly used in two different senses, even
in modern English. If we say ' a loving child,' loving
is a verbal adjective. If we say ' loving our neighbour
is our highest duty,' loving is a verbal substantive.
Again, there are many substantives in ing, such as
building, wedding, meeting, where the verbal cha-
racter of the substantive is almost, if not entirely,
lost.

Now, if we look to Anglo-Saxon, we find the termi-
nation ing used

(1) To form patronymics for instance, Godvulf-
ing, the son of G-odvulf. In the A.S. translation of
the Bible, the son of Elisha is called E Using. In the
plural these patronymics frequently become the names
of families, clans, villages, towns, and nations, e.g.
Thyringas, the Thuringians. Even if names in ing are
derived from names of rivers or hills or trees, they may
still be called patronymics, because in ancient times
the ideas of relationship and descent were not confined
to living beings. 16 People living near the Elbe might
well be called the sons of the Elbe or Albings, as, for
instance, the Nordalbingi in Holstein. Many of the
geographical names in England and Germany were
originally such patronymics. Thus we have the vil-
lages 17 of Matting, of Billing, &c., or in compounds,
Mallington, Billingborough. In Walsingham, the home

14 Grimm, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, p. 666.

15 Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. 348-365.

10 See Forstemann, Die Deutschen Ortsnamen, p. 244 ; and Zeitschrift
far Vergleichende Sprachforschung, i. 109.

17 Latham, History of the English Language, i. p. 223; Kemble,
Saxons in England, i. p. 59, and Appendix, p. 449.

'A-GOING.' 17

of the Walsings, the memory of the famous race of the
Wcelsings may have been preserved, to which Siegfried
belonged, the hero of the Nibelunge. 18 In German
names, such as Gottingen in Hanover, Harlingen in
Holland, we have old genitives plural, in the sense
of ' the home of the Gottings, the home of the Har-
lings,' &c. 19

(2) Ing is used to form more general attributive
words, such as, cefyeling, a man of rank ; lyteling, an
infant ; nifting, a bad man. This ing being frequently
preceded by another suffix, the I, we arrive at the very
common derivative ling, in such words as darling, hire-
ling, yearling, foundling, nestling, worldling, changeling.
It is doubtful, in fact, whether even in such words
as cfyeling, lyteling, which end in I, the suffix is not
rather ling than ing, and whether the original spelling
was not ce]>elling and ly telling. Farthing, too, is a
corruption offeor&ling, German vierling.

It has been supposed that the modern English
participle was formed by the same derivative, but in
A.S. the suffix ing is (as a rule) 20 attached to nouns
and adjectives, not to verbs. There was, however,

18 Grimm, Deutsche Heldensage, p. 14.

19 Harlings, in A.S. Herelingas (Trav. Song, i. 224), Harlunge (W.
Grimm, Deut. Heldensage, p. 280, &c.), are found at Harling in Norfolk
and Kent, and at Harlington (Herelingatun) in Bedfordshire and Mid-
dlesex. The Waelsings, in Old Norse Volsungar, the family of Sigurd
or Siegfried, reappear at Walsingham in Norfolk, Wolsingham in
Northumberland, and Woolsingham in Durham. The Billings at Bil-
linge, Billingham, Billinghoe, Billinghurst, Billingden, Billington, and
many other places. The Thyringas, in Thorington or Thorrington, are
likely to be offshoots of the great Hermunduric race, the Thyringi or
Thoringi, now Thuringians, always neighbours of the Saxons. Kemble,
Saxons in England, i. pp. 59 and 63.

20 See Koch, Historische Grammatik dcr Englischen Sprache, yol. iii.
103.

II. C

another derivative in A.S., which was attached to
verbs in order to form verbal substantives. This
was ung, the German ung. For instance, clcensung,
cleansing; bedcnung, beaconing, beckoning, &c. In
early A.S. these abstract nouns in ung are far more
numerous than those in ing* 1 Ing, however, began
soon to encroach on ung, and at present no trace is
left in English of substantives derived from verbs by
means of ung.

Although, as I said, it might seem more plausible
to look on the modern participle in English as origin-
ally an adjective in ing, such popular phrases as
a-going, a-thinking, point rather to the verbal substan-
tives in ing as the source from which the modern
English participle was derived. ( I am going ' is in
reality a corruption of ' I am a-going,' i. e. ' I am on
going,' and the participle present would thus, by
a very simple process, be traced back to a locative
<;ase of a verbal noun. 32

21 See Koch, Historische Grammatik der Englischen Sprache, vol. iii.
106.

22 Of. Garnett's paper ' On the Formation of Words from Inflected
Cases,' Philological Society, vol. iii. No. 54, 1847. Garnett compares the
Welsh yn sefyll, in standing, Ir. ag seasamh, on standing, the Gaelic ag
scalgadh. The same ingenious and accurate scholar was the first to
propose the theory of the participle being formed from the locative of a
verbal noun.

It would, no doubt, be far simpler if ing, the modern termination
of the participle present in English, could be taken, as it used to be,
as a mere phonetic corruption of the Anglo-Saxon termination ende.
A change from ende to ing, however, is without any analogy in English,
and scholars who wished to maintain it at all hazards, could bring
nothing better in support of it than the spoken dialect of Henneherg, in
which we have been told, over and over again, a similar consonantal
change has taken place.

Now, first of all, changes from Anglo-Saxon to English can no longer
be treated in this manner. They must be explained according to

' A-GOING.' 19

Let us lay it down, therefore, as a fact, that the
place of the participle present may, in the progress

phonetic laws peculiar to the language of England, or to other Low-
German dialects, but not according to those of one out of many High-
German dialects which are supposed to contain some admixture of Low-
German elements.

Secondly, what has to be explained is not only the consonantal change
from endc to ing, which is said to have taken place in Henneberg, but
the co-existence of participles in ende and ing. The two texts of
Layamon vary between singinge and singende, scchinge and seckende;
and while in v. 26,946, text A has ing, and B ende, the case is reversed in
v. 1,383, where A has endc, and B inge. We even meet in text B with
such phrases as ne goinde ne ridinge. (Koch, Grammatik der Englischen
Sprache, i. p. 342. See also the extract from Hector Boece in the 12th
Lecture.) Is this the case in the dialect of Henneberg? Do we really
find there the two forms used by the same speaker, or do we witness a
consonantal change from the old Hennebergian participle in ende to
the modern Hennebergian participle in ing? All that can be gathered
from Reinwald (Henneberg isches Idiotikon] is that ' ing is not scarce,
but on the contrary the regular active participle of our people.' Sup-
posing, therefore, that all was right in Henneberg, we should only
have before us another problem another form that requires explanation
but by no means should we have witnessed a consonantal change from
ende to ing. To explain the English ing by the Hennebergian ing would
be to explain ignotum per ignotius.

But, lastly, are there really any participles in ing to be found in Hen-
neberg? Grimm said so, and, with their usual sequacity, others have
repeated it after him. Now Grimm for once has made a mistake. The
termination of the participle in English is ing, and this ing is attached
to the verbal base, like the termination ung which it has supplanted.
The same applies to the participial termination nde. It is always
attached to the base, not to the infinitive. Hence in Anglo-Saxon, ber-an,
to bear, and ber-e-nde, bearing; in German, lieb-en, to love, lieb-end, loving.
What do we find in Henneberg? Reinwald gives such instances as
schlaffe-ning, schlqf-end, sleep-ing; blinzer-ning, blinzel-nd, blink-ing;
lache-ning, lack-end, laugh-ing ; forchte-ning, furcht-end, fear-ing. And
he adds distinctly : ' ing is not attached to the root, but to the complete
High-German infinitive ; or, if we cannot admit that the people of Hen-
neberg recognised such an infinitive, en or n is inserted between their
popular infinitive and the termination ing!

Thus vanishes this much talked-of Hennebergian participle in ing!
We never find there the suffix ing replacing end in the participle of the
present, but we find a suffix ning. (Tormeling, taumelnd, Reinwald,

c 2

$>0 C A-GOING.'

of dialectic regeneration, be supplied by the locative,
or some other case of a verbal noun.

vol. ii. p. 13, is a misprint for tbrmelning, see vol. i. p. 169, and pref.
p. ix.) We never find the consonantal change from nde to ing ; but if
nlng in Henneberg represented an original nde, we should really have the
curious consonantal change from de to ing.

It has also been objected with much plausibility, that the preposition
a in a-going cannot be arbitrarily dropt before a case dependent on
it, least of all in languages deprived of the power of their original in-
flections. This assertion is bold, but it is not true. If we confine
ourselves to a comparison of Anglo-Saxon with English, and to the
very preposition on, we find in Anglo-Saxon on bcec, at Uie back; in
later English, a back; and at last back. Go back stands for go aback.

Again, we read in Shakespeare :

The spring is near when green geese are a breeding.

(Love's Labour Lost, i. 1.)
There are worthies a coming.

(Ibid. v. 2.)

Like a German clock, still a repairing, ever out of frame.

(Ibid. iii. 1.)

In all these cases a modern English poet would drop the preposition a,
which stands for Anglo-Saxon on. (See Matzner, EngliscJie Grammatik,
i. p. 400.)

Lastly it is objected, and not without ingenuity, that if / am beating
were an abbreviation of I am a beating, it could not govern the accusa-
tive, because no substantive in ing can govern the accusative. This
assertion is again bold, but it is not true. In such phrases as ' after
flogging him, by flogging him, by means of flogging him,' flogging is
surely a verbal substantive in ing, whatever theory we adopt about such
phrases as ' he was flogging him.' Substantives in ing, therefore, cer-
tainly can govern the accusative. And if we can say ' he was repairing,'
instead of ' he was a repairing,' we can likewise say ' he was repairing
the clock,' instead of ' he was a repairing the clock.'

Bopp's theory of the English participle in ing is this : ' In English,'
he writes, ' and frequently in Anglo-Saxon too, ing takes the place of the
German ung in the formation of abstract substantives. As adjectives,
the forms in ing have entirely supplanted in modern English the old
participle in end, while in Middle English forms in end and ing exist
still together. I do not believe, therefore, as Grimm supposes in the
second part of his Grammar (p. 356), that ing in the English participles
is a corruption of end, because e does not easily change to i, i being
more frequently a corruption of e.'

Now let us look to French. On June 3, 1679, the
French Academy decreed that the participles present
should no longer be declined. 23

What was the meaning of this decree? Simply
what may now be found in every French grammar,
namely, that commengant, finissant, are indeclinable
when they have the meaning of the participle present,
active or neuter ; but that they take the terminations
of the masculine and feminine, in the singular and
plural, if they are used as adjectives. 24 But what is
the reason of this rule ? Simply this, that chantant,
if used as a participle, is not the Latin participle
present cantans, but the so-called gerund ; that is to
say, the oblique case of a verbal noun, the Latin

If verbal adjectives in ing existed in Anglo-Saxon, Bopp's theory
would certainly remove all difficulties. We should then have to admit
two forms, substantives in ung and adjectives in ing, converging into
the modern English participle in ing. But no such adjectives exist in
Anglo-Saxon, and I do not see how to explain their sudden appearance
except by adopting the theory of the late Mr. Garnett.

By means of such phrases as ' he was flogging,' instead of ' he was a
flogging' forms in ing without a preposition entered into a new gram-
matical category. They were felt as participles, and were allowed to
enjoy all the privileges of the forms ending in ende, which they gradu-
ally supplanted. The same thing has happened in French. To a
Frenchman aimant is much the same as what amans was to a Roman ;
and it is only by analysing such constructions as ' une fern/me aimant
ses amants' that we discover aimant as the representative of the Latin
Gerund amando, and not of the Latin participle amans.

One more word about Henneberg ! In the dialect of Henneberg the
substantive termination ung is pronounced ing. We find Ubing, Ver-
w&sseling, Verwonnering, instead of Ubung, Verwechselung, Verwunder-
ung. This is the only light which the Thuringian dialect throws on the
change of Anglo-Saxon ung into English ing, though, as Grimm re-
marked, the suffix ing extends far beyond Thuringia.

23 Cf. Egger, Notions elementaires de Grammaire comparee: Paris,
1856, p. 197. 'La regie est faite. On ne declinera plus les participes
presents.' B. Jullien, Cours superieur, i. p. 186.

24 Diez, Vergleichende Grammatik der Eomanischen Sprachen, ii. p. 1 14.

22 ' A-GOING.'

cantando corresponding to the English a-singing, while
the real Latin participle present, cantans, is used in
the Romance languages as an adjective, and takes
the feminine termination for instance, c une femme
souffrante,' &c.

Here, then, we see again that in analytical lan-
guages the idea conveyed by the participle present
can be expressed by the oblique case of a verbal noun.

Let us now proceed to a more distant, yet to a
cognate language, the Bengali. We there 25 find that
the so-called infinitive is formed by te, which te is
at the same time the termination of the locative sin-
gular. Hence the present, Karite&i, I am doing,
and the imperfect, Karite&ilam, I was doing, are
mere compounds of aH, I am, a&ilam, I was, with
what may be called a participle present, but what is
in reality a verbal noun in the locative. Karitefci,
I do, means ' I am on doing,' or ' I am a-doing.'

Now the question arises, Does this perfectly in-
telligible method of forming the participle from the
oblique case of a verbal noun, and of forming the
present indicative by compounding this verbal noun
with the auxiliary verb ( to be,' supply us with a test
that may be safely applied to the analysis of lan-
guages which decidedly belong to a different family
of speech ? Let us take the Bask, which is certainly
neither Aryan nor Semitic, and which has thrown
out a greater abundance of verbal forms than almost
any known language. 26 Here the present is formed

25 M. M.'s Essay on the Relation of the Bengali to the Aryan and Ab-
original Languages of India. Report of the British Association for the
Advancement of Science, 1847, pp. 344-45. Cf. Grarnett, 1. c. p. 29.

26 See Inchauspe's Le Verbe basque, published by Prince Louis-Lucien
Bonaparte. Bayonne, 1858.

by what is called a participle, followed by an auxiliary
verb. This participle, however, is formed by the
suffix an, and the same suffix is used to form the
locative case of nouns. For instance, mendia, the
mountain ; mendiaz, from the mountain ; mendian, in
the mountain; mendico, for the sake of the moun-
tain. In like manner, etchean, in the house : ohean,
in the bed. If, then, we examine the verb,

erorten niz, I fall ;

hiz, thou fallest ;
da, he falls ;

we see again in erorten a locative, or, as it is called, a
positive case of the verbal substantive erorta, the root
of which would be eror, falling ; 27 so that the indica-
tive present of the Bask verb does not mean either /
fall, or I am falling, but was intended originally for
' I (am) in the act of falling, 5 or, to return to the point
from whence we started, JT am a-falling. The a in
a-f ailing stands for an original on. Thus asleep is mi
sleep, aright is onrihte, away is onweg, aback is onbcec,
again is ongen (Ger. entgegen), among is ongemang, &c.

This must suffice as an illustration of the principles
on which the Science of Language rests, viz. that
what is real in modern formations must be admitted
as probable, or at least as possible, in more ancient
formations, and that what has been found to be true
on a small scale may be true on a larger scale.

But the same illustration may also serve as a
warning. There is much in the science of language
to tempt us to overstep the legitimate limits of induc-
tive reasoning. We may infer from the known to the

97 Cf. Dissertation critique et apologetiqiie sur la Langue basque (par
1'abbe 1 Darrigol). Bayonne, p. 102.

24 GENERALISATION.

unknown in language tentatively, "but not positively.
It does not follow, even within so small a sphere as
the Aryan family of speech, that what is possible in
French is possible in Latin, that what explains Ben-
gali will explain Sanskrit; nay, the similarity be-
tween some of the Aryan languages and the Bask in
the formation of their participles should be consi-
dered as an entirely exceptional case. Mr. Garnett,
however, after establishing the principle that the
participle present may be expressed by the locative
of a verbal noun, endeavours in his excellent paper
to show that the original Indo-European participle,
the Latin amans, the Greek typton, the Sanskrit
bodhat, were formed on the same principle : that
they are all inflected cases of a verbal noun. In
this, I believe, he has failed, 28 as many have failed
before and after him, by imagining that what has
been found to be true in one portion of the vast
kingdom of speech must be equally true in all. This
is not so, and cannot be so. Language, though its
growth is governed by intelligible principles through-
out, was not so uniform in its progress as to repeat
exactly the same phenomena at every stage of its
life. As the geologist looks for different character-
istics when he has to deal with London clay, with
Oxford clay, or with old red sandstone, the student
of language, too, must be prepared for different for-
mations, even though he confines himself to one
stage in the history of language, the inflectional.
And if he steps beyond this, the most modern stage,

28 He takes the Sanskrit dravat as a possible ablative, likewise
*as-at, and tan- vat (sic). It would be impossible to form ablatives
in at (as) from verbal bases raised by the vikarawas of the special
tenses, nor would the ablative be so appropriate a case as the locative,
for taking the place of a verbal adjective.

DIFFERENT TREATMENT OF DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 25

then to apply indiscriminately to the lower stages of
human speech, to the agglutinative and radical, the
same tests which have proved successful in the in-
flectional, would be like ignoring the difference be-
tween aqueous, igneous, and metamorphic rocks.
There are scholars who, as it would seem, are incap-
able of appreciating more than one kind of evidence.
No doubt the evidence on which the relationship of
French and Italian, of Greek and Latin, of Lithuanian
and Sanskrit, of Hebrew and Arabic, has been esta-
blished, is the most satisfactory ; but such evidence
is possible only in inflectional languages that have
passed their period of growth, and have entered into
the stage of phonetic decay. To call for the same
evidence in support of the homogeneousness of the
Turanian languages, is to call for evidence which,
from the nature of the case, it is impossible to supply.
As well might the geologist look for fossils in granite !
The Turanian languages allow of no grammatical
petrifactions like those on which the relationship of
the Aryan and Semitic families is chiefly founded. If
they did, they would cease to be what they are ; they
would be inflectional, not agglutinative.

If languages were all of one and the same texture,
they might be unravelled, no doubt, with the same
tools. But as they are not and this is admitted by
all it is surely mere waste of valuable time to test
the relationship of Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic,
Samoyedic, and Finnic dialects by the same criteria
on which the common descent of Greek and Latin
is established ; or to try to discover Sanskrit in the
Malay dialects, or Greek in the idioms of the Cau-
casian mountaineers. The whole crust of the earth
is not made of lias, swarming with Ammonites and

PHONETIC LAWS.

Plesiosauri, nor is all language made of Sanskrit,
teeming with Supines and Paulo-pluperfects. Up to-
a certain point the method by which so great results
have been achieved in classifying the Aryan languages
may be applicable to other clusters of speech. Pho-
netic laws are always useful, but they are not the
only tools which the student of language must learn
to handle. If we compare the extreme members of
the Polynesian dialects, we find but little agreement
in what may be called their grammar, and many of
their words seem totally distinct. But if we compare
their numerals we clearly see that these are common
property ; we perceive similarity, though at the same
time great diversity : 29

Fakaafoan

tasi

lua, ua

tolu

lima

Samoan

tasi

lua

tolu

lima

Tongan

taha

tolu

nima

New Zealand

tahi

rua

torn

rima

Karotongan

tai

rua

toru

rima

Mangarevan

tai

rua

toru

rima

Paumotuan

rari

ite

neti

ope

neka

Tahitian

tahi

rua, piti

toru

ha, maha

rima, pae

Hawaiian

tahi

lua

tolu

ha, tauna

lima

Nukuhivan

tahi

tou

ha or fa

ima

Fakaafoan

ono

fitu

valu

iva

fulu, nafulu

Samoan

ono

fitu

valu

iva

sefulu, nafulfc

Tongan

ono

fitu

valu

hiva

honofulu

New Zealand

ono

witu

waru

iwa

nahuru

Rarotongan

ono

itu

varu

ira

nauru

Mangarevan

ono

itu

varu

iva

nauru

Paumotuan

hene

hito

hawa

nipa

horihori

Tahitian

ono, fene

hitu

varu vau

iva

ahuru

Hawaiian

ono

hitu

valu

iwa

umi

Nukuhivan

ono

hitu, fitu

vau

iva

onohuu

29 Hale, United States Exploring Expedition, vol. vii. p. 246.

PHONETIC LAWS. 27

We begin to note the phonetic changes that have
taken place in one and the same numeral, as pro-
nounced by different islanders : we thus arrive at
phonetic laws, and these, in their turn, remove the
apparent dissimilarity in other words which at first
seemed totally irreconcilable. Let those who are
inclined to speak disparagingly of the strict obser-
vance of phonetic rules in tracing the history of
Aryan words, and who consider it mere pedantry to
be restrained by Grimm's Law from identifying such
words as Latin euro, and care, Greek kalein and to
call, Latin peto and to bid, Latin corvus and crow, look
to the progress that has been made by African and
Polynesian philologists in checking the wild spirit of
etymology even where they have to deal with dialects
never reduced as yet to a fixed standard by the in-
fluence of a national literature, never written down at
all, and never analysed before by grammatical science.
The whole of the first volume of Dr. Bleek's ' Com-
parative Grammar of the South African Languages '
treats of Phonology, of the vowels and consonants
peculiar to each dialect, and of the changes to which
each letter is liable in its passage from one dialect
into another (see page 82, seq.). And Mr. Hale, in
the seventh volume of the ' United States Exploring
Expedition ' (p. 232), has not only given a table of the
regular changes which words common to the nume-
rous Polynesian languages undergo, but he has like-
wise noted those permutations which take place occa-
sionally only. On the strength of these phonetic
laws once established, words which have hardly one
single letter in common have been traced back with
perfect certainty to one and the same source.

28 DIALECTIC REGENERATION.

But mere phonetic decay will not account for the
differences between the Polynesian dialects, and un-
less we admit the process of dialectic regeneration to
a much greater extent than we should be justified in
doing in the Aryan and Semitic families, our task of
reconciliation would become hopeless. Will it be be-
lieved that since the time of Cook five of the ten
simple numerals in the language of Tahiti have been
thrown off and replaced by new ones ? This is, never-
theless, the fact.

Two was rua ; it is now piti.
Four was ha ; it is now maka.
Five was rima ; it is now pae.
Six was ono; it is now fene.
Eight was varu ; it is now vau. 30

It is clear that if a radical or monosyllabic language,
like Chinese, begins to change and to break out in
independent dialects, the results must be very different
from those which we observe in Latin as split up into
the Romance dialects. In the Romance dialects,
however violent the changes which made Portuguese
words to differ from French, there always remain a
few fibres by which they hang together. It might
be diifieult to recognise the French plier, to fold, to
turn, in the Portuguese chegar, to arrive, yet we trace
plier back to plicare, and chegar to the Spanish llegar,
the old Spanish plegar, the Latin plicare, 31 here used
in the sense of plying or turning towards a place,
arriving at a place. But when we have to deal with
dialects of Chinese, everything that could possibly
hold them together seems hopelessly gone. The

30 United States Exploring Expedition under the command of Charles
WdJces. ' Ethnography and Philology,' by H. Hale, vol. vii. p. 289.

31 Diez, Lexicon, s. v. llegar ; Grammar, i. p. 379.

DIALECTIC REGENEEATION. 2D

language now spoken in Cochin-China is a dialect of
Chinese, at least as much as Norman-French was a
dialect of French, though spoken by Saxons at a
Norman court. There was a native language of
Cochin-China, the Annamitic, 32 which forms, as it
were, the Saxon of that country on which the Chi-
nese, like the Norman, was grafted. This engrafted
Chinese, then, is a dialect of the Chinese which is
spoken in China, and it is most nearly related to the
spoken dialect of Canton. 33 Yet few Chinese scholars
would recognise Chinese in the language of Cochin-
China. It is, for instance, one of the most charac-
teristic features of the literary Chinese, the dialect of
Nankin, or the idiom of the Mandarins, that every
syllable ends in a vowel, either pure or nasal. 34 In
Cochin-Chinese, on the contrary, we find words
ending in k, t, p. Thus ten is thap, at Canton chap,
instead of the Chinese chi. 35 No wonder that the

32 On the native residuum in Cochin-Chinese, see Le"on de Kosny,
Tableau de la Cochinchine, p. 138.

33 In the island of Hai-nan there is a distinct approach to the form
that Chinese words assume in the language of Annam. Edkins, Man-
darin Grammar, p. 87.

31 Endlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, p. 53, 78, 96.
35 Leon de Rosny, Tableau de la Cochinchine, p. 295. He gives a*
illustrations :

Annamique.

Cantonnais.

Peking.

dix

thap

chap

Chi

pouvoir

dak

tak

sang

houet

hoeet

hioue

foret

lam

lin.

He likewise mentions double consonants in the Chinese as spoken in
Cochin-China, namely, bl, dy, ml, ty, tr ; also f, r, s. As final conso-
nants he gives ch, k, m, n, ng, p, t (p. 296). The Rev. J. Edkins, in
his Mandarin Grammar, shows that in Chinese ancient and modern
sounds differ, just as the dialects in modern times of two places distant
from each other: p. 268 283.

30 DIALECTIC REGENERATION.

early missionaries described the Amiamitic as totally
distinct from Chinese. One of them says : f When I
arrived in Cochin-China, and heard the natives speak,
particularly the women, I thought I heard the twit-
tering of birds, and I gave up all hope of ever
learning it. All words are monosyllabic, and people
distinguish their significations only by means of
different accents in pronouncing them. The same
syllable, for instance, dai, signifies twenty-three
entirely different things, according to the difference
of accent, so that people never speak without sing-
ing.' 36 This description, though somewhat exag-
gerated, is correct in the main, there being six or
eight musical accents or modulations in this as in.
other monosyllabic tongues, by which the different
meanings of one and the same monosyllabic root are
kept distinct. These accents form an element of lan-
guage which we have lost, but which was most impor-
tant during the primitive stages of human speech. 37
The Chinese language commands no more than
about 450 distinct sounds, and with them it expresses
between 40,000 and 50,000 words or meanings. 38
These meanings are now kept distinct by means of
composition, as in other languages by derivation, but
in the radical stage words with more than twenty
significations would have bewildered the hearer en-
tirely, without some hints to indicate their actual
intention. Such hints were given by different into-
nations. We have something left of this faculty in
the tone of our sentences. We distinguish an interro-

36 Lon de Eosny, 1. c. p. 301.

87 See Beaulieu, Memoire sur I" Origine de la Musique, 1863.

38 Lectures on the Science of Language, First Series, p. 307.

DIALECTIC BEGENERATION. 31

gative from, a positive sentence by the raising of our
voice. (Gone? Gone.) We pronounce Yea very
differently when we mean perhaps (Yes, this may be
true), or of course (Yes, I know it), or realty (Yes?
is it true ?) or truly (Yes, I will) . But in Chinese, in
Annamitic (and likewise in Siamese and Burmese),
these modulations have a much wider application.
Thus in Annamitic, ~ba pronounced with the grave
accent means a lady, an ancestor ; pronounced with
the sharp accent it means the favourite of a prince ;
pronounced with the semigrave accent, it means what
has been thrown away ; pronounced with the grave
circumflex, it means what is left of a fruit after it
has been squeezed out ; pronounced with no accent,
it means three ; pronounced with the ascending
or interrogative accent, it means a box on the ear.

Thus

Ba, M, U, bi,

is said to mean, if properly pronounced, ' Three
ladies gave a box on the ear to the favourite of the
prince.' How much these accents must be exposed
to fluctuations in different dialects is easy to per-
ceive. Though they are fixed by grammatical rules,
and though their neglect causes the most absurd
mistakes, they were clearly in the beginning the
mere expression of individual feeling, and therefore
liable to much greater dialectic variation than gram-
matical forms, properly so called. But let us take
what we might call grammatical forms in Chinese,
in order to see how differently they too fare in dia-
lectic dispersion, as compared with the terminations
of inflectional languages. Though the grammatical
organisation of Latin is well-nigh used up in French,

32 DIALECTIC REGENERATION.

we still see in the s of the plural a remnant of the
Latin paradigm. We can trace the one back to the
other. But in Chinese, where the plural is formed
by the addition of some word meaning e multitude,
heap, flock, class,' what trace of original relationship
remains when one dialect uses one, another another
word ? The plural in Cochin- Chinese is formed by
placing fo before the substantive. This fo means
many, or a certain number. It may exist in Chinese,
but it is certainly not used there to form the plural.
Another word employed for forming plurals is nung,
several, and this again is wanting in Chinese. It
fortunately happens, however, that a few words ex-
pressive of plurality have been preserved both in
Chinese and Cochin-Chinese ; as, for instance, choung,
clearly the Chinese tchoung meaning conflux, vul-
gus, all, and used as an exponent of the plural ; and
kale, which has been identified with the Chinese Jco.
The last identification may seem doubtful ; and if we
suppose that choung, too, had been given up in
Cochin- Chinese as a term of plurality, how would
the tests which we apply for discovering the original
identity of the Aryan languages have helped us in
determining the real and close relationship between
Chinese and Cochin-Chinese?

The present indicative is formed in Cochin-Chinese
by simply putting the personal pronoun before the
root. Thus

Toy men, I love.

Mai men, thou lovest.

No men, he loves.

89 Endlicherj Chinesische GrammatiJc, s. 152.

DIALECTIC REGENERATION. 33

The past tense is formed by the addition of da,
which means 'already.' Thus

Toy da men. I loved.

Mai da men, thou lovedst.

No da men, he loved.

The future is formed by the addition of che.
Thus-
Toy che men, I shall love
Mai che men, thou wilt love.
No che men, he will love.

Now, have we any right, however convinced we
may be of the close relationship between Chinese and
Cochin-Chinese, to expect the same forms in the lan-
guage of the Mandarins ? Not at all. The pronoun
of the first person in Cochin-Chinese is not a pro-
noun, but means ' servant.' ' I love ' is expressed in
that civil language by f servant loves.' 40 In Chinese
the same polite phraseology is constantly observed, 41
but the words used are not the same, and do not
include toy, servant. Instead of ngo, I, the Chinese
would use Jcua $in, man of little virtue ; tern, subject ;
iu, blockhead. 42 Nothing can be more polite ; but

40 Leon de Kosny, I. c. 302. 41 Endlicher, 206.

42 I owe the following note to the kindness of M. Stanislas Julien :

' La maniere dont le mot ego s'exprime dans les differentes conditions
est fort curieuse.

' Un homme ordinaire dira par humilite : yu, le stupide ; ti, le frere
cadet ; siao-ti, le petit ; nou-thsdi, 1'esclave.

' L'empereur dit : siao-tseu, parvus filius ; siao-eul, parvus infans. Un
prince dit : koua-jin, exiguse virtutis homo ; Jcou, 1'orphelin ; pou-kou, non
bonus.

' Un magistral superieur (un prefet) dit : pen-fou, ma ville dii premier
II. D

34 DIALECTIC REGENERATION.

we cannot expect that different nations should hit on
exactly the same polite speeches, though they may
agree in the common sense of grammar. The past
tense is indicated in Chinese by particles meaning
* already ' or c formerly,' but we do not find among
them the Annamitic da. The same applies to the
future. The system is throughout the same, but the
materials are different. Shall we say, therefore, that
these languages cannot be proved to be related,
because they do not display the same criteria of re-
lationship as French and English, Latin and Greek,
Celtic and Sanskrit ?

I tried in one of my former lectures to explain
some of the causes which in nomadic dialects pro-
duce a much more rapid shedding of words than in
literary languages, and I have since received ample
evidence to confirm the views which I then ex-
pressed. I was not aware at that time how clearly
Schelling, in his Einleitung in die Philosophic der
Mythologie (vol. i. p. 114), had perceived the necessity

ordre. Un magistrat in&rieur (sous-pr6fet) : hia-kouan, le magistrat
infime. Pen-hieu, ma sous-prefecture; pi-tchi, la basse charge.

' Un Tartare parlant a 1'empereur : nou-thsai, 1'esclave.

' Un religieux bouddhiste : pin-seng, le pauvre religieux ; siao-senff, lo
petit religieux.

1 Une femme parlant a son mari : nou-nou, esclave-esclave ; nou-kia t
esclave-maison ; tsien-tsie, la m^prisable concubine.

' Un domestique : do, le domestique.

'Un fils parlant a son pere : pou-siao, pas semblable (c'est-a-dire
degeriere).

' Un vieillard dit: lao-fon, le vieil homme ; lao-Tian, le vieux Chinois ;
lao-tchue (vieux-stupide) ; lao-hieou, vieux-pourri.

'Un religieux: tao-sse ; pin-too, le pauvre tao; siao-tao, le petit tao.

'Une religieuse bouddhiste: pin-ni, la pauvre religieuse; siao-ni, la
petite religieuse.

'Une vieille femme: lao-chin, le vieux corps; lao-niang, la vieille
dame, etc. 1

DIALECTIC REGENERATION. 35

of change and dialectic variety in all nomadic lan-
guages. Speaking of the languages of Southern
America, as described by Azara in his voyages
(vol. ii.), he says :

Among that population the Guarani is the only language
which is understood over a large area, and even this point
requires more careful examination. Apart from this, as Azara
remarks (and he has not only passed through these countries,
but lived in them for years), the language changes from clan
to clan, from cottage to cottage, so that often the members of
one and the same family only understand each other. Nay,
the very power of speech seems sometimes to become extinct.
Their voice is never strong or sonorous ; they only speak low,
never loud, even when they are being killed. They hardly
move their lips while speaking, and there is no expression in
their face to invite attention. They evidently dislike speaking,
and if they see a friend a hundred steps off, they rather run
after him than call him. Language, therefore, here hovers on
the very edge, and one step more would entirely put an end
to it.

My excellent friend, the Bishop of Melanesia, of
whom it is difficult to say whether we should admire
him most as a missionary, or as a scholar, or as a
bold mariner, meets in every small island with a new
language, which none but a scholar could trace back
to the Melanesian type. ' What an indication,' he
writes, ' of the jealousy and suspicion of their lives,
the extraordinary multiplicity of these languages
affords ! In each generation, for aught I know, they
diverge more and more ; provincialisms and local
words, &c., perpetually introduce new causes for
perplexity.'

The northern peninsula of Celebes, of which the

36 DIALECTIC EEGENEEATION.

chief town is Menado, is inhabited by a race quite
distinct from the other people of the island. They
are Malays, but have something of the Tartar and
something of the European in their physiognomy.
They agree best with some of the inhabitants of the
Philippines ; and Mr. Wallace, a most accurate ob-
server, supposes that they have come from those
islands originally by way of the Siaou and Sanguir
islands, which are inhabited by an allied race. Their
languages show this affinity, differing very much
from all those of the rest of Celebes. A proof, how-
ever, of the antiquity of this immigration, and of
the low state of civilisation in which they must have
existed for long periods, is to be seen in the variety
of their languages. In a district about one hundred
miles long by thirty miles wide, not less than ten
distinct languages are spoken. Some of them are
confined to single villages, others to groups of three
or four ; and though of course they have a certain
family resemblance, they are yet so distinct as to be
mutually unintelligible. 43

I shall mention to-day but one new, though insig-
nificant cause of change in the Polynesian languages,
in order to show that it is difficult to over-estimate
the multifarious influences which are at work in
nomadic dialects, constantly changing their aspect
and multiplying their number ; and in order to con-
vince even the most incredulous how little we know
of all the secret springs of language if we confine our
researches to a comparison of the classical tongues
of India, Greece, Italy, and Germany.

43 A. R Wallace, ' Man in the Malay Archipelago,' Transactions of the
Ethnological Society, iii. p. 206.

TE PI. 37

The Tahitians, 44 besides their metaphorical ex-
pressions, have another and a more singular mode of
displaying their reverence towards their king, by a
custom which they term Te pi. They cease to em-
ploy, in the common language, those words which
form a part or the whole of the sovereign's name, or
that of one of his near relatives, and invent new
terms to supply their place. As all names in Poly-
nesian are significant, and as a chief usually has
several, it will be seen that this custom must produce
a considerable change in the language. It is true
that this change is only temporary, as at the death
of the king or chief the new word is dropt, and
the original term resumed. But it is hardly to be
supposed that after one or two generations the old
words should still be remembered and be reinstated.
Anyhow, it is a fact, that the missionaries, by em-
ploying many of the new terms, give them a per-
manency which will defy the ceremonial loyalty of
the natives. Vancouver observes (Voyage, vol. i.
p. 135) that at the accession of Otu, which took place
between the visit of Cook and his own, no less than
forty or fifty of the most common words, which occur
in conversation, had been entirely changed. It is
not necessary that all the simple words which go to
make up a compound name should be changed. The
alteration of one is esteemed sufficient. Thus in
Po-mare, signifying ' the night (po) of coughing
(mare),' only the first word, po, has been dropped, mi
being used in its place. So in Ai-mata (eye-eater),
the name of the present queen, the ai (eat) has been
altered to amu, and the mata (eye) retained. In

44 Hale, I. c. p 288.

38 TE PI.

Te-arii-na-vaha-roa (the chief with the large mouth),
roa alone has been changed to maoro. It is the
same as if, with the accession of Queen Victoria,
either the word victory had been tabooed altogether,
or only part of it, for instance tori, so as to make it
high treason to speak during her reign of Tories,
this word being always supplied by another ; such,
for instance, as Liberal-Conservative. The object
was clearly to guard against the name of the sove-
reign being ever used, even by accident, in ordinary
conversation, and this object is attained by tabooing
even one portion of his name.

But this alteration (as Mr. Hale continues) affects not
only the words themselves, but syllables of similar sound in
other words. Thus the name of one of the kings being Tu,
not only was this word, which means ' to stand,' changed to
tia, but in the word fetu, star, the last syllable, though having
no connection except in sound, with the word tu, underwent
the same alteration star being now fetia; tut, to strike,
became tiai; and tu pa pan, a corpse, tia pa pan. So ha,
four, having been changed to maha, the word aha, split, has
been altered to amaha, and murihd, the name of a month, to
muridha. When the word ai was changed to amu, maraai,
the name of a certain wind (in Rarotongan, maranai), became
maraamu.

The mode of alteration, or the manner of forming new
terms, seems to be arbitrary. In many cases, the substitutes
are made by changing or dropping some letter or letters of
the original word, as hopoi for hapai, to carry in the arms ;
ene for hono, to mend ; au for tau, fit ; hio for tio, to look ;
ea for ara, path ; van for varu, eight ; vea for vera, not, &c.
In other cases, the word substituted is one which had before
a meaning nearly related to that of the term disused as tia,
straight, upright, is used instead of tu, to stand ; pae, part,

TE PI. 89

division, instead of rima, five ; piti, together, has replacad rua,
two, &c. In some cases, the meaning or origin of the new
word is unknown, and it may be a mere invention as ofai
for ohatu, stone ; pape, for vai, water ; poke for mate, dead,
&c. Some have been adopted from the neighbouring Pau-
motuan, as rui, night, from ruki, dark ; fene, six, from hene ;
avae, moon, from kawahe.

It is evident that but for the rule by which the old terms
are revived on the death of the person in whose name they
entered, the language might, in a few centuries, have been
completely changed, not, indeed, in its grammar, but in its
vocabulary.

It might, no doubt, be said that the Te pi is a mere
accident, a fancy peculiar to a fanciful race, but far
too unimportant to claim any consideration from the
philosophical student of language. I confess that at
first it appeared to myself in the same light, but my
attention was lately drawn to the fact, that the same
peculiarity, or at least something very like it, exists
in the Kafir languages. ' The Kafir women,' as we
are told by the Rev. J. W. Appleyard, in his excellent
work on the Kafir language, 45 'have many words
peculiar to themselves. This arises from a national

45 The Kafir Language, comprising a sketch of its history ; which in-
cludes a general classification of South African dialects, ethnographical
and geographical ; remarks upon its nature ; and a grammar. By the
Rev. J. W. Appleyard, Wesleyan missionary in British Kaffraria. King
"William's Town : printed for the Wesleyan Missionary Society ; sold by
Godlonton and White, Graham's Town, Cape of Good Hope, and by
John Mason, 66, Paternoster Kow, London. 1850. Appleyard's remarks
on Ukuhlonipa were pointed out to me by the Kev. F. W. Farrar, the
author of an excellent work on the Origin of Language.

See also Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 147, and the Rev. J.
L. Dohne, Zulu-Kafir Dictionary, Cape Town, 1857, s.v. hlonipa, to be
bashful, to keep at a distance through timidity, to shun approach, to
avoid mentioning one's name, to be respectful. On Ukuhlonipa in
Tasmania, see Bonwick, Daily Life in Tasmania, p. 146.

40 UKUHLONIPA.

custom, called Ukulilonipa, which forbids their pro-
nouncing any word which may happen to contain a
sound similar to one in the names of their nearest
male relations. 5 It is perfectly true that the words
substituted are at first no more than family idioms -
nay, that they would be confined to the gossip of
women, and not enter into the conversation of men.
But the influence of women on the language of each
generation is much greater than that of men. We
very properly call our language in Germany our
mother-tongue, Unsere Muttersprache, for it is from
our mothers that we learn it, with all its peculiarities,
faults, idioms, accents. Cicero, in his ' Brutus ' (c.
58), said: 'It makes a great difference whom we
hear at home every day, and with whom we speak as
boys, and how our fathers, our tutors, and our
mothers speak. We read the letters of Cornelia, the
mother of the Gracchi, and it is clear from them that
her sons were brought up not in the lap, but, so to
say, in the very breath and speech of their mother.'
And again (Ehet. iii. 12), when speaking of his
mother-in-law, Crassus said, 'When I hear Laelia
(for women keep old fashions more readily, because,
as they do not hear the conversation of many people,
they will always retain what they learned at first) ;
but when I hear her, it is as if I were listening to
Plautus and Nsevius. 5

But this is not all. Dante ascribed the first at-
tempts at using the vulgar tongue in Italy for literary
compositions to the silent influence of ladies who did
not understand the Latin language. Now this vulgar
Italian, before it became the literary language of
Italy, held very much the same position there as the

UKUHLONIPA. 41

so-called Prakrit dialects in India; and these Prakrit
dialects first assumed a literary position in the San-
skrit plays where female characters, both high and
low, are introduced as speaking Prakrit, instead of
the Sanskrit employed by kings, noblemen, and
priests. Here, then, we have the language of women,
or, if not of women exclusively, at all events of women
and domestic servants, gradually entering into the
literary idiom, and in later times even supplanting it
altogether ; for it is from the Prakrit, and not from
the literary Sanskrit, that the modern vernaculars
of India branched off in course of time. Nor is the
simultaneous existence of two such representatives of
one and the same language as Sanskrit and Prakrit
confined to India. On the contrary, it has been re-
marked that several languages divide themselves from
the first into two great branches ; one showing a
more manly, the other a more feminine character ;
one richer in consonants, the other richer in vowels ;
one more tenacious of the original grammatical ter-
minations, the other more inclined to slur over these
terminations, and to simplify grammar by the use of
circumlocutions. Thus we have Greek in its two
dialects, the JEolic and the Ionic, with their sub-
divisions, the Doric and Attic. In German we find
the High and the Low German; in Celtic, the Gadhelic
and Cymric, as in India the Sanskrit and Prakrit;
and it is by no means an unlikely explanation, that,
as Grimm suggested in the case of High and Low
German, so likewise in the other Aryan languages,
the stern and strict dialects, the Sanskrit, the Molic,
the Gadhelic, represent the idiom of the fathers and
brothers, used at public assemblies ; while the soft

42 TJKUHLONIPA.

and simpler dialects, the Prakrit, the Ionic, and
Cymric, sprang originally from the domestic idiom of
mothers, sisters, and servants at home.

But whether the influence of the language of women
be admitted on this large scale or not, certain it is,
that through a thousand smaller channels their idioms
everywhere find admission into the domestic conver-
sation of the whole family, and into the public speeches
of their assemblies. The greater the ascendancy of
the female element in society, the greater the influence
of their language on the language of a family or a
clan, a village or a town. The cases, however, that
are mentioned of women speaking a totally different
language from the men, cannot be used in confirmation
of this view. The Caribe women, for instance, in the
Antille Islands, 46 spoke a language different from that
of their husbands, because the Oaribes had killed the
whole male population of the Arawakes and married
their women ; and something similar seems to have
taken place among some of the tribes of Greenland. 47
Yet even these isolated cases show how, among savage
races, in a primitive state of society, language may be
influenced by what we should call purely accidental
causes.

But to return to the Kafir language, we find in it
clear traces that what may have been originally a mere
feminine peculiarity the result, if you like, of the
bashfulness of the Kafir ladies extended its influence.
For, in the same way as the women eschew words
which contain a sound similar to the names of their
nearest male relatives, the men also of certain Kafir

4fi Hervas, Catalogo, i. p. 212. 7 Ibid. i. p. 369.

UKUHLONIPA. 48

tribes feel a prejudice against employing a word that
is similar in sound to the name of one of their former
chiefs. Thus, the Arnambalu do not use ilanga, the
general word for sun, because their first chief's name
was Ulanga, but employ isota instead. For a similar
reason, the Amagqunukwebi substitute immela for
isitshetshe, the general term for knife. 48

Here, then, we may perceive two things : first, the
influence which a mere whim, if it once becomes
stereotyped, may exercise on the whole character of
a language (for we must remember that as every
woman had her own male relations, and every tribe
its own ancestors, a large number of words must
constantly have been tabooed and supplanted in these
African and Polynesian dialects) ; secondly, the cu-
rious coincidence that two great branches of speech,
the Kafir and the Polynesian, should share in common
what at first sight would seem a merely accidental
idiosyncrasy, a thing that might have been thought
of once, but never again. It is perfectly true that
such principles as the Te pi and the Ulcuhlonipa could
never become powerful agents in the literary languages
of civilised nations, and that we must not look for
traces of their influence either in Sanskrit, Greek, or
Latin, as known to us. 49 But it is for that very reason
that the study of what I call Nomad languages, as
distinguished from State languages, becomes so in-
structive. We see in them what we can no longer
expect to see even in the most ancient Sanskrit or
Hebrew. We watch the childhood of language with
all its childish freaks, and we learn at least this one

- 48 Appleyard, L c. p. 70.
49 See Loredan Larchey, Les Excentricites du Langage: Paris, 1865.

44 DIVISION OP LECTURES.

lesson, that there often is more in real language than
is dreamt of in our philosophy.

One more testimony in support of these views.
Mr. H. W. Bates, in his latest work, ( The Naturalist
on the Amazons,' writes :

But language is not a sure guide in the filiation of Brazi-
lian tribes, seven or eight languages being sometimes spoken
on the same river within a distance of 200 or 300 miles.
There are certain peculiarities in Indian habits which lead to
a quick corruption of language and segregation of dialects.
When Indians, men or women, are conversing amongst them-
selves, they seem to take pleasure in inventing new modes of
pronunciation, or in distorting words. It is amusing to notice
how the whole party will laugh when the wit of the circle
perpetrates a new slang term, and these new words are very
often retained. I have noticed this during long voyages made
with Indian crews. When such alterations occur amongst a
family or horde, which often live many years without com-
munication with the rest of their tribe, the local corruption
of language becomes perpetuated. Single hordes belonging
to the same tribe, and inhabiting the banks of the same river,
thus become, in the course of many years' isolation, unin-
telligible to other hordes, as happens with the Collinas on the
Juriia. I think it, therefore, very probable that the dispo-
sition to invent new words and new, modes of pronunciation,
added to the small population and habits of isolation of hordes
and tribes, are the causes of the wonderful diversity of lan-
guages in South America. (Vol. i. pp. 329-30.)

As I intend to limit the present course of lectures
chiefly to Greek and Latin, with its Romance offshoots ;
English, with its Continental kith and kin ; and
the much-abused, though indispensable, Sanskrit, I
thought it necessary thus from the beginning to
guard against the misapprehension that the study of

DIVISION OF LECTURES. 45

Sanskrit and its cognate dialects could supply us with
all that is necessary for the Science of Language. It
can do so as little as an exploration of the tertiary
epoch could tell us all about the stratification of the
earth. But, nevertheless, it can tell us a great deal.
By displaying the minute laws that regulate the
changes of each consonant, each vowel, each accent,
it disciplines the student, and teaches him respect for
every jot and tittle in any, even the most barbarous,
dialect he may hereafter have to analyse. By help-
ing us to an understanding of that language in which
we think, and of others most near and dear to us, it
makes us perceive the great importance which the
Science of Language lias for the Science of the Mind.
Nay, it shows that the two are inseparable, and that
without a proper analysis of human language we shall
never arrive at a true knowledge of the human mind.
I quote from Leibniz : ' I believe truly,' he says, ' that
languages are the best mirror of the human mind, and
that an exact analysis of the signification of words
would make us better acquainted than anything else
with the operations of the understanding.'

I propose to divide my lectures into two parts. I
shall first treat of what may be called the body or the
outside of language, the sounds in which language is
clothed, whether we call them letters, syllables, or
words ; describing their origin, their formation, and
the laws which determine their growth and decay.
In this part we shall have to deal with some of the
more important principles of Etymology.

In the second part I mean to investigate what may
be called the soul or the inside of language ; examin-
ing the first conceptions that claimed utterance, their

46 DIVISION OF LECTURES.

combinations and ramifications, their growth, their
decay, and their resuscitation. In that part we shall
have to inquire into some of the fundamental prin-
ciples of Mythology, both ancient and modern, and to
determine the sway, if any, which language as such
exercises over our thoughts.

LECTURE II.

LANGUAGE AND SEASON.

THE division of my subject which I sketched out
at the end of my last lecture is liable, I am aware,
to some grave objections. To treat of sound as in-
dependent of meaning, of thought as independent of
words, seems to defy one of the best established prin-
ciples of the science of language. Where do we ever
meet in reality, I mean in the world such as it is, with
articulate sounds sounds like those that form the
body of language, existing by themselves, and inde-
pendent of language ? No human being utters arti-
culate sounds without an object, a purpose, a mean-
ing. 1 The endless configurations of sound which are
collected in our dictionaries would have no existence
at all, they would be the mere ghost of a language,
unless they stood there as the embodiment of thought,
as the realisation of ideas. Even the interjections
which we use, the cries and screams which are the
precursors, or, according to others, the elements, of
articulate speech, never exist without meaning. Arti-
culate sound is always an utterance, a bringing out of

1 Ait. Br. II.: 'Manasa va ishita vag vadati, yam hy anya-
mana va&am vadatya surya vai sa vag adeva^ush^a.' 'The
voice speaks as impelled by the mind; if one utters speech with a
different mind or meaning, that is demoniacal speech, not loved by the
gods.'

48 ARTIFICIAL LANGUAGE.

something that is within, a manifestation or revela-
tion of something that wants to manifest and to reveal
itself. It would be different if language had been in-
vented by agreement ; if certain wise kings, priests,
and philosophers had put their heads together and
decreed that certain conceptions should be labelled
and ticketed with certain sounds. In that case we
might speak of the sound as the outside, of the ideas
as the inside of language ; and no objection could be
raised to our treating each of them separately.

Why it is impossible to conceive of living human
language as having originated in a conventional agree-
ment, I endeavoured to explain in one of my former
lectures. But I should by no means wish to be under-
stood as denying the possibility of framing some lan-
guage in this artificial manner, after men have once
learnt to speak and to reason. It is the fashion to
laugh at the idea of an artificial, still more of a uni-
versal language. But if this problem were really so
absurd, a man like Leibniz would hardly have taken
so deep an interest in its solution. That such a
language should ever come into practical use, or that
the whole earth should in that manner ever be of one
language and one speech again, is hard to conceive.
But that the problem itself admits of a solution, and
of a very perfect solution, cannot be doubted.

As there prevails much misconception on this sub-
ject, I shall devote part of this lecture to a statement
of what has been achieved in framing a philosophical
and universal language.

Leibniz, in a letter to Remond de Montmort, written
two years before his death, expressed himself with the
greatest confidence on the value of what he calls his

LEIBNIZ. 49

Specieuse generate, and we can hardly doubt that he
had then acquired a perfectly clear insight into his
ideal of a universal language. 2 'If he succeeded,'
he writes, * in stirring up distinguished men to culti-
vate the calculus with infinitesimals, it was because
he could give palpable proofs of its use ; but he had
spoken to the Marquis de L'Hopital and others, of
his Specieuse generate, without gaining from them
more attention than if he had been telling them of a
dream. He ought to be able, he adds, to support his
theory by some palpable use ; but for that purpose he
would have to carry out a part of his Characteristics
no easy matter, particularly circumstanced as he then
was, deprived of the conversation of men who would
encourage and help him in this work.'

A few months before this letter, Leibniz spoke
with perfect assurance of his favourite theory. He
admitted the difficulty of inventing and arranging
this philosophical language ; but he maintained that,
if once carried out, it could be acquired by others
without a dictionary, and with comparative ease. He
should be able to carry it out, he said, if he were
younger and less occupied, or if young men of talent
were by his side. A few eminent men might complete
the work in five years, and within two years they
might bring out the systems of ethics and meta^
physics in the form of an incontrovertible calculus.

Leibniz died before he could lay before the world
the outlines of his philosophical language, and many
even among his admirers have expressed their doubts
whether he ever had a clear conception of the nature
of such a language. It seems hardly compatible,

2 Guhrauer, G. W. Freiherr von Leibnitz, 1846, vol. i. p. 328.
II. E

50 BISHOP WILKINS.

however, with the character of Leibniz to suppose
that he should have spoken so confidently, that he
should actually have placed this Specieuse generale
on a level with his differential calculus, if it had been
a mere dream. It seems more likely that Leibniz
was acquainted with a work which, in the second half
of the seventeenth century, attracted much attention
in England, ' The Essay towards a Eeal Character
and a Philosophical Language,' 3 by Bishop Wilkins
(London, 1668), and that he perceived at once that
the scheme there traced out was capable of much
greater perfection. This work had been published by
the Royal Society, and the author's name was so well
known as one of its founders, that it could hardly
have escaped the notice of the Hanoverian philoso-
pher, who was in such frequent correspondence with
members of that society. 4

Now, though it has been the fashion to sneer at
Bishop Wilkins and his Universal Language, his work
seems to me, as far as I can judge, to offer the best
solution that has yet been offered of a problem which,
if of no practical importance, is of great interest from
a merely scientific point of view ; and though it is
impossible to give an intelligible account of the
Bishop's scheme without entering into particulars
which cannot be but tedious, it will help us, I believe,
towards a better understanding of real language,

8 The work of Bishop Wilkins is analysed and criticised by Lord
Monboddo, in the second volume of his Origin and Progress of Language,
Edinburgh, 1774.

4 This supposition has been confirmed by a passage in which Leibniz
actually quoted Bishop Wilkins. See Benfey, Geschichte der Sprach*
wissenschaft, p. 249 ; Trendelenburg, in the Monatsberichtf der Berliner
Akademle, 1860, p. 375 ; and a note in the French translation of my
Lectures by Harris and Perrot, p. 57.

BISHOP WILZINS. 51

if we can acquire a clear idea of what an artificial
language would be, and how it would differ from
living speech.

The primary object of the Bishop was not to invent
a new spoken language, though he arrives at that in
the end, but to contrive a system of writing or repre-
senting our thoughts that should be universally in-
telligible. We have, for instance, our numerical
figures, which are understood by people speaking
different languages, and which, though differently
pronounced in different parts of the world, convey
everywhere the same idea. We have besides such
signs as 4- plus, minus, x to be multiplied, -H to
be divided, = equal, < greater, > smaller, sun,
O moon, earth, % Jupiter, I? Saturn, $ Mars, $
Venus, &c., which are intelligible to mathematicians
and astronomers all over the world.

Now if to every thing and notion, I quote from Bishop
Wilkins (p. 21) there were assigned a distinct mark, to-
gether with some provision to express grammatical derivations
and inflexions, this might suffice as to one great end of a real
character, namely, the expression of our conceptions by marks,
which shall signify things, and not words. And so, likewise,
if several distinct words (sounds) were assigned to the names
of such things, with certain invariable rules for all such
grammatical derivations and inflexions, and such only as are
natural and necessary, this would make a much more easy and^
convenient language than is yet in being.

This suggestion, which, as we shall see, is not the
one which Bishop Wilkins carried out, has lately been
taken up by Don Sinibaldo de Mas, in his Ideographie. 5

* Ideographic. Memoire sur la possibility et "a facilite 1 de former une
Venture gdnerale au moyen de laquelle tons les peuples puissent s'en-

E 2

52 DON SINIBALDO DE MAS.

He gives a list of 2,600 figures, all formed after the
pattern of musical notes, and he assigns to each a
certain meaning. According to the interval in which
the head of such a note is placed, the same sign is to
be taken as a noun, an adjective, a verb, or an ad-
verb. Thus the same sign might be used to express
love, to love, loving, and lovingly, by simply moving
its head on the lines and spaces from f to e, d, and
c. Another system of signs is then added to express
gender, number, case, person, tense, mood, and other
grammatical categories, and a system of hieroglyphics
is thus formed, by which the author succeeds in
rendering the first 150 verses of the ^Eneid. It is
perfectly true, as the author remarks, that the diffi-
culty of learning his 2,000 signs is nothing in com-
parison with learning several languages; it is perfectly
true, also, that nothing can exceed the simplicity of
his grammatical notation, which excludes by its very
nature everything that is anomalous. The whole
grammatical framework consists of thirty-nine signs,
whereas, as Don Sinibaldo remarks, we have in
French 310 different terminations for the simple
tenses of the ten regular conjugations, 1,755 for the
thirty-nine irregular conjugations, and 200 for the
auxiliary verbs, a sum total of 2,265 terminations,
which must be learnt by heart. 6 It is perfectly true,
again, that few persons would ever use more than
4,000 words, and that by having the same sign used
throughout as noun, verb, adjective, and adverb, this

tendre mutuellement sans que les uns connaissent la langue des autres ;
ecrit par Don Siuibaldo de Mas, Envoye extraordinaire et Ministry
plenipotentiaire de S. M. C. en Chine. Paris: B. Duprat, 1863.
Page 99.

BISHOP WILKINS. 0*3

number might still be considerably reduced. There is,
however, this fundamental difficulty, that the assign-
ment of a certain sign to a certain idea is purely
arbitrary in this system, a difficulty which, as we
shall now proceed to show, Bishop Wilkins endea-
voured to overcome in a very ingenious and truly
philosophical way.

If these marks or notes (he writes) could be so contrived
as to have such a dependence upon, and relation to, one
another, as might be suitable to the nature of the things and
notions which they represented ; and so, likewise, if the names
of things could be so ordered as to contain such a kind of
affinity or opposition in their letters and sounds, as might be
some way answerable to the nature of the things which they
signified ; this would yet be a farther advantage superadded,
by which, besides the best way of helping the memory by
natural method, the understanding likewise would be highly
improved ; and we should, by learning the character and the
names of things, be instructed likewise in their natures, the
knowledge of both of which ought to be conjoined. 7

The Bishop, then, undertakes neither more nor less
than a classification of all that is or can be known,
and he makes this dictionary of notions the basis of
a corresponding dictionary of signs, both written and
spoken. All this is done with great circumspection,
and if we consider that it was undertaken nearly two
hundred years ago, and carried out by one man single-
handed, we shall be inclined to judge leniently of
what may now seem to us antiquated and imperfect
in his catalogue raisonne of human knowledge. A
careful consideration of his work will show us why
this language, which was meant to be permanent,

7 Page 21.

54 BISHOP WILKINS.

unchangeable, and universal, would, on the contrary,
by its very nature, be constantly shifting. As our
knowledge advances, the classification of our notions
is constantly remodelled ; nay, in a certain sense, all
advancement of learning may be called a corrected
classification of our notions. If a plant, classified ac-
cording to the system of Linnaeus, or according to that
of Bishop Wilkins, has its own peculiar place in their
synopsis of knowledge, and its own peculiar sign in
their summary of philosophical language, every change
in the classification of plants would necessitate a
change in the philosophical nomenclature. The whale,
for instance, is classified by Bishop Wilkins as a fish,
falling under the division of viviparous and oblong.
Fishes, in general, are classed as substances, animate,
sensitive, sanguineous, and the sign attached to the
whale, by Bishop Wilkins, expresses every one of
those differences which mark its place in his system
of knowledge. As soon, therefore, as we treat the
whale no longer as a fish, but as a mammal, its place
is completely shifted, and its sign or name, if re-
tained, would mislead us quite as much as the names
of rainbow, thunderbolt, sunset, and others, expres-
sive of ancient ideas which we know to be erroneous.
This would happen even in strictly scientific subjects.
Chemistry adopted acid as the technical name of
a class of bodies of which those first recognised in
science were distinguished by sourness of taste. But
as chemical knowledge advanced, it was discovered
that there were compounds precisely analogous in
essential character, which were not sour, and conse-
quently acidity was but an accidental quality of some
of these bodies, not a necessary or universal character

BISHOP WILKINS. 55

of all. It was thought too late to change the name,
and accordingly in all European languages the term
acid, or its etymological equivalent, is now applied to
rock-crystal, quartz, and flint.

In like manner, from a similar misapplication of
salt, in scientific use, chemists class the substance of
which junk-bottles, French mirrors, windows, and
opera glasses are made, among the salts, while ana-
lysts have declared that the essential character, not
only of other so-called salts, but of common kitchen
salt, the salt of salts, has been mistaken ; that salt is
not salt, and, accordingly, have excluded that sub-
stance from the class of bodies upon which, as their
truest representative, it had bestowed its name. 8

The Bishop begins by dividing all things which
may be the subjects of language into six classes or
genera, which he again subdivides by their several
differences. These six classes comprise :

A. TRANSCENDENTAL NOTIONS.

B. SUBSTANCES.

C. QUANTITIES.

D. QUALITIES.

E. ACTIONS.

F. KELATIONS.

In B to F we easily recognise the principal pre-
dicaments or categories of logic, the pigeon-holes in
which the ancient philosophers thought they could
stow away all the ideas that ever entered the human
mind. Under A we meet with a number of more
abstract conceptions, such as kind, cause, condition, &c.

8 Marsh, History of the English Laguage, p. 211 ; Liebig, Chemische
Bricfe, 4th edit. i. p. 96.

56 BISHOP W1LKINS.

By subdividing these six classes, the Bishop arrives
in the end at forty classes, which, according to him,
comprehend everything that can be known or ima-
gined, and therefore everything that can possibly
claim expression in a language, whether natural or
artificial. To begin with the beginning, we find that
his transcendental notions refer either to things or to
words. Eeferring to things, we have

I. TRANSCENDENTALS GENERAL, such as the notions of kind,
cause, differences, end, means, mode. Here, under kind, we
should find such notions as being, thing, notion, name, sub-
stance, accident, &c. Under notions of cause we meet with
author, tool, aim, stuff, &c.

II. TRANSCENDENTAL OF MIXED RELATION, such as the
notions of general quantity, continued quantity, discontinued
quantity, quality, whole and part. Under general quantity
the notions of greatness and littleness, excess and defect;
under continued quantity those of length, breadth, depth, &c.,
would find their places.

III. TRANSCENDENTAL RELATIONS OF ACTIONS, such as the
notions of simple action (putting, taking), comparate action
(joining, repeating, &c.), business (preparing, designing, be-
ginning), commerce (delivering, paying, reckoning), event
(gaining, keeping, refreshing), motion (going, leading, meet-
ing)-

IV. THE TRANSCENDENTAL NOTIONS OF DISCOURSE, compre-
hending all that is commonly comprehended under grammar
and logic: ideas such as noun, verb, particle, prose, verse, letter,
syllogism, question, affirmative, negative, and many more.

After these general notions, which constitute the first four
classes, but before what we should call the categories, the
Bishop admits two independent classes of transcendental notions,
one for God, the other for the World, neither of which, as he
says, can be treated as predicaments, because they are not
capable of any subordinate species.

BISHOP WILKINS. 57

V. The fifth class, therefore, consists entirely of the idea of
GOD.

VI. The sixth class comprehends the WORLD or universe,
divided into spiritual and corporeal, and embracing such
notions as spirit, angel, soul, heaven, planet, earth, land, &c.

After this we arrive at the five categories, subdivided into
thirty-four subaltern genera, which, together with the six
classes of transcendental notions, complete, in the end, his
forty genera. The Bishop begins with substance, the first
difference of which he makes to be inanimate, and distin-
guishes by the name of

VII. ELEMENT, as his seventh genus. Of this there are
several differences, fire, air, water, earth, each comprehending
a number of minor species.

Next comes SUBSTANCE INANIMATE, divided into vegetative
and sensitive. The vegetative again he subdivides into imper-
fect, such as minerals, and perfect, such as plants.

The imperfect vegetative he subdivides into

VIII. STONE, and

IX. METAL.

STONE he subdivides by six differences, which, as he tells
us, is the usual number of differences that he finds under
every genus ; and under each of these differences he enume-
rates several species, which seldom exceed the number of nine
under any one.

Having thus gone through the imperfect vegetative, he comes
to the perfect, or plant, which he says is a tribe so numerous
and various, that he confesses he found a great deal of trouble
in dividing and arranging it. It is in fact a botanical classi-
fication, not based on scientific distinctions like that adopted
by Linnaeus, but on the more tangible differences in the out-
ward form of plants. It is interesting, if for nothing else, at
least for the rich native nomenclature of all kinds of herbs,
shrubs, and trees, which it contains.

The herb he defines to be a minute and tender plant, and

58 BISHOP WILKINS.

he has arranged it according to its leaves, in which way con-
sidered, it makes his

X. Class, LEAF-HERBS.

Considered according to its flowers, it makes his

XI. Class, or FLOWER-HERBS.

Considered according to its seed-vessels, it makes his

XII. Class, or SEED-HERBS.

Each of these classes is divided by a certain number of
differences, and under each difference numerous species are
enumerated and arranged.

All other plants being woody, and being larger and firmer
than the herb, are divided into

XIII. SHRUBS, and

XIV. TREES.

Having thus exhausted the vegetable kingdom, the Bishop
proceeds to the animal or sensitive, as he calls it, this being
the second member of his division of animate substance. This
kingdom he divides into

XV. EXSANGUINEOUS.

XVI., XVII., XVIII. SANGUINEOUS, namely FISH, BIRD,
and BEAST.

Having thus considered the general nature of vegetables
and animals, he proceeds to consider the parts of both, soaie
of which are peculiar to particular plants and animals, and
constitute his

XIX. Genus, PECULIAR PARTS ;

while others are general, and constitute his

XX. Genus, GENERAL PARTS.

Having thus exhausted the category of substances, he goes
through the remaining categories of quantity, quality, action,
and relation, which, together with the preceding classes, are
represented in the following table, the skeleton, in fact, of the
whole body of human knowledge.

BISHOP WILKINS.

D" namely, those universal notions, whether belonging more properly to
(GENERAL. I.
Things; called TRANSCENDENTAL 4 RELATION MIXED. H.
( RELATION OF ACTION. HI.
Words; DISCOURSE. IV.
denoting either
( CREATOR. V.

\ Creature ; namely, such things as were either created or concreated by G-od, not
excluding several of those notions which are framed by the minds of men,
considered either
( Collectively; WOULD. VI.
I Distributivefy ; according to the several kinds of beings, whether such as do

belong to
''Substance.

Inanimate ; ELEMENT. VTL
Animate; considered according to their several
( Species; whether
C Vegetative ;

'Imperfect; as Minerals

("HERB, considered ( LEAP. X.

D f / TJI *J according to \ FLOWER. XI.
Perfect ; as Plant <j gHRtJB xm f 1

Sensitive

LTREE. XIV.

(EXSANGUINEOUS. XV.

Parts

( Sanguineous

< PECTJLIAR. XIX.
1 GENERAL. XX.

( FISH. XVI.
\ BIRD. XVII.
(BEAST. XVni.

^Accident.

I MAGNITUDE. XXI.
( Quantity; \ SPACE. XXTT.

( MEASURE. XXIII.
^NATURAL POWER. XXIV.

HABIT. XXV.
Quality; { MANNERS. XXVI.

SENSIBLE QUALITY. XXVII.
LSICKNESS. XXVIII.

rSPIRITUAL. XXIX.

I CORPOREAL. XXX.
1 MOTION. XXXI.
L OPERATION. XXXII.

f (ECONOMICAL. XXXIII.
Private \ POSSESSIONS. XXXIV.
( PROVISIONS. XXXV.
/ CIVIL. XXXVI.
JUDICIAL. XXXVII.
4 MILITARY. XXXVIH.
Public NAVAL. XXXIX.

V ECCLESIASTICAL. XL.

Action

Relation ; whether more -

The Bishop is far from claiming any great merit
for his survey of human knowledge, and he admits
most fully its many defects. No single individual
could have mastered such a subject, which would
baffle even the united efforts of learned societies. Yet
such as it is, and with all its imperfections, increased

60 BISHOP WILKINS.

by the destruction of great part of his manuscript in
the fire of London, it may give us some idea of what
the genius of a Leibniz would have put in its place,
if he had ever matured the idea which was from his
earliest youth stirring in his brain.

Having completed, in forty chapters, his philoso-
phical dictionary of knowledge, Bishop Wilkins pro-
ceeds to compose a philosophical grammar, according
to which these ideas are to be formed into complex
propositions and discourses. He then proceeds, in
the fourth part of his work, to the framing of the
language, which is to represent all possible notions,
according as they have been previously arranged.
He begins with the written language or Real Cha-
racter, as he calls it, because it expresses things, and
not sounds, as the common characters do. It is,
therefore, to be intelligible to people who speak dif-
ferent languages, and to be read without, as yet, being
pronounced at all. It were to be wished, he says,
that characters could be found bearing some resem-
blance to the things expressed by them ; also, that the
sounds of a language should have some resemblance
to their objects. This, however, being impossible, he
begins by contriving arbitrary marks for his forty
genera. The next thing to be done is to mark the
differences under each genus. This is done by affix-
ing little lines at the left end of the character,
forming with the character angles of different kinds,
that is, right, obtuse, or acute, above or below ; each
of these affixes, according to its position, denoting the
first, second, third, and following difference under the
genus, these differences being, as we saw, regularly
numbered in his philosophical dictionary.

BISHOP WILKINS. 61

The third and last thing to be done is to express
the species under each difference. This is done by
affixing the like marks to the other end of the cha-
racter, denoting the species under each difference, as
they are numbered in the dictionary.

In this manner all the several notions of things
which are the subject of language, can be represented
by real characters. But besides a complete dic-
tionary, a grammatical framework, too, is wanted
before the problem of an artificial language can be
considered as solved. In natural languages the gram-
matical articulation consists either in separate par-
ticles or in modifications in the body of a word, to
whatever cause such modifications may be ascribed.
Bishop Wilkins supplies the former by marks denoting
particles, these marks being circular figures, dots, and
little crooked lines, or virgulse, disposed in a certain
manner. The latter, the grammatical terminations,
are expressed by hooks or loops, affixed to either end
of the character above or below, from which we learn
whether the thing intended is to be considered as a
noun, or an adjective, or an adverb ; whether it be
taken in an active or passive sense, in the plural or
singular number. In this manner, everything that
can be expressed in ordinary grammars, the gender,
number, and cases of nouns, the tenses and moods
of verbs, pronouns, articles, prepositions, conjunc-
tions, and interjections, are all rendered with a
precision unsurpassed, nay unequalled, by any living
language.

Having thus shaped all his materials, the Bishop
proceeds to give the Lord's Prayer and the Creed,
written in what he calls his Real Character ; and it

62 BISHOP WILKINS.

must be confessed by every unprejudiced person that
with some attention and practice these specimens are
perfectly intelligible.

Hitherto, however, we have only arrived at a written
language. In order to translate this written into a
spoken language, the Bishop has expressed his forty
genera or classes by such sounds as ba, be, bi, da, de,
di, ga, ge, gi, all compositions of vowels, with one or
other of the best sounding consonants. The differences
under each of these genera he expresses by adding to
the syllable denoting the genus one of the following
consonants, b, d, g, p, t, c, z, s, n, according to the
order in which the differences were ranked before in
the tables under each genus, b expressing the first
difference, d the second, and so on.

The species is then expressed by putting after
the consonant which stands for the difference one
of the seven vowels, or, if more be wanted, the
diphthongs.

Thus we get the following radicals corresponding
to the general table of notions, as given above :

,',:}

[II. J

f General . . Ba

<^ Relation Mixed . Ba

III. J I Relation of Action Be

IV. Discourse . . Bi
V. God ... Da

VI. World ... Da

VII. Element . . De

VIII. Stone Di

IX. Metal ... Do

X. Leaf 1

XI. Flower V Herbs

XII. Seed- vessel J

XIII. Shrub . . Gi

XIV. Tree . . Go

BISHOP WILKINS.

XV. 1

" Exsanguineous

XVI.

Fish .

XVII.

Bird .

XVIII.

_ Beast .

XIX.]

T> <

" Peculiar

XX. j

> Parts

General

XXI/

XXII.

> Quantity <

' Magnitude .
Space

Pe
Pi

XXIII.

__ Measure

XXIV.^

Natural Power

XXV.

Habit .

XXVI.

> Quality

Manners

XXVII.

Quality, sensible

XXVIII. J

^Sickness

XXIX."

' Spiritual

XXX.
XXXI.

> Action <

Corporeal
Motion

Ca
Ce

XXXII.

_ Operation

XXXIIL^

"(Economical .

XXXIV.

Possessions .

XXXV.

Provisions .

XXXVI.
XXXVII.

>Eelation <;

Civil
Judicial

Sa
Se

XXXVIII.

Military

XXXIX.

Naval .

XL.^

^Ecclesiastical

The differences of the first genus would be ex-
pressed by,

Bab, bad, bag, bap, bat, baC, baz, baS, ban.

The species of the first difference of the first genus
would be expressed by,

Bab*, baba, babe, babi, babo, bab, baby, babyi, baby.

Here botbx. would mean being, baba thing, babe
notion, ba.bi name, babo substance, fcafcs quantity, baby
action, babyi relation.

For instance, if De signify element, he says, then
Deb must signify the first difference, which, according

64 BISHOP WILKIXS.

to the tables, is fire ; and Deba. will denote the first
species, which is flame. Dei will be the fifth difference
under that genus, which is appearing meteor; Det/x.
the first species, viz. rainbow; Deta the second,
viz. halo.

Thus if Ti signify the genus of Sensible Quality,
then Tid must denote the second difference, which
comprehends colours, and Tida must signify the
second species under that difference, viz. redness, &c.

The principal grammatical variations, laid down in
the philosophical grammar, are likewise expressed by
certain letters. If the word, he writes, is an adjec-
tive, which, according to his method, is always de-
rived from a substantive, the derivation is made by
the change of the radical consonant into another
consonant, or by adding a vowel to it. Thus, if Da
signifies God, dua must signify divine ; if De signifies
element, then due must signify elementary ; if Do
signifies stone, then duo must signify stony. In like
manner voices and numbers and such-like accidents
of words are formed, particles receive their phonetic
representatives ; and again, all his materials being
shaped, a complete grammatical translation of the
Lord's Prayer is given by the Bishop in his own
newly-invented philosophical language.

I hardly know whether the account here given of
the artificial language invented by Bishop Wilkins
will be intelligible, for, in spite of the length to
which it has run, many points had to be omitted
which would have placed the ingenious conceptions
of its author in a much brighter light. My object
was chiefly to show that to people acquainted with a
real language, the invention of an artificial language

REASON AND SPEECH. C5

is by no means an impossibility, nay, that such an
artificial language might be much more perfect,
more regular, more easy to learn, than any of the
spoken tongues of man. The number of radicals in
the Bishop's language amounts to not quite 3,000,
and these, by a judicious contrivance, are sufficient
to express every possible idea. Thus the same
radical, as we saw, expresses with certain slight
modifications, noun, adjective, and verb. Again, if
Da is once known to signify God, then ida must
signify that which is opposed to God, namely, idol.
If dab be spirit, odab will be body ; if dad be heaven,
odad will be hell. Again, if saba is king, sava is
royalty, salba is reigning, samba to be governed, &c.

Let us now resume the thread of our argument.
We saw that in an artificial language, the whole
system of our notions, once established, may be
matched to a system of phonetic exponents ; but we
maintain, until we are taught the contrary, that no
real language was ever made in this manner. 9

There never was an independent array of deter-
minate conceptions waiting to be matched with an
independent array of articulate sounds. As a matter
of fact, we never meet with articulate sounds except
as wedded to determinate ideas ; nor do we ever, I be-
lieve, meet with determinate ideas except as bodied
forth in articulate sounds. This is a point of some im-
portance on which there ought not to be any doubt or
haze, and I therefore declare my conviction, whether
right or wrong, as explicitly as possible, that thought,

9 See an important letter of Descartes on the same subject in his
(Ec.vrcs completes, ed. Cousin, v. 61 ; quoted in the French translation
of my Lectures.

II. F

66 REASON AND SPEECH.

in one sense of the word, i.e. in the sense of reasoning,
is impossible without language or without signs. After
what I stated in my former lectures, I shall not be
understood as here denying the reality of thought or
mental activity in animals. Animals and infants who
are without language, are alike without reason ; but
the difference between animal and infant is, that the
infant possesses the healthy germs of speech and
reason, only not yet developed into actual speech and
actual reason, whereas the animal has no such germs
or faculties, capable of development in its present
state of existence. We must concede to animals
' sensation, perception, memory, will, and judgment,'
but we cannot allow to them a trace of what the
Greek called logos, i. e. reason, literally, gathering,
a word which most rightly and naturally expresses
in Greek both speech and reason. 10 Animals were
called by the Greek dloga, whether in the sense of
without reason, or in the sense of speechless. L6gos
is derived from legein, which, like Latin legere, means,
originally, to gather. Hence, Katdlogos, a catalogue,
a gathering, a list ; collectio, a collection. In Homer, 11
legein is hardly ever used in the same sense of saying,
speaking, or meaning, but always in the sense of
gathering, or, more properly, of telling, for to tell is
the German zahlen, and means originally to count,
to cast up. Lrfgos, used in the sense of reason, meant
originally, like the English tale, or the German Zahl, 1 *
gathering ; for reason, ' though it penetrates into the
depths of the sea and earth, elevates our thoughts as

> Cf. Farrar, p. 125; Heyse, p. 41.

11 Od. xiv. 197 : otf ri StcwrpTjIat/a \4ytav e/xo ^Seo Ovpov. Ulysses says
he should never finish if he were to tell the sorrows of his heart, i.e. if
he were to count or record them, not simply if he were to speak of them.

12 Kmd. v. 8, the tale, i.e. the number of the bricks.

REASON AND SPEECH. 67

high as the stars, and leads us through the vast spaces
and large rooms of this mighty fabric,' 13 is nothing
more or less than the gathering up of the single by
means of the general. 14 To sum up, as Kant says,
it is the office of the senses to perceive, and the office
of the understanding to think ; but to think is to
unite different conceptions in one act of conscious-
ness. 15 The Latin intelligo, i. e. inter-ligo, for inter-
lego, expresses most graphically the interlacing of the
general and the single, which is the peculiar province
of the intellect. Expressions like cogitare, i. e. co-
agitare, or to comprehend, rest on similar metaphors.
But Logos used in the sense of word, means likewise
a gathering, for every word, or, at least, every name
is based on the same process; it represents the
gathering of single impressions under one general
conception. As we cannot tell or count quantities
without numbers, we cannot tell or recount things
without words. There are tribes that have no nume-
rals beyond four. Should we say that they do not
know if they have five children instead of four:*
They certainly do, as much as a cat knows that she
has five kittens, and will look for the fifth if it has
been taken away from her. But if they have no
numerals beyond four, they cannot reason beyond

13 Locke, On the Understanding, iv. 17, 9.

14 This, too, is well put by Locke (iii. 3, 20) in his terse and homely
language : ' I would say that all the great business of genera and species,
and their essences, amounts to no more but this ; that men making
abstract ideas, and settling them in their minds, with names annexed to
them, do thereby enable themselves to consider things, and discourse of
them, as it were, in bundles, for the easier and readier improvement and
communication of their knowledge, which would advance but slowly
were their words and thoughts confined only to particulars.'

15 Kant, Proleg. p. 60.

F 2

68 FORMATION OF NAMES.

four. They would not know, as little as children
know it, that two and three make five, but only that
two and three make many. Though I dwelt on this
point in the last lectures of my former course, a few
illustrations may not be out of place here, to make
my meaning quite clear.

Man could not name a tree, or an animal, or a
river, or any object whatever in which he took an
interest, without discovering first some general
quality that seemed at the time the most charac-
teristic of the object to be named ; 16 or, to borrow an
expression of Thomas Aquinas (I. P. 9. 13, art. 9.
ed. 2.), Nomina non sequuntur modum essendi, qui est
in rebus, sed modum essendi, secundum quod in cognitione
nostra est. In the lowest stage of language, an
imitation of the neighing of the horse would have been
sufficient to name the horse. Savage tribes are
great mimics, and imitate the cries of animals with
wonderful success. But this is not yet language.
There are cockatoos who, when they see cocks and
hens, will begin to cackle as if to inform us of what
they see. This is not the way in which the words
of our languages were formed. There is no trace of
neighing in the Aryan names for horse. In naming
the horse, the quality that struck the mind of the
Aryan man as the most prominent was its swiftness.
Hence from the root as, 18 to be sharp or swifb (which
we have in Latin acus, needle, and in the French

16 This point has been well discussed by Dr. Otto Caspari, Die Sprache
als psychischer Entwickelungsgrund : Berlin, 1864.

17 La Science de Langage, par Alfred Grilly : Paris, 1868.

18 Gf. Sk. bsu, quick, o)/ct5s, &K0ir4, point, and other derivatives given
by Curtius, G-riechische Etymologic, i. 101. The Latin catus, sharp, has
been derived from Sk. so (syati), to whet.

FORMATION OF NAMES. 69

diminutive aiguille, in acuo, I sharpen, in acer, quick,
sharp, shrewd, in acrimony and even in 9 cute), was
derived asva, the runner, the horse. This asva
appears in Lithuanian as aszva (mare), in Latin as
ekvus, i. e. equus, in Greek as fcicof, 1 ? or wnros, in
Old Saxon as ehu. Many a name might have been
given to the horse besides the one here mentioned;
but, whatever name was given, it could only be formed
by laying hold of the horse by means of some general
quality, and by thus arranging the horse, together
with other objects, under some general category.
Many names might have been given to wheat. It
might have been called eared, nutritious, graceful,
waving, golden, the child of the earth, &c. But it
was called simply the white, the white colour of its
grain seeming to distinguish it best from those plants
with which otherwise it had the greatest similarity.
For this is one of the secrets of enomatopoesis, or
name-poetry, that each name should express, not the
most important or specific quality, but that which
strikes our fancy, 20 and seems most useful for the
purpose of making other people understand what we
mean. If we adopted the language of Locke, we
should say that men were guided by wit rather than
by judgment, in the formation of names. Wit, he
says, lies most in the assemblage of ideas, and put-
ting those together with quickness and variety,
wherein can be found any resemblance or congruity,
thereby to make up pleasant pictures, and agreeable
visions, in the fancy: judgment, on the contrary,

19 Eti/m. Magn. p. 474, 12, IKKOS <m/j.aivei rbv ITTTTO*. Curtius, G. E.
ii 49.

28 Pott, Eti/m. F. ii. 139.

70 FORMATION OF NAMES.

lies quite on the other side, in separating carefully,
one from another, ideas wherein can be found the
least difference, thereby to avoid being misled by
similitude, and by affinity, to take one thing for an-
other. 21 While the names given to things according
to Bishop Wilkins' philosophical method would all
be founded on judgment, those given by the early
Irumers of language repose chiefly 011 wit or fancy.
Thus wheat was called the white plant, hvaiteis in
Gothic, in A. S. hvcete, in Lithuanian Jcwetys, in Eng-
lish wheat, and all these words point to the Sanskrit
xvuta, i.e. white, the Gothic hveits, the A. S. hvit.
In Sanskrit, sveta, white, is not applied to wheat
(which is called godhiima, the smoke or incense of
the earth), but it is applied to many other herbs and
weeds, and as a compound (s vet a sung a, white-
awued), it entered into the name of barley. In
Sanskrit, silver is counted as white, and called sveta,
and the feminine sveti, was once a name of the
dawn, just as the French aube, dawn, which was
originally alba. We arrive at the same result what-
ever words we examine ; they always express a
general quality, supposed to be peculiar to the ob-
ject to which they are attached. In some cases this
is quite clear, in others it has to be brought out by
minute etymological research. To those who ap-
proach these etymological researches with any pre-
conceived opinions, it must be a frequent source of
disappointment, when they have traced a word
through all its stages back to its first starting-point,
to find in the end, or rather in the beginning, nothing
but roots of the most general powers, meaning to

51 Locke, On the Human Understanding, ii. 11, 2.

FORMATION OF NAMES. 71

go, to move, to run, to do. But on closer consider-
ation, this, instead of being disappointing, should
rather increase our admiration for the wonderful
powers of language, man being able out of these
vague and pale conceptions to produce names expres-
sive of the minutest shades of thought and feeling.
It was by a poetical fiat that the Greek probata.
which originally meant no more than things walking
forward, became in time the name of cattle, and par-
ticularly of sheep. In Sanskrit, sarit, meaning goer,
from sar, to go, became the name of river; sara,
meaning the same, what runs or goes, was used for
sap, but not for river. Thus d r u , in Sanskrit, means
to run, dravat, quick; but drapsa is restricted to
the sense of a drop, gutta. The Latin cevum, mean-
ing going, from i, to go, became the name of time,
age; and its derivative cevitemus, or ceternus, was
made to express eternity. Thus in French, meubles
means literally anything that is raoveable, but it be-
came the name of chairs, tables, and wardrobes.
In ancient Greek dloga, without reason, was used for
brute animals in general. In modern Greek alogon
has become the name for horse. 22 Viande, originally
vivenda* 3 the English viands, that on which one
lives, came to mean meat. Frumentum, lit. what
serves for food, from frui, means in Latin corn in
general ; froment in French is wheat. Jumentum in

'-- &\oyoi>, horse, occurs as early as 1198 in the Syllabus
Mcivhr. ed Trinchera, p. 334: al rb &\uy6v /j.ovrb pavpiov, T& 5e
IJLOV rb /3<8toj>, et eqvmm meum nigrum, badium vero.

23 ' La viande estoit un peu de poiree,' dit 1'auteur de la Vie d? Isabella,
sceur de Saint-Louis. 'On ne pouvoit mie assez trouver viandes aux
hommes et aux chevaux, rapporte la chronique de Sp-int-Dems.' Michel
Breal, De la MetJwde comparative, 1864, p. 15.

72 FORMATION OF NAMES.

Latin means a beast of burden ; jument in French is
a mare. A table, the Latin tabula, is originally
what stands, or that on which things can be placed
or stood ; it now means what dictionaries define as
' a horizontal surface raised above the ground, used
for meals and other purposes.' The French tableau,
picture, again goes back to the Latin tabula, a thing
stood up, exhibited, and at last to the root std of
stare, to stand. A stable, the Latin stabulum, comes
from the same root, but it was appliecl to the stand-
ing-place of animals, to stalls or sheds. That on
which a thing stands or rests is called its base, and
basis in Greek meant originally no more than going,
the base being conceived as ground on which it is
safe to walk. What can be more general than fades,
originally the make or shape of a thing, then the
face ? Tet the same expression is repeated in modern
languages, feature being evidently a mere corruption
of factura, the make. On the same principle the
moon was called luna, i. e. lucna or lucina, the shin-
ing ; the lightning, fulmen from fulgere, the bright ;
the stars stellce, i. e. sterulce, the Sanskrit star as, from
stri, to strew, the strewers of light. All these ety-
mologies may seem very unsatisfactory, vague, un-
interesting, yet, if we reflect for a moment, we shall
see that in no other way but this could the mind, or
the gathering power of man, have comprehended the
endless variety of nature 24 under a limited number of
categories or names. What Bunsen called ' the first

24 Cf. Sankara on Vedanta-Sutra, 1,3, 28 (Muir, Sanskrit Texts,
iii. 67), akritibhis a sabdanam sambandho na vyaktibhiA,
vyaktinam anantyat sambandhagrahawanupapatteA. 'The
relation of words is with the genera, not with individuals ; for, as indi-
viduals are endless, it would be impossible to lay hold of relations.'

NO SPEECH WITHOUT REASON. 73

poesy of mankind,' the creation of words, is no doubt
very different from the sensation poetry of later days ;
yet its very poverty and simplicity render it all the
more valuable in the eyes of historians and philoso-
phers. For of this first poetry, simple as it is, or of
this first philosophy in all its childishness, man only
is capable. He is capable of it because he can gather
the single under the general ; he is capable of it be-
cause he has the faculty of speech ; he is capable of it
we need not fear the tautology because he is man.
Without speech no reason, without reason no speech.
It is curious to observe the unwillingness with which
many philosophers admit this, and the attempts they
make to escape from this conclusion, all owing to the
very influence of language which, in most modern
dialects, has produced two words, one for language,
the other for reason; thus leading the speaker to
suppose that there is a substantial difference between
the two, and not a mere formal difference. 25 Thus
Brown says : * To be without language, spoken or
written, is almost to be without thought.' 26 But he
qualifies this almost by what follows : 6 That man can
reason without language of any kind, and conse-
quently without general terms though the opposite
opinion is maintained by many very eminent philoso-
phers seems to me not to admit of any reasonable
doubt, or, if it required any proof, to be sufficiently
shown by the very invention of language which in-

25 In Dutch there is no difference between rede, oratio, and rede, ratio,
though Siegenbeek, in his authorised grammar of the Dutch language,
1804, tries to distinguish between rede, speech, and reden, reason, cause.
Eedeloos is irrational, redelijk, rational, reasonable, the German redlich :
rcdenaar, an orator.

26 Works, i. p. 475.

74 NO REASON WITHOUT SPEECH.

volves these general terms, and still more sensibly by
the conduct of the uninstructed deaf and dumb 27 to
which also the evident marks of reasoning in the
other animals of reasoning which I cannot but
think as unquestionable as the instincts that mingle
with it may be said to furnish a very striking addi-
tional argument from analogy.'

The iminstructed deaf and dumb, I believe, have
never given any signs of reason, in the true sense of
the word, though to a certain extent all the deaf and
dumb people that live in the society of other men
catch something of the rational beha-viour of their
neighbours. 28 When instructed, the deaf and dumb
certainly acquire general ideas without being able in
every case to utter distinctly the phonetic exponents
or embodiments of these ideas which we call words.
But this is no objection to our general argument.
The deaf and dumb are taught by those who possess
both these general ideas and their phonetic embodi-
ments, elaborated by successive generations of rational
men. They are taught to think the thoughts of
others, and if they cannot pronounce their words,
they lay hold of these thoughts by other signs, and
particularly by signs that appeal to their sense of
sight, in the same manner as words appeal to our
sense of hearing. These signs, however, are not the

27 Works, ii. p. 446.

28 ' Un medecin clebre de 1'institution des sourds-muets, Itart, nous
a depeint l'tat intellectual et moral des hommes qu'un mutisme con-
genital laissait rMuits a leur propre experience. Non-seulement ils
tubissent une veritable retrogradation intellectuelle et morale qui les
reporte en quelque sorte aux premiers temps des societes ; mais leur
esprit, form6 en partie aux notions qui nous parviennent par les sens,
ne sauruit se developper.' Claude Bernard, ' Expose des Faits et du
Principe de la Physiologic moderne,' Revue ethnographique, 1869, p. 253.

LOCKE. 75

signs of things or their conceptions, as words are :
they are the signs of signs, just as written language
is not an image of our thoughts, but an image of the
phonetic embodiment of thought. Alphabetical writ-
ing is the image of the sound of language, hieroglyphic
writing the image of language or thought.

The same supposition that it is possible to reason
without signs, that we can form mental conceptions,
nay, even mental propositions, without words, runs
through the whole of Locke's philosophy. 29 He
maintains over and over again, that words are signs
added to our conceptions, and added arbitrarily. He
imagines a state

In which man, though possessed of a great variety of
thoughts, and such from which others, as well as himself,
might receive profit and delight, was unable to make these
thoughts appear. The comfort and advantage of society, how-
ever, not being to be had without communication of thoughts,
it was necessary that man should find out some external sen-
sible signs, whereby those invisible ideas of which his thoughts
are made up might be made known to others. For this purpose,
nothing was so fit, either for plenty or quickness, as those
articulate sounds, which, with so much ease and variety, he
found himself able to make. Thus we may conceive how
words, which were by nature so well adapted to that purpose,
came to be made use of by men as the signs of their ideas ;
not by any natural connexion there is between particular arti-
culate sounds and certain ideas ; for then there would be but
one language amongst all men ; but by a voluntary compo-
sition, whereby such a word is made arbitrarily the mark of
such an idea.

Locke admits, indeed, that it is almost unavoidable,
in treating of mental propositions, to make use of

29 Locke, On the Human Understanding, iii. 2, 1.

76 LOCKE.

words. 'Most men, if not all,' lie says (and who
are they that are here exempted ?) ' in their thinking
and reasoning within themselves, make use of words,
instead of ideas, at least when the subject of their
meditation contains in it complex ideas.' 30 But this
is in reality an altogether different question ; it is the
question whether, after 'our notions have once been
realised in words, it is possible to use words without
reasoning, and not whether it is possible to reason
without words. This is clear from the instances given
by Locke.

Some confiised or obscure notions (he says) Live served
their turns ; and many who talk very much of religion and
conscience, of church and faith, of power and right, of obstruc-
tions and humours, melancholy and choler, would, perhaps,
have little left in their thoughts and meditations, if one should
desire them to think only of the things themselves, and layby
those words, with which they so often confound others, and
not seldom themselves also. 81

In all this there is, no doubt, great truth ; yet,
strictly speaking, it is as impossible to use words
without thought, as to think without words. Even
those who talk vaguely about religion, conscience, &c.
have at least a vague notion of the meaning of the
words they use ; and if they ceased to connect any
ideas, however incomplete and false, with the words
they utter, they could no longer be said to speak, but
only to make noises. The same holds good if we in-
vert our proposition. It is possible, without language,
to see, to perceive, to stare at, to dream about things ;
but, without words, not even such simple ideas as
white or black can for a moment be realised.

80 Locke, I. c. iv. 5, 4. 31 Ibid.

LOCKE. 77

We cannot be careful enough in the use of our
words. If reasoning is used synonymously with
knowing or thinking, with mental activity in gene-
ral, it is clear that we cannot deny it either to the
uninstructed deaf and dumb, or to infants and ani-
mals. 32 A child knows as certainly before it can
speak the difference between sweet and bitter (i.e.
that sweet is not bitter), as it knows afterwards
(when it comes to speak) that wormwood and sugar-
plums are not the same thing. 33 A child receives
the sensation of sweetness ; it enjoys it, it recollects
it, it desires it again ; but it does not know what
sweet is ; it is absorbed in its sensations, its plea-
sures, its recollections ; it cannot look at them from
above, it cannot reason on them, it cannot tell of
them. 34 This is well expressed by Schelling.

Without language (he says) it is impossible to conceive
philosophical, nay, even any human consciousness ; and hence
the foundations of language could not have been laid con-
sciously. Nevertheless, the more we analyse language, the
more clearly we see that it transcends in depth the most con-
scious productions of the mind. It is with language as with
all organic beings ; we imagine they spring into being blindly,
and yet we cannot deny the intentional wisdom in the forma-
tion of every one of them. 35

32 Amusement phttosophicpte sur le Langage des Bestes, par le Pere
Bougeant: Paris, 1739.

33 Locke, I. c. i. 2, 15.

34 ' A child certainly knows that a stranger is not its mother ; that its
sucking-bottle is not the rod, long before he knows that it is impossible
for the same thing to be and not to be.' Locke, On the Human Under-
standing, iv. 7, 9.

35 Einleitung in die Philosophic der Mythologie, p. 52 ; Pott, Etymolo-
gische Forschungen, ii. 261.

78 NO REASON WITHOUT SPEECH.

Hegel speaks more simply and more boldly. 6 It is
in names/ he says, ' that we think.' 36

It may be possible, however, by another kind of
argument, less metaphysical perhaps, but more con-
vincing, to show clearly that reason cannot become
real without speech. Let us take any word, for
instance, experiment. It is derived from expenor.
Perior, like Greek perdnf 1 would mean to go through.
Perltus is a man who has gone through many things ;
periculum, something to go through, a danger. Ex-
perior is to go through and come out (the Sanskrit,
vyutpad) ; hence experience and experiment The
Gothic faran, the English to fare, are the same words
as per an; hence the German Erfahrung, experience,
and Gefahr, periculum ; Wohlfahrt, welfare, the Greek
euporia. As long then as the word experiment ex-
presses this more or less general idea, it has a real
existence. But take the mere sound, and change
only the accent, and we get experiment, and this is
nothing. Change one vowel or one consonant, ex-
periment or esperiment, and we have mere noises,
what Heraclitus would call a mere psophos, but no
words. Character, with the accent on the first syllable,
has a meaning in English, but none in German or
French; character, with the accent on the second
syllable, has a meaning in German, but none in Eng-
lish or French ; charactere, with the accent on the
last, has a meaning in French, but none in English
or German. It matters not whether the sound is arti-
culate or not ; articulate sound without meaning is

3S Carri&re, Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der Culturentwickelung,
p. 11.

37 Curtius, G. E. i. 237.

ELEMENTS OP LANGUAGE. 79

t3ven more unreal than inarticulate sound. If, then,
these articulate sounds, or what we may call the body
of language, exist nowhere, have no independent
reality, what follows ? I think it follows that this
so-called body of language could never have been
taken up anywhere by itself, and added to our con-
ceptions from without ; from which it would follow
again that our conceptions, which are now always
clothed in the garment of language, could never
have existed in a naked state. This would be per-
fectly correct reasoning, if applied to anything else ;
nor do I see that it can be objected to as bearing on
thought and language. If we never find skins except
as the teguments of animals, we may safely conclude
that skins cannot exist without animals. If colour
cannot exist by itself (aTrav ^ap xpay/j,a sv <ra)/j.aTi\
it follows that neither can anything that is coloured
exist without colour. A colouring substance may be
added or removed; but colour without some substance,
however ethereal, is, in rerum naturd, as impossible
as substance without colour, or as substance without
form or weight.

Granting, however, to the fullest extent, the one
and indivisible character of language and thought,
agreeing even with the Polynesians, who express
thinking by speaking in the stomach, 38 we may yet, I
think, for scientific purposes, claim the same liberty
which is claimed in so many sciences, namely, the
liberty of treating separately what in the nature of
things cannot be separated. Though colour cannot
be separated from some ethereal substance, yet the

38 Farrar, p. 125.

80 ELEMENTS OP LANGUAGE.

science of optics treats of light and colour as if they
existed by themselves. The geometrician reasons on
lines without taking cognisance of their breadth, of
plains without considering their depth, of bodies
without thinking of their weight. It is the same in
language, and though I consider the identity of lan-
guage and reason as one of the fundamental principles
of our science, I think it will be most useful to begin,
as it were, by dissecting the dead body of language,
by anatomising its phonetic structure, without any
reference to its function, and then to proceed to a
consideration of language in the fulness of life, and to
watch its energies, both in what we call its growth
and its decay.

I tried to show in my first course of lectures, that
if we analyse language, that is to say, if we trace
words back to their most primitive elements, we arrive,
not at letters, but at roots. This is a point which has
not been sufficiently considered, and it may almost
be taken as the general opinion, that the elements of
language are vowels and consonants, but not roots.
If, however, we call elements those primitive sub-
stances the combination of which is sufficient to ac-
count for things as they really are, it is clear that we
cannot well call the letters the elements of language ;
for we might shake the letters together ad infinitum,
without ever producing a dictionary, much less a
grammar. It was a favourite idea of ancient philo-
sophers to compare the atoms the concurrence of
which was to form all nature, with letters. Epicurus
is reported to have said that ' The atoms come to-
gether in different order and position, like the letters,
which, though they are few, yet- by being placed

ELEMENTS OF LANGUAGE. 81

together in different ways, produce innumerable
words.' 39

Aristotle, also, in his 6 Metaphysics,' when speak-
ing of Leucippus and Democritus, illustrates the
different effects produced by the same elements by a
reference to letters. ' A,' he says, ' differs from Nby
its shape ; AN from NA by the order of the letters ;
Z from N by its position.' 40

It is true, no doubt, that by putting the twenty-
three or twenty- four letters together in every possible
variety, we might produce every word that has ever
been used in any language of the world. The number
of these words, taking twenty-three letters as the
basis, would be 25,852,016,738,884,976,640,000 ; or,
if we take twenty-four letters, 620,448,401,733,
239,439,360,000. 41 But even then these trillions,
billions, and millions of sounds would not be words,
for they would lack the most important ingredient,
that which makes a word to be a word, namely, the
different ideas by which they were called into life,
and which are expressed differently in different
languages.

Element (Aristotle says) we call that of which anything
consists, as of its first substance, this being as to form indivi-

39 Lactantius, Divin. Inst. lib. 3, c. 19 : 'Vario, inquit (Epicurus),
ordine ac positione conveniunt atomi sicut literse, quse cum sint paucse,
varie tamen collocatae innumerabilia verba conficiunt.'

40 Metaph. i. 4, 11 : Aicupepei yap rb pcy A TOV N ax^om, r ^ * AN
TOV NA Ta|et, rb Se Z TOV N deVet.

41 Cf. Leibniz, DeArte oombinatoria, Opp. t. ii. pp. 387-8, ed. Dutens ;
Pott, Etym. Forsch. ii. p. 9. Plutarch, Symposiacce qucestiones, viii. 9,
3: RevoKpdr'fis Se r'bv ra>v vvKXafiiav apiQ^jibv, %vra (noix^a ^vyvv^va. irpbs
^AATjAa irapexet, ^.vpidSuv airefyrivei' flKcxraKis /cat fj.vpid.Kis pvpicav. Xeno-
crates was the pupil of Plato, and for twenty -five years president of the
Academy. See First Series, p. 307.

II. G

82 STOICHEION.

sible ; as, for instance, the elements of language (the letters) of
which language is composed, and into which as its last com-
ponent parts, it can be dissolved ; while they, the letters, can
no longer be dissolved into sounds different in form ; but if
they are dissolved, the parts are homogeneous, as a part of
water is water ; but not so the parts of a syllable. 42

If here we take phone as voice, not as language,
there would be nothing to object to in Aristotle's rea-
soning. The voice, as such, may be dissolved into
vowels and consonants, as its primal elements. But
not so speech. Speech is preeminently significant
sound, and if we look for the elements of speech, we
cannot on a sudden drop one of its two characteristic
qualities, either its audibility or its significancy.
Now letters as such are not significant ; a, b, c, d,
mean nothing, either by themselves or if put toge-
ther. The only word that is formed of mere letters
is 'Alphabet' (o aX^a^ro*), the English ABC; but
even here it is not the sounds, but the names of the
letters, that form the word. One other word has
been supposed to have the same merely alphabetical
origin, namely, the Latin elementum. As elementa is
used in Latin for the ABC, it has been supposed,
though I doubt whether in real earnest, that it was
formed from the three letters, 1, rn, n.

The etymological meaning of elementa is by no
means clear, nor has the Greek stoichewn, which in
Latin is rendered by elementum, as yet been satis-
factorily explained. We are told that stoichewn is a

42 Metaph. iv. 3 : ffroixf'iov \4yerai e ou avynsnai irpdnov tvvnap-
S, aSiaipe'-rou rep eJfSet [ety erepov cTSos], dtov tpwvTJs crroix^ - e '| &V
<puv)) Kal els & StajpeTrat e<rxTa, ^Keiva 5e /irjxeV ei's &\\as
crtpas ry efSei O.VTUV a\\a K&V Siaiprjrai, TO fj.6pia 6/j.oeiSTj^ olov
v&aros rb ^6piov u'5a>p, a\\'

STOICHEION. 83

diminutive from stolchos, a small upright rod or post,
especially the gnomon of the sundial, or the shadow
thrown by it ; and under stoichos we find the meaning
of a. row, a line of poles with hunting nets, and are
informed that the word is the same as stichos, line,
and stSchos, aim. How the radical vowel can change
from i to o and oi, is not explained.

The question is, why were the elements, or the
component primary parts of things, called stoichela
by the Greeks ? It is a word which has had a long
history, and has passed from Greece to almost every
part of the civilised world, and deserves, therefore,
some attention at the hand of the etymological genea-
logist. Stoichos, from which stoichewn, means a row
or file, like stix and stiches in Homer. The suffix
eios is the same as the Latis eius, and expresses what
belongs to or has the quality of something. There-
fore, as stoichos means a row, stoichewn would be
what belongs to or constitutes a row. Is it possible
to connect these words with stochos, aim, either in
form or meaning? Certainly not. Eoots with i
are liable to a regular change of i into oi or ei,
but not into o. Thus the root lip, which appears
in elipon, assumes the forms leipo and leloipa, and
the same scale of vowel-changes may be observed in

liph, aleipho, eloipha, and
pith, peitho, pepoitha.

Hence stoichos presupposes a root stich, and this
root would account in Greek for the following deriva-
tions :

1, stix, gen. stich6s, a row, a line of soldiers.

2, stichos, a row, a line ; distich, a couplet.

G 2

84 STOICHEION.

3, steicho, estichon, to march in order, step by step ;
to mount.

4, stolchos, a row, a file; stoichem, to march in a
line.

In German, the same root yields steigen, to step, to
mount; in Gothic, steigan ; and in Sanskrit we find
stigh, to mount.

Quite a different root is presupposed by st6chos.
As tomos points to a root tarn (temno, etamori), or
bolos to a root bal (belos, ebalori), st6clios points to a
root stacJt. This root does not exist in Greek in the
form of a verb, and has left behind in the classical
language this one formation only, strfchos, mark, point,
siiiu, whence stochdzomai, I point, I aim, and similar
derivatives. In Gothic, a similar root exists in the
verb staggan or stiggan, 43 the English to sting.

A third root, closely allied with, yet distinct from,
stack, has been more prolific in the classical languages,
namely, stig, to stick. 44 From it we have stizo, estig-
mai, I prick ; in Latin, in-stigare, stimulus, and stilus
(for stiglus, like palus for paglus) ; Gothic, stikan,
in trans, to stick, and staJcjan, 45 trans, to stick ; Ger-
man, stecken, both intrans. and trans.; Goth, stik-s, a
point, stak-s,* Q a mark, a-rly/jLa.

The result at which we thus arrive is that stoicheion
has no connection with stSchos; and hence that it can-
not, as the dictionaries tell us, have the primary

See Ulfilas, Matth. v. 29.

44 Grimm, Deutsche Sprache, p. 853; Goth, stiggan, stagg ; O.H.G*
stiii g an ; A.S. stingan, stang, stung on. Goth, stikan, staJc, steJeum ;
O.H.G. stechan, stah, stachum ; A.S. stican.

45 Goth, stikan and stakjan appear by the side of stiggan. Grimm,
Lex. s. v. Evgcn.

4S See Leo Mayer, Die Gothische Sprache, p. 159.

STOICHEION. 85

meaning of a small upright rod or pole, or of the
gnomon of the sundial. Where stoichewn (as in
SsKaTTow ffToi^siov i. e. noon) is used with reference
to the sundial, it means the lines of the shadow fol-
lowing each other in regular succession ; the radii, in
fact, which constitute the complete series of hours
described by the sun's daily course. And this gives
us the key to stoichewn, in the sense of elements.
Stoicheia are the degrees or steps from one end to
the other, the constituent parts of a whole, forming a
complete series, whether as hours, or letters, or num-
bers, or parts of speech, or physical elements, pro-
vided always that such elements are held together by
a systematic order. This is the only sense in which
Aristotle and his predecessors could have used the
word for ordinary and for technical purposes ; and it
corresponds with the explanation proposed by no less
an authority than Dionysius Thrax. The first gram-
marian of Greece gives the following etymology of
stoichem in the sense of letters ( 7) : 47 c The same
are also called stoicheia, because they have a certain
order and arrangement.' 48 Why the Romans, who
probably became for the first time acquainted with
the idea of elements through their intercourse with
Greek philosophers and grammarians, should have
translated stoicheia by elementa is less clear. In the
sense of physical elements, the early Greek philo-
sophers used rizomata, roots, in preference to stoicheia,

/col ffroi^eia /coAe?TOt 5to T& eeii/ OTTOIV nva. Kal

48 The explanation here suggested of stoichewn is confirmed by some
remarks of Professor Pott, in the second volume of his Etymologische
Forschungen, p. 191, 1861. The same author suggests a derivation of
elemcntnm from ti, solvere, with the preposition e. 1. c. p. 193.

86 ROOTS.

and whether elementa stands for alimenta, in the sense
of feeders, or for olementa, in the sense of sources of
growth (cf. adolere, sub-oles, &c.), 49 it may have been
intended originally as a rendering of rizomata.

From an historical point of view, letters are not the
stoichela or rizomata of language. The simplest parts
into which language can be resolved are the roots, and
these themselves cannot be further reduced without
destroying the nature of language, which is not mere
sound, but always significant sound. There may be
roots consisting of one vowel, such as i, to go, in
Sanskrit, or % one, in Chinese ; but this would only
show that a root may be a letter, not that a letter
may be a root. If we attempted to divide roots like
the Sk. A;i, to collect, or the Chinese tchi, many, into
tcli and i, we should find that we had left the pre-
cincts of language, and entered upon the science of
phonetics.

Before we do this before we proceed to dissect the
phonetic skeleton of human speech, it may be well to
say a few words about roots. In my former Lectures
I said, intentionally, very little about roots ; at least
very little about the nature or the origin of roots,
because I believed, and still believe, that in the science
of language we must accept roots simply as ultimate
facts, leaving to the physiologist and the psychologist
the question as to the possible sympathetic or reflec-
tive action of the five organs of sensuous perception
upon the motory nerves of the organs of speech. It
was for that reason that I gave a negative rather than
a positive definition of roots, stating 50 that, for my
own immediate purposes, I called root or radical

49 Corssen, Aussprache, 2nd ed. i. p. 530. 50 Vol. i. p. 292.

ROOTS. 87

whatever, in the words of any language or family of
languages, cannot be reduced to a simpler or more
original form.

It has been pointed out, however, with great logical
acuteness, that if this definition were true, roots
would be mere abstractions, and as such unfit to
explain the realities of language. Now, it is perfectly
true that, from one point of view, a root may be
considered as a mere abstraction. A root is a cause,
and every cause, in the logical acceptation of the word,
is an abstraction. As a cause it can claim no reality,
no vulgar reality ; if we call real that only which can
become the object of sensuous perception. In real
language, we never hear a root ; we only meet with
their effects, namely, with words, whether nouns, ad-
jectives, verbs, or particles. This is the view which
the native grammarians of India have taken of Sans-
krit roots ; and they have taken the greatest pains to
show that a root, as such, can never emerge to the
surface of real speech ; that there it is always a word,
an effect, a substance clothed in the garment of gram-
matical derivatives. The Hindus call a root dhatu,
which is derived from the root dha, 51 to support or
nourish. They apply the same word to their five
elements, which shows that, like the Greeks, they
looked upon these elements (earth, water, fire, air,

51 Uwadi Sutras, i. 70: dudh&n dharawaposhawayoA.
He tii, the Sanskrit word for cause, cannot be referred to the same root
from which dhatu is derived; for though dha forms the participle
hita, the i of hi-ta would not be liable to guwa before tu. Hetu
(Uwadi Sutras, i. 73) is derived from hi, which Bopp identifies with
K e i<a (Bopp, Glossarium, s. v. hi.) This Klw and KiWw are referred by
Curtius to the Latin do, cieo, citus, excito, not however to the Sanskrit
hi, but to root si, to sharpen. Cf. Curtius, G. E. i. p. 118.

88 ROOTS.

ether), and upon the elements of language, as the
supporters and feeders of real things and real words.
It is known that, in the fourth century B.C., the
Hindus possessed complete lists, not only of their
roots, but likewise of all the formative elements,
which, by being attached to them, raise the roots
into real words.

Thus from a root vid, to know, they would form by
means of the suffix ghan, Veda, i.e. knowledge ; by
means of the suffix trifc, vettar, a knower, Greek
histor and tstor. Again, by affixing to the root cer-
tain verbal derivatives, they would arrive at vedmi,
I know, viveda, I have known, or veda, I know.
Besides these derivatives, however, we likewise find
in Sanskrit the mere vid, used, particularly in com-
pounds, in the sense of knowing ; for instance,
dharmavid, a knower of the law. Here then the
root itself might seem to appear as a word. But
such is the logical consistency of Sanskrit gramma-
rians, that they have actually imagined a class of
derivative suffixes, the object of which is to be added
to a root for the sole purpose of being rejected again.
Thus only could the logical conscience of Pa?iini
be satisfied. 52 When we should say that a root is
used as a noun without any change except those that
are necessitated by phonetic laws (as, for instance,
dharmavit, instead of dharmavid), Patiini says

42 In earlier works the meaning of dhatu is not yet so strictly de-
fined. In the Pratisakhya of the Kigveda, xii. 5, a noun is defined
as that which signifies a being, a verb as that which signifies being, and
as such the verb is identified with the root (Tan nama yenabhid a-
dhati sattram, tad akhyatam yena bhavam, sa dhatuA). In
the Nirukta, too, verbs with different verbal terminations are spoken
of as dhatus. Nighanf'u, i. 20.

BOOTS. 89

{iii. 3, 68), that a suffix (namely, vif) is added to tlie
root v id. But if we come to inquire what this suffix
means, and why it is called vi, we find (vi. 1, 67)
that a lop a, i. e. a lopping off, is to carry away the
v of vit; that the final t is only meant to indicate
certain phonetic changes that take place if a root
ends in a nasal (vi. 4, 41); and that the vowel i
serves merely to connect these two algebraic symbols.
So that the suffix vit is in reality nought. This is
certainly strict logic, but it is rather cumbersome
grammar, and, from an historical point of view, we
are justified in dropping these circumlocutions, and
looking upon roots as real words.

With us, speaking inflectional and highly refined
languages, roots are primarily what remains as the
last residuum after a complete analysis of our own
dialects, or of all the dialects that form together the
great Aryan mass of speech. But if our analysis is
properly made, what is to us a mere residuum must
originally, in the natural course of events, have been
a real germ ; and these germinal forms would have
answered every purpose in an early stage of language.
We must not forget that there are languages which
have remained in that germinal state, and in which
there is to the present day no outward distinction be-
tween a root and a word. In Chinese, 53 for instance,
ly means to plough, a plough, and an ox, i.e. a
plougher; ta means to be great, greatness, greatly.
Whether a word is intended as a noun, or a verb, or
a particle, depends chiefly on the position which it
occupies in a sentence. In the Polynesian 54 dialects,

53 Eudlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, 123.
5 Cf. Hale, p. 263.

90 BOOTS.

almost every verb may, without any change of form,
be used as a noun or an adjective ; whether it is
meant for the one or the other must be learnt from
certain particles, which are called particles of affirma-
tion (kua), and the particles of the agent (ko). In
Egyptian, as Bun sen states, there is no formal dis-
tinction between noun, verb, adjective, and particle,
and a word like anh might mean life, to live, living,
lively. 65 What does this show ? I think it shows
that there was a stage in the growth of language, in
which that sharp distinction which we make between
the different parts of speech had not yet been fixed,
and when even that fundamental distinction between
subject and predicate, on which all the parts of
speech are based, had not yet been realised in its
fulness, and had not yet received a corresponding
outward expression.

A slightly different view is propounded by Professor
Pott, when he says : ' Eoots, it should be observed,
as such, lack the stamp of words, and therefore their
real value in the currency of speech. There is no
inward necessity why they should first have entered
into the reality of language, naked and formless ; it
suffices, that, unpronounced, they fluttered before the
soul like small images, continually clothed in the
mouth, now with this, now with that form, and sur-
rendered to the air to be drafted off in hundred-fold
cases and combinations. 556

It might be said, that as soon as a root is pro-
nounced as soon as it forms part of a sentence it
ceases to be a root, and is either a subject or a pre-

45 Bunsen'a Aegypten, i. 324.

Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 95.

BOOTS. 91

dieate, or, to use grammatical language, a noun or a
verb. Yet even this seems an artificial distinction.
To a Chinese, the sound ta, even when pronounced,
is a mere root ; it is neither noun nor verb, distinctions
which, in the form in which we conceive them, have
no existence at all to a Chinese. If to ta we add/it,
man, and when we put/w- first and ta last, then, no
doubt, fu is the subject, and ta the predicate, or, as
our grammarians would say, fu is a noun, and ta a
verb ; fu ta would mean, ( the man is great.' But if
we said ta fu, ta would be an adjective, and the phrase
would mean ' a great man.' I can here see no real
distinction between ta, potentially a noun, an adjec-
tive, a verb, an adverb, and ta infu ta, used actually
as an adjective or verb.

As the growth of language and the growth of the
mind are only two aspects of the same process, it is
difficult for us to think in Chinese, or in any radical
language, without transferring to it our categories of
thought. But if we watch the language of a child,
which is in reality Chinese spoken in English, we see
that there is a form of thought, and of language, per-
fectly rational and intelligible to those who have
studied it, in which, nevertheless, the distinction be-
tween noun and verb, nay, between subject and pre-
dicate, is not yet realised. If a child says Up, that
up is, to his mind, noun, verb, adjective, all in one.
It means, 6 1 want to get up on my mother's lap.' If
an English child says ta, that ta is both a noun,
thanks, and a verb, I thank you. Nay, even if a
child learns to speak grammatically, it does not yet
think grammatically ; it seems, in speaking, to wear
the garments of its parents, though it has not yet

92 ROOTS.

grown into them. A child says '1 am hungry,' with-
out an idea that I is different from hungry, and that
both are united by an auxiliary verb, which auxiliary
verb again was a compound of a root a s, and a per-
sonal termination mi, giving us the Sanskrit asini,
I am. A Chinese child would express exactly the
same idea by one word, shi, to eat, or food, &c. The
only difference would be that a Chinese child speaks
the language of a child, an English child the language
of a man. If then it is admitted that every inflec-
tional language passed through a radical and an ag-
glutinative stage, it seems to follow that, at one time
or other, the constituent elements of inflectional lan-
guages, namely, the roots, were to all intents and
purposes, real words, and used as such both in
thought and speech.

Roots, therefore, are not such mere abstractions as
they are sometimes supposed to be, and unless we
succeed in tracing each word in English, or in any
inflectional language back to its root, we have not
traced it back to its real origin. It is in this analysis
of language that comparative philology has achieved
its greatest triumphs, and has curbed that wild spirit
of etymology which would handle words as if they had
no past, no history, no origin. In tracing words back
to their roots we must obey certain phonetic laws.
If the vowel of a root is i or u, its derivatives will be
different, from Sanskrit down to English, from what
they would have been if that radical vowel had been
a. If a root begins with a tenuis in Sanskrit, that
tenuis will never be a tenuis in Gothic, but an aspi-
rate ; if a root begins with an aspirate in Sanskrit,
that aspirate will never be an aspirate in Gothic, but

BOOTS. 93

a media ; if a root begins with a media in Sanskrit,
that media will not be a media in Gothic, but a tennis.
And this, better than anything else, will, I think,
explain the strong objection which comparative phi-
lologists feel to what I called the Bow-wow and the
Pooh-pooh theories, names which I am sorry to see
have given great offence, bnt in framing which, I
can honestly say, I thought of Epicurus 57 rather
than of living writers, and meant no offence to
either. 'Onomatopoeic' is neither an appropriate
nor a pleasant word, and it was absolutely necessary
to distinguish between two theories, the onomatopoeic,
which derives words from the sounds of animals
and nature in general, as imitated by the framers
of language, and the inter jectional, which derives
words not from the imitation of the interjections of
others, but from the interjections themselves as wrung
forth, almost against their will, from the framers of
language. According to the former view the origin
of language was the result of a conscious act, accord-
to the latter, of an involuntary instinct. I did not
think that the weapons of ridicule were necessary to
combat theories which, since the days of Epicurus,
had so often been combated, and so often been de-
fended. I may have erred in choosing terms which,
while they expressed exactly what I wished to ex-
press, sounded rather homely and undignified ; but I
could not plead for the terms I had chosen a better
excuse than the name now suggested by the sup-
porters of the onomatopoeic theory, which, I am

57 'O yap 'EiriKOvpos (\eyfv '6ri ov%l firL<rTt]fj.6v(as OVTOI Sldei/TO ra
oi/d.uara, a\\a QvffiKais Kivovpevoi, us ol ftiiacrovTfs Kal TTTaipovres Kal
Kal vXaKTovvres Kal (rrevd^ovres. Proclus, ad Plat. Crat. p. 9.

94 BOOTS.

told, is to be Imsonic, from im instead of imitation,
and son instead of sonus, sound. 58

That there is some analogy between the faculty
of speech and the sounds which we utter in singing,
laughing, crying, sobbing, sighing, moaning, scream-
ing, whistling, and clicking, was known to Epicurus
of old, and requires no proof. But does it require to
be pointed out that even if the scream of a man who
has his finger pinched should happen to be identically
the same as the French helas, that scream would be
an effect, an involuntary effect of outward pressure,
whereas an interjection like alas, helas, Italian lasso,
to say nothing of such words as pain, suffering,
agony, &c., is there by the free will of the speaker,
meant for something, used with a purpose, chosen as
a sign ?

Again, that sounds can be rendered in language b} r
sounds, and that each language possesses a large stock
of words imitating the sounds given out by certain
things, who would deny ? And who would deny that

58 Another name proposed in order to avoid the vague term onomato-
poeic, is pathognomic. I subjoin an explanation of the term as given in
Steinthal's Zeitschrift fur Vblkerpsychologie, i. p. 420 : ' We call it the
pathognomic principle, in order to avoid the word onomatopoeic, with
which, not only through Plato and the Stoics, so many misunderstandings
are connected. In order to understand the principle rightly, we must
remove not only every intention, every consciousness in the formation of
words ; but it should not be overlooked that the word is never an image,
nor an imitation of the thing, nor of its representation. The likeness of
word and meaning consists only in this that the Gefiihlston (tone used
metaphorically, as we speak of tone of colour), which the intuition of a
thing calls forth in us, is about the same as that which is excited by the
SpracUaut (Lazarus, Leben der Seele, ii. p. 93 ; Zeitschrift fur Phttos. u.
phil. Kritik, Bd. 32, p. 212) ; for this tone, this temper of the mind, as
excited by sensation or perception, may be what is alone effective in this
reflex on the motory nerves.'

HOOTS. 95

some words, originally expressive of sound only, might
be transferred to other things which have some ana-
logy with sound ?

But how are all things that do not appeal to the
sense of hearing how are the ideas of going, moving,
standing, sinking, tasting, thinking, to be expressed ?

I give the following as a specimen of what may be
achieved by the advocates of ' painting in sound.'
Hooiaioai is said in Hawaian to mean to testify ; and
this, we are told, was the origin of the word : 59

In uttering the i the breath is compressed into the smallest
and seemingly swiftest current possible. It represents there-
fore a swift, and what we may call a sharp movement.

Of all the vowels o is that of which the sound goes farthest.
We have it therefore in most words relating to distance, as in
holo, lo, long, &c.

In joining the two, the sense is modified by their position.
If we write oz, it is an o going on with an z. This is exem-
plified in oz, lame. Observe how a lame man advances.
Standing on the sound limb, he puts the lame one leisurely
out and sets it to the ground : this is the o. But no sooner
does it get there, and the weight of the body begin to rest on
it, than, hastening to relieve it of the burden, he moves the
other leg rapidly forward, lessening the pressure at the same
time by relaxing every joint he can bend, and thus letting his body
sink as far as possible ; this rapid sinking movement is the i.

Again, oz, a passing in advance, excellency. Here o is the
general advance, z is the going ahead of some particular one.

If, again, we write zo, it is an i going on with an o. That
is to say, it is a rapid and penetrating movement z, and that
movement long continued. Thus we have in Hawaian to, a
chiefs forerunner. He would be a man rapid in his course
; of good bottom o . In Greek, ios, an arrow, and 70, the

69 The Polynesian, Honolulu,^ 1862.

96 BOOTS.

goddess who went so fast and far. Hence io is anything that
goes quite through, that is thorough, complete, real, true.
Like Burns, ' facts are chiels that winna ding,' that is, cannot
be forced out of their course. Hence z'0, flesh, real food, in
distinction to bone, &c., and reality or fact, or truth generally.

la is the pronoun that, analogous to Latin, z's, ea, id. Put-
ting together these we have o, m, io ' oh that is fact.' Prefix-
ing the causative hoo, we have 'make that to be fact;' affix
at, completive of the action, and we have, l make that com-
pletely out to be a fact,' that is ' testify to its truth.'

It is to be remarked that the stress of the voice is laid on
the second z', the oia being pronounced very lightly, and that
in Greek the i in oiomai, I believe, is always strongly ac-
cented, a mark of the contraction the word has suffered.

Although the languages of Europe, with their
well-established history, lend themselves less easily to
such speculations, yet I could quote similar passages
from French, German, and English etymologists,
Dr. Bolza, in his Yocabolario Genetico-Etimologico
(Vienna, 1852), tells us, among other things, that in
Italian a expresses light, o redness, u darkness ; and
he continues, ' JEcco probabilmente le tre note, die in
fiamma, fuoco, e fumo, sono espresse dal mutamento
della vocale, mentre la f esprime in tutti i tre il movi-
mento deW aria 9 (p. 61, note). And again we are
told by him that one of the first sounds pronounced
by children is m : hence mamma. The root of this is
ma or am, which gives us amare, to love. On account
of the movement of the lips, it likewise supplies the
root of mangiare and masticare ; and explains besides
muto, dumb, muggire, to low, miagolare, to mew, and
mormorio, murmur. Now, even if amare could not
be protected by the Sanskrit root am, to rush forward
impetuously (according to others, kam, to love), we

BOOTS. 97

should have thought that mangiare and masticare
would have been safe against onomatopoeic inter-
ference, the former being the Latin manducare, to
chew, the latter the post-classical masticare, to chew.
Manducare has a long history of its own. It descends
from mandere to chew, and mandere leads us back to
the Sanskrit root mard, to grind, one of the nume-
rous offshoots of the root mar, the history of which
will form the subject of one of our later lectures.
Mutus has been well derived by Professor A. Weber
(Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vi. p. 318) from the Sanskrit mu,
to bind (P SLU. vi. 4, 20), so that its original meaning
would have been c tongue-bound/ As to miagolare,
to mew, we willingly hand it over to the onomatopoeic
school.

The onomatopoeic theory goes very smoothly as
long as it deals with cackling hens and quacking
ducks ; but round that poultry-yard there is a high
wall, and we soon find that it is behind that wall
that language really begins.

Many names of animals, however, particularly in
languages which have not yet been analysed scienti-
fically, have been explained as onomatopoeic, which
a more intimate acquaintance with the language
clearly proves to be appellative. As a warning in
that respect I may quote the remarks of Mr. J.
Hammond Trumbull, in the Proceedings of the Ame-
rican Oriental Society, 1868, p. xiii. :

In Dr. Wilson's * Prehistoric Man' (2nd ed. p. 56) is given
a list of twenty -six names of animals which he regards as of
onomatopoetic origin, and as illustrating the fact that ' primi-
tives originating directly from the observation of natural
sounds are not uncommon among the native root-words of the

II. H

98 ROOTS.

New World.' This list has been used by Mr. Farrar (Chapters
on Language, pp. 24-5) in support of his averment that, in
savage vocabularies, ' almost every name for an animal is a
striking and obvious onomatopoeia.'

Considering our imperfect comprehension of the Algonkin
dialects, we could not be expected to refute every assumed and
doubtful onomatopoeia by a true etymology. Of a part of the
words in the list, it can only be said that their origin is not
primd facie mimetic. Respecting others, the fact can be
proved. Thus koo-koosh, ' sow,' is demonstrably derived, by
an adaptation of the name for * porcupine,' from a root signi-
fying l sharp,' and it designates * a bad bristly or prickly
animal.' As to pe-zhew, l wild cat,' forms of which are
widely distributed, and used to denote various of the feline
animals, there is a bare possibility that it may be imitative,
but no more. These are the only names of quadrupeds in the
list. Of the nineteen names of birds, four or five are pre-
sumably mimetic (including those of the owl and crow), six
or seven possibly so, and the rest obviously derivative and
significant. Shi-sheeb, * duck,' like duck itself, comes from a
root signifying ' dive.' Pau-pau-say, ' the common spotted
woodpecker,' means *a spotted bird.' Moosh-kah-oos, 'bittern,'
denotes a frequenter of marshes. No-no-caus-ee, ' humming-
bird' a strange enough onomatopoeia ! means * the exceed-
ingly delicate creature.' Of the asserted mimetic names for
' frog,' one signifies c diver,' and the other, as it belongs also to
the toad, is not likely to be truly imitative. And so on. If
only one-fourth of a list carefully gleaned from three dialects
can be fairly set down as onomatopoeic, how much less is
likely to be the proportion of such names to the whole voca-
bulary of any one tribe ?

Most Algonkin names of animals are descriptive derivatives,
and the few apparent exceptions belong to species which are
more often heard than seen, while it is doubtful if any name
of a quadruped is purely mimetic. Attention should also be
paid to certain curious features of Indian nomenclature, espe-

ROOTS. 99

cially to the combination of a generic characteristic with spe-
cific names ; as, for example, certain swimming animals have
<i common suffix of derivation coming from a root that means
* put the head above water;' others, one that means 'bite;'
others, ' scratch ' or * tear ;' of plants, some are thus marked
as to be eaten green, as nut-bearing, as having eatable roots,
and so on. Such a suffix, in the Chippeway and allied
tongues, \agun, the formative of theinstrumentive participial;
the occurrence of which at the end of the name for ' shooting-
instrument' has misled Mr. Farrar into affirming (p. 34) that
4 in some cases the onomatopoeic instinct is so strong that it
asserts itself side by side with the adoption of a name' from a
foreign language.

But whatever we may think of these onomatopoeic
and interjectional theories, we must carefully distin-
guish between two things. There is one class of
scholars who derive all words from roots according to
the strictest rules of comparative grammar, but who
look upon the roots, in their original character, as
either interjectional or onomatopoeic. There are
others who derive words straight from interjections
und the cries of animals, and who claim in their
etymologies all the liberty the cow claims in saying
booh, mooh, or ooh, or that man claims in saying pooh,
fi, pfui. 6Q With regard to the former theory, I should
wish to remain entirely neutral, satisfied with con-
sidering roots as phonetic types till some progress has
been made in tracing the principal roots, not of Sans-
krit only, but of Chinese, Bask, the Turanian, and
Semitic languages, back to the cries of man or the
imitated sounds of nature.

60 On the uncertainty of rendering inarticulate by articulate sounds,
see Marsh (4th ed.), p. 36; Sir John Stoddart's Glossology, p. 231;
Melanges asiatiques (St P^tersbourg), iv. 1.

H 2

100 ROOTS.

Quite distinct from this is that other theory which r
without the intervention of determinate roots, derives
>ur words directly from cries and interjections. This
theory would undo all the work that has been done
by Bopp, Huinboldt, Grimm, and others, during the
last fifty years ; it would with one stroke abolish all
the phonetic laws that have been established with so
much care and industry, and throw etymology back
i nto a state of chaotic anarchy. According to Grimm's-
3 aw, we derive the English fiend, the German feind,
the Gothic fijand, from a root which, if it exists at all
in Sanskrit, Latin, Lithuanian, or Celtic, must there
begin with the tenuis p. Such is the phonetic law that
holds these languages together, and that cannot be
violated with impunity. If we found in Sanskrit a
word fiend, we should feel certain that it could not be
the same as the English fiend. Following this rule
we find in Sanskrit the root ply, to hate, to destroy,
the participle of which ply ant would correspond
exactly with Gothic fijand. But suppose we derived
fiend and other words of a similar sound, such as foul,
filth, &c., from the interjections fi, and pooh (faugh !
fo! fie! Lith. pui, Germ, pfui), all would be mere
scramble and confusion ; Grimm's law would be
broken ; and roots, kept distinct in Sanskrit, Greek,.
Latin, and German, would be mixed up together.
For besides piy, to hate, there is another root in
Sanskrit, puy, to decay. From it we have Latin pus,,
puteo, putridus ; Greek pyon, and pytho ; Lithuanian
pulei, matter ; and, in strict accordance with Grimm's
law, Gothic fuls, English foul. If these words were-
derived from// then we should have to include all

ROOTS. 101

the descendants of the root bhi, to fear, such as
Lithuanian bijau, I fear ; Maurus, ugly.

In the same manner, if we looked upon thunder as a
mere imitation of the inarticulate noise of thunder,
we could not trace the A. S. thunor back to the root
tan, which expresses that tension of the air which
gives rise to sound, but we should have to class it
together with other words, such as to din, to dun, and
discover in each, as best we could, some similarity
with some inarticulate noise. If, on the contrary,
we bind ourselves by definite rules, we find that the
same law which changes tan into than, changes
another root dhvan into din. There may be, for all
we know, some distant relationship between the two
roots tan and dhvan, and that relationship may
have its origin in onomatopoeia; but, from the earliest
beginnings of the history of the Aryan language,
these two roots were independent germs, each the
starting-point of large classes of words, the phonetic
character of which is determined throughout by the
type from which they issue. To ignore the indivi-
duality of each root in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin,
would be like ignoring the individuality of the types
of the animal creation. There may be higher, more
general, more abstract types, but if we want to reach
them, we must first toil through the lower and more
special types ; we must retrace, in the descending-
scale of scientific analysis, every step by which, in an
ascending scale, language has arrived at its present
state.

The onomatopoeic system would be most detri-
mental to all scientific etymology, and no amount of

102 ROOTS.

learning and ingenuity displayed in its application
could atone for the lawlessness which is sanctioned
by it. If it is once admitted that all words must be
traced back to definite roots, according to the strictest
phonetic rules, it matters little whether these roots
are called phonetic types, more or less preserved in
all the innumerable impressions that are taken from
them, or whether we call them onomatopoeic and
interjectioiial. As long as we have definite forms
between ourselves and chaos, we may build our
science like an arch of a bridge that rests on the firm
piles fixed in the rushing waters. If, on the contrary,,
the roots of language are mere abstractions, and
there is nothing to separate language from cries and
interjections, then we may play with language as
children play with the sands of the sea, but we must
not complain if every fresh tide wipes out the little
castles we had built on the beach.

103

LECTURE 111.

THE PHYSIOLOGICAL ALPHABET.

TT7E proceed to-day to dissect the body of lan-
T T gnage. In doing this we treat language as a
mere corpse, not caring whether it ever had any life
or meaning, but simply trying to find out what it is
made of, how sounds are produced, how impressions
are made upon our ear, and how they can be clas-
sified. In order to do this it is not suflicient to
examine our alphabet, such as it is, though no doubt
the alphabet, if arranged according to scientific prin-
ciples, may very properly be called the table of the
elements of language. But what do we learn from
our ABC? what even, if we are told that k is a
guttural tenuis, s a dental sibilant, m a labial nasal,
y a palatal liquid? These are names which are
borrowed from Greek and Latin Grammars. They
expressed more or less happily the ideas which the
scholars of Athens and Alexandria had formed of the
nature of certain letters. But these ideas were by
no means always correct, and, as translated into our
grammatical phraseology they have frequently lost
their original meaning. Our modern grammarians
speak of tenuis and media, but they define tenuis not
as a bare or thin letter, so called in opposition to the

104 CLASSIFICATION OP LETTERS.

aspirated consonants which in Greek were spoken of
as thick, rough or shaggy (Saav), but on the con-
trary as the hardest and strongest articulation ; nor
are they always aware that the mediae or middle
letters were originally so called because, as pro-
nounced at Alexandria, they seemed to stand half-
way between the bare and the rough letters, i.e. the
aspirates, being pronounced with less breath than
the aspirates, with more than the tenues. 1 Plato's
division of letters, as given in his Cratylus, is very
much that which we still profess to follow. He
speaks of voiced letters (<$>wvr)zvra, vocales), our
vowels ; and of voiceless letters (afava), our conso-
nants, or mutes. But he divides the latter into two
classes: first, those which are voiceless, but not
soundless ((frwvijsvTa IJLSV ov, ov /JLEVTOI <ys a<f>6ojya)y after-
wards called semi- vowels (rjfjbfywva) ; and secondly,
the real mutes, both voiceless and soundless, i.e. all
consonants, except the semi-vowels (a(f>0oyya). z In
later times, the scheme adopted by Greek gram-
marians is as follows :

1 Scholion to Dionysius Thrax, in Anccdota Bekk. p. 810 :

Spyavct rpia etVlv, f) yXcaffcra, ol o8<Wes, TO, xeiA.?;. Toij /*/ o&v &Kpois
XetA.e<rt TnAov/wVots eKcpoij/eirai [rb TT], &ffT ff^Z'bv /u.7j8 o\lyov rt
Trjsevp.a TrapeKjSaiVeti/ avovyo^vuv 5e rail/ x t ^ ' ft " / ' ir ^ vv K< d irvevfj-aros
iro\\ov ci6t>TOS, e/c^ajvetrat rb (f) rb Se ft, eK<fxavo^fJ.vov dpotus ro'ts
&Kpois T&V x 6t ^- ' a " / > Tovrcffri irepl rbv avrbv r6irov rots Trpo\exQ*?o'i
TUV <puvr]T IKWV opydvav, otire irdvv av<&yfi ^a X 6 ^ 7 ? ^ s T ^ <P ofae
irdvv TriAeZ ws rb TT, aAAa /tetrrjj/ TWO, 8ieofiov T$ irvevfJMTi ire<pfia'fj.fvcas
SiScixriv, K.T.\. See Eudolph von Eaumer, Sprachwissenschaftliche
Schriften, p. 102, who shows that the Scholion was written before 730
A.D. ; Curtius, Griechische Etymologic, ii. p. 30. It is clear that the scho-
liast speaks of the pronunciation of his own time, when the aspirates
had become mere spirants, and when the mediae, too, approached to
that pronunciation which they have in modern Greek.

2 Eaumer, 1. c. p. 100.

CLASSIFICATION OF LETTERS. 105

I. Phoneenta, vocales, voiced vowels.
II. Symphona, consonantes.

II. 1. JLemiphona, semi-vocales, half- voiced,
1, m, n, r, s ; or, Hygrd, liquidse, fluid,
1, m, n, r.

II. 2. Aphona, mutse, voiceless.

a. Psildy tenues (hard, surd) ; b. Mesa, mediae (soft,
sonant) ; c. Dasea, aspiratse.

k, t, p. g, d, b. ch, th, ph.

Another classification of letters, more perfect, be-
cause deduced from a language (the Sanskrit) not
yet reduced to writing, but carefully watched and
preserved by oral tradition, is to be found in the so-
called Pratisakhyas, works on phonetics, belonging
to different schools in which the ancient texts of the
Ye da were handed down from generation to genera-
tion with an accuracy far exceeding that of the most
painstaking copyists of MSS. Some of these works
have lately been published and translated, and may
be consulted by those who take an interest in these
matters. 3

Of late years the whole subject of phonetics has
been taken up with increased ardour by scientific

3 Pratisakhya clu Eig-Veda, par M. Ad. Regnier, in the Journal
aslatique. Paris, 1856-58.

Text und Uebersetzung des Pratisakhya, oder der dltesten PhonetiJc
und Grammatik, in M. M.'s edition of the Rig- Veda. Leipzig, 1856.

Das Vayasane'yi-Pratisakhyam, published by Prof. A. Weber,
in Indische Studlen, vol. iv. Berlin, 1858.

The Atharva-Veda Pratisakhya, by W. D. Whitney. New-
haven, 1862. The same distinguished scholar is preparing an edition
of the Pratisakhya of the Taittiriya-Veda. As the hymns of
the Samaveda were chanted, and not recited, no true Pratisakhya,
or work on phonetics, existed for this Veda

106 PHONETICS.

men, and assaults have been made from three dif-
ferent points by different armies, philologists, physio-
logists, and mathematicians. The best philological
treatises I can recommend (without mentioning
earlier works, such as a very excellent treatise by
Bishop Wilkins, 1688), are the essays published from
time to time by Mr. Alexander John Ellis, 4 by far

4 Works on Phonetics by Alexander J. Ellis. The Alphabet of Nature;
or, contributions towards a more accurate analysis and symbolisation of
spoken sounds, with some account of the principal Phonetical alphabets
hitherto proposed. Originally published in the Phonotypic Journal,
June 1844 to June 1845. London and Bath, 1845. 8vo. pp. viii. 194.
The Essentials of Phonetics ; containing the theory of a universal alpha-
bet, together with its practical application as an ethnical alphabet to the
reduction of all languages, written or unwritten, to one uniform system
of writing, with numerous examples, adapted to the use of Phoneticians,
Philologists, Etymologists, Ethnographists, Travellers, and Missionaries.
In lieu of a second edition of the Alphabet of Nature. London, 1848.
8vo. pp. xvi. 276. Printed entirely in a Phonetic character, with illus-
trations in twenty-seven languages, and specimens of various founts of
Phonetic type. The Ethnical Alphabet was also published as a separate
tract. English Phonetics; containing an original systematisation of
spoken sounds, a complete explanation of the Reading Keform Alphabet,
and a new universal Latinic Alphabet for Philologists and Travellers.
London, 1854. 8vo. pp. 16. Universal Writing and Printing with
Ordinary Letters, for the use of Missionaries, Comparative Philologists,
Linguists, and Phonologists (Edinburgh and London, 1856, 4to. pp. 22),
containing a complete Digraphic, Travellers' Digraphic, and Latinic
Alphabets (of which the two first were published separately), with ex-
amples in nine languages, and a comparative table of the Digraphic,
Latinic, suggested Panethnic, Prof. Max Miiller's Missionary, and Dr.
Lepsius's Linguistic Alphabets. A Plea for Phonetic Spelling; or, the
Necessity of Orthographic Reform. London, 8vo. First edition, 1844,
pp. 40. Second edition, 1848, pp. 180, with an Appendix, showing the
inconsistencies of het^ric orthography, and the present geographical ex-
tent of the writing and printing reform. Third edition, with an Ap-
pendix, containing the above tables remodelled, an account of existing
Phonetic alphabets, and an elaborate Inquiry into the Variations in
English Pronunciation during the last three Centuries, has been in the
press in America since 1860, but has been stopped by the civil war. The/
whole text, pp. 151, has been printed.

PHONETICS. 107

the most accurate observer and analyser in the field
of phonetics. Other works by E. von Eaumer, 5
F. H. du Bois - Eeymond, 6 Lepsius, 7 Thausing,*
Bell, 9 may be consulted with advantage in their
respective spheres. The Physiological works which
I found most useful and intelligible to a reader not
professionally devoted to these studies were Muller's
( Handbook of Physiology,' Briicke's ' Grundziige der
Physiologic Und Systematik der Sprachlaute ' (Wien,
1856), Funke's ' Lehrbuch der Physiologic,' and
Czerinak's articles in the c Sitzungsberichte der k.k.
Akadernie der Wissenschaften zu Wien.' 10

Among works on mathematics and acoustics, I
have consulted Sir John Herschel's f Treatise on
Sound,' in the e Encyclopaedia Metropolitana ; ' Pro-
fessor Willis's paper 6 On the Yowel Sounds and on
Eeed Organ-Pipes,' read before the Cambridge Phy-
siological Society in 1828 and 1829 ; but chiefly

s Gesammelte sprackwissenschaftliche Schriften, von Eudolph von
Eaumer. Frankfort, 1863. (Chiefly on classical and Teutonic lan-
guages).

6 Kadmus, oder Allgemeine Alphabetic, von F. H. du Bois-Eeymond.
Berlin, 1862. (Containing papers published as early as 1811, and full
of ingenious and original observations.)

7 Lepsius, Standard Alphabet, second edition, 1863. (On the subject
in general, but particularly useful for African languages.)

8 Das naturliche Lautsystem der menschlichen Sprache, von Dr. M.
Thausing. Leipzig, 1863. (With special reference to the teaching of
deaf and dumb persons.)

9 The Principles of Speech, and Vocal Physiology, by Alex. Melville
Bell. Edinburgh, 1863. The same author has published several other
works on phonetics, and has prepared an alphabet which is to indicate
the physiological character of each letter, so as really to deserve the
name of ' Visible Speech,' a name too freely granted to the ancient sys-
tems of writing. See Visible Speech, a New Fact, demonstrated by A.
Melville Bell. 1865.

10 See also Popul'dre physiologische Vortrdge, von J. N. Czermak,
Wien, 1869.

108 PHONETICS.

Professor Helmholtz's classical work. 'Die Lehrt,
von den Tonempfindungen ' (Braunschweig, 1863),
a work giving the results of the most minute scien-
tific researches in a clear, classical, and truly popular
form, so seldom to be found in German books.

I ought not to omit to mention here the valuable
services rendered by those who, for nearly twenty
years, have been labouring in England to turn the
results of scientific research to practical use, in de-
vising and propagating a new system of 'Brief
Writing and True Spelling,' best known under the
name of the Phonetic Reform. I am far from under-
rating the difficulties that stand in the way of such
a reform, and I am not so sanguine as to indulge in
any hopes of seeing it carried for the next three or
four generations. But I feel convinced of the truth
and reasonableness of the principles on which that
reform rests, and as the innate regard for truth and
reason, however dormant or timid at times, has
always proved irresistible in the end, enabling men
to part with all they hold most dear and sacred,
whether corn-laws, or Stuart dynasties, or Papal
legates, or heathen idols, I doubt not but that the
effete and corrupt orthography will follow in their
train. Nations have before now changed their nu-
merical figures, their letters, their chronology, their
weights and measures ; and though Mr. Pitman may
not live to see the results of his persevering and
disinterested exertions, it requires no prophetic
power to perceive that what at present is pooh-
poohed by the many, will make its way in the end,
unless met by arguments stronger than those hitherto
levelled at the Fonetic Nuz.' One argument which

PHONETICS. 109

might be supposed to weigh, with the student of
language, viz. the obscuration of the etymological
structure of words, I cannot consider as very for-
midable. The pronunciation of languages changes
according to fixed laws, the spelling has changed in
the most arbitrary manner, so that if our spelling
followed strictly and unswervingly the pronunciation
of words, it would in reality be of greater help to the
critical student of language than the present uncer-
tain and unscientific mode of writing.

Although considerable progress has thus been
made in the analysis of the human voice, the diffi-
culties inherent in the subject have been increased
rather than diminished by the profound and laborious
researches carried on independently by physiologists,
students of acoustics, and philologists. The human
voice opens a field of observation in which these
three distinct sciences meet. The substance of
speech or sound has to be analysed by the mathe-
matician and the experimental philosopher; the
organs or instruments of speech have to be examined
by the anatomist; and the history of speech, the
actual varieties of sound which have become typified
in language, fall to the province of the student of
language. Under these circumstances it is abso-
lutely necessary that students should co-operate in
order to bring these scattered researches to a suc-
cessful termination ; and I take this opportunity of
expressing my obligation to Dr. Eolleston, our inde-
fatigable Professor of Physiology, Mr. Gr. Griffith,
Deputy-Professor of Experimental Philosophy, Mr.
A. J. Ellis, and others, for their kindness in helping
me through difficulties which, but for their assist-

110 PHONETICS.

tance, I should not have been able to overcome with-
out much loss of time.

What can seern simpler than the ABC, and yet
what is more difficult when we come to examine it ?
Where do we find an exact definition of vowel and
consonant, and how they differ from each other ? The
vowels, we are told, are simple emissions of the voice,
the consonants cannot be articulated except with the
assistance of vowels. If this were so, letters such as
s y /, r, could not be classed as consonants, for there is
no difficulty in pronouncing these without the assist-
ance of a real vowel. Again, what is the difference
between a, i, u ? What is the difference between a
tenuis and media, a difference almost incomprehen-
sible to certain races ; for instance, the Mohawks and
the inhabitants of Saxony? Has any philosopher
given as yet a clear and intelligible definition of the
difference between speaking, whispering, singing?
We may speak in singing, and sing in speaking ; we
may speak in whispering, and whisper in speaking ;
we may even sing in whispering, and whisper in
singing; in fact, we seldom speak without either
singing or whispering certain portions of our words,
yet few people could tell how these different processes
are to be distinguished. Let us begin, then, with
the beginning, and give some definitions of the words
we shall have to use hereafter.

What we hear may be divided, first of all, into
Noises and Tones. Noises, such as the rustling of
leaves, the jarring of doors, or the clap of thunder,
are produced by irregular impulses imparted to the
air. Tones, such as we hear from tuning-forks,
strings, flutes, organ pipes, are produced by regular

PHONETICS. Ill

periodical (isochronous) vibrations of elastic air.
That tone, musical tone, or tone in its simplest form,
is produced by tension, and ceases after the sounding
body has recovered from that tension, seems to have
been vaguely known to the early framers of language,
for the Greek tonos, tone, is derived from a root tan,
meaning to stretch, to extend. Pythagoras 11 knew
more than this. He knew that when chords of the
same quality and the same tension are to sound a
fundamental note, its octave, its fifth, and its fourth,
their respective lengths must be like 1 to 2, 2 to 3,
and 3 to 4.

When we hear a single note, the impression we
receive seems very simple, yet it is in reality very
complicated. We can distinguish in each note

1. Its strength or loudness.

2. Its height or pitc!i.

3. Its quality, or, as it is sometimes called, timbre ;
in German Tonfarbe, i.e. colour of tone.

Strength or loudness depends upon the amplitude
of the excursions of the vibrating particles of air which
produce the wave.

Height or pitch depends on the length of time
that each particle requires to perform an excursion,
i.e. on the number of vibrations executed in a given
time. If, for instance, the pendulum of a clock,
which oscillates once in each second, were to mark
smaller portions of time, it would cause musical tones
to be heard. Sixteen double oscillations in one se-
cond would be sufficient to bring out tone, though
its pitch would be so low as to be hardly perceptible.
For practical purposes, the lowest tone we hear is

11 Helmholtz, Einleitung, p. 2.

112 PHONETICS.

produced by 30 double vibrations in one second, the
highest by 4,000. Between these two lie the usual
seven octaves of our musical instruments. It is said
to be possible, however, to produce perceptible mu-
sical tones through 11 octaves, beginning with 16
and ending with 38,000 double vibrations in one
second, though here the lower notes are mere hums,
the upper notes mere clinks. The A' of our tuning-
forks, as fixed by the Paris Academy, requires 437*5
double, or 875 single l2 vibrations in one second. In
Germany the A' tuning-fork makes 440 double vibra-
tions in one second. It is clear that beyond the lowest
and the highest tones perceptible to our ears, there is a
progress ad infinitum, musical notes as real as those
which we hear, yet beyond the reach of our sensuous
perception. It is the same with the other senses. We
can perceive the movement of the pendulum, but we
cannot perceive the slower movement of the hand
on the watch. We can perceive the flight of a bird,
but we cannot perceive the quicker movement of a
cannon-ball. This, better than anything else, shows
how dependent we are on our senses ; and how, if our
senses are our weapons for the discovery of truth,
they are likewise the chains that keep us from soaring
too high. Up to this point everything, though won-
derful enough, is clear and intelligible. As we hear
a note, we can find out, with mathematical accuracy,
to how many vibrations in one second it is due ; and
if we want to produce the same note, an instrument,.

12 It is customary to reckon by single vibrations in France and Ger-
many, although some German writers adopt the English fashion of
reckoning by double vibrations or complete excursions backwards and
forwards. Helmholtz uses double vibrations, but Scheibler uses singl&
vibrations. De Morgan calls a double oscillation a ' swing-swang.

PHONETICS. 113

such as the siren, which gives a definite number of
impulses to the air within a given time, will enable
us to do it in the most mechanical manner.

When two waves of one note enter the ear in
the same time as one wave of another, the interval
between the two is an octave.

When three waves of one note enter the ear in the
same time as two waves of another, the interval
between the two notes is a, fifth.

When four waves of one note enter the ear in the
same time as three waves of another, the interval
between the two notes is a fourth.

'When five waves of one note enter the ear in the
same time as four waves of another, the interval
between the two notes is a major third.

When six waves of one note enter the ear in the
same time as five waves of another, the interval
between the two notes is a minor third.

When five waves of one note enter the ear in the
same time as three waves of another, the interval
between the two notes is a major sixth.

All this is but the confirmation of what was known
to Pythagoras. He took a vibrating cord, and, by
placing a bridge so as to leave f of the cord on the
right, on the left side, the left portion vibrating by
itself, gave him the octave of the lower note of the
right portion. So, again, by leaving -J on the right,
f- on the left side, the left portion vibrating gave him
the fifth of the right.

But it is clear that we may hear the same tone,
i.e. the result of exactly the same number of vibra-
tions in one second, produced by the human voice, by
a flute, a violoncello, a fife, or a double bass. They

n. i

114

PHONETICS.

are tones of the same pitch, and yet they differ in
character, and this their difference is called their
quality. But what is the cause of these various
qualities ? By a kind of negative reasoning, it had
long been supposed that, as quality could neither
arise from the amplitude nor from the duration, it
must be due to the form of the vibrations. Professor
Helmholtz, however, was the first to prove positively
that this is the case, by applying the microscope to
the vibrations of different musical instruments, and
thus catching the exact outline of their respective
vibrations a result which before had been but im-
perfectly attained by an instrument called the Pho-
nautograph. What is meant by the form of waves
may be seen from the following outlines :

In pursuing these inquiries, Professor Helmholtz
made another important discovery, viz. that the dif-
ferent forms of the vibrations which are the cause
of what he calls quality or colour are likewise the

PHONETICS. 115

cause of the presence or absence of certain harmonics,
or by- notes ; in fact, that varying quality and varying
harmonics are but two expressions of the same thing.
Harmonics are the secondary tones which can be
perceived even by the unassisted ear, if, after lifting
the pedal, we strike a key on a pianoforte. These
harmonics arise from a string vibrating as if its
motion were compounded of several distinct vibrations
of strings of its full length, and one-half, one-third,
one-fourth, &c., part of its length. Each of these
shorter lengths would vibrate twice, three times, four
times as fast as the original length, producing corre-
sponding tones. Thus, if we strike c, we hear, if listen-
ing attentively, c', G', c", E", a", B" flat, c'", &c.

n _ _

12^3 4 5 6 7 8

c c' o' c" K" G" B"flat c'"

That the secondary notes are not merely imagina-
tive or subjective can be proved by a very simple
and amusing experiment. If we place little soldiers
very light cavalry on the strings of a pianoforte
and then strike a note, all the riders that sit on
strings representing the secondary tones will shake,
and possibly be thrown off, because these strings
vibrate in sympathy with the secondary tones of the
string struck, while the others remain firm in their
saddles. Another test can be applied by means of
resounding tubes, tuned to different notes. If we
apply these to our ear, and then strike a note the se-
condary tones of which are the same as the notes to

i 2

116 PHONETICS.

which the resounding tubes are tuned, those notes will
sound loudly and almost yell in our ears ; while if the
tubes do not correspond to the harmonics of the note
played, the resounding tubes will not answer in the
same manner.

We thus see, again, that what seems to us a simple
impression, the one note struck on the pianoforte,
consists of many impressions which together make
up what we hear and perceive. We are not conscious
of the harmonics which follow each note and deter-
mine its quality, but we know, nevertheless, that
these by-notes strike our ear, and that our senses
receive them and suffer from them. The same re-
mark applies to the whole realm of our sensuous
knowledge. There is a broad distinction between
sensation and perception. There are many things
which we perceive at first and which we perceive
again as soon as our attention is called to them, but
which, in the ordinary run of life, are to us as if they
did not exist at all. When I first came to Oxford, I
was constantly distracted by the ringing of bells ;
after a time I ceased even to notice the dinner-bell.
There are earrings much in fashion just now little
gold bells with coral clappers. Of course they pro-
duce a constant jingling which everybody hears
except the lady who wears them in her ears. In
these cases, however, the difference between sensation
and perception is simply due to want of attention.
In other cases our senses are really incapable, with-
out assistance, of distinguishing the various con-
stituents of the objective impressions produced from
without. We know, for instance, that white light is
a vibration of ether, and that it is a compound of the

PHONETICS. 117

single colours of the solar spectrum. A prism will
at once analyse that compound, and divide it into its
component parts. To our apprehension, however,
white light is something simple, and our senses are
too coarse to distinguish its component elements by
any effort whatsoever.

We now shall be better able to understand what I
consider a most important discovery of Professor
Helmholtz. 13 It had been proved by Professor G-. S.
Ohm 14 that there is only one vibration without har-
monics, viz. the simple pendulous vibration. It had
likewise been proved by Fourier, Ohm, and other
mathematicians, 15 that all compound vibrations or
sounds can be divided into so many simple or pendu-
lous vibrations. But it is due to Professor Helmholtz
that we can now determine the exact configuration
of many compound vibrations, and determine the
presence and absence of the harmonics which, as we
saw, caused the difference in the quality, or colour,
or timbre of sound. Thus he found that in the violin,
as compared with the guitar or pianoforte, the pri-
mary note is strong, the secondary tones from two to
six are weak, while those from seven to ten are much
more distinct. 16 In the clarionet 17 the odd harmonics
only are perceptible, in the hautboy the even har-
monics are of equal strength.

Let us now see how all this tells on language.
When we are speaking we are in reality playing on a
musical instrument, and a more perfect instrument
than was ever invented by man. It is a wind-in-

13 Helmholte, I c. p. 82. ' 1. c. p. 38.

15 L c. p. 54. 16 /. c. p. 143.

17 I.e. p. 162.

118 OKGANS OF SPEECH.

strument, in which the vibrating apparatus is sup-
plied by the chordce vocales, while the outer tube, or
bells, through which the waves of sound pass, are
furnished by the different configurations of the mouth.
I shall try, as well as I can, to describe to you, with
the help of some diagrams, the general structure of
this instrument, though in doing so I can only retail
the scant information which I gathered myself from
our excellent Professor of Physiology at Oxford, Dr.
Rolleston. He kindly showed and explained to me
by actual dissection, and with the aid of the newly-
invented laryngoscope 18 (a small looking-glass, which
enables the observer to see as far as the bifurcation
of the windpipe and the bronchial tubes), the bones,,
the cartilages, the ligaments and muscles, which
together form that extraordinary instrument on
which we play our words and thoughts. Some
parts of it are extremely complicated, and I would
not venture to act even as interpreter of the dif-
ferent and sometimes contradictory views held by
Miiller, Briicke, Czermak, Funke, and other dis-
tinguished physiologists, on the mechanism of the
various cartilages, the thyroid, cricoid, and arytenoid,
which together constitute the levers of the larynx.
It fortunately happens that the most important
organs which are engaged in the formation of letters
lie above the larynx, and are so simple in their
structure, and so open to constant inspection and
examination, that, with the diagrams placed before
you, there will be little difficulty, I hope, in explain-
ing their respective functions.

18 Czermak, Uber den KeMkopfspiegel und seine Verwcrthung. Leipzig,
1860; 2nded. 1863.

ORGANS OP SPEECH.

119

There is, first of all, the thorax (1), which, by alter-
nately compressing and dilating the lungs, performs
the office of bellows.

Fig. 1.

1. Larynx.

2. Pectoralis minor.

3. Latissimus dorsi.

4. Serratus magnus.

5. External intercostal!.

6. Eectus abdominia.

7. Internal oblique.

The next diagram (2), shows the trachea, a carti-
laginous and elastic pipe, which terminates in the
lungs by an infinity of roots or bronchial tubes, its

I 4

120

ORGANS OP SPEECH.
Fig. 2.

ORGANS OF SPEECH.
Fig. 3.

121

upper extremity being formed into a species of head
called the larynx, situated in the throat, and com-
posed of five cartilages.

The uppermost of these cartilages, the epiglottis (3),
is intended to open and shut, like a valve, the aperture

122 ORGANS OF SPEECH.

of the glottis, i. e. the superior orifice of the larynx
(fissura, laryngea pharyngis). The epiglottis is a leaf-
shaped elastic cartilage, attached by its narrower
end to the thyroid cartilage, and possessing a midrib
overhanging and corresponding to the fissure of the
glottis. The broader end of the leaf points freely
upwards towards the tongue, in which direction the
entire cartilage presents a concave, as towards the
larynx a convex, outline. In swallowing, the epi-
glottis falls over the larynx, like a saddle on the back
of a horse. In the formation of certain letters a
horizontal narrow fissure may be produced by de-
pressing the epiglottis over the vertical false and
true vocal chords.

Within the larynx (4), rather above its middle,
between the thyroid and arytenoid cartilages, are
two elastic ligaments, like the parchment of a drum
split in the middle, and forming an aperture which is
called the interior or true glottis, and corresponds in
direction with the exterior glottis. This aperture is
provided with muscles, which enlarge and contract it
at pleasure, and otherwise modify the form of the
larynx. The three cartilages of the larynx supply
the most perfect mechanism for stretching or relaxing
the chords, and likewise, as it would seem, for dead-
ening some portion of them by pressure of a protu-
berance on the under-side of the epiglottis (in Ger-
man, Epiglottiswulst). These chords are of different
lengths in children and grown-up people, in man
and in woman. Their average length in man is
1S-J mm. when relaxed, 23^- mm. when stretched;
in woman, 12f mm. when relaxed, 15f mm. when
stretched : thus giving a difference of about one-

ORGANS OF SPEECH.

third between the two sexes, which accounts for the
different pitch of male and female voices. 19

Fig. 4.

The tongue, the cavity of the fauces, the lips, teeth,
and palate, with its velum pendulum and uvula per-
forming the office of a valve between the throat and
nostrils, as well as the cavity of the nostrils themselves,
are all concerned in modifying the impulse given to
the breath as it issues from the larynx, and in pro-
ducing the various vowels and consonants.

After thus taking to pieces the instrument, the
tubes and reeds as it were of the human voice, let
us now see how that instrument is placed by us in

19 Eunke, Lehrbuch der Physiologie, p. 664, from observations made
by J. Miiller.

124 VIBRATIONS OF AIR.

speaking or in singing. Familiar and simple as
singing or music in general seems to be, it is, if we
analyse it, one of the most wonderful phenomena.
What we hear when listening to a chorus or a sym-
phony is a commotion of elastic air, of which, to
quote from Helmholtz, the wildest sea would give a
very inadequate image. The lowest tone which the
ear perceives is due to about 30 vibrations in one
second, the highest to about 4,000 Consider then
what happens in a Presto, when thousands of voices
and instruments are simultaneously producing waves
of air, each wave crossing the other, not only like
the surface waves of the water, but like spherical
bodies, and, as it would seem, without any percep-
tible disturbance ; 20 consider that each tone is accom-
panied by secondary tones, that each instrument has
its peculiar timbre, due to secondary vibrations ; and,
lastly, let us remember that all this cross-fire of
waves, all this whirlpool of sound, is moderated by
laws which determine what we call harmony, and by
certain traditions or habits which determine what
we call melody both these elements being absent in
the songs of birds that all this must be reflected
like a microscopic photograph on the two small
organs of hearing, and there excite not only percep-
tion, but perception followed by a new feeling even
more mysterious, which we call either pleasure or
pain ; and it will be clear that we are surrounded on
all sides by miracles transcending all we are accus-
tomed to call miraculous, and yet disclosing to the
genius of an Euler or a Newton laws which admit of
the most minute mathematical determination.

If we pronounce a vowel, what happens ? Breath

20 Weber, Wellcnlehre, p. 495.

VOWUL.S.

is emitted from the lungs, and some kind of tube is
formed by the mouth through which, as through a
clarionet, the breath has to pass before it reaches the
outer air. If, while the breath passes the vocal
chords, these elastic lamince are made to vibrate
periodically, we sing, and the number of the vibra-
tions determines the pitch of our voice, but it has
nothing to do with its timbre, i.e. its vowel. We
may vary the pitch of our voice, without changing
its vocal timbre. What we call vowels are neither
more nor less than the qualities, or colours, or
timbres of our voice, and these are determined by the
form, not by the number, of the vibrations, this form
being determined by the form of the buccal tubes.
This had, to a certain extent, been anticipated by
Professor Wheatstone in his critique 21 on Professor
Willis's ingenious experiments, but it has now been
rendered quite evident by the researches of Professor
Helmholtz. It is, of course, impossible to watch the
form of these vibrations by means of a vibration
microscope, but it is possible to analyse them by
means of resounding tubes, like those before de-
scribed ; and thus to discover in them what, as we
saw, is homologous with the form of vibration, viz.
the presence and absence of certain harmonics. If a
man sings the same note on different vowels, the
harmonics which answer to our resounding tubes
vary as they would vary if the same note was played
011 different instruments, such as the violin, the flute, or
the clarionet. In order to remove all uncertainty,
Professor Helmholtz simply inverted the experiment.
He took a number of tuning-forks, each furnished
with a resonance box, by advancing or withdrawing

- 1 London and Westminster Review, Oct. 1837, pp. 34, 37.

126 VOWELS.

which he could give their primary tones alone various
degrees of strength, and extinguish their secondary
tones altogether. He tuned them so as to produce
a series of tones answering to the harmonics of the
deepest tuning-fork. He then made these tuning-
forks vibrate simultaneously by means of a galvanic
battery, and by combining the harmonics, which he
had first discovered in each vowel by means of the
sounding tubes, he succeeded in reproducing arti-
ficially exactly the same vowels. 22

We know now what vowels are made of. They
are produced by the form of the vibrating air. They
vary like the timbre of different instruments, and we
in reality change the instruments on which we speak
when we modify the buccal tubes in order to pro-
nounce a, e, i, o, u (the vowels to be pronounced as
in Italian or in Spanish).

Is it possible, then, to produce a vowel, to evoke a
certain timbre of our mouth, without giving at the
same time to each vowel a certain musical pitch?
This question has been frequently discussed. For a
long time it was taken for granted that vowels could
not be uttered without pitch. Yet, if a vowel was
whispered, it was easy to see that the vocal chords
were not vibrating, at least not periodically, and that
they began to vibrate very differently when the
whispered vowel was changed into a voiced vowel.
J. Miiller proposed a compromise. He admitted that
the vowels might be uttered as mutes, and with-
out any definite tone from the vocal chords, but he
maintained that these mute vowels were formed
in the glottis by the air passing the non- sonant
chords.

22 L.c.-p. 188.

VOWELS. 127

This view, 23 though in the main correct, has been
somewhat modified by later observations, which have
shown that in whispering the vocal chords are
drawn together, while at the same time the back
part of the glottis between the arytenoid cartilages
remains open, assuming the form of a triangle. 24
The breath passing through this aperture may pro-
duce imperfect vibrations, and these imperfect vibra-
tions would produce the muffled tone that accom-
panies whispered vowels. In cases of aphonia, where
the vocal chords cannot be made to vibrate freely, it
is still possible to pronounce the different vowels, and
the vox clandestine^, though a mere whisper, is cer-
tainly able to rise and to fall. Though it is true,
therefore, that the vowels can be pronounced without
the definite pitch of the perfect voice, it is equally
true that, even in whispered vowels, some kind of
pitch may be distinguished; nay, that there is a
pitch peculiar to each vowel, whether voiced or
whispered. This was first pointed out by Professor
Bonders, and afterwards corrected and confirmed by
Professor Helmholtz. 25 We can best perceive this if
we pronounce a whispered ii, and then allow it
gradually to become a whistling, in which case we
shall always get the same tone ; a most- useful dis-
covery as a substitute for a tuning-fork. 26 It will

23 Funke, Handbuch der Physiologic, p. 673. Different views of Willis
and Briicke, p. 678

24 Helmholtz, p. 171. Professor Czermak remarks, that the same effect
may be and is produced by the larynx assuming different other conforma-
tions. ' tiber den Spiritus asper,' p. 7. See, however, the same author's
remarks in his Physiologische Vortr'dye, 1869, p. 101.

25 1. c. p. 172. That there is some connection between the quality
and the pitch of vowels is best seen from the fact, that very high pitch
is incompatible with the quality of the vowels u and o.

26 Czermak, Physiologische Vortr'dge, p. 113.

128 VOWELS.

be necessary, I think, to treat these indications of
musical pitch in whispered vowels as imperfect tones,
that is to say, as noises approaching to tones, or as
irregular vibrations, nearly, yet not quite, changed
into regular or isochronous vibrations ; though the
exact limit where a noise ends and tone begins has,
as far as I can see, not yet been determined by any
philosopher, 27 and the subject requires further careful
consideration.

Vowels in all their varieties are really infinite in
number. Yet, for practical purposes, certain typical
vowels, each with a large margin for dialectic variety,
have been fixed upon in all languages, and these we
shall now proceed to examine. We shall take no
account of the endless dialectic or local or even per-
sonal variations that take place in the pronunciation
of vowels, because, however interesting for special
purposes, they are of no importance for the elucida-
tion of the general principles of phonetics, with which
alone we are here concerned. How far the subdivision
of the sounds of the alphabet can be carried may be
seen, for instance, in Mr. A. J. Ellis's Palocotypic
Alphabet, which contains about 270 signs for as many
different sounds. When the sounds of a spoken lan-
guage are submitted to so minute an analysis, it is
not surprising that there should be so much diver-
gence of opinion between different authorities, and
that the same letter should be described in the most
divergent ways. Our ears as well as our tongues de-
cline to recognise distinctions which have no practi-
cal purpose, i.e. which are not connected with a real
change of meaning, and the student of the laws of
language must be careful not to lose sight of the per-

27 See Brfrcke, Grundziir/e, p. 16.

VOWELS.

129

manent outlines of grammatical sounds behind the
ever-changing play of living speech.

From the diagrams, which are meant to represent,
in the broadest and most general way possible, the
configuration of the mouth requisite for the formation
of the three principal vowels, you will see that there
are two extremes, the u and the i, the a. occupying
an intermediate position. All vowels are to be pro-
nounced as in Italian or Spanish.

1. In pronouncing u we round the lips and draw
down the tongue so that the cavity of the mouth

Fig. 6.

EXAMPLES: 28

Open syllable, long, who ; Fr.
ou ; Germ, du.

Open syllable, short, fruition ;
Fr. ouir ; Germ, zuruck.

Closed syllable, long, pool ; Fr.
poule; Germ. Stuhl.

Closed syllable, short, pull; Fr.
pour ; Germ. bunt.

assumes the shape of a bottle without a neck. Such
bottles give the deepest notes, and so does the
vowel u. According to Helmholtz its inherent tone
is F.

28 I give instances of short and long vowels, both in open and closed
syllables (i.e. not followed or followed by consonants), because in English
particularly, hardly any vowels pair when free and stopped. On the
qualitative, and not only quantitative, difference between long and short
vowels, see Briicke, I.e. p. 24, seq. and E. von Raumer.
II. K

130

VOWELS.

2. If the lips be opened somewhat wider, and the
tongue somewhat raised, we hear the o. Its pitch,
according to Helmholtz, B' flat.
Fig. 6

EXAMPLES :

Open syllable, long, ago; Fr.
beau; Germ. Of en.

Open syllable, short, zoology ; Fr.
zoologie; Germ. Zoologic.

Closed syllable, long, bone; Fr.
cone ; Germ. Mond.

Closed syllable, short, dccst ; Fr.
boL; Germ. fort.

3. If the lips are less rounded, and the tongue
somewhat depressed, we hear the a.

Fig. 7.

EXAMPLES :

Open syllable, long, August (subs.) ;
Fr. deest ; Germ, deest.

Open syllable, short, august (adj.) ;
Fr. deest ; Germ, deest.

Closed syllable, long, nought ; Fr.
corps; Germ, deest.

Closed syllable, short, not; Fr.
vote; Germ, deest.

4. If the lips are wide open, and the tongue in its
natural flat position, we hear a. Inherent pitch, ac-

VOWELS.

131

cording to Helmholtz, B" flat. This seems the most
natural position of the mouth in singing ; yet for the
higher notes singers prefer the vowels e and i, and find
it impossible to pronounce a and u on the highest.""

Fig. 8.

EXAMPLES .

Open syllable, long, mamd; Fr.
bas ; Gferm. da.

Open syllable, short, papa; 30 Fr.
robot ; Grerm. dabei.

Closed syllable, long, farm; Fr.
Basle; Grerm. that.

Closed syllable, short, deest ; Fr.
bal ; Grerm. carrot.

5. If the lips are fairly open, and the back of the
tongue raised towards the palate, the larynx being
raised at the same time, we hear the sound e. The
long e is seldom quite pure in English, and particu-
larly in singing we clearly hear a furtive I at the end
of this vowel, day sounding like d&i. The long o in
the same manner is frequently followed by a short ft,
no sounding like no-u. The buccal tube resembles a

29 Briicke, p. 13.

30 I have given papa as an instance of the short pure a in English,
but even in this word children soon learn to pronounee pupaw instead
ofpapd. The fact is that there is no short pure a in English, either in
open or in closed syllables, and even in long syllables the pronunciation
of the a is seldom quite pure. According to the peculiarities of local
dialects we sometimes hear farm pronounced like fawrm, sometimes
like/aim. The true pronunciation of the Italian amata must be learnt
in Italy.

K 2

132

VOWELS.

"bottle with a narrow neck. The natural pitch of e is
B"' flat or F'.

Fig 9.

EXAMPLES :

Open syllable, long, hay; Fr. nh;
Germ. gch.

Open syllable, short, aerial; Fr.
legal; Germ. Gebet.

Closed syllable, long, lake; Fr.
aise ; Germ. geht.

Closed syllable, short, debt; Fr.
dette; Germ. Fett.

6. If we raise the tongue higher still, and narrow
the lips, we hear i. The buccal tube represents a
bottle with a very narrow neck of no more than six
centimetres from palate to lips. Such a bottle would
answer to c"". The natural pitch of i seems to
be D"".

Fig. 10.

EXAMPLES:

Open syllable, long, he; Fr. vie;
Germ. sie.

Open syllable, short, behalf; Fr.
vitesse; Germ. Sibirien.

Closed syllable, long, been; Fr.
pire; Germ. mir.

Closed syllable, short, been, pro-
nounced bin; Fr. mirroir; Germ.
rn.it.

VOWELS.

7. There is, besides, the most troublesome of all
vowels, the neutral vowel, sometimes called Urvocal*
better Unvocal. Professor Willis defines it as the
natural vowel of the reed, Mr. Ellis as the voice
in its least modified form. Some people hear it
everywhere, others imagine they can distinguish
various shades of it. If I could trust my own ear,
I should say that this vowel was always pronounced
with non-sonant or whispered breath ; that it is in
fact a breathed, not a voiced, vowel. We know it
best in short closed syllables, such as but, dust, &c.
It is supposed to be long in absurd. Sir John
Herschel hears but one and the same vowel in spurt,
assert, bird, virtue, dove, oven, double, blood. Sheridan
and Smart distinguish between the vowels heard in
bird and work, in whirl' d and world. There is no
doubt that in English all unaccented syllables have
a tendency towards it, 31 e. g. against, final, ided >
captain, village, supper, bird, fully, mutton. Town
sinks to Paddington, ford to Oxford; and though
some of these pronunciations may still be considered
as vulgar, they are nevertheless real. The exact
sound of these imperfect vowels cannot be accurately
matched either in German or French words. The
English hat has a very different sound from the
German er hat; the sound of o in English hot has
very little in common with that of o in German
Sonde ; and though the French bceuf is said to be
pronounced like English buff, many people would be
able to perceive a difference between the two.

These are the principal vowels, and there are few
languages in which they do not occur. But we have

S1 Ellis, 29.

134 VOWELS.

only to look to English, French, and German in order
to perceive that there are many varieties of vocal
sound besides these. There is the French u, the
German ii, which lies between i and u; 32 as in
French, lu, lui, pur, sur ; in German, fruh, fur, Sud,
Sunde. Professor Helinholtz has fixed the natural
pitch of ii, as G'".

There is the French eu, the German o, which lies
between e and o, as in French peu, heureux, peur,
tieuf ; German Konig, emport, or short in Bocke. 33
Professor Hehnholtz has fixed the natural pitch of o
as c'" sharp.

There is a as heard in bear, inGermanFaer,in French
pretre, in Italian erba. Its natural pitch is <j" or D'".

There is the peculiar short a in closed syllables in
English, such as hat, happy, man. It may be heard
lengthened in the affected pronunciation of half.

There is the peculiar short i, as heard in the Eng-
lish happy, reality, hit, knit. 3 *

There is the short e in closed syllables, such as
heard in English debt, bed, men, which if lengthened
conies very near to the German a in Vater, and the
French e in pretre, or e in pere, not quite the English
there.

Lastly, there are the diphthongs, which arise when,

* 2 ' While the tongue gets ready to pronounce i, the lips assume the
position requisite for u.' Du Bois-Reymond, Kadmus, p. 160.

83 The German o, if shortened, seems to dwindle down to the neutral
vowel, e.g. Ofen, ovens, but bffnen, to open. See Du Bois-Reymond,
Kadmus, p. 173. With a little practice, however, we can perceive a
difference between the vowel u in English hut, and the vowel o in Ger-
man Hbrner; and it is easy to distinguish between the German Goiter
and the English flutter.

81 Briicke speaks of this and some other vowels which occur in English
in closed syllables as imperfect vowels (p. 23). They might more
correctly be called mute vowels; see p. 127.

VOWELS. 135

instead of pronouncing one vowel immediately after
another with two efforts of the voice, we produce a
sound during the change from one position to the
other that would be required for each vowel. If we
change the a into the i position and pronounce a vowel,
we hear ai as in aisle. A singer who has to sing I
on a long note will end by singing the Italian i. If
we change the a into the u position and pronounce a
vowel, we hear au, as in Jioiv. Here, too, we find
many varieties, such as ai, ai, ei, and the several less
perfect diphthongs, such as oi, eu, ui, &c.

Though this may seem a long and tedious list, it
is, in fact, but a very rough sketch, and I must refer
to the works of Mr. Ellis and others for many minute
details in the chromatic scale of the vowels. Though
the tube of the mouth, as modified by the tongue and
the lips, is the principal determinant in the production
of vowels, yet there are other agencies at work, the
velum pendulum, the posterior wall of the pharynx, the
greater or less elevation of the larynx, all contributing
at times to modify the cavity of the throat. It is
said that in pronouncing the high vowels, the bones of
the skull participate in the vibration, 35 and it has been
proved by irrefragable evidence that the velum pen-
dulum is of very essential importance in the pronun-
ciation of all vowels. Professor Czermak, 36 by intrO'
ducing a probe through the nose into the cavity of the
pharynx, felt distinctly that the position of the velum
was changed with each vowel ; that it was lowest for
<i, and rose successively with e, o, u, i, reaching its
highest point with i.

35 Briicke, p. 16.

36 Sitzungsberichte der Jc. k. Akademie zu Wien (mathemat. natur-
wissenschaftliche Classe), xxiv. p. 5. Physiologische Vortrdge, p. 114.

136 CONSONANTS.

He likewise proved that the cavity of the nose was
more or less firmly closed during the pronunciation of
certain vowels. By introducing water into the nose
he found that while he pronounced i, u, o, the water
would remain in the nose, but that it would pass into
the fauces when he came to e, and still more when
he uttered a. 37 These two vowels, a and e, were the
only vowels which Leblanc, 38 a young man whose
larynx was completely closed, failed to pronounce.

Nasal Vowels.

If, instead of emitting the vowel sound freely
through the mouth, we allow the velum pendulum
to drop and the air to vibrate through the cavities
which connect the nose with the pharynx, we hear
the nasal vowels 39 so common in French, as un, on,
in, an. It is not necessary that the air should
actually pass through the nose; on the contrary,
we may shut the nose, and thus increase the nasal
twang. The only requisite is the removal of the
velum, which, in ordinary vowels, covers the clioancz
more or less completely. 40

Consonants.

There is no reason why languages should not have
been entirely formed of vowels. There are words

87 Funke, 1. c. p. 676.

38 Bindseil, Abhandlungen zur allgemeinen vergleichenden 8prachlehre r
1838, p. 212.

39 Briicke, p. 27.

40 The different degrees of this closure were tested by the experiment
of Prof. Czermak with a metal looking-glass applied to the nostrils-
during the pronunciation of pure and nasal vowels. Sitzungsbcriohte
der Wiener Academic, xxviii. p. 575, xxix. p. 174.

CONSONANTS.

consisting of vowels only, such as Latin eo, I go ; ea,
she ; eoa, eastern ; the Greek eioeis (rjioeis, with high
banks), but for its final s; the Hawaian hooiaioai,.
to testify, but for its initial breathing. Yet these
very words show how unpleasant the effect of such
a language would have been. Something else was
wanted to supply the bones of language, namely,
the consonants. Consonants are called in Sans-
krit vyan</ana, which means 'rendering distinct
or manifest,' while the vowels are called svara,
sounds, from the same root which yielded susurrus
in Latin.

As scholars are always fond of establishing general
theories, however scanty the evidence at their dis-
posal, we need not wonder that languages like the
Hawaian, in which the vowels predominate to a very
considerable extent, should on that very ground have
been represented as primitive languages. It was
readily supposed that the general progress of lan-
guage was from the slightly articulated to the
strongly articulated ; and that the fewer the conso-
nants, the older the language. Yet we have only to
compare the Hawaian with other Polynesian lan-
guages in order to see that here too the consonantal
articulation existed and was lost ; that consonants,
in fact, are much more apt to be dropped than to
sprout up between two vowels. Prof. Buschmann
expresses the same opinion : c Mes recherches m'ont
conduit a la conviction, que cet etat de pauvrete
phonique polynesienne n'est pas tant Tetat nature!
d'une langue prise a sa naissance, qu'une deteriora-
tion du type vigoureux des langues inalaies occiden-
tales, amenee par un peuple qui a peu de disposition

CONSONANTS.

pour varier les sons.' 41 The very name of Havai, or
more correctly Hawai'i, confirms this view. It is
pronounced

in the Samoan dialect, Savai'i

Tahitian, Havai'i

Rarotongan, Avaiki

Nukuhivan, Havaiki

New Zealand Hawaiki

from which the original form may be inferred to have
been Savaiki. 42

All consonants fall under the category of noises,
and there are certain noises that could hardly be
avoided even in a language which was meant to con-
sist of vowels only. If we watch any musical instru-
ments, we can easily perceive that their sounds are
always preceded by certain noises, arising from the
first impulses imparted to the air before it can pro-
duce really musical sensations. We hear the puffing
and panting of the siren, the scratching of the violin,
the hammering of the pianoforte, the spitting of the
flute. The same in speaking. If we send out our
breath, intending it to be vocalised, we hear the
rushing out, the initial impulse produced by the
inner air as it reaches the outer.

If we breathe freely, the glottis is wide open, 43
and the breath emitted can be distinctly heard. Mere
breathing, however, is not yet our h, or the spiritus
asper. An intention is required to change mere

41 Buschmann, lies Marq. p. 36, 59. Pott, Etymologische Forschungen,
ii. 46.

42 Hale, 1. c. p. 120.

43 Czermak, Physiologische Unter&uchungen mit Garcia's Kehlkopf-
spiegel, Sitzungsberichte der Jc. k. Akademie der Wissenschaften, vol.
xxxix. 1858, p. 563.

BREATHINGS. 139

breathing into h; the velum pendulum has to assume
its proper position, the larynx is stiffened, the glottis
narrowed 44 in order to produce an accumulation and
intensification of the breath ; this breath is then
jerked out by the action of the abdominal muscles.
This is the h in its purest state, the Greek spiritus
asper, free, as yet, from any degree of hoarseness that
may be imparted to it by subsequent barriers. These
barriers are formed by narrowing different portions
of the larynx or the throat, and they have given rise,
particularly in the Semitic languages and in some
German dialects, to a great variety of guttural
breathings which, even with the help of the laryngo-
scope, it is difficult accurately to analyse or to de-
scribe. With regard to dead languages, as for
instance the ancient Greek, it is a hopeless task to
attempt to determine the exact formation of their
true guttural breathings. But, without wishing to
commit myself to any opinion as to the exact degree
of harshness imparted by the ancient Greeks to their
TrvBVfJba Sao-Vy it will be convenient to retain the name
of spiritus asper for the least modified form of the
guttural breathing.

Now it is clearly possible, while the breath is thus
passing through the more or less compressed throat,
to bring the vocal chords near to each other, so that
iihe breath in passing should produce a kind of friction
or imperfect vibration. As the ('), the spiritus asper,

44 Czermak, Uber den Spiritus asper und lenis. Sender- Abd ruck aus
dem LII. Bande der Sitzungsberichte der Jcais. Akad. der Wissenschaftcn
(December 7, 1865). Though Professor Czermak is right in saying that
the glottis is narrowed, if compared with its shape in men breathing, yet
it is equally correct to say that the glottis for h is wide open as compared
with its aperture in the pronunciation of other letters.

140 BREATHINGS.

described before, is the type of all the modifications
of non-sonant breath, this letter would be the type
of all the modifications of sonant breath, or of ex-
haled voice. The Sanskrit h must come very near
to it, for it is described as a breath or wind, like
s, but at the same time as sonant. As I wish to re-
tain for the non-sonant breath, in its purest form, the
name of spiritus asper, I should wish to assign to the
typical form of sonant breath the name of spiritus
lenis, without, however, committing myself to any
opinion as to the exact pronunciation of TTVSVJJLO, *fyi\bv
in different parts of Greece, or at different periods in
the history of the Greek languages. 45

45 Professor Czermak, in trying to define the nature of

in Greek, explains it as ' the explosive sound at the beginning of
a vowel where the tone breaks forth, having for its only, and often
hardly perceptible, extraneous admixture, the peculiar acoustic pheno-
menon of the first explosive opening of the glottis, appearing other-
wise in its full strength and purity.' Professor Czermak, in fact, seems
to understand by -jrvevua <lfi\6v the coup de la glotte, the sound produced
by the explosive contact of the two sides of the glottis. If that had
been the Greek irv^v^a tyi\6v, the name would not have been chosen very
happily, for the coup de la glotte is not the breath itself, the weC/ia, but
the sound produced by a check imposed upon the sonant breath. The
adjective tyi\6v applied to in/eD/ia does by no means prove, as Pro-
fessor Czermak imagines, that the m/eC/ia $i\6v must have been formed,
like the &<f>cava \tyi\ci, by an explosive opening of a complete contact.
To a Greek such an idea had never occurred, and would certainly not have
been conveyed by the adjective ^i\6v. The adjective tyi\6v is no doubt
opposed to Sacrt, but, according to the best authorities, the Htyuva Sotrea
were themselves pronounced originally by an explosive opening of a
previous complete contact, <f> being originally ph and not /. The fact
is that the Greek classification of letters, and, in consequence, their
terminology, were of the vaguest kind. They divided the fapuva or
mutes into Saae'a, i. e. rough letters, and into tyi\<i, i. e. letters that were
without that roughness. The ^ueVa, or mediae, were supposed to stand
between the two, but, if pressed on the subject, the Greeks would most
likely have admitted that the /uVa, too, were free from the roughness of the-
Scwre'a, and, in that sense, ^tAa. When they gave to Trvevuao? breath, too,

BREATHINGS. 141

We distinctly hear the spiritus lenis, like a slight
bubble, if we listen to the pronunciation of any ini-
tial vowel, as in old, art, ache, ear, or if we pronounce
6 my hand/ as it is pronounced by vulgar people,
6 my 'and.' According to some physiologists, 46 and
according to nearly all grammarians, this initial
noise can be so far subdued as to become evanescent,
and we all imagine that we can pronounce an initial

the name of SCMTU, all they meant to indicate by it was the roughness of
the breathing, and this the Romans rendered very properly by spiritus
asper. In irvevna. \l/t\6v, therefore, we hare really no more than a nega-
tive definition of another breath which is free from roughness, and this
the Romans understood so well that they did not translate irvev/j.a tyi\6i>
by spiritus tennis, but by spiritus lenis. The adjective i|/t\oV is likewise
used in a merely negative sense in e tyi\6v and v tyi\6v. The natural
meaning, therefore, of this term would seem to be a breath which is not
rough, and in this sense I apply it to the sonant breath as just described.
If the spiritus lenis in Greek had been what Professor Czermak asserts
it was, it is strange that it should not have been ranged among the &(f>ava
$i\d. But these are questions which, at this distance of time, it is im-
possible to answer positively. What is of importance to us is this,
that it is possible to define the following four letters, the non-sonant
glottal breath, the sonant glottal breath, the glottal non-sonant check,
and the glottal sonant check. But though we can define these four
letters, the three last are apt to run into each other in actual use. Nor
is this to be wondered at, considering that in the glottal series the organs
which check the breath are the same as those which impart to it its
sonant nature. The change of simple breath (') into simple voice (')
implied a check of the forth-rushing breath, which, initially, might
easily be mistaken for the check that constitutes the explosive tenuis ;
nor would it be easy, in spite of the most hair-splitting definitions, to
distinguish the sound of the glottal explosive media from that of the
glottal sonant breath. Briicke doubts whether the glottal sonant breath
can be ranged as a distinct letter. ' Sonant consonants,' he says (p. 85)
' spring from non-sonant consonants simply by means of narrowing the
glottis till it produces a sound ; and if this is done with the k, the result
must be the pure tone of the voice without any additional rustle.' In
strict logic this is true, but in actual language we neither get a perfectly
pure('), nor a perfectly pure ('), and the slightest trace of hoarseness would
give to the (') and to the (') their peculiar consonantal body.
46 Briicke, p. 9.

142 BREATHINGS.

vowel quite pure. 47 Yet I believe the Greeks were
right in admitting the spiritus lenis as inherent in
all initial vowels that have not the spiritus asper; and
the laryngoscope clearly shows in all initial vowels a
continuous narrowing of the vocal chords, quite dis-
tinct from the narrowing and sudden opening that
takes place in the pronunciation of the h.

There is another very important distinction be-
tween spiritus asper and lenis. It is impossible,
except by means of a trick, to sing the spiritus asper,
that is to say, to make the breath which produces it,
sonant. If we try to sing ha, the tone does not come
out till the h is over. We might as well try to
whistle and to sing at the same time. 48 The reason
of this is clear. If the breath that is to produce h is
to become a tone, it must be checked by the vocal
chords, but the very nature of h consists in the noise
of the breath rushing forth unchecked from the lungs
to the outer air. The spiritus lenis, on the contrary.,
can be sounded, because, in pronouncing it, more or
less distinctly, the breath is checked near the vocal
chords, and can there be intoned.

The distinction which, with regard to the first
breathing or spiritus, is commonly called asper and

47 Briicke, p. 85. ' If in pronouncing the spiritus asper the glottis be
narrowed, we hear the pure tone of the voice without any additional
noise.' The noise, however, is quite perceptible, particularly in the vox
clandestina.

48 See R. von Kaumer, Gesammelte Schriften, p. 371, note. Johannes
Miiller says, ' The only continua which is quite mute and cannot be
accompanied by the tone or the humming of the voice, is the h, the
aspirate. If one attempts to pronounce the h loud, with the tone of the
chordae vocales, the humming of the voice is not synchronous with the
h, but follows it, and the aspiration vanishes as soon as the air is
changed into tones by the chordae vocales.'

BREATHINGS.

143

lenis, is the same which, in other letters, is known by
the names of hard and soft, surd and sonant, tennis
and media. 49 The peculiar character meant to be
described by these terms, and the manner in which
it is produced are the same throughout. The authors
of the Pratisakhyas knew what has been confirmed
by the laryngoscope, that, in pronouncing tenues, hard
or surd letters, the glottis is open, while, in pro-
Fig. 11. Fig. 12.

(h) ; e.g. hand.

' ; e.g. and.

nouncing medice, soft or sonant letters, the glottis is
closed. In the first class of letters, the vocal chords
are simply neutral ; in the second, they are so close
that, though not set to vibrate periodically, they
produce a hum, or what has been called a fricative
noise (Reibungsgerausch). Anticipating the dis-

49 Czermak, Physiologische Vortr'dge, p. 120: 'Die Keibungslaute
zerfallen genau so wie die Verschlusslaute in wcicJie oder tbncnde, bei
denen das Stimmritzengerausch oder der laute Stimmton mitlautet und
in hartq oder tonlose, bei denen der Kehlkopf absolut still ist.'

144 BREATHINGS.

tinction between /, t, p, and g, d, I, I may quote
here the description given by Professor Helmholtz
of the general causes which produce their distinction.

6 The series of the mediae, b, d, g,' he says, ' differs
from that of the tenues, p, t, k, by this, that for the
former the glottis is, at the time of consonantal open-
ing, sufficiently narrowed to enable it to sound, or
at least to produce the noise of the vox clandestina,
or whisper, while it is wide open with the tenues, 50
and therefore unable to sound.'

' Mediae are therefore accompanied by the tone of
the voice, and this may even, when they begin a
syllable, set in a moment before, and when they end
a syllable, continue a moment after the opening of
the mouth, because some air may be driven into the
closed cavity of the mouth and support the sound of
the vocal chords in the larynx.'

' Because of the narrowed glottis, the rush of the
air is more moderate, the noise of the air less sharp
than with the tenues, which are pronounced with the
glottis wide open, so that a great mass of air may
rush forth at once from the chest.' 51

We now return to an examination of the various
modifications of the breath, in their double character
of liard and soft, or surd and sonant. The simple

50 See Lepsius, Die Arabischen Sprachlaute, p. 108, line 1.

51 This distinction is very lucidly described by R. von Raumer,
Gcsammcltc Schriften, p. 444. He calls the hard letters flata, blown,
the soft letters halatce, breathed. He observes that breathed letters,
though always sonant in English, are not so in other languages, and
therefore divides the breathed consonants, physiologically, into two
classes, sonant and non-sonant. This distinction, however, is apt to
mislead, and is of no importance in reducing languages to writing. See
also Investigations into the Laws of English Orthography and Pronun
elation, by Prof. R. L. Tafel. New York, 1862.

BEEATHINGS.

145

breathing- in its double character of surd and sonant,
can be modified in eight different ways by interposing 1
certain barriers or gates formed by the tongue, the
soft and hard palate, the teeth, and the lips.

If, instead of allowing the breath to escape freely
from the lungs to the lips, we hem it in by a barrier
formed by lifting the tongue against the uvula, we
get the sound of ch, as heard in the German ach or
the Scotch loch. 52 If, on the contrary, we slightly

Fig. 13.

Fig. 14.

'h (ch); e.g. Loch.

'h (g) ; e. g. Tage (German).

y (ch) ; e. g. ich (German),
y (j) ; e. g. yea.

check the breath as it reaches that barrier, we get the
sound which is heard when the g in the German word
Tage is not pronounced as a media, but as a semi-
vowel, Tage.

A. second barrier is formed by bringing the tongue

52 The same sound occurs in some of the Dayak dialects of Borneo.
See Surat Peminyuh Daya Sarawak, Beading Book for Land and Hill
Dayaks, in the Sentah dialect. Singapore, 1862. Printed at the Mission
Press.

II. L

1 4(5 BREATHINGS.

in a more contracted state towards the point where
the hard palate begins, a little beyond the point
where the k is formed. Letting the spiritus asper
pass this isthmus, we produce the sound ch as heard
in the German China or ich, a sound very difficult to
an Englishman, though approaching to the initial
sound of words like hume, huge. If we soften the
breath as it reaches this barrier, we arrive at the
familiar sound of y in year. This sound is naturally
accompanied by a slight hum arising from the check
applied through the glottis, nor is there much diffi-
culty in intoning the y. There is no evidence what-
ever that the Sanskrit palatal flatus ![ (s) was ever

pronounced like ch in German China and ich. Most
likely it was the assibilated sound which can be
produced if, keeping the organs in the position for
German ch, we narrow the passage and strengthen
the brea.th. This, however, is merely an hypothesis.

A third barrier, produced by advancing the tongue
towards the teeth, modifies the spiritus asper into s,
the spiritus lenis into z, the former completely surd,
the latter capable of intonation ; for instance, the
rise or rice ; but to rise.

A fourth barrier is formed by drawing the tongue
back and giving it a more or less concave (retrousse)
shape, so that we can distinctly see its lower surface
brought in position towards the back of the upper
teeth or the palate. By pressing the air through
this trough, we get the letter sh as heard in sharp,
and s as heard in pleasure, or j in the French jamais,
the former mute, the latter intonable. The pronun-

i3 Ellis, English Phonetics, 47.

BREATHINGS.

147

elation of the Sanskrit lingual sli requires a very
elaborate position of the tongue, so that . its lower
surface should really strike the roof of the palate.
But a much more simple and natural position, as
described above, will produce nearly the same effect.

Fig. 15. Fig. 10.

e.g. tlw rise, rice, sin.
e.g. to rise, zeal.

$ (sh) ; e.g. sharp,
z ; e.g. azure.

A fifth barrier is produced by bringing the tip of
the tongue almost point-blank against the back of
the upper teeth, or, according to others, by placing
it against the edge of the upper teeth, or even be-
tween the edges of the upper and lower teeth. If,
then, we emit the spiritus asper, we form the English
th, if we emit the spiritus lenis, the English dh; the
former mute, as in breath, the latter intonable, as in
to breathe, and both very difficult for a German to
pronounce.

A sixth barrier is formed by bringing the lower lip
against the upper teeth. This modifies the spiritus

i. 2

148

BUEATHINGS.

asper to/, the spiritus lenis to v, as heard in life and
to live, half and to halve.

Fig. 17. I-'ig. 18.

th >; c.p;.

dh ('5) ; e.g. to Ireatltc.

f; e.g./1/fc

v ; e.g. to live.

A seventh barrier is possible by bringing the two
lips together. The sound there produced by the
spiritus asper would be the sound which we make in
blowing out a candle ; it is not a favourite sound in
civilised languages. The spiritus lenis, however, is
very common; it is the w in German as heard in
Quelle, i. e. Kwelle ; 54 also sometimes in the German
Wind 9 &c.

An eighth barrier is formed by slightly contracting
and rounding the lips, instead of bringing them
together flat against each other. Here the spiritus
asper assumes the sound of wh (originally hw), in
wheel, which; whereas the spiritus lenis is the com-
mon English double u, as heard in weaL &5

54 Brucke, 1. c. p. 34.

45 As my definition of the wh as a whispered counterpart of w, has
been declared entirely false, and as I cannot pretend to speak with

BREATHINGS.

149

Fig. 19.

We have thus examined eight modifications of
spiritus asper and spiritus lenis, produced by breath,
voiceless or vocal, emitted eruptively or prohibitively,
and modified by cer-
tain iiarrowings of the
mouth. Considering the
great pliability of the
muscles of the tongue
and the mouth, we can
easily imagine other pos-
sible narrowings ; but
with the exception of
some peculiar letters of
the Semitic and African
languages, we shall find
these eight sumcient
for our own immediate
purposes.

The peculiar guttural sounds of the Arabs, which
have given rise to so much discussion, have at last
been scientifically defined by Professor Czermak.
After hearing these letters pronounced by an Arab,
he tried to imitate them, and by applying the laryn-
goscope to himself he was able to watch the exact
formation of the Hha and A in, which constitute a
separate class of guttural breathings in the Semitic

authority on the correct pronunciation of English, I quote my author-
ities. Mr. Alexander J. Ellis, in his Universal Writing, p. 6, says:
4 Also distinguish weal, wheel, veal, feel, where wh represents the whisper
of w. Some orthoepists and most foreigners confuse wh with hu' Mr.
Alexander M. Bell, in his Principles of Speech, p. 52, says, ' When the
aperture of the lips is slightly enlarged by the separation of their
anterior edges, and the breath passes between the inner edges of the
lips, the effect is that of the English wh, w; the former being the
voiceless, the latter the vocal form of the same articulation.'

w (wh) ; }. g. which.
w; e.g. we.

150 BREATHINGS.

languages. This is his account. If the glottis is
narrowed and the vocal chords brought near toge-
ther, not however in a straight parallel position, but
distinctly notched in the middle, while, at the same
time, the epiglottis is pressed down, then the stream
of breath in passing assumes the character of the
Arabic Hha,^, as different from h, the spiritus asper,
the Arabic ^. If this Hha is made sonant, it becomes
Ain. Starting from the configuration as described for
Hha, all that takes place in order to change it into Ain
is that the rims of the apertures left open for Hha
are brought close together, so that the stream of air
striking against them causes a vibration in the fissura
laryngea, and not, as for other sonant letters, in the
real glottis. These ocular observations of Czermak, 56
coincide with the phonetic descriptions given by Arab
grammaripjis, and particularly with Wallin's ac-
count. If the vibration in the fissura laryngea takes
place less regularly, the sound assumes the character
of a trilled r, the deep guttural r of the Low Saxons.
The Arabic . and A I must continue to consider as
near equivalents of the ch in loch and 'Ji in German
tage, though the pronunciation of the approaches

sometimes to a trill, like the r grasseye.

M Sitzungsbcrichte der mathematisch-naturwissenschaftlichen Classe
der kaiserlichcn Akademie dcr Wissenschaften, vol. xxix. p. 576, seq
Professor Lepsius, Die Arabischen Sprachlaute, has but partially
adopted the views of Briicke and Czermak on what they call the
Gutturales Vera in Arabic. See also a curious controversy between
Professor Briicke and Professor Lepsius, in the 12th volume of the
Zeitschrift fur vergleichende Sprachforschung.

TRILLS. 151

Trills.

We have to add to this class of letters two which
are commonly called tnils, the r and the I. They are
both intonable or sonant, that is to say, they are
modifications of the spiritus lenis, but they differ
from the other modifications by a vibration of certain
portions of the mouth. I am unable to pronounce
the different r's, and I shall therefore borrow their
description from one of the highest authorities on
this subject, Mr. Ellis. 57 ' In the trills,' he writes,
( the breath is emitted with sufficient force to cause a
vibration, not merely of some membrane, but of some
much more extensive soft part, as the uvula, tongue,
or lips. In the Arabic grh (grhain), which is the
same as the Northumberland burr (burgrh, Hagrhiut
for Harriot), and the French Proven9al r grasseye
(as, Paris c'est la France, Paghri c'est la Fgrhance),
the uvula lies along the back part of the tongue,
pointing to the teeth, and is very distinctly vibrated.
If the tongue is more raised and the vibration indis-
tinct or very slight, the result is the English r in more,
poor, while a still greater elevation of the tongue pro-
duces the r as heard after palatal vowels, as hear,
mere, fire. These trills are so vocal that they form
distinct syllables, as surf, serf, fur, fir, virtue, honour,
and are with difficulty separable from the vowels.
Hence, when a guttural vowel precedes, the effect of
the r is scarcely audible. Thus laud and lord, father
and. farther, are scarcely distinguishable.'

Professor Helmholtz describes r and I as follows :
c In pronouncing r the stream of air is periodically

67 Universal Writing and Printing, by A. J. Ellis, B. A., 1856, p. 5.

152 CHECKS OB, MUTES.

entirely interrupted by the trembling of the soft
palate or of the tip of the tongue, and we then get
an intermittent noise, the peculiar jarring quality of
which is produced by these very intermissions. In
pronouncing I the moving soft lateral edges of the
tongue produce, not entire interruptions, but oscilla-
tions in the force of air.' 58

If the lips are trilled the result is brh, a sound
which children are fond of making, but which, like
the corresponding spiritus asper, is of little import-
ance in speaking. If the tongue is placed against
the teeth, and its two lateral edges, or even one only,
are made to vibrate, we hear the sound of I, which is
easily intonable as well as the r.

We have thus exhausted one class of letters which
all agree in this, that they can be pronounced by
themselves, and that their pronunciation can be con-
tinued. In Greek, they are all included under the
name of Hemiphona, or semi-vowels, while Sanskrit
grammarians mention as their specific quality that,
in pronouncing them, the two organs, the active and
passive, which are necessary for the production of all
consonantal noises, are not allowed to touch each
other, but only to approach. 59

Checks or Mutes.

We now come to the third and last class of letters,
which are distinguished from all the rest by this, that
for a time they stop the emission of breath altogether.

58 I.e. p. 116.

59 In Pawini, i. 1, 9, y, r, 1, v, are said to be pronounced with
ishatsprishtfam, slight touch; s, sh, s, h, with vivritam, opening,
or ishadvivritam, slight opening, or asprishtfam, no contact.

CHECKS.

153

They are called by the Greeks aphona, mutes, because
they check all voice, or, what is the same, because they
must not be intoned. They differ, however, from the

fig. 21.

hisses or hard breathings, which likewise resist all
intonation; for, while the hisses are emissions of
breath, they, the mutes, are prohibitions of breath.
They are formed, as the
Sanskrit grammarians
say, by complete contact
of the active and passive
organs. They will re-
quire very little expla-
nation. If we bring the
root of the tongue
against the soft palate,
we hear the consonan-
tal noise of Jc. If we
bring the tongue against
the teeth, we hear the

154 HARD CHECKS.

consonantal noise of t. If we bring the lower against
the upper lip, we hear the consonantal noise of p. The
real difference between those three articulations con-
sists in this, that in p, two flat surfaces are struck
against each other ; in t, a sharp against a flat sur-
face ; in k a round against a hollow surface. These
three principal contacts can be modified almost inde-
finitely, in some cases without perceptibly altering
the articulation. If we pronounce leu, ka, ki, the
point of contact between tongue and palate advances
considerably without much influence on the character
of the initial consonant. The same applies to the t
contact. 60 Here the essential point is that the tongue
should strike against the wall formed by the teeth.
But this contact may be effected

1. By flattening the tongue and bringing its edge
against the alveolar part of the palate.

2. By making the tongue convex, and bringing
the lower surface against the dome of the palate
(these are the lingual or cacuminal letters in San-
skrit). 61

3. By making the tongue convex, and bringing the
upper surface against the palate, the tip against the
lower teeth (dorsal t in Bohemian).

4. By slightly opening the teeth and stopping the
aperture by the rounded tongue, or by bringing the
tongue against the teeth.

Most languages have only one t, the first or the
fourth ; some have two ; but we seldom find more

60 Briicke, p. 38.

61 Formerly called cerebral, a mistranslation of murddhanya,
thoughtlessly repeated by many Sanskrit scholars and retained by others,
on the strange ground that the mistake is too absurd to mislead anybody.
Briicke, p. 37.

HARD CHECKS. 155

than two sets of dentals distinguished phonetically
in one and the same dialect.

If we place the tongue in a position intermediate
between the guttural and dental contact, we can pro-
duce various consonantal sounds which go by the
general name of palatal. The click that can be pro-
duced by jerking the tongue, from the position in
which ich and yea are formed, against the palate,
shows the possibility of a definite and simple conso-
nantal contact analogous to the two palatal breath-
ings. That contact, however, is liable to many
modifications, and it oscillates in different dialects
between Jcy and tsh. The sound of ch in church, or
Ital. cielo, is formed most easily if we place the
tongue and teeth in the position described above for
the formation of sh in sharp, and then stop the breath
by complete contact between the tongue and the back
of the teeth. Some physiologists, and among them
Briicke, 62 maintain that ch in English and Italian
consists of two letters, t followed by sh, and should
not be classed as a simple letter. There is some
truth in this, which, however, has been greatly ex-
aggerated from want of careful observation. Ch may
be said to consist of half t and half sh; but half t and
half sh give only one whole consonant. There is an
attempt of the organs at pronouncing t, but that
attempt is frustrated or modified before it takes
effect. 63 If Sanskrit grammarians called the vowels
e and 6 diphthongs, because they combine the condi-
tions of a and i, and of a and u, we might call the

62 Briicke, p. 63, seq. He would, however, distinguish these concrete
consonants from groups of consonants, such as |, ^.

63 Du Bois-Reymond, Kadmus, p. 213.

156 HARD CHECKS.

Sanskrit k a consonantal diphthong, though even
this would lead to the false supposition that it was
necessarily a double letter, which it is not. That the
palatal articulation may be simple is clearly seen in
those languages where, as in Sanskrit, both ancient
and modern, k leaves a short vowel that precedes
it short, whereas a double consonant would raise its
quantity.

Few Sanskrit scholars acquainted with the Prati-
sakhyas, works describing the formation of letters,
would venture to speak dogmatically on the exact
pronunciation of the so-called palatal letters at any
definite period in the history of ancient Sanskrit.
They may have been pronounced as they are now
pronounced, as consonantal diphthongs ; they may
have differed from the gutturals no more than k in
kaw differs from k in key; or they may have
been formed by raising the convex part of the
tongue so as to flatten it against the palate, the
hinder part being in the k, and the front part in the
^ position. The k, as sometimes heard in English,
in kind, card, cube, cow, sounding almost like kyind,
cyard, cyube, cyow, may give us an idea of the transi-
tion of k into ky, and finally into English cli a change
analogous to that of t into cli, as in natura, nature, or
of d into j, as in soldier, pronounced soljer, diurnale
changed to journal. In the northern dialects of Jut-
land a distinct j is heard after k and g if followed by
ue, e, o, o ; for instance, kjcev\ kjcer, gjekk, kjerk, skjell,
instead of kcev', kcer, &c. 64 However that may be, we
must admit in Sanskrit and in other languages, a

64 See Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xii. 147 ; M. M., On the Pronunciation of c
iff ore e^ i, t/, ae cu, oe, in the Academy, 15 Febr. 1871.

SOFT CHECKS. 157

class of palatals, sometimes modifications of gutturals,
sometimes of dentals, varying- no doubt in pronuncia-
tion, not only at different periods in the history of
the same language, but also in different localities ;
yet sufficiently distinct to claim a place for them-
selves, though a secondary one, between gutturals
and dentals, and embracing, as we shall see, the
same number of subdivisions as gutturals, dentals,
and labials.

It is not always perceived that these three con-
sonants fc, t y p, and their modifications, represent in
reality two quite different effects. If we say ka, the
effect produced on the ear is very different from ale.
In the first case the consonantal noise is produced by
the sudden opening of the tongue and palate ; in the
second by their shutting. This is still clearer in pa
and ap. In pa you hear the noise of two doors
opening, in ap of two doors shutting. In empire you
hear only half a p ; the shutting takes place in the m,
and the p is nothing but the opening of the lips. In
topmost you hear likewise only half a p; you hear the
shutting, but the opening belongs to the m. The
same in uppermost. It is on this ground that mute
letters have sometimes been called dividuce, or di-
visible, as opposed to the first class, in which that
difference does not exist ; for whether I say sa or as,
the sound of s is the same.

Soft Checks, or Mediae.

We should now have finished our survey of the
alphabet of nature, if it was not that the consonantal
stops &, t, p, are liable to certain modifications, which,
as they are of great importance in the formation of

158 SOFT CHECKS.

language, deserve to be carefully considered. What
is it that changes It into g and ng, t into d and n, p
into b and m ? B is called a media, a soft letter, a
sonant, in opposition to p, -which is called a tenuis, a
hard letter, or a surd. But what is meant by these
terms ? A tenuis, we saw, was so called by the
Greeks in opposition to the aspirates, the Greek
grammarians wishing to express that the aspirates
had a rough or shaggy sound, 65 whereas the tenues
were bald, slight, or thin. This does not help us
much. f Soft' and ' hard' are terms which no doubt
express an outward difference of p and 6, but they
do not explain the cause of that difference. '.Surd'
and * sonant' are apt to mislead; for if, according
to the old system, both p and I continue to be classed
as mute, it is difficult to see how, taking words in
their proper sense, a mute letter could be sonant.
Some persons have been so entirely deceived by the
term sonant, that they imagined all the so-called
sonant letters to be actually pronounced with tonic
vibrations of the chordse vocales. 66 This is physically
impossible ; for if we really tried to intone p or b, we
should either destoy the p and b } or be suffocated in
our attempt at producing voice. All consonants are
really checks, and their character consists in their
producing for a time a complete cessation of audible
breath or voice. Both p and b, therefore, are mo-
mentary negations of breath and voice ; or, as the
Hindu grammarians say, both are formed by com-
plete contact. But b differs from p in so far as, in

65 Briicke, p. 90. T< Trj/eu/iort iroAAqS, Dion Hal. R. von Raumer,
Die Aspiration, p. 103.

" Fun eke, p. 685. Briicke, Grundzugc, p. 7, 89.

SOFT CHECKS. 159

order to pronounce it, the breath must have been
changed by the glottis into voice, which voice,
whether loud or whispered, partly precedes partly
follows the check. The process which produces the
difference between k and g, t and d, p and fc, is so
well described by Briicke (p. 55) that I quote his
words : f In all the systems elaborated by the stu-
dents of language who have studied comparative
phonology, the mediae are classed as sonant, because
phonetically they stand to the sonant fricative sounds
{the voiced breaths) in the same relation as the tenues
to the non-sonant (the voiceless breaths). Some,
however, hesitate to class them simply as sonant
letters, because they cannot be produced continuously
by the sonant voice. Against this we have to re-
mark : The voice, as we have just seen, does sound
sometimes really ^during the shutting of the organs ;
or, if this is not so, the glottis at least is nar-
rowed during the shutting of the organs so as to
be ready to sound, which is never the case with
voiceless consonants. If therefore the tone of the
voice does stop, this is only because the difference
between the pressure of the air in the chest and the
mouth is not sufficiently great to cause a current
which would produce a vibration of the vocal chords.
With the mediae the vocal chords are ready to sound
as long as the closing of the organs lasts, and the
voice sounds therefore at once, as soon as the closure
is over. This is the characteristic difference between
tenuis and media. We may now understand why
the terms soft and hard, as applied to 6 and p, are
by no means so inappropriate as has sometimes been
supposed. Czermak, by using his probe, as described

160

NASAL CHECKS.

above, found that hard consonants (mutae tenues)
drove it up much more violently than the soft con-
sonants (mutse mediae). 67 The normal impetus of the
breath is certainly checked, subdued, softened, when
we pronounce b ; it does not strike straight against
the barrier of the lips ; it hesitates, so to say, and
we hear how it clings to the glottis in its slow
onward passage. But although the hardness and
softness are secondary qualities of tenues and medice, of
surd and sonant letters, the true physiological differ-
ence between p and b, t and d, k and g, is that in
the former the glottis is wide open, in the latter
narrowed, so as to produce either whispered or loud
voice.

Nasal Checks.

Eig. 24.

87 L. c. p. 9. Briicke (G-rundzuge, p. 56) remarks that these are se-
condary characteristics of the tenues and media, but nevertheless quite
correct. It is always pleasant to find out a solid foundation of truth
in what we are apt to consider as mere mistakes in those who came
before us. See Curtius, Grundzuge, p. 374.

NASAL CHECKS.

161

Lastly, g, d, b, may be modified to ng, n, m. For
these three nasals a full contact 68 takes place, but the
breath is stopped, not ab- Fig. 25.

ruptly as in the tenues,
but in the same manner
as with the medise. At
the same time the
breathing is emitted,
not through the mouth,
but generally through
the nose. It is not ne-
cessary, however, that
breath should be pro-
pelled through the nose,
as long as the veil is
withdrawn that separates the nose from the
pharynx. Water injected into the nose while n
and m are pronounced rushes at once into the wind-

68 Lepsius, who divides all consonants into explosive or dividucs, and
fricatives or continues, classes the nasals with the former. I do not
myself adopt that terminology, but I added these terms in the table on
p. 158, simply for the sake of completeness. Signor Ascoli, in his
Lezioni di Fonologia, p. 19, blames me for this division, evidently
unaware that it belongs to Lepsius, and not to me. ' Erra/ he writes,
' quindi Max Miiller, ponendo le nasali tra le esplosive.' And he adds,
' La nasale e continua, per la manifesta ragione che gli organ! rimangono
nel suo proferimento, e possono indeterminatemente rimanere, nella
stessa disposizione in cui sin da principio si mettono.' This may be
right or wrong according to the definition which is given of technical
terms, such as explosives and continues. But Signor Aseoli ought to have
known what Lepsius had written in defence of his view, before he called
his view erroneous. Lepsius says : ' It is a decided mistake to reckon m
and n among the consonantes continues ; for in m and n it is only the
vowel element inherent in the first half, which may be continued at
pleasure, whilst in all the continuous consonants it is the consonantal
element (the friction) which must be continued, as in /, v, s, z' (p. 60,
note).

II. M

162 ASPIRATED CHECKS.

pipe. 69 Where the withdrawal of the velum is ren-
dered impossible by disease such a case came under
Czermak's 70 observation pure nasals cannot be pro-
duced. 71

The so-called mouille or softened nasal, and all
other inouille consonants, are produced by the addi-
tion of the final y, and need not be classified as simple
letters. 72

Aspirated Checks.

For most languages the letters hitherto described
would be amply sufficient ; but in the more highly-
organised forms of speech new distinctions were intro-
duced and graphically expressed which deserve some
explanation. Instead of pronouncing a tenuis as it
ought to be pronounced, by cutting sharp through
the stream of breath or tone which proceeds from the
larynx, it is possible to gather the breath and to let it
explode audibly as soon as the consonantal contact is
withdrawn. In this manner we form the hard or
surd aspirates which occur in Sanskrit and in Greek,
kh, th, ph.

If, on the contrary, we pronounce g, d, b, and
allow the soft breathing to be heard as soon as the
contact is removed, we have the soft aspirates, which
are of frequent occurrence in Sanskrit, gh, dh, bh.

69 Czermak, Wiener Akademie, xxiv. p. 9.

70 Funke, p. 681. Czermak, Wiener Akademie, xxix. p. 173.

71 Professor Helmoltz has the following remarks on M and N : ' M
and N resemble the vowels in their formation, because they cause no
noise in the buccal tube. The buccal tube is shut, and the voice escapes
through the nose. The mouth forms only a resounding cavity, modifying
the sound. If we watch from below people walking up-hill and speaking
together, the nasals in and n are heard longest.'

72 See Briicke, Grundzilge, p. 70.

ASPIRATED CHECKS. 163

Much discussion lias been raised on these hard and
soft aspirates, the question being whether their first
element was really a complete consonantal contact, or
whether the contact was incomplete, and the letters
intended were hard and soft breathings. As we have
110 means of hearing either the old Brahmans or
the ancient Greeks pronounce their hard aspirates,
and as it is certain that pronunciation is constantly
changing, we cannot hope to derive much aid either
from modern Pandits or from modern Greeks. The
Brahmans of the present day are said to pronounce
their kh, th, and ph like a complete tenuis, followed
by the spiritus asper. The nearest approach to kh
is said to be the English kh in inlchom, though this
can hardly be a good illustration, as here the tenuis
ends and the aspirate begins a syllable. The Irish pro-
nunciation of Jcind 9 town, pig, has likewise been quoted
as in some degree similar to the Sanskrit hard aspi-
rates. In the modern languages of India, where the
Sanskrit letters are transcribed by Persian letters, we
actually find kh represented by two letters, k and h,
joined together, and pronounced accordingly. The
modern Greeks, on the contrary, pronounce their three
aspirates as breathings, like h, th, f. It seems to me
that the only two points of importance are, first,
whether these aspirates in Greek or Sanskrit were
formed with or without complete contact, and,
secondly, whether they were classed as surd or as
sonant. The ancient grammarians of India allow,
as far as I can judge, of no doubt on either of these
points. The hard aspirates are formed by complete
contact (sprishJa), and they belong to that class of
letters for which the glottis must be completely open,

M 2

164 ASPIRATED CHECKS.

i.e. to the surd or hard consonants. These two points
once established put an end to all speculations on the
subject. What the exact sound of these letters was
is difficult to determine, because the ancient author-
ities vary in their descriptions, but there is no un-
certainty as to their physiological character. They
are said to be uttered with a strong- out-breathing
(mahapratiaTz/), but this, as it is shared by them in
common with the soft aspirates and the hard breaths,
cannot constitute their distinctive feature. Their tech-
nical name ( soshman,' i.e. 'with wind,' would admit
of two explanations. ' Wind ' might be taken in the
general sense of breath, or and this, I believe, is
more correct in the sense of the eight letters called
'the winds' in Sanskrit, h, s, sh, s, tongue-root
breath (6rihvamuliya), labial breath (Upadhma-
niya), neutral breath (Yisarga), and neutral nasal
(Aiiusvara). Thus it is maintained by some ancient
grammarians 73 that the hard aspirates are the hard
letters, k, t, p, together with the corresponding winds
or horn organic breathings ; that is to say, kh is = k 4-
tongue-root breath, th=t + s, ph=p + labial breath.

As to the Greek aspirates, we know that they be-
longed to the aphona, i.e. that they were formed by
complete contact. They were not originally hemi-
phona or breaths, though they became so afterwards.
That they were hard, or pronounced with open glottis,
we must gather from their original signs, such as II H,
and from their reduplicated forms, ti-themi, ~ke-chy~ka,
pe-phyka. 7 *

It is more difficult to determine the real nature of

73 Survey of Languages, p. xxxii. Sakala-pratisakliya, xiii. 18,

74 Raumer, Aspiration, 96. Curtius, Gr. Etymologic, ii. p. 11.

PHYSIOLOGICAL ALPHABET. 165

the Sanskrit soft aspirates, gh, dh, bh. According
to some grammarians they are produced by the union
of g, d, b, with 'h, which in Sanskrit is a sonant letter.
a spiritus lenis in its least modified form. 75 The same
grammarians, however, maintain that they are not
formed entirely with the glottis closed, or as sonant
letters, but that they and the h require the glottis
* both to be opened and to be closed. 9 What this means
is somewhat obscure. A letter may be either surd
or sonant, but it can hardly be both, and the fact that
not only the four soft aspirates but the simple 3 h 76
also were considered as surd-sonant, would seem to
show that an intermediate rather than a compound
utterance is intended. One thing is certain, namely,
that neither the hard nor the soft aspirates were
originally mere breaths. They are both based on
complete contact, and thus differ from the, hard and
soft breaths which sometimes take their places in
cognate tongues.

We have thus finished our survey, which I have
kept as general as possible, without dwelling on any
of the less normal letters, peculiar to every language,
every dialect nay, to the pronunciation of every in-
dividual. It is the excessive attention paid to these
exceptional letters that has rendered most works on
Phonetics so complicated and unintelligible. If we
have clearly impressed on our mind the normal con-

75 If Sanskrit writing were not of so late a date, the fact that the
Vedic dh or lh is actually represented by a combination of I and h might

be quoted in support of this theory ( < = odf ).

76 Mkala-Pratisakhya, xiii. 1. The expression the breath be-
comes both sonant and surd between the two,' i. e. between the complete
opening and shutting, shows that an intermediate sound is meant.

1()6 PHYSIOLOGICAL ALPHABET.

ditions of the organs of speech in the production of
vowels and consonants, it will be easy to arrange the
sounds of every new language under the categories
once established on a broad and firm basis. To do
this, to arrange the alphabet of any given language
according to the compartments planned by physio-
logical research, is the office of the grammarian, not
of the physiologist. But even here, too much nicety
is dangerous. It is easy to perceive some little dif-
ference between k, t, p, as pronounced by an English-
man and by a German ; yet each has only one set of
tenues, and to class them as different and represent
them by different graphic exponents would produce
nothing but confusion. The Semitic nations have
sounds which are absent in the Indo-European lan-
guages the sounds which Briicke has well described
as gutturales verce, true gutturals ; for the letters
which we commonly call gutturals, k, g, have nothing
to do with the guttur, but with the root of the
tongue and the soft palate. But their character, if
only accurately described, as it has been by Czermak,
will easily become intelligible to the student of
Hebrew and Arabic if he has once acquired a clear
conception of what has been well called the Alphabet
of Nature. To sum up, we must distinguish three
things :

(1) What letters are made of.

(2) How they are made.

(3) Where they are made.

(1) Letters are formed

(a) Of vocalised breath. These I call vowels
(Phoneenta, no contact).

PHYSIOLOGICAL ALPHABET. 167

(b) Of breath, not vocalised. These I call breaths
or spiritus (Hemiphona, slight contact).

(2) Letters are formed

(a) With wide opening of the chordae vocales.
These I call surd letters (psila, tenues, hard, sharp 5
vivarasvasaghosha/i,).

(b) With a narrowing of the chordae vocales.
These I call sonant letters (mesa, mediae), soft, blunt;
samvaranadaghosha/t). This distinction applies
both to the breaths and to the checks, though the
effect, as pointed out, is different.

(3) Letters are formed in different places by active
and passive organs, the normal places being those
marked by the contact between the root of the tongue
and the palate, the tip of the tongue and the teeth,
and the upper and lower lips with their various
modifications.

168

PHYSIOLOGICAL ALPHABET.

to >->

G G

O
o"

5 H ^>

<i,o S 5

p 1 -3 B

2 P ^ 2

-2 5 a

II 13 11-.

jC >> 03 ^

1
g

2 S

s S

fan t> *^

fl & C

3 1

rS * fl

a) o

8 & S^

^^ '7
POO

ra I 1

g ~ f

to fcc p <^

C C pJ P*

H ^ J P

kd o t>I co

169
APPENDIX TO LECTUEE III.

ON TRANSLITERATION.

HAVING on former occasions discussed the problem
of transcribing languages by a common alphabet, 77 1
should, for the present, have passed over that subject
altogether if I had not been repeatedly urged to
declare my opinion on other alphabets recommended
to the public by powerful advocates. No one has
worked more energetically for the propagation of a
common alphabet than Professor Lepsius, of Berlin ;
and though, in my opinion, and in the opinion of
much more competent judges, such as Briicke, the
physiological basis of his alphabet is not free from
error nay, though in the more limited field of lan-
guages on which I can form an independent opinion
he has slightly misapprehended the nature of certain
letters and classes of letters I should nevertheless
rejoice in the success even of an imperfect alphabet,
supposing it had any chance of general adoption.
If his alphabet could become the general alphabet at
least among African scholars, it would be a real
benefit to that new branch of philological studies.
But I regret to see that even in Africa those who,
like Dr. Bleek, are most anxious to follow the pro-
positions of Professor Lepsius, find it impossible to
do so, ' on account of its too great typographical
difficulties.' 78 If this is the case at a steam printing-
office in Cape Town, what can we expect at Neu-

77 Proposals for a Missionary Alphabet in !&f . M.'s Survey qf Languages
(2nd edition), 1855.

78 Dr. Bleek, Comparative Grammar, p. xii.

170 TRANSLITERATION.

herrnlmt ? Another and even more serious objec-
tion, urged likewise by a scholar most anxious to
support the Church Missionary Alphabet, is that the
scheme of Dr. Lepsius, as modified by the Church of
England and Continental Missionary Societies, has
long ceased to be a uniform system.

The Societies (says the Rev. Hugh Goldie, in his 'Dic-
tionary of the Efik Language,' Glasgow, 18C2) have not
succeeded in establishing a uniform system, for which
Dr. Lepsius's alphabet is taken as a base : deviations are
made from it, which vary in different languages, and which
destroy the claim of this system to uniformity. Marks are
employed in the Church of England Society which are not
employed by the continental societies, and vice versd. This, I
think, is fatal to the one great recommendation of the system,
namely, its claim to be received as a common system. Stripped
of its adventitious recommendations, and judged on its own
merits, we think it deficient in simplicity.

These are serious objections ; and yet I should
gladly have waived them and given my support to
the system of Professor Lepsius, if, during the many
years that it has been before the public, I had ob-
served any signs of its taking root, or of that slow and
silent growth which alone augurs well for the future.
What has been, I believe, most detrimental to its
success, is the loud advocacy by which it was at-
tempted to force that system on the acceptance of
scholars and missionaries, many of them far more
competent, in their own special spheres, 79 to form an

79 Professor Lepsius has some interesting remarks on the African
clicks. The Eev. J. L. Dohne, author of a Zulu Kafir Dictionary, ex-
pressed himself against Dr. Lepsius's proposal to write the clicks before
their accompanying letters. He at the same time advanced some etymo-
logical arguments in support of his own view. How is the African mis-

TRANSLITERATION. 171

opinion of its defects than either its author or its
patrons. That my unwillingness to adopt the system
of Professor Lepsius did not arise from any predi-
lection for my own Missionary Alphabet, I have
proved by continuing for a long time to employ the
system of Sir William Jones, particularly when
writing for the English public. My own system was,
in every sense of the word, a missionary system.
My object was, if possible, to devise an alphabet,
capable of expressing every variety of sound that
could be physiologically denned, and yet not requir-
ing one single new or artificial type. As in most
languages we find, besides the ordinary sounds that
can be expressed by the ordinary types, one, or at
the utmost two modifications to which certain letters
or classes of letters are liable, I proposed italics as
exponents of the first degree of modification, small
capitals as exponents of the second degree. Thus
as, besides the ordinary dentals, t, th, d, dh, we find
in Sanskrit the linguals, I proposed that these
should be printed as italics, t y th, d, dh y instead of
the usual but more difficult types, t', th', d', dh'; or
t, th, d, dh. As in Arabic we find, besides the
ordinary dentals, another set of linguals, I proposed
to express these too by italics. These italics were

sionary answered ? I quote Professor Lepsius's reply, which can hardly
have convinced his learned adversary. ' Equally little,' he writes, ' should

we be justified in inferring from the fact, that in the Sanskrit
let'i (sic), he licks, from f^T^ lih,andf^f ti, t' (sic) must be pro-
nounced not as th (sic), but as h t (sic).' How the change of Sanskrit h
and t into d' / <j> is dli, not A)has any bearing on the Rev. J. L. Dohne's

argument about the clicks, few missionaries in Africa will be able to-
understand.

172 TRANSLITERATION.

only intended to show that the dentals printed in
italics were not meant for the usual dentals. This
would have been sufficient for those not acquainted
with Sanskrit or Arabic, while Sanskrit and Arabic
scholars could have had little doubt as to what class
of modified dentals was intended in Sanskrit or
Arabic. If certain letters require more than one
modification as, for instance, t, s, n, r then small
capitals would have to come in, and only in very ex-
treme cases would an additional diacritical mark
have been required for a third modification of one
common type. If through the liberality of one
opulent society, the Church Missionary Society, 80
complete founts of complicated and expensive types
are to be granted to any press that will ask for them,
there is no further need for italics or small capitals
mere make-shifts, that could only have recom-
mended themselves to poor missionaries wishing to
obtain the greatest results by the smallest means.
It is curious, however, that in spite of all that has
beeen urged against a systematic use of italics,
italics crop out almost everywhere both in philo-
logical works at home and in missionary publications
abroad, while as yet I have very seldom met with
the Church Missionary p for the vowel in French
cceur, or with the Church Missionary s for the Sans-
krit sh, as written by Sir W. Jones.

Within the circle of languages in which I take a
more immediate interest, the languages of India, the
adoption of the alphabet advocated by the Church
Missionary Society seems now, after the successful

80 See Resolution 2, carried August 26, 1861, at the Church Mission-
ary House, London.

TRANSLITERATION. 1 73

exertions of Sir Charles Trevelyan, more than hope-
less, nor do I think that for people situated like the
modern Hindus such a pis-aller as italics and small
capitals is likely to be popular. Living in England,
and writing chiefly for England and India, I natu-
rally decided to follow that system which was so
modestly put forth by Sir William Jones in the first
volume of the c Asiatic Eesearches,' and has since,
with slight modifications, not always improvements,
been adopted by the greatest Oriental scholars in
India, England, and the Continent. In reading that
essay, written about eighty years ago, one is sur-
prised to see how well Hs author was acquainted
with all that is really essential either in the physio-
logical analysis or in" the philological definition of
the alphabet. I do not think the criticism of Pro-
fessor Lepsius quite fair when he imputes to Sir W.
Jones ' a defective knowledge of the general organism
of sounds, and of the distinct sounds to be repre-
sented ; ' nor can I blame the distinguished founder
of the Asiatic Society for the imperfect application
of his own principles, considering how difficult it is
for a scholar to sacrifice his own principles to con-
siderations of a more practical nature.

The points on which I differ from Sir W. Jones
are of very small consequence. They arise from
habit rather than from principle. I should willingly
give them up if by so doing I could help to bring
about a more speedy agreement among Sanskrit
scholars in England and India. I am glad to find
that in the second edition of his c Standard Alphabet '
Professor Lepsius has acknowledged the practical
superiority of the system of Sir W. Jones in several

174

TRANSLITERATION.

important points, and I think he will find that his
own system may be still further improved, or at all
events have a better chance of success in Europe as
well as in India, if it approaches more and more
closely to that excellent standard. The subjoined
table will make this clearer than any comment :

Sanskrit Alphabet, as transcribed by Sir W. Jones, M. M.,

in the Missionary, and in the Church Missionary

Alphabets.

SirW.

Joe..M.M.1r p SK c i'(^-

Sir W. Jones. M. M. *%$$ C Alphab?t. SS '

*R c k

TJT

^r c'h kh

or kh

T g g

^f g'h gh

or gh

^ n n

^ ch ch

or 6

^ ch'h chh

,/' y,

k or ch

5f j J

orj

Iri

^5f j'h jh gh gorjh

Irl

3? ny n

ai or e

Z * \

au or o

"Z t'h th

orth

T d d

^rr

< 9'h dh

' or dh

TRANSLITERATION.

175

Missionary Church Miss. '

tiabet.

Alphabet.

sir w.Jones. JML. M.

Alphabet.

T r r

r or r

*T 1 1

t' or th

3 V V W

^ a s

sorx

d f or dh

TBf sh sh

s or s

*T s s

h(K) h

p orph

3 n m

+ x

b' or bh

X $

^^ 1

}

^5f #

^F ii n n

7ft t t

^ t'h th t

^ d d

T* d'h dh

f n n n

1? P P

tfi p'h p

^ b b

H b'h b

^ m m
^ h h

^ y y

N.B. For the use of missionaries and travellers a vocabulary has been
compiled by Mr. John Bellows, which has proved of great assistance in
collecting the words of new languages and dialects. Outline Dictionary
for the Use of Missionaries, Explorers, and Students of Language. With
an introduction on the proper use of the ordinary English alphabet in
transcribing foreign languages by Max Mitller, M.A. London :
Triibner & Co., 60, Paternoster Row. Calcutta: George Wyman &
Co. 1867.

176

LECTURE IV.

PHONETIC CHANGE.

POM the investigations which I laid before you
in my last Lecture, you know the materials
which were at the disposal of the primitive architects
of language. They may seem small compared with
the countless vocables of the countless languages
and dialects to which they have given rise, nor
would it have been difficult to increase their number
considerably, had we assigned an independent name
and position to every slight variety of sound that
can be uttered, or may be discovered among the
various tribes of the globe. Tet small as is the
number of the alphabetic elements, there are but few
languages that avail themselves of all of them.
Where we find very abundant alphabets, as for in-
stance in Hindustani and English, different lan-
guages have been mixed, each retaining, for a time,
its own phonetic peculiarities. It is because French
is Latin as spoken not only by the Roman provincials
but by the German Franks, that we find in its dic-
tionary words beginning with h and with gui. The
former is due to German throats; the latter is an
attempt of a Roman mouth to pronounce the German
w. Thus ha'ir is to hate ; hameau, home ; hater, to
haste ; deguiser points to wise, guile to wile, guichet

RICH ALPHABETS. 177

to wicket. It is because English is Saxon as spoken
not only by Saxons, but likewise by Normans, that we
hear in it several sounds which do not occur in any
other Teutonic dialects. The sound of u as heard in
pure is not a Teutonic sound. It arose from an
attempt to imitate the French u in pure. 1 Most of
the words in which this sound is heard are of Ro-
man origin, e.g. duke, during (durer), beauty (beaute,
bellitas), nuisance (nocentia). This sound of u,
however, being once naturalised, found its way into
Saxon words also ; that is to say, the Normans pro-
nounced the A. S. e6w and eaw like yu ; e.g. knew
(cne6w), few (feawa), dew (deaw), hue (hiw). 2

The sounds of ch and j in English are Roman or
Norman rather than Teutonic sounds, though, once
admitted into English, they have infected many words
of Saxon descent. Thus cheer in good cheer is the
French chere, the Mediaeval Latin caret,; 3 chamber,
chambre, camera; cherry, A. S. cirse, Fr. cerise, Lat.
cerasus ; to preach, precher, prcedicare ; to forge, fabri-
care. Or j in joy, gaudium, judge, judex, &c. But
the same sounds found their way into Saxon words
also, such as choose (ceSsan, German kieseri) ; chew
(ceowan, German Jcaueri) ; particularly before e and i,
but likewise before other vowels ; e. g. child, as early
as Layamon, instead of the older A. S. did ; cheap,
A.S. ceap ; birch, finch, speech, much, &c. ; thatch
(theccan), watch (weccan) ; in Scotch, theeJc and waiJc;

1 Fiedler, Englische GrammatiJc, i. pp. 118 and 142.

2 Cf. Marsh, Lectures, Second Series, p. 65.

3 Cara in Spanish, chiere in Old French, mean face ; Nicot uses ' avoir
la chere baisseV It afterwards assumed the sense of welcome, and hos-
pitable reception. Cf. Diez, Lex. Etym. s. v. Cara.

II. N

178 POOR ALPHABETS.

or in bridge (brycg, Brucke), edge (ecg, Ecke), ridge
(hrycg, Ruckeri).

The soft sound of z in azure or of s in vision is
likewise a Eoman importation.

Words, on the contrary, in which th occurs are
Saxon, and had to be pronounced by the Normans as
well as they could. To judge from the spelling of MSS.,
they would often seem to have pronounced d instead
of th. The same applies to words containing wh,
originally hv, or ght, originally lit ; as in who, which,
or bought, light, right. All these are truly Saxon,
and the Scotch dialect preserves the original guttural
sound of h before t.

The Otyi-herero has neither I nor /, nor the sibi-
lants s r z. The pronunciation is lisping, in conse-
quence of the custom of the Va-herero of having
their upper front teeth partly filed of, and four lower
teeth knocked out. It is perhaps due to this that
the Otyi-herero has two sounds similar to those
of the hard and soft th and dh in English (written,

,, .).

There are languages that throw away certain
letters which to us would seem almost indispensable,
and there are others in which even the normal dis-
tinctions between guttural, dental, and labial contact
are not yet clearly perceived. We are so accustomed
to look upon pa and ma as the most natural articula-
tions, that we can hardly imagine a language without

4 Sir OK Grey's Library, i. 167. A. Kaufmann (Das Gebiet des
Weissen Flusses und dessen Bewohner : Brixen, 1861), says of the Dinka
language that it is without sibilants, such as 5, sh, z, which may be due
to the fact that the Dinka, like all other negroes of the White River,
take out the front teeth of the lower jaw. They are also without k and
ch, but have instead the sound of ng and gh, like Arabic c

POOR ALPHABETS. 179

them. We have been told over and over again that
the names for father and mother in all languages are
derived from the first cry of recognition which an in-
fant can articulate, and that it could at that early
age articulate none but those formed by the mere
opening or closing of the lips. It is a fact, never-
theless, that the Mohawks, of whom I knew an in-
teresting specimen at Oxford, never, either as infants
or as grown-up people, articulate with their lips.
They have no p, b, m,/, v, w no labials of any kind ;
and although their own name Mohawk would seem
to bear witness against this, that name is not a word
of their own language, but was given to them by
their neighbours. Nor are they the only people who
always keep their mouths open and abstain from ar-
ticulating labials. 5 They share this peculiarity with
five other tribes, who together form the so-called six
nations, Mohawks, Senekas, Onandagos, Oneidas, Ca-
yugas, and Tuscaroras. The Hurons likewise have
no labials, and there are other languages in America
with a similar deficiency. 6

The gutturals are seldom absent altogether ; in
some, as in the Semitic family, they are most pro-

5 Brosses, Formation mecanique des Langues, i. p. 220 : ' La Hontam
ajoute qu'aucune nation du Canada ne fait usage de la lettre/, que les
Hurons, a qui elles manquent toutes quatre (B, P, M, F), ne ferment
jamais les levres.' F and s are wanting in Karotongan. Hale, p. 232.

6 See Bindseil, Abhandlungen, p. 368. The Mixteca language has no
p, b,f; the Mexican no b, v,f; the Totonaca no b, v,f; the Kaigani
(Haidah) and Thlinkit no b, p, f (Pott, Et. F. ii. 63) ; the Hottentot no
/ or v (Sir Gr. Grey's Library, i. p. 5) ; the languages of Australia no/ or

v (ibid. ii. 1, 2). Many of the statements of Bindseil as to the presence
and absence of certain letters in certain languages, require to be re-
examined, as they chiefly rest on Adelung's Mithridates.

K 2

180 POOE ALPHABETS.

minent, and represented by a numerous array of
letters. Several languages do not distinguish be-
tween k and g; some have only Jc, others g only.
The sound of g as in gone, of j as in jet, and of a as
in zone, which are often heard in Kafir, have no place
in the Sechuana alphabet. 7 There are a few dialects
mentioned by Bindseil as entirely destitute of gut-
turals, for instance, that of the Society Islands. 8 It
was unfortunate that one of the first English names
which the natives of these islands had to pronounce
was that of Captain Cook, whom they could only call
Tide. Besides the Tahitian, the Hawaian and Sa-
moan 9 are likewise said to be without gutturals.
In these dialects, however, the Jc is indicated by a
hiatus or catching of the breath, as aWi for alihi, 'a'na
for kakano.

The dentals seem to exist in every language. 11 The
d, however, is never used in Chinese, nor in Mexican,
Peruvian, and several other American dialects, 12 and
the n is absent in the language of the Hurons 13 and
of some other American tribes. The s is absent in
the Australian dialects 14 and in several of the
Polynesian languages, where its place is taken by

7 Bindseil, /. c. 344 ; Mithridatcs, i. 632, 637.

Appleyard, p. 50. 9 Hale, p. 232.

10 To avoid confusion, it may be stated that throughout Polynesia,
with the exception of Samoa, all the principal groups of islands are
known to the people of the other groups by the name of their largest
island. Thus, the Sandwich Islands are termed Hawaii ; the Marquesas,
Nukuhiva ; the Society Islands, Tahiti; the Gambler Group, Mangareva ;
the Friendly Islands, Tonga; the Navigator Islands, Samoa (all), see
Hale, pp. 4, 120 ; the Hervey Islands, Earotonga ; the Low or Dangerow
Archipelago, Paumotu; Bowditch Island is Fakaafo.

11 Bindseil, /. c. p. 358. 1S Ibid. p. 365. Ibid. p. 334.
14 Sir George Grey's Library, ii. 1, 3.

POOR ALPHABETS. 181

7i. 15 Thus in Tongan we find hahaJce for sasalce ; in
the New Zealand dialect Jieke for seke. In Rarotongan
the s is entirely lost, as in ae for sae. When the h
stands for an original s, it has a peculiar hissing
sound which some have represented by sh, others by
zh, others by he or 7i', or simply e. Thus the word
hongi, from the Samoan songi, meaning to salute by
pressing noses, has been spelt by different writers, shon-
gi, ehongi, heongi, h'ongi and zongi. 16 But even keep-
ing on more familiar ground, we find that so perfect
a language as Sanskrit has no /, no soft sibilants,
no snort e, and o ; Greek has no y, no w, no f, no
soft sibilants; Latin likewise has no soft sibilants,
no $, <f>, %. English is deficient in guttural breath-
ings like the German ach and icli. High German
has no w like the English w in wind, no th y dh, ch, j.
While Sanskrit has no /, Arabic has no p. F is
absent not only in those dialects which have no
labial articulation at all, but we look for it in vain
in Finnish (despite of its name, which was given it
by its neighbours), 17 in Lithuanian, 18 in the Gipsy
languages, in Tamil, Mongolian, some of the Tataric
dialects, Burmese, &c. 19

It is well known that r is felt to be a letter difficult
to pronounce not only by individuals but by whole
nations. ]STo Chinese who speaks the classical lan-
guage of the empire, ever pronounces that letter.
They say Ki li sse tu instead of Christ ; Eulopa in-
stead of Europe; Ya me li Tea instead of America.

15 Hale, 1. c. p. 232. 16 Ibid. pp. 122, 234.

17 Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 62.

18 ' F does not occur in any genuine Sclavonic word.' Briicke, Grand-
zuge, p. 34.

18 Bindseil, p. 289.

182 ALPHABETIC STATISTICS.

Hence neither Mandarin nor Sericum can be Chinese
words : the former is the Sk. mantrin, counsellor;
the latter derived from Seres, a name given to the
Chinese by their neighbours.* It is likewise absent
in the language of the Hurons, the Mexicans, the
Othomi, and other American dialects ; in the Kafir
language, 21 and in several of the Polynesian 22 tongues.
In the Polynesian tongues the name of Christ is
Kalaisi, but also Karaita and Keriso. R frequently
alternates with I, but I again is a sound unknown in
Zend, and in the Cuneiform Inscriptions, 23 in Japanese
(at least some of its dialects) and in several American
and African tongues. 24

It would be interesting to prepare more extensive
statistics as to the presence and absence of certain
letters in certain languages ; nay, a mere counting
of consonants and vowels in the alphabets of each
nation might yield curious results. I shall only
mention a few :

Hindustani, which admits Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic,
and Turkish words, has 48 consonants, of which 13
are classical Sanskrit aspirates, nasals, and sibilants,
and 14 Arabic letters.

20 Pott, Deutsche Morgenlandische Gesellschaft, xii. 453.

21 Boyce's Grammar of the Kafir Language, ed. Davis, 1863, p. vii.
The r exists in the Sechuana. The Kafirs pronounce I instead of r in
foreign words ; they have, however, the guttural trills. Cf. Appleyard,
The Kafir Language, p. 49.

23 The dialects of New Zealand, Rarotonga, Mangareva, Paumota,
Tahiti, and Nukuhiva have r; those of Fakaafo, Samoa, Tonga, and
Hawai, have 1. See Hale", I. c. p. 232.

23 See Sir H. Rawlinson, Bchistun, p. 146; Spiegel, Parsi Gram-
tnatik, p. 34.

- 4 Bindseil, p. 318 ; Pott, /. c. xii. 453.

IMPERFECT ARTICULATION. 183

Sanskrit has 37 consonants, or if we count the
Vedicl andlh, 39.

Turkish, which admits Persian and Arabic words,
has 32 consonants, of which only 25 are really
Turkish,

Persian, which admits Arabic words, has 31 con-
sonants, of which 22 are really Persian, the rest
Arabic.

Arabic has 28 consonants.

The Kafir (Zulu) has 26 consonants, besides the
clicks.

Hebrew has 23 consonants.

English has 20 consonants.

Greek has 17 consonants, of which 3 are com-
pound.

Latin has 17 consonants, of which 1 is compound.

Mongolian has 17 or 18 consonants.

Finnish has 11.

Polynesian has 10 native consonantal sounds ; no
dialect has more many have less. 25

Some Australian languages have 8, with three
variations. 26

The Melanesian languages are richer in consonants.
The poorest, the Duauru, has 12 ; others 13, 14 and
more consonants. 27

But what is even more curious than the absence
or presence of certain letters in certain languages or
families of languages, is the inability of some races to

25 Cf. Hale, p. 231 ; Von der G-abelentz, Abhandlungen der philo-
logisch-historischen Classe der Koniglich-Sachsischen Gesettschqft der
Wissenschaften, vol. iii. p. 253. Leipzig, 1861.

28 Hale, p. 482. 27 See Von der Gabelentz, I c.

184 IMPEEFECT ARTICULATION.

distinguish, either in hearing or speaking, between
some of the most normal letters of our alphabet. No
two consonants would seem to be more distinct than
k and t. Nevertheless, in the language of the Sandwich
Islands, these two sounds run into one, and it seems
impossible for a foreigner to say whether what he
hears is a guttural or a dental. The same word is
written by Protestant missionaries with k, by French
missionaries with t. It takes months of patient
labour to teach a Hawaian youth the difference be-
tween k and t, g and d, I and r. The same word
varies in Hawaian dialects as much as koki and hoi,
held and tea.** In adopting the English word steel,
the Hawaians have rejected the s, because they never
pronounce two consonants together; they have added
a final a, because they never end a syllable with a
consonant, and they have changed t into &. 29 Thus
steel has become kila. Such a confusion between two
prominent consonants like Jc and t would destroy the
very life of a language like English. The distinction
between carry and tarry, car and tar, key and tea,
neck and net, would be lost. Yet the Hawaian lan-
guage struggles successfully against these disadvan-
tages, and has stood the test of being used for a
translation of the Bible, without being found wanting.
Physiologically we can only account for this confusion
by inefficient articulation, the tongue striking the
palate bluntly half-way between the k and the t points,
and thus producing sometimes more of a dental,

' B The Polynesian, October 1862.

29 Buschmann, lies Marq. p. 103 ; Pott, Etym. F. ii. 138. ' In Hawaian
the natives make no distinction between t and k, and the missionaries
have adopted the latter, though improperly (as the element is really the
Polynesian t), in the written language.' Hale, vii. p. 234.

IMPERFECT ARTICULATION. 185

sometimes more of a palatal noise. But it is curious
to observe that, according to high authority, some-
thing of the same kind is supposed to take place in
English and in French. 30 We are told by careful
observers that the lower classes in Canada habitually
confound t and It, and say mekier, moiJcie, for metier
and moitie. Webster goes so far as to maintain, in
the Introduction to his English Dictionary, that in
English the letters d are pronounced as if written tl;
clear, clean, he says are pronounced Hear, tlean; gl is
pronounced dl; glory is pronounced dlory. Now
Webster is a great authority on such matters, and
although I doubt whether anyone really says dlory
instead of glory, his remark shows, at all events, that
even with a well-mastered tongue and a well-disci-
plined ear there is some difficulty in distinguishing
between guttural and dental contact. 31

80 Student's Manual of the English Language (Marsh and Smith), p. 349.

31 ' Sans chercher si loin des examples de cette permutation, nous
pouvons er trouver des exemples dans la bouche des paysans des
environs de Paris et de plusieurs autres grandes villes, du Havre
entre autres, car ils disent amikie pour amitie, charkier, abricokier,
squie pour charretier, abricotier, seller. A Paris me'me certaines gens
disent crapu pour trapu. (Cf. E. Agnel, Observations $ur la prononcia-
tion et le langage rustique des environs de Paris, pp. 11, 28.) II n'y a
apparemment qu'un seul mot latin qui ait subi cette permutation en
passant dans notre langue, c'est tremere, qui devint d'abord cremere et
ensuite craindre, avec epenthese d'un d. (Terrien Poncel, Du Langage,
p. 49.) The French translators of my Lectures have pointed out that
Moliere, in Le Medecin malgre lui, introduces Jacqueline as saying heriquib
for heritier. In the same play, quarquie occurs for quartier, amiqutt for
amitie. In the popular pronunciation of cintieme for cinquieme, qu seems
changed to t. 'Le pluriel de 1'imparfait fetaimes onfetions, prononc^
fequions.' GK Met'Viers, Dictionnaire franco-normand, 1870, p. v. See
also Mrs. A. H. Leonowens, The Governess at the Siamese Court, 1870,
p. 197. ' Now,' said the King, ' St. Paul in this chapter evidently and
strongly applies the Buddhists' word maitri, or maikree as pro-
nounced by some Sanskrit scholars ' &c.

186 IMPERFECT ARTICULATION.

How difficult it is to catch the exact sound of a
foreign language may be seen from the following
anecdote. An American gentleman, long resident in
Constantinople, writes :

There is only one word in all my letters which I am certain
(however they may be written) of not having spelt wrong, and
that is the word bactshtasch, which signifies a present. I have
heard it so often, and my ear is so accustomed to the sound,
and my tongue to the pronunciation, that I am now certain I
am not wrong the hundredth part of a whisper or a lisp.
There is no other word in the Turkish so well impressed on
my mind, and so well remembered. Whatever else I have
written, bactshtasch ! my earliest acquaintance in the Turkish
language, I shall never forget you.

The word intended is Bakhshish.* 2

The Chinese word which French scholars spell eul,
is rendered by different writers ol, eulh, eull, r'l, r'W,
urh, rhl. These are all meant, I believe, to represent
the same sound, the sound of a word which at Canton
is pronounced i, in Annamitic ni, in Japanese ni 33

If we consider that r is in many languages a
guttural, and I a dental, we may place in the same
category of wavering pronunciation as Jc and ,the con-
fusion between these two letters, r and I, a confusion
remarked not only in the Polynesian, but likewise in
the African languages. Speaking of the Setchuana
dialects, Dr. Bleek remarks : ' One is justified to con-
sider r in these dialects as a sort of floating letter,
and rather intermediate between I and r, than a
decided r sound.' 34

3 - Constantinople and its Environs, by an American long resident, New
York, 1835, ii. p. 151 ; quoted by Marsh, Lect., Second Series, p. 87.

33 Leon de Rosny, La Cochinchine, p. 29.4.

34 Sir G-. Grey's Library, vol. i. p. 135.

IMPEEFECT ARTICULATION. 187

Some faint traces of this confusion between r and I
may be discovered even in the classical languages,
though here they are the exception, not the rule.
There can be no doubt that the two Latin derivatives
aris and alls are one and the same. If we derive
Saturnalis from Satumus, and secularis from seculum,
normalis from norma, regularis from regula, astralis
from astrum, stellaris from stella, it is clear that the
suffix in all is the same. Yet there is some kind of
rule which determines whether alis or aris is to be
preferred. If the body of the words contains an I, the
Roman preferred the termination aris; hence secu-
laris, regularis, stellaris, the only exceptions being
that I is preserved (1) when there is also an r in the
body of the word, and this r closer to the termination
than the I ; hence pluralis, lateralis ; (2) when the I
forms part of a compound consonant, as fluvialis,
glacialis. Z5

Occasional changes of I into r are to be found in
almost every language, e.g. lavender, i.e. lavendula ;
colonel, pronounced curnel (Old French, coronel ;
Spanish, coronel); rossignole=zlusciniola ; 36 coeruleus
from ccelum ; Jcephalargia, and letha,rgia, but otalgia,
all from dlgos, pain. The Wallachian dor, desire, is
supposed to be the same word as the Italian duolo,
pain. In apotre, chapitre, esdandre, the same change
of I into T has taken place. 37

On the other hand r appears as I in Italian albero =
arbor; celebro = cerebrum ; mercoledi, Mercurii dies;
pellegrino, pilgrim =peregrinus.* B

35 Cf. Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, 1st edit. ii. 97, where some
exceptions, such as legalis, letalis, are explained.

36 See Corssen, KritiscJie Nachtrdge, p. 36.

37 Diez, Vergleichende Grammatik, i. p. 189 38 Diez, I, c. i. p. 209.

188 IMPERFECT ARTICULATION.

In the Dravidian family of languages the change
of I into r, and more frequently of r into I, is very
common. 39

Instances of an utter inability to distinguish be-
tween two articulate sounds are, however, of rare oc-
currence, and they are but seldom found in languages
which have received a high amount of literary cul-
tivation. What I am speaking of here is not merely
change of consonants, one consonant being preferred
in one, another in another dialect, or one being fixed
in one noun, another in another. This is a subject we
shall have to consider presently. What I wished to
point out is more than that; it is a confusion between
two consonants in one and the same language, in one
and the same word. I can only explain it by com-
paring it to that kind of colour-blindness when people
are unable to distinguish between blue and red, a
colour-blindness quite distinct from that which makes
blue to seem red, or yellow green. It frequently
happens that individuals are unable to pronounce
certain letters. Many persons cannot pronounce the
I, and say r or even n instead ; grass and crouds in-
stead of glass and clouds; ritten instead of little.
Others change r to d, dound instead of round ; others
change I to d, dong instead of long. Children, too,
for some time substitute dentals for gutturals, speak-
ing of tat instead of cat, tiss instead of kiss. It is
difficult to say whether their tongue is more at fault
or their ear. In these cases, however, a real sub-
stitution takes place ; we who are listening hear one
letter instead of another, but we do not hear as it were
two letters at once, or something between the two.

19 Caldwell, Dravidian Grammar, p. 120.

PHONETIC CHANGE. 189

The only analogy to this remarkable imperfection
peculiar to uncultivated dialects may be discovered in
languages where, as in Modern German, the soft and
hard consonants become almost, if not entirely, un-
distinguishable. But there is still a great difference
between actually confounding the places of contact as
the Hawaians do in k and t, and merely confounding
the different efforts with which consonants, belonging
to the same organic class, ought to be uttered, a defect
very common in some parts of Germany and elsewhere.

This confusion between two consonants in the same
dialect is a characteristic, I believe, of the lower stages
of human speech, and reminds us of the absence of
articulation in the lower stages of the animal world.
Quite distinct from this is another process which is
going on in all languages, and in the more highly
developed even more than in the less developed, the
process of phonetic diversification, whether we call it
growth or decay. This process will form the princi-
pal subject of our sixth Lecture, and we shall see
that, if properly denned and understood, it forms the
basis of all scientific etymology.

Wherever we look at language, we find that it
changes. But what makes language change ? We
are considering at present only the outside, the pho-
netic body of language, and are not concerned with
the changes of meaning, which, as you know, are
sometimes very violent. At present we only ask,
how is it that one and the same word assumes dif-
ferent forms in different dialects, and we intention-
ally apply the name of dialect not only to Scotch
as compared with English, but to French as com-
pared with Italian, to Latin as compared with Greek,

190 PHONETIC CHANGE.

to old Irish as compared with Sanskrit. These are
all dialects ; they are all members of the same family,
varieties of the same type, and each variety may,
under favouring circumstances, become a species.
How then is it, we ask, that the numeral four is four
in English, quatuor in Latin, cethir in Old Irish,
fcatvar in Sanskrit, Jceturi in Lithuanian, tettares
in Greek, pisyres in Jfolic, fidvor in Gothic, fior in
Old High-German, quatre in French, patru in Walla-
chian? 39fl

Are all these varieties due to accident, or are they
according to law ; and, if according to law, how is
that law to be explained ?

I shall waste no time, in order to show that these
changes are not the result of mere accident. This
has been proved so many times, that we may, I be-
lieve, take it now for granted.

I shall only quote one passage from the Eev. J. W.
Appleyard's excellent work, ' The Kafir Language,'
in order to show that even in the changes of lan-
guages sometimes called barbarous and illiterate,
law and order prevail (p. 50) :

The chief difference between Kafir and Sechuana roota
consists in the consonantal changes which they have under-
gone, according to the habit or taste of the respective tribes.
None of these changes, however, appear to be arbitrary, but, on
the contrary, are regulated by a uniform system of variation.
The vowels are also subject to the same kind of change ; and,
in some instances, roots have undergone abbreviation by the
omission of a letter or syllable.

Then follows a table of vowel and consonantal
changes in Kafir and Sechuana, after which the
author continues :

m See Maspero, Memoires de la Socitit de Linguistigue, 1872, p. 2.

PHONETIC CHANGE. 191

By comparing the above consonantal changes with 42, it
be seen that many of them are between letters of the same
organ, the Kafir preferring the flat sounds (b. d, g, v, z), and
the Sechuana the sharp ones (p, t, k, /, s). It will be ob-
served, also, that when the former are preceded by the nasal
m or 7i, these are dropped before the latter. There is some-
times, again, an interchange between dentals and linguals;
and there are, occasionally, other changes which cannot be so
easily accounted for, unless we suppose that intermediate

changes may be found in other dialects It will thus

be seen that roots which appear totally different the one from
the other, are in fact the very same, or rather, of the same
origin. Thus no one, at first sight, would imagine that the
Sechuana relca and the Kafir tonga, or the Kafir pila and the
Sechuana tsera, were mere variations of the same root. Yet
a knowledge of the manner in which consonants and vowels
change between the two languages shows that such is the case.
As corroborative of this it may be further observed, that one
of the consonants in the above and other Sechuana words
sometimes returns in the process of derivation to the original
one, as it is found in the Kafir root. For example, the re-
flective form of reka is tteka, and not ireka; whilst the noun,
which is derived from the verb tsera is botselo, and not
botsero.

The change of th into / is by many people con-
sidered a very violent change, so much so that Bur-
nouf s ingenious identification of Thraetona with
F&ridwi, of which more hereafter, was objected to
on that ground. But we have only to look at the
diagrams of th and /, to convince ourselves that the
slightest movement of the lower lip towards the
upper teeth would change the sound of th into /, 40 so
that in English, 'iiothing,' as pronounced vulgarly,

40 See M. M. On Veda and Zendavesta, p. 32. Arendt, Beitr'dge zur
Verghichendcn Sprachforschung , i. p. 425.

192

PHONETIC CHANGE.

Fig. 26.

th and f.
(the dotted outline is th.)

sounds sometimes like 'nuffingj and 'had another
is made to rhyme with ' did not love Aer.' 41

Few people, if any,
would doubt any longer
that the changes of let-
ters take place according
to certain phonetic laws,
though scholars may dif-
fer as to the exact appli-
cation of these laws. But
what has not yet been
fully explained is the
nature of these phonetic
laws which regulate the
changes of words. Why
should letters change?
Why should we, in modern English, say lord in-
stead of hldford, lady instead of hlcefdiye ? Why
should the French say pere and mere, instead of
pater and mater ? I believe the laws which regu-
late these changes are entirely based on physiolo-
gical grounds, and admit of no other explanation
whatsoever. It is not sufficient to say that I and r, or
d and r, or s and r, or 7c and t, are interchangeable.
We want to know why they are interchangeable,
or rather, to use more exact language, we want to
know why the same word, which a Hindu pronounces
with an initial d, is pronounced by a Eoman with an
initial I, and so on. It must be possible to explain

41 ' On what principle is it that the Yorkshireman travelling between
Huddersfield and Saddleworth reads the name of Slaithwaite station as
Slawit, or that the Wriothesley family dwindles in the public mouth into
the insignificance of EocUeyT London Quarterly, Oct. 1864, p. 209.

CAUSES OF PHONETIC CHANGE.

this physiologically, and to show, by means of dia-
grams, what takes place, when, instead of a d an l y
instead of an / a th is heard.

And here we must, from the very beginning, dis-
tinguish between two processes, which, though they
may take place at the same time, are nevertheless
totally distinct. There is one class of phonetic
changes which take place in one and the same lan-
guage, or in dialects of one family of speech, and
which are neither more nor less than the result of
laziness. Every letter requires more or less of mus-
cular exertion. There is a manly, sharp, and definite
articulai ion, and there is an effeminate, vague, and in-
distinct utterance. The one requires a will, the other
is a mere laisser-aller. The principal cause of pho-
netic degeneracy in language is when people shrink
from the effort of articulating each consonant and
vowel ; when they attempt to economise their breath
and their muscular energy. It is perfectly true that,
for practical purposes, the shorter and easier a word>
the better, as long as it conveys its meaning distinctly.
Most Greek and Latin words are twice as long as they
need be, and I do not mean to find fault with the
Romance nations, for having simplified the labour of
speaking. I only state the cause of what we must
call phonetic decay, however advantageous in some
respects ; and I consider that cause to be neither more
nor less than want of muscular energy. If the pro-
vincial of Gaul came to say pere instead of pater, it
was simply because he shrank from the trouble of
lifting his tongue, and pushing it against his teeth.
Pere required less strain on the will, and less ex-
penditure of breath : hence it took the place of pater.

LL o

194

MUSCULAR RELAXATION.

So in English, night requires less expenditure of mus-
cular energy than ndght or Nacht, as pronounced
in Scotland and in Germany ; and hence, as people
always buy in the cheapest market, night found more
customers than the more expensive terms. Nearly
all the changes that have taken place in the transition
from Anglo-Saxon to modern English belong to this
class. Thus :

A.S. hafoc became hawk

A.S

foeger

secgan

sprecan

folgian

morgen

cyning

weorold

UATTA

day

hlaford 43

z mjuguu

lord

fair

hlasfdige

lady

say

saslig

silly

speak

buton

but

heafod ,,

head

morrow

nose-fyrel

nostril

king

wif-man

woman

world 42

Eofor-wic

York

The same takes place in Latin or French words

naturalised in English.
Scutarius

Thus :

escuier =

Historia histoire =

Egyptianus Egyptian =

Extraneus estrangier =

Hydropsis =

Capitulum cliapitre =

Dominicella demoiselle =

Paralysis paralysie =

Sacristanus sacristain =

squire

story

gipsy

stranger

dropsy

chapter

damsel

palsy

sexton

There are, however, some words in English which,
if compared with their originals in Anglo-Saxon, seem

42 Old High-German wer-alt = seculum, i. e. Menschenalter. Cf. rer-
vulf, lycanthropus, werewolf, wahrwolf, loup-garou(l) ; were-gild, mann-
geld, ransom. Cf. Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. 480.

43 See Lectures on the Science of Language, vol. i. p. 186.

MUSCULAR RELAXATION. 195

to have added to their bulk, and thus to violate the
general principle of simplification. Thus A.S. thunor
is in English thunder. Yet here, too, the change is
due to laziness. It requires more exertion to with-
draw the tongue from the teeth without allowing the
opening of the dental contact to be heard than to slur
from n on to d, and then only to the following vowel.
The same expedient was found out by other languages.
Thus, the Greek said dndres, instead of dneres ; am-
brosia, instead of amrosia." The French genre is
more difficult to pronounce than gendre; hence the
English gender, with its anomalous d. Similar in-
stances in English are, to slumber=A.S. slumerian;
embers = A.S. cemyrie; cinders = cineres ; humble=
hum>ilis.

It was the custom of grammarians to ascribe these
and similar changes to euphony, or a desire to make
words agreeable to the ear, the real object being to
make them agreeable to the mouth. Greek, for in-
stance, it was said, abhors two aspirates at the be-
ginning of two successive syllables, because the
repeated aspiration would offend delicate ears. If a
verb in Greek, beginning with an aspirate, has to be
reduplicated, the first syllable takes the tenuis instead
of the aspirate. Thus the in Greek forms tithemi, as
dha in Sanskrit dadhami. If this was done for
the sake of euphony, it would be difficult to account
for many words in Greek far more inharmonious than
thithemi. Such words as %&wz>, chthon, earth,

44 In Greek n cannot stand before \ and p, nor \ before p, nor v before
any liquid. Hence ^e<n]^(e)pt'a=jue<ri7juj3pfa; ya^s = yafj.&p6s ; ?ifjutproy
= ^/ij8poTji/ ; p.opr6s = fipoT6s. See Mehlhorn, Griechiscke Grammatik,
p. 54. In Tamil nr is pronounced ndr. Caldwell, Dravidian Grammar ^
p. 138.

o 2

196 MUSCULAR RELAXATION.

phthoggos, vowel, beginning with two aspirates, were
surely more objectionable than thithemi would have
been. There is nothing to offend our ears in the
Latin fefelli, 45 from fallo, or in the Gothic redupli-
cated perfect haihald, from haldan, which in English
is contracted into held, the A.S. being he6ld, instead
of hehold; or even in the Gothic faifahum, we caught,
from fahan, to catch. 46 There is nothing fearful in
the sound of fearful, though both syllables begin with
an/. But if it be objected that all these letters in
Latin and Gothic are mere breaths, while the Greek
X, $, </> are real aspirates, we have in German such
words as Pfropfenzieher, which to German ears is
anything but an unpleasant sound. I believe the
secret of this so-called abhorrence in Greek is no-
thing but laziness. An aspirate requires great effort,
though we are hardly aware of it, beginning from the
abdominal muscles and ending in the muscles that
open the glottis to its widest extent. It was in order
to economise this muscular energy that the tenuis
was substituted for the aspirate, though, of course,

45 It should be remarked that the Latin /, though not an aspirated
tenuis like <f>, but a labial flatus, seems to have had a very harsh sound.
Quintilian, when regretting the absence in Latin of Greek <p and v, says,
' Quse si nostris literis (/et ?*) scribantur, surdum quiddam et barbarum
efficient, et velut in locum earum succedent tristes et horridse quibus
Grsecia caret. Nam et ilia quae est sexta nostratium (/) psene non
humana voce, vel omnino non voce potius, inter discrimina dentium
efflanda est ; quae etiam cum vocalem proxima accipit, quassa quodam-
modo, utique quoties aliquam consonantem frangit, ut in hoc ipso frangit,
multo fit horridior' (xii. 10). Cf. Bindseil, p. 287.

48 Pres. Perf. Sing. Perf. Plur. Part. Perf. Pass.

G-oth. haita haihait haihaitum haitan

A.S. hatan h6ht (het) heton haten

O.E. hate hight highten hoten, hoot, bight.

DIALECTIC VARIATION. 197

in cases only where it could be done without destroy-
ing the significancy of language. Euphony is a very
vague and unscientific term. Each nation considers
its own language, each tribe its own dialect, euphonic;
and there are but few languages which please our ear
when heard for the first time. To my ear knight does
not sound better than Knecht, though it may do so to
an English ear ; but there can be no doubt that it re-
quires less effort to pronounce the English knight
than the German Knecht.

But from this, the most important class of phonetic
changes, we must distinguish others which arise from
a less intelligible source. When we find that, instead
of Latin pater, the Gothic tribes pronounced fadar, it
would be unfair to charge the Goths with want of
muscular energy. On the contrary, the aspirated/
requires more effort than the mere tenuis ; and the d,
which between two vowels was most likely sounded
like the soft th in English, was by no means less
troublesome than the t. Again, if we find in Sanskrit
gharma, heat, with the guttural aspirate, in Greek
thermos with the dental aspirate, in Latin formus,
adj., 47 with the labial aspirate, we cannot charge any
one of these three dialects with effeminacy, but we
must look for another cause that could have produced
these changes. That cause I call Dialectic Growth;
and I feel strongly inclined to ascribe the phonetic
diversity which we observe between Sanskrit, Greek,
and Latin, to a previous state of language, in which,
as in the Polynesian dialects, the two or three prin-
cipal points of consonantal contact were not yet felt

47 Festus states, ' forcipes dicuntur quod his forma id est calida
apiuntur.'

198 DIALECTIC VARIATION".

as definitely separated from each other. There is
nothing to show that in thermos, Greek ever had a
guttural initial, and to say that Sanskrit gh becomes
Greek th is in reality saying what is impossible. ~No
Sanskrit letter can become a Greek letter ; in fact, no
letter ever becomes. People pronounce letters, and
they either pronounce them properly or improperly.
If the Greek pronounced th in thermtis properly, with-
out any intention of pronouncing gh, then the th, in-
stead of gh, requires another explanation, and I can-
not find a better one than the one just suggested.
When we find three dialects, like Sanskrit, Greek,
and Latin, exhibiting the same word with guttural,
dental, and labial initials, we gain but little if we say
that Greek is a modification of Sanskrit, or Latin of
Greek. No Greek ever took che Sanskrit word and
modified it ; but all three received it from a common
source, in which its articulation was as yet so vague
as to lend itself to these various interpretations.
Though we do not find in Greek the same confusion
between guttural and dental contact which exists in
the Hawaian language, it is by no means uncommon
to find one Greek dialect preferring the dental 48 when
another prefers the guttural ; nor do I see how this
fact could be explained unless we assume that in an
earlier state of the Greek dialects the pronunciation
fluctuated or hesitated between Jc and t. The Rev.
W. Eidley in his grammatical outlines of the Kami-
laroi, Dippil, and Turrinbad languages, spoken by
Australian aborigines ('New South Wales,' 1866,
p. 4.), remarks : 'They habitually soften the sound

48 Doric, 7ro/ca, o'/ea, &\\oKa, for TT^TC, ore, &\\ore ; Doric, 8v6(f>os ;
c, yvfyos ; Doric, 52 for 77).

DIALECTIC VARIATION. 1 ^

of their mutes, so that it is difficult to determine, in,
many instances, whether the consonant sound is b or
p, d or t, g or &.' f No Polynesian dialect,' says Mr.
Hale, ' makes any distinction between the sounds of
b and p, d and t, g and k, I and r, or v and w. The I,
moreover, is frequently sounded like d, and t likek.' 49
If colonies started to-morrow from the Hawaian
Islands, what took place thousands of years ago,
when the Hindus, Greeks, and Bornans left their
common home, would take place again. One colony
would elaborate the indistinct, half-guttural, half-
dental articulation of their ancestors into a pure gut-
tural; another into a pure dental; a third into a
labial. The Eomans who settled in Dacia, where
their language still lives in the modern Wallachian,
are said to have changed every qu, if followed by %
into p. They pronounce aqua as apa ; equa as epa. b ^
Are we to suppose that the Italian colonists of Dacia
said aqua as long as they stayed on Italian soil, and
changed aqua into apa as soon as they reached the
Danube ? Or may we not rather appeal to the frag-
ments of the ancient dialects of Italy, as preserved in
the Oscan and TJmbrian inscriptions, which show that
in different parts of Italy certain words were from the
beginning fixed differently, thus justifying the as-
sumption that the legions which settled in Dacia
came from localities in which these Latin qu's had

49 Hale, Polynesian Grammar, p. 233.

50 The Macedonian (Kutzo-Wallachian) changes pectus into keptu^
pectine into keptine. Cf. Pott, Etym. F. ii. 49, Of the Tegeza dialects,
the northern entirely drops thep; the southern, in all grammatical ter-
minations, either elide it or change it into k. Cf. Sir Gr. G-rey's Library,
i. p. 159. In Sicilian dialects fiore &ndfiume appear as ciore and ciume*.
Academy, 1871, p. 147.

200 PHONETIC PECULIARITIES.

always been pronounced as p's ? 51 It will sound to
classical scholars almost like blasphemy to explain
the phenomena in the language of Homer and Horace,
by supposing for both a background like that of the
Polynesian dialects of the present day. Comparative
philologists, too, will rather admit what is called a
degeneracy of gutturals sinking down to dentals and
labials, than look for analogies to the Sandwich
Islands. Yet the most important point is, that we
should have clear conceptions of the words we are
using, and I confess that, without certain attenuating
circumstances, I cannot conceive of a real & degene-
rating into t, or t into p. I can conceive different
definite sounds arising out of one indefinite sound ;
and those who have visited the Polynesian islands
describe the fact as taking place at the present day.
What then takes place to-day can have taken place
thousands of years ago ; and if we see the same word
beginning in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, with k, t,
or p, it would be sheer timidity to shrink from the
conclusion that there was a time in which that word
was pronounced less distinctly ; in short, in the same
manner as the Jc and t in Hawaian.

There is, no doubt, this other point to be con-
sidered, that each man has his phonetic idiosyncra-
sies, and that what holds good of individuals, holds
good of families, tribes, and nations. We saw that
individuals and whole nations are destitute of certain
consonants, and this defect is generally made up on
the other hand by a decided predilection for some
other class of consonants. The West Africans, being

51 The Oscans said pomtis instead of quinque, &c. See Mommsen,
Unteritalische Dialecte, p. 289.

PHONETIC PECULIARITIES. 201

poor in dentals and labials, are rich, in gutturals.
Now if an individual, or a family, or a tribe cannot
pronounce a certain letter, nothing remains but to
substitute some other letter as nearly allied to it as
possible. The Eomans were destitute of a dental
aspirate like the th of the Greeks, or the dh of the
Hindus. Hence, where that letter existed in the
language of their common ancestors, the Eomans
had either to give up the aspiration and pronounce
d, or to take the nearest consonantal contact and
pronounce /. Hence fumus instead of Sk. dhuma,
Greek thymos. It is exactly the same as what took
place in English. The modern English pronuncia-
tion, owing, no doubt, to Norman influences, lost the
guttural ch, as heard in the German lachen. The
Saxons had it, and wrote and pronounced hleahtor*
It is now replaced by the corresponding labial letter,
namely, f, thus giving us laughter for hleahtor,
enough for genug, &c. 52 If we find one tribe pro-
nounce r, the other Z, we can hardly accuse either
of effeminacy, but must appeal to some phonetic
idiosyncrasy, something in fact corresponding to
what is called colour-blindness in another organ of
sense. These idiosyncrasies have to be carefully
studied, for each language has its own, and it would
by no means follow that because a Latin / or even 6
corresponds to a Sanskrit dh, therefore every dh in
every language may lapse into / and 6. Greek has a
strong objection to words ending in consonants ; in
fact, it allows but three consonants, arid all of them
hemiphona, to be heard as finals. We only find n>

42 Pott, Etym. Forsch. ii. 59.

202 PHONETIC PECULIARITIES.

r, and s, seldom Jc, ending Greek words. The Roman
had no such scruples. His words end with a gut-
tural tenuis, such as hie, nunc ; with a dental tenuis r
such as sunt, est; and he only avoids a final labial
tenuis which certainly is not melodious. We can
hardly imagine Virgil, in his hexameters, uttering
such words as lump, trump, or stump. Such tenden-
cies or dispositions, peculiar to each nation, must
exercise considerable influence on the phonetic struc-
ture of a language, particularly if we consider that
in the Aryan family the grammatical lifeblood throbs
chiefly in the final letters.

These idiosyncrasies, however, are quite inadequate
to explain why the Latin coquo should, in Greek,
appear as pepto, or why codus should in Walachiaii
be copt. Latin is not deficient in labial, nor Greek
in guttural sounds. Nor could we honestly say
that the gutturals in Latin were gradually ground
down to labials in Greek, or that Jc becomes Jcv, kv
becomes v, and v p. Such forms are dialectic vari-
eties, and it is, I believe, of the greatest importance,
for the purposes of accurate reasoning and accurate
scholarship, that these dialectic varieties should be
kept distinct, as much as possible, from phonetic
corruptions. I say, as much as possible, for in some
cases I know it is difficult to draw a line between the
two. Physiologically speaking, I should say that the
phonetic corruptions are always the result of muscu-
lar effeminacy, though it may happen, as in the case
of thunder, that c lazy people take the most pains.'
All cases of phonetic corruption can be clearly re-
presented by anatomical diagrams. Thus the Latin
clamare requires complete contact between root of

PHONETIC PECULIARITIES.

203

tongue and soft palate, which contact is merged by
sudden transition into the dental position of the
tongue with a vibration of p ig 27>

its lateral edges. In Italian
this lateral vibration of the
tongue is dropt, or rather
is replaced by the slightest
possible approach of the
tongue towards the palate,
which follows almost in-
voluntarily on the opening
of the guttural contact,
producing chiamare, instead
of clamare. The Spaniard
slurs over the initial gut-
tural contact altogether; Clamare, chiamare, Uamar.
he thinks he has pronounced it, though his tongue
has never risen, and he glides at once into the
I vibration, the opening of which is followed by
the same sticky sound which we observed in Italian.
What applies to the Romance applies equally to
the Teutonic languages. The old Saxons said
cniht, cnif 9 and cneow. Now, the guttural contact
slurred over, and we only hear night, nife, nee.
The old Saxons said 'hledpan, with a distinct initial
aspiration ; that aspiration is given up in to leap.
Wherever we find an initial wh, as in who, which,
white, there stood originally in A.S. hw, the aspirate
being distinctly pronounced. That aspirate, though
it is still heard in correct pronunciation, is fast dis-
appearing in the language of the people except in
the north, where it is clearly sounded before, not

53 This diagram was drawn by Professor Richard Owen.

204 PHONETIC CORRUPTION.

after, the w. In the interrogative pronoun who,
however, no trace of the w remains except in spelling,
and in the interrogative adverb, liow, it has even ceased
to be written (A.S. hwu, hu ; Goth, hvaiva). In whole,
on the contrary, the w is written, but simply by false
analogy. The A. S. word is hdl, without a w, and
the good sense of the people has not allowed itself to
be betrayed into a false pronunciation in spite of the
false spelling enforced by its schoolmasters.

Words beginning with more than one consonant
are most liable to phonetic corruption. It certainly
requires an effort to pronounce distinctly two or
three consonants at the beginning without interven-
ing vowels, and we could easily understand that one
of these consonants should be slurred over and be
allowed to drop. But if it is the tendency of lan-
guage to facilitate pronunciation, we must not shirk
the question how it came to pass that such trouble-
some forms were ever framed and sanctioned. Strange
as it may seem, I believe that these troublesome
words, with their consonantal exuberances, are like-
wise the result of phonetic corruption, i. e. of mus-
cular relaxation. Most of them owe their origin to
contraction, that is to say, to an attempt to pronounce
two syllables as one, and thus to save time and breath,
though not without paying for it by an increased
consonantal effort.

It has been argued, with some plausibility, that lan-
guage in its original state, of which, unfortunately,
we know next to nothing, eschewed the contact
of two or more consonants. There are languages
still in existence in which each syllable consists
either of a vowel, or of a vowel preceded by one con-

DOUBLE CONSONANTS. 205

sonant only, and in which, no syllable ever ends in a
consonant. This is the case, for instance, in the
Polynesian languages. A Hawaian finds it almost
impossible to pronounce two consonants together,
and in learning English he has the greatest difficulty
in pronouncing cab, or any other word ending in a
consonant. Cal, as pronounced by a Hawaian, be-
comes cciba. Mr. Hale, in his excellent ' Polynesian
Grammar/ 54 says :

In all the Polynesian dialects every syllable must terminate
in a vowel ; and two consonants are never heard without a
vowel between them. This rule admits of no exception what-
ever, and it is chiefly to this peculiarity that the softness of
these languages is to be attributed. The longest syllables
have only three letters, a consonant and a diphthong, and
many syllables consist of a single vowel.

There are other languages besides the Polynesian
which never admit closed syllables, i. e. syllables
ending in consonants. All syllables in Chinese are
open or nasal, 55 yet it is by no means certain whether
the final consonants which have been pointed out
in the vulgar dialects of China are to be con-
sidered as later additions, or whether they represent
a more primitive state of the Chinese language.

In South Africa all the members of the great
family of speech, called by Dr. Bleek the Ba-ntu
family, agree in general with regard to the sim-
plicity of their syllables. Their syllables can begin
with only one consonant (including, however, con-
sonantal diphthongs, nasalised consonants, and com-
binations of clicks with other consonants reckoned

" Hale, L c. p. 234.

65 Endlicher, ChinesiscJie Grammatik, p. 112.

206 DOUBLE CONSONANTS.

for this purpose as substantially simple). The semi-
vowel w, too, may intervene between a consonant
and a following vowel. No syllable, as a general
rule, in these South African languages, which extend
north beyond the equator, can end in a consonant,
but only in vowels, whether pure or nasal. 56 The
exceptions serve but to prove the rule, for they are
confined to cases where by the falling off of the
generally extremely short and almost indistinct ter-
minal vowel, an approach has been made to conso-
nantal endings. 57

In the other family of South African speech, the
Hottentot, compound consonants are equally es-
chewed at the beginning of words. It is clear,
too, that all radical words ended there originally in
vowels, and that the final consonants are entirely
due to grammatical terminations, such as p, s, ts, and
r. By the frequent use of these suffixes the final
vowel disappeared, but that it was there originally
has been proved with sufficient evidence. 58

The permanent and by no means accidental or
individual character of these phonetic peculiarities is
best seen in the treatment of foreign words. Prac-
tice will no doubt overcome the difficulty which a
Hawaian feels in pronouncing two consonants to-
gether, or in ending his words by consonantal checks,
and I have myself heard a Mohawk articulating his
labial letters with perfect accuracy. Yet if we
examine the foreign words adopted by the people

56 Bleek, Comparative Grammar, 252 ; Appleyard, Kafir Language,
p. 89.

57 Bleek, Comparative Grammar, 257 ; Hahn, Herero Grammar,

S*-

58 Bleek, Comparative Grammar, 257-60.

DOUBLE CONSONANTS. 207

into their own vocabulary, we shall easily see how
they have all been placed on a bed of Procrustes.
In the Ewe, a West- African language, school is pro-
nounced suku, the German Fenster (window) /esre. 69

In the Kafir language we find bapitizesha = to baptize

igolide = gold

inkamela = camel

ibere = bear

umperisite = priest

ikerike = kirk

,, ,, umposile = apostle

isugile = sugar

ama-Ngezi = English 60

If we look to the Finnish and the whole Uralic
class of the Northern Turanian languages, we meet
with the same disinclination to admit double con-
sonants at the beginning, or any consonants what-
ever at the end of words. The German Glas is
written lasi in Finnish. The Swedish smaJc is
changed into maTcu, stor into suuri, strand into ranta.
No genuine Finnish word begins with a double con-
sonant, for the assibilated and softened consonants,
which are spelt as double letters, were originally
simple sounds. This applies equally to the lan-
guages of the Esths, Ostiaks, Hungarians, and
Sirianes, though, through their intercourse with
Aryan nations, these tribes, and even the Finns,
succeeded in mastering such difficult groups as pr,
sp, st, sir, &c. The Lapp, the Mordvinian, and
Tcheremissian dialects show, even in words which
are of native growth, though absent in the cognate

59 Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 56.
* Appleyard, Kafir Language, p. 89.

208 DOUBLE CONSONANTS.

dialects, initial consonantal groups such as kr, ps, st,
&c.; but such groups are always the result of secon-
dary formation, as has been fully proved by Professor
Boiler. 61 The same careful scholar has shown that
the Finnish, though preferring syllables ending in
vowels, has admitted n, s, I, r, and even t, as final
consonants. The Esthonian, Lapp, Mordvinian,
Ostiakian, and Hungarian, by dropping or weaken-
ing their final and unaccented vowels, have acquired
a large number of words ending in simple and double
consonants ; but throughout the Uralic class, wher-
ever we can trace the radical elements of language,
we always find simple consonants and final vowels.

We arrive at the same result, if we examine the
syllabic structure of the Dravidian class of the South
Turanian languages, the Tamil, Telugu, Canarese,
Malayalam, &c. The Rev. E. Caldwell, in his excel-
lent work, the ' Dravidian Comparative Grammar/
has treated this subject with the same care as Pro-
fessor Boiler in his Essay on the Finnish languages,
and we have only to place these accounts by the side
of each other, in order to perceive the most extraor-
dinary coincidences.

The chief peculiarity of Dravidian syllabatiou is its ex-
treme simplicity and dislike of compound or concurrent con-
sonants; and this peculiarity characterises the Tamil, the
most early cultivated member of the family, in a more marked
degree than any other Dravidian language.

In Telugu, Canarese, and Malayalam, the great majority of
Dravidian words, i.e. words which have not been derived from

61 Boiler, Die Finnischen Sprachen, p. 19. Pott, I. c. pp. 40 and 56.
See also Boehtlingk, Ueberdie Sprache der Jakuten, 152. ' The Turko-
Tataric languages, the Mongolian, and Finnish show a strong aversion to
double consonants at the beginning of words.'

DOUBLE CONSONANTS. 209

Sanskrit, or altered through Sanskrit influences, and in Tamil
all words without exception, including even Sanskrit deriva-
tives, are divided into syllables on the following plan. Double
or treble consonants at the beginning of syllables, like ' str,'
in ' strength,' are altogether inadmissible. At the beginning
not only of the first syllable of every word, but also of every
succeeding syllable, only one consonant is allowed. If in the
middle of a word of several syllables, one syllable ends with a
consonant and the succeeding one commences with another
consonant, the concurrent consonants must be euphonically
assimilated, or else a vowel must be inserted between them.
At the conclusion of a word, double and treble consonants,
like ' gth,' in ' strength,' are as inadmissible as at the beginning;
and every word must terminate in Telugu and Canarese in a
vowel ; in Tamil, either in a vowel or in a single semivowel,
as ' 1,' or * r,' or in a single nasal, as * n,' or ; m.' It is obvious
that this plan of syllabation is extremely unlike that of the
Sanskrit.

Generally, ' i ' is the vowel which is used for the purpose of
separating inadmissible consonants, as appears from the manner
in which Sanskrit derivatives are Tamilised. Sometimes * u '
is employed instead of ' i.' Thus the Sanskrit preposition
*pr a' is changed into 'pira' in the compound derivatives,
which have been borrowed by the Tamil ; whilst * Krishwa'
becomes 'Kiru^ina-n' ('' instead of ' sh '), or even
'Kilina-n.' Even such soft conjunctions of consonants as
the Sanskrit * dya,' ' d va,' ' gya,' &c., are separated in Tamil
into ' diya,' ' diva,' and ' giya.' 62

It is hardly to be wondered at that evidence of this
kind, which might be considerably increased, should
have induced speculative scholars to look upon the
original elements of language as necessarily consist-
ing of open syllables, of one consonant followed by
one vowel, or of a single vowel. The fact that lan-

62 Csildwell, Dravidian Comparative Grammar, p. 138.
II. P

210 DOUBLE CONSONANTS.

guages exist, in which this simple structure has been
preserved, is certainly important, nor can it be de-
nied, that out of such simple elements languages
have been formed, gradually advancing, by a sup-
pression of vowels, to a state of strong consonantal
harshness. The Tcheremissian sma, mouth, if de-
rived from a root u, to speak, must originally have
been uma.

In the Aryan languages, the same process can
easily be observed as producing the same effect, viz.
double consonants, either at the beginning or at
the end of words. It was in order to expedite the
pronunciation of words that vowels were dropt, and
consonants brought together : it was to facilitate the
pronunciation of such words that one of the conso-
nants was afterwards left out, and new vowels were
added to render the pronunciation easier once
more.

Thus, to know points back to Sk. grfia, but this #na,
the Lat. gn6 in gn6vi, or gno in G-r. egnon, again points
back to <jrana, contracted to </na. Many roots are
formed by the same process, and they generally ex-
press a derivative idea. Thus #an, which means to
create, to produce, and which we find in Sk. gran as,
Gr. genos, genus, kin, is raised to #na, in order to
express the idea of being able to produce. If I am
able to produce music, I know music ; if I am able to
produce ploughing, I know how to plough, I can
plough ; and hence the frequent running together of
the two conceptions, I can and I know, Ich Jcann and
Ich kenne, Je sais and Je peux. GZ As from #an we

63 Pott (E. F. ii. 291) compares queo and scio, tracing them to Sanskrit
ki. See Bonfey, Kurze Sanskrit Grammatik, 62, note.

DOUBLE CONSONANTS. 211

have griia, so from man, to think (Sk. man as, Gr.
menos, niens, mind), we have mna, to learn by heart,
Greek memnemai, I remember, mimnesJco. In modern
pronunciation the m is dropt, and we pronounce
m-nemonics. Again we have in Sanskrit a root rnlai,
which means to fade ; from it ml an a, faded, mlani,
fading. The Teutonic nations avoiding the complete
labial contact that is required for m, were satisfied
with the labial approach which produces w, and thus
pronounced ml like vl. Hence A.S. wlcec, tired,
wlacian, to be tired, to flag. The Latin has flaccus,
withered, flabby, where we should expect blaccus,
Germ. welk. In German we -have flauf* weak, and
what seems to be merely a dialectic Low German
variety, lau, in the sense of lukewarm, i.e. water
that is but weakly heated. Now, whence this initial
double consonant ml, which in German meets with
the usual fate of most double initial consonants, and
from ml sinks to I? The Sanskrit root nilaiormla
is formed like #na and mna, from a simpler root mal
or mar, which means to wear out, to decay. As #an
became grna, so mar, mra. This mar is a very pro-
lific root, of which more hereafter, and was chiefly
used in the sense of decaying or dying, morior^
dfi((3)p6ffia, Old. Slav, mreti, to die, Lith. mirti, to die.
These instances must suffice in order to show
that in Sanskrit, too, and in the Aryan languages
in general, the initial double consonants owe their
existence to the same tendency which afterwards
leads to their extinction. It was phonetic economy

64 Cf. Leo, Zeitschrift fur Vergl. Sp. ii. 252. Grimm (Worterbuch,
s. v.) traces flau to flauen, and this to a supposed M.H.Gr. fiou or floinre.

p 2

212 DOUBLE CONSONANTS.

that reduced mar a to mra; it was phonetic economy
that reduced mra to ra and la.

The double consonants being once there, the
simplest process would seem to drop one of the
two. This happens frequently, but by no means
always. We see this process in English words like
knight, (tyring, &c. ; we likewise observe it in Latin
natns instead of gnatus, nodus instead of gnodus, Eng-
lish knot. We know that the old Latin form of locus
was stlocus,* 5 thus pointing to root std, whence the
German Stelle; we know that instead of Us, litis,
quarrel, litigation, the ancient Romans pronounced
stlis, which points to. German streit. In all these
cases the first consonant or consonants were simply
dropt. But it also happens that the double conso-
nant, which was tolerated at first only because it
was the saving of a syllable, is lengthened again into
two syllables, the two syllables seeming to require
less effort than the double consonant. The Semitic
languages are quite free from words beginning with
two consonants without an intermediate vowel or
shewa. This is, in fact, considered by Ewald as one
of the prominent characters of the Semitic family 5 ^
and if foreign words like Plato have to be naturalised
in Arabic, the p has to be changed to /, for Arabic,
as we saw, has no p, and an initial vowel must be
added, thus changing Platon into Iflatun. We saw
that the Hawaians, in adopting a word like steel, had
to give up the initial s before the t, pronouncing tila
or Idla. We saw that the West African languages
met the same difficulty by making two syllables in-

65 Quintil. i. 4, 16.

66 Ewald, Gramm. Arabica. i. p. 23 ; Pott, Etym. Forsch. ii. 66.

DOUBLE CONSONANTS. 213

stead of one, and saying suJcu instead of school. The
Chinese, in order to pronounce Christ, have to change
that name into Ki-li-sse-tu, 57 four syllables instead of
one. There are analogous cases nearer home. Many
words in Latin begin with sc, st, sp. Some of these
are found in Latin inscriptions of the fourth century
after Christ spelt with an initial i : e.g. in istatuam
(Orelli, 1,120, A.D. 375),; Ispiritus (Mai, Coll. Vat.
t. v. p. 446, 8). 68 It seems that the Celtic nations
were unable to pronounce an initial s before a con-
sonant, or at least that they disliked it. 69 The
Spaniards, even when reading Latin, pronounce
estudium for studium, eschola for schola. 70 Hence the
constant addition of the initial vowel in the Western
or chiefly Celtic branch of the Romance family ;
French escabeau, instead of Latin scabellum; estame
(etaim), Latin stamen; esperer, instead of Latin spe-
rare. Then again, as it were to revenge itself for

67 Endlicher, Chinesische Grammatik, p. 22.

68 See Crecelius, inHoefer's Zeitschrift, iv. 166; Corssen, Aussprache,
p. i. p. 289.

69 Richards, Antique Lingua Britannicce Thesaurus (Bristol, ( 1753), as
quoted by Pott, E. F. ii. 67, says (after letter S) : * No British word
begins with s, when a consonant or w follows, without setting y before
is ; for we do not say Sgubor, snodeu, &c., but Ysgubor, ysnoden. And
when we borrow any words from another language which begin with an
s and a consonant immediately following it, we prefix a y before such
words, as from the Latin schola, ysgol ; spiritus, yspryd ; scutum,
ysgwyd.'

70 Tschudi, Peru, i. 176. Caldwell, Dravidian Comparative Gram-
mar, p. 170: ' flow perfectly in accordance with Tamil this is, is known
to ever}' European resident in Southern India, who has heard the natives
speak of establishing an English iskool.' This iskool is as good as
establishing for stabilire ; or the Italian expressions, con istudio, per
istrada, &c. ' II en est de meme des mots germaniques devenus fran-
<jais, ainsi: stock, estoc ; skarp, escarpe ; skiff, esquif, &c.'~ Terrien
Poncel, Du Langagc, p. 64.

214 TWOFOLD CAUSES OP PHONETIC CHANGE.

the additional trouble caused by the initial double
consonant, the French language throws away the 9
which had occasioned the addition of the initial e,
but keeps the vowel which, after the loss of the s,
would no longer be wanted. Thus spada became
espee, lastly epee ; scala became eschelle, lastly echelle.
Stcibilire became establir, lastly etablir, to stablish. 71

Now it must be clear that all these changes rest on
principles totally distinct from those which made the
Romans pronounce the same word as quatuor which
we pronounce four. The transition from Gothic fidvor
to English four may properly be ascribed to phonetic
corruption, but quatuor &nd.fidvor together can only
be explained as the result of dialectic variation. If
we compare quatuor, tessares, piayres, and fidvor, we
find a change of guttural, dental, and labial contact
in one and the same word. There is nothing to show
that the Greek changed the guttural into the dental
contact, or that the Teutonic nations considered the
labial contact less difficult than the guttural and
dental. We cannot show that in Greece the gut-
tural dwindles down to a dental, or that in German
the labial is later, in chronological order, than the
guttural. We must look upon guttural, dental, and
labial as three different phonetic expressions of the
same general conception, not as corruptions of one
definite original type. The guttural tenuis once fixed
in any language or dialect does not in that dialect
slowly dwindle down to a dental tenuis; a dental
tenuis once clearly pronounced as a dental does not
in the mouth of the same speaker glide into a labial
tenuis. That which is not yet individualised may

71 Diez, Grammatik, i. p. 224.

TWOFOLD CAUSES OF PHONETIC CHANGE. 215

grow and break forth in many different forms ; that
which has become individual and definite loses its
capability of unbounded development, and its changes
assume a downward tendency and must be considered
as decay. To say where growth ends and decay
begins is as difficult in living languages as in living
bodies ; but we have in the science of language this
test, that changes produced by phonetic decay must
admit of a simple physiological explanation we
must be able to refer then to a relaxation of muscular
energy in the organs of speech. Not so the dialectic
varieties. Their causes, if they can be traced at all,
are special, not general, and in many cases they baffle
all attempts at physiological elucidation.

216

LECTURE V.

I INTEND to devote to-day's Lecture to the con-
sideration of one phonetic law, which I believe
I was the first to call Grimm's Law, a law of great
importance and very wide application, affecting nearly
the whole consonantal structure of the Aryan lan-
guages. The law may be stated as follows :

There are in the Aryan languages three principal
points of consonantal contact, the guttural, the dental,
and the labial, k, t, p.

At each of these three points there are two modes
of utterance, the hard and the soft ; each in turn is
liable to aspiration, though only in certain languages.

In Sanskrit the system is complete ; we have the
hard checks, k, t, p ; the soft checks, g, d, b ; the hard
aspirated checks, kh, th, ph ; and the soft aspirated
checks, gh, dh, bh. The soft aspirated checks are,
however, in Sanskrit of far greater frequency and
importance than the hard aspirates.

In Greek we find, besides the usual hard and soft
checks, one set of aspirates, %, $, </>, which are hard,
and which in later Greek dwindle away into the
corresponding breathings, gh, dh, bh.

In Latin there are no real aspirates ; their place
having been taken by the corresponding breathings,
h, f. The dental breathing, however, the s, is never

GRIMM'S LAW. 217

found in Latin as the representative of an original
dental aspirate (th or dh), but is replaced by/, or by
d and b.

In Gothic, too, the real aspirates are wanting,
'unless th was pronounced as such. In the guttural
and labial series we have only the breathings h and/.
The same applies to Old High-German.

In the Slavonic and Celtic languages the four aspi-
rates are likewise absent.

We see, therefore, that the aspirated letters exist
only in Sanskrit and Greek, that in the former they
are chiefly soft, in the latter entirely hard.

Let us now consider Grimm's Law. It is this :
* If the same roots or the same words exist in San-
skrit, Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic, Lithuanian,
Gothic, and High-German, then wherever the Hin-
dus and the Greeks pronounce an aspirate, the
Goths and the Low Germans generally, the Saxons,
Anglo-Saxons, Frisians, &c., pronounce the corre-
sponding soft check, the Old High-Germans the
corresponding hard check. In this first change the
Lithuanian, the Slavonic, and the Celtic races agree
in pronunciation with the Gothic. We thus arrive
at the first formula :

I. Greek and Sansk. KH TH PH 1
II. Gothic, &c. G D B

III. OldH.G. K T P

1 The letters here used are to be considered merely as symbols, not
as the real letters occurring in those languages. If we translate these
symbols into real letters, we find, in Formula I., instead of

KH TH PH

Sanskrit gh, h dh, h bh, h

Greek % & 4>

Latin h, f (gv, g, v, ') f (d, b) f (b)

218 GRIMM'S LAW.

Secondly, if in Greek, Latin, Sanskrit, Lithuanian,
Slavonic, and Celtic, we find a soft check, then we find
a corresponding hard check in Gothic, a corresponding
breath in Old High-German. This gives us the
second formula :

IV. Greek, &c. G D B

V. Gothic K T P

VI. OldH.G. Ch Z F(Ph)

Thirdly, when the six first-named languages show
a hard consonant, then Gothic shows the correspond-
ing breath, Old High-German the corresponding soft
check. In Old High-German, however, the law holds
good with regard to the dental series only, while in
the guttural and labial series the Old High-German
documents generally exhibit h and /, instead of the
corresponding mediae g and 6. This gives us the
third formula :

VII. Greek, &c. K T P

VIII. Gothic H(G,F) Th(D) F (B)

IX. OldH.G. H(G, K) D F (B, V)

It will be seen at once that these changes cannot
be considered as the result of phonetic corruption,
or as successive steps of phonetic decay. Phonetic
coiTuption always follows one and the same direction.
It always goes downward, but it does not rise again.
Now the dwindling down of the aspirate, the boldest
of the bold, into the media, the meekest of meek
letters, might be considered as phonetic decay. But
the raising of the soft to a hard, and of the hard to an
aspirated letter, is a movement in the opposite direc-
tion, and shows, as Grimm says himself, a certain

GRIMM'S LAW. 219

pride and pluck on the part of the Teutonic nations. 2
We must not forget that this phonetic law, which
Grimm has well compared to a three-spoked wheel,
turns round completely, and that what seems a rise
in one spoke is a fall in the other. If, therefore, we
considered the aspiration of the hard t as the begin-
ning of a phonetic infection (th) which gradually led
to the softening of t to d, we should have again on
the other side to account for the transition of the d
into t by a process of phonetic reinvigoration. 3 We
are in a vicious circle out of which there is no escape
unless we look at the whole process from a different
point of view.

Who tells us that Greek t ever became Gothic th ?
What definite idea do we connect with the phrase, so
often heard, that a Greek t becomes Gothic th ? Does
a Greek become a Gothic consonant, any more than
a Gothic becomes a Greek consonant? Even an
Italian consonant never becomes a Spanish conso-
nant; an Italian t, as in amah, never becomes a
Spanish d, as in amado. They both come from a
common source, the Latin ; and the Greek and
Gothic both come from a common source, the old
Aryan language. Instead of attempting to explain
the differences between Greek and Gothic by refer-
ring one to the other, we ought rather to trace back
both to a common source from which each may have
started fully equipped in its peculiar consonantal
armour. The same applies to Gothic and Old High-
German. What is meant by saying that Gothic t
becomes z in Old High-German? We should never

2 Cf. Curtius, Kuhn's Zeitsckrift, ii. 330.

1 See Lottner, Zeitschrtft, xi. p. 204 ; Forstemann, ibid. i. p. 170.

220 GEIMM'S LAW.

say that Greek d becomes z in Old High- German, or
that Old High-German z becomes Greek d. It would
not even be correct to say, and few scholars would
venture seriously to defend what may be pardoned as
an inaccurate mode of expression, viz. that in /COTS
for 7roT y Attic TT has become Ionic K ; or that, in the
Homeric SsxofjLcu, ^ is the result of a former K. All
this, however pardonable for the sake of brevity, is,
if taken literally, opposed to the first principles of
the science of language.

We know from the physiological analysis of the
alphabet, that three, or sometimes four, varieties
exist for each of the three consonantal contacts.
We may pronounce p as a hard letter, by cutting
the breath sharply with our lips ; we may pronounce
it as a soft letter, by allowing the refraining pressure
to be heard while we form the contact ; and we may
pronounce it as an aspirate by letting an audible
emission of breath follow immediately on the utter-
ance of the hard or the soft letter. Thus we get for
each point of consonantal contact four varieties :

k, kh, g, gh,
t, th, d, dh,
p, ph, b, bh.

This rich variety of consonantal contact is to be
found, however, in highly- developed languages only.
Even among the Aryan dialects, Sanskrit alone can
boast of possessing it entire. Greek is driven to
merge the difference between soft and hard aspi-
rates, and, instead of Sanskrit soft aspirates, it has
to use hard aspirates. The other Aryan languages
having no soft aspirates, use soft tenues instead.

GRIMM'S LAW. 221

They all, in fact, cut the coat according- to their
cloth.

Now if we look beyond the Aryan frontiers, and
examine such dialects as, for instance, the Hawaian,
we see the same state of thing. We find that even the
simplest distinction, that between hard and soft con-
tact, has not yet been achieved. A Hawaian, as we
saw, not only finds it extremely difficult to distin-
guish between k and t; he likewise fails to perceive
any difference between k and g, t and d, p and "b.
The same applies to other Polynesian languages. In
Finnish the distinction between k, t, p, and g, d, Z>, is
of modern date, and due to foreign influence. The
Finnish itself recognises no such distinction in the
formation of its roots and vocables, whereas in cog-
nate dialects, such as Hungarian, that distinction
has been fully developed (Boiler, Die Finnischen
Sprachen, p. 12).

Secondly, in some of the Polynesian languages we
find an uncertainty between the hard checks and their
corresponding hard breaths. We find the New Zea-
land poe, ball, pronounced foe in Tonga, 4 just as we
find the Sanskrit pati represented in Gothic by
fath-s.

The introduction of the differences of articulation
in more highly developed languages had an object.
As new conceptions craved expression, the phonetic
organs were driven to new devices, which gradually
assumed a more settled, traditional, typical form. It
is possible to speak without labials, it is possible to
say a great deal in a language which has but seven
consonants, just as it is possible for a mollusc to eat

4 Hale, Polynesian Grammar, p. 232.

222 TEEBLE ROOTS.

without lips, and to enjoy life without either lungs or
liver. I believe there was a far far distant time when
the Aryan nations (if we may then call them so) had
no aspirates at all. A very imperfect alphabet will
suffice for the lower states of thought and speech ;
but, with the progress of the mind, a corresponding
development will take place in the articulation and
specification of letters. Some dialects, as we saw,
never arrived at more than one set of aspirates, others
ignored them altogether, or lost them again in the
course of time. But I believe it can be proved that
before the Aryan nations, such as we know them,
separated, some of them, at all events, had elaborated
a threefold modification of the consonantal checks.
The Aryans, before they separated, had, for instance,
three roots, which in Sanskrit appear as tar, dar, and
dhar, differing chiefly by their initial consonants
which represent three varieties of dental contact.
Tar meant to cross, dar, to tear, dh ar, to hold. Now
although we may not know exactly how the Aryans
before their separation pronounced these three letters,
the t, d, and dh, we may be certain that they kept
them distinct. That distinction was kept up in Sans-
krit by means of the hard, the soft, and the aspirated
soft contact, but it might have been achieved equally
well by the hard, the soft, and the aspirated hard
contact, t, d y th, or by the hard and soft contacts
together with the dental breathing. The great point
was to have three distinct utterances for three dis-
tinct, though possibly cognate, expressions. Now, if
the same three roots coexisted in Greek, they would
there, as the soft aspirates are wanting, appear from
the very beginning, as tar (terma, ter-minus), dar

TREBLE ROOTS. 223

(derma, skin), and thar, never as dliar* But what
would happen if the same three roots had to be fixed
by the Bomans, who had never realised the existence
of aspirates at all ? It is clear that in their language
the distinctions so carefully elaborated at first, and so
successfully kept up in Sanskrit and Greek, would be
lost. Dar and Tar might be kept distinct, but the
third variety, whether dhar or thar, would either be
merged, or assume a different form altogether.

Let us see what happened in the case of tar, dar,
and dhar. Instead of three, as in Sanskrit, the other
Aryan languages have fixed two roots only, tar and
dar, replacing dhar by bhar, or some other radical.
Thus tar, to cross, has produced in Sanskrit tar man,
point, tiras, through; in Greek ter-ma, end; in
Latin ter-minus, and trans, through ; in Old Norse,
thro-m, edge, thairh, through ; in Old High-German
dru-m, end, durh, through. Dar, to burst, to break,
to tear, exists in Sanskrit driwati, in Greek deiro, I
skin ; derma, skin ; Gothic tairan, to tear ; Old High-
German zeran. But though traces of the third root
dhar may be found here and there, for instance in
Persian Ddrayavus, Darius, i.e. the holder or sus-
tainer of the empire, in Zend dere, Old Persian dar,
to hold, that root has disappeared in most of the
other Aryan dialects.

The same has happened even when there were only

* The possible corruption of gh, dh, bh, into Ich, th, pk, has been ex-
plained by Curtius (Gr. E. ii. 17), under the supposition ^hat the second
element of gh, dh, bh, is the spiritus asper, a supposition which is un-
tenable (Briicke, p. 8-1). But even if the transition of gh into kh were
phonetically possible, it has never been proved that Greek ever passed
through the phonetic phase of Sanskrit. See also ^he interesting obser-
vations of Grassmann, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xii. p. 106.

224 TREBLE "ROOTS.

two roots to distinguish. The two verbs, dadami,
I give, and dadhami, I place, were kept distinct in
Sanskrit by means of their initials. In Greek the
same distinction was kept up between di-dd-mi, I
give, and tithemi, I place : and a new distinction was
added, namely, the e and the o. In Zend the two
roots ran together, dd meaning both to give and to
place, or to make, besides dd, to know. This is
clearly a defect. In Latin it was equally impossible
to distinguish between the roots dd and dhd, because
the Eomans had no aspirated dentals ; but such was
the good sense of the Romans that, when they felt
that they could not efficiently keep the two roots
apart, they kept only one, dare, to give, and replaced
the other dare, to place or to make, by different
verbs, such as ponere, facere. That the Eomans
possessed both roots originally, we can see in such
words as credo, credidi, which corresponds to Sanskrit
srad-dadh&mi, srad-dadhau, 6 but where the dli
has of course lost its aspiration in Latin. In condere
and abdere likewise the radical element is dhd, to
place, while in reddo, I give back, do must be traced
back to the same root as the Latin dare, to give. In
Gothic, on the contrary, the root dd, to give, was
surrendered, and dhd only was preserved, though, of
course, under the form of dd.

Such losses, however, though they could be re-
medied, and have been remedied in languages which
had not developed the aspirated varieties of con-
sonantal articulation, were not submitted to by
Gothic and the other Low and High German tribes

6 Sanskrit dh appears as Latin d in meditts = Sk. madhya, Greek
jieVos or /jiecrffos, meri-dies= J uf<r-rj/ij8pta.

TREBLE ROOTS. 22>

without an effort to counteract them. The Teutonic
tribes, as we saw, were without real aspirates, but in
taking possession of the phonetic inheritance of their
Aryan, not Indian, forefathers, they retained the
consciousness of the threefold variety of their con-
sonantal checks, and they tried to meet this three-
fold claim as best they could. Aspirates, whether
hard or soft, they had none. Hence, where Sanskrit
had fixed on soft, Greek on hard aspirates, Gothic,
like Latin, like the Celtic and Slavonic tongues, pre-
ferred the corresponding soft checks ; High-German
the corresponding hard checks. High-German ap-
proached to Greek, in so far as both agreed on
hard consonants ; Gothic approached to Sanskrit, in
so far as both agreed on soft consonants. But none
borrowed from the other, none was before or after
the other. All four, according to my view of dialec-
tic growth, must be taken as national varieties of one
and the same type or idea.

So far all would be easy and simple. But now we
have to consider the common Aryan words which in
Sanskrit, Greek, in fact, in all the Aryan languages,
begin with soft and hard checks. What could the
Goths and the High- Germans do ? They had really
robbed Peter to pay Paul. The High-Germans had
spent their hard, the Goths their soft checks, to
supply the place of the aspirates. The soft checks
of the Goths, g, d, b, corresponding to Sanskrit gh,
dh, bh, were never meant, and could not be allowed,
to run together and be lost in the second series of
soft consonants which the Hindus, the Greeks, and
the other Aryan nations kept distinct from gli, dh,
bli, and expressed by g, d, b. These two series were

II. Q

226 TREBLE ROOTS.

felt to be distinct by the Goths and the High-
Germans, quite as much as by the Hindus and
Greeks ; and while the Celtic and Slavonic nations
submitted to the aspirates gh, dh, bh, being merged
in the real media) g, d s b, remedying the mischief as
best they could, the Goths, guided by a wish to keep
distinct what must be kept distinct, fixed the second
series, the g, d, fe's in their national utterance as Jc, t,
p. Strange as this may seem, the process is repeated
at the present day in many parts of Germany, when
people wishing to pronounce g, d, b, pronounce in
reality k, t, p. But then the same pressure was felt
once more, for there was the same necessity of main-
taining an outward distinction between their k, t, _p's
and that third series, which in Sanskrit and Greek
had been fixed on k, t, p. Here the Gothic nations
were driven to adopt the only remaining expedient ;
and in order to distinguish the third series both
from the g, d, fc's and k, t, p's, which they had used
up, they had to employ the corresponding hard
breaths, the h, th, and/.

The High-German tribes passed through nearly
the same straits. What the Greeks took for hard
aspirates they had taken for hard tenues. Having
spent their k, t, p'a, they were driven to adopt the
breaths, the ch, z, /, as the second variety; while,
when the third variety came to be expressed, nothing
remained but the mediae, which, however, in the
literary documents accessible to us, have, in the
guttural and labial series, been constantly replaced
by the Gothic h and /, causing a partial confusion
might easily have been avoided.

This phonetic process which led the Hindus,

TREBLE KOOTS. 227

Greeks, Goths, and Germans to a settlement of their
respective consonantal systems might be represented
as follows. The aspirates are indicated by I., the
mediae by II., the tenues by III., the breaths by
IV.:

i. n. in. ~1

| Sanskrit .ghdhbh gdb ktpi

| II. III. IV. |

^Gothic .gdb ktp hthfj

I. in. ii. 1

| Greek . . ^ $ < ktp gdb|

III. II. IV. I

^High-German k t p (g)h d (b)f ch z f J

Let us now examine one or two more of these
clusters of treble roots, like dhar, dar, tar, and see
how they burst forth under different climates from
the soil of the Aryan languages.

There are three roots, all beginning with a gut-
tural and ending with the vocalised r. In the ab-
stract they may be represented as KAE, GAE,
KEAE (or GHAE). In Sanskrit we meet first of all
with GHAE, which soon sinks down to HAE, a
root of which we shall have to say a great deal when
we come to examine the growth of mythological
ideas, but which for the present we may define as
meaning to glitter, to be bright, to be happy, to
burn, to be eager. In Greek this root appears in
chair ein, to rejoice, &c.

Gothic, following Sanskrit as far as it could, fixed
the same root as GAE, and formed from it geiro,
desire ; gairan and gairnjan, to desire, to yearn

Q 2

228 TEEBLE HOOTS.

derivatives which, though they seein to have taken
a sense almost the contrary of that of the Greek
ehair&in, find valuable analogies in the Sanskrit
haryati, to desire, &c. 7 The High-German, fol-
lowing Greek as far as possible, formed Jciri, desire ;
kerni, desiring, &c. So much for the history of one
root in the four representative languages, in San-
skrit, Greek, Gothic, and High- German.

We now come to a second root, represented in
Sanskrit by GAR, to shout, to praise. There is no
difficulty in Greek. Greek had not spent its mediae,
and therefore exhibits the same root with the same
consonants as Sanskrit, in geri/s, voice; geryo, I
proclaim. But what was Gothic to do, and the lan-
guages which follow Gothic, Low-German, Anglo-
Saxon, Old Norse? Having spent their mediae on
ghar, they must fall back on their tenues, and hence
the Old Norse kalla, to call, 8 but not the A.S. galan,.
to yell. The name for crane is derived in Greek
from the same root, geranos, meaning literally the
shouter. In Anglo-Saxon crdn and Norse Kranc we
find the corresponding tennis. Lastly, the High-
German, having spent its tenuis, has to fall back on
its guttural breath; hence 6.H.G. challon, to call,.
and chrdnoh, crane.

The third root, KAB, appears in Sanskrit as well
as in Greek with its guttural tenuis. There is in
Sanskrit kar, to make, to achieve; kratu, power,
&c. ; in Greek kraino, I achieve ; and kratys, strong - 9
kdrtos, strength. Gothic having disposed both of it

7 See Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, i. 166, and Objections, ibid*
ii. 313.

8 Lottner in Kuhn's Zeitscltrift, xi. p. 165.

TREBLE BOOTS. 229

media and tennis, has to employ its guttural breath
to represent the third series; hence hardus, hard,
i.e. strong. The High-German, which naturally
would have recourse to its unemployed media, pre-
fers in the guttural series the Gothic breath, giving
us harti instead of garti, and thereby causing, in a
limited sphere, that very disturbance the avoidance
of which seems to be the secret spring of the whole
process of tfce so-called Dislocation of Consonants,
or Lautverschiebung.

Again, there are in Sanskrit three roots ending in
u, and differing from each other merely by the three
dental initials, dh, d, and t. There is dhu (dhu),
to shake ; du, to burn ; and tu, to grow. 9

The first root, dhu, produces in Sanskrit dhu-no-
mi, I shake; dhu-ma, smoke (what is shaken or
whirled about); dhu-li, dust. In Greek the same
root yields thyo, to rush, as applied to rivers, storms,
and the passions of the mind ; thyella, storm ; thym6s,
wrath, spirit; in Latin, fumus, smoke.

In Gothic the Sanskrit aspirate dh is represented
by d; hence dauns, vapour, smell. In Old High-
German the Greek aspirate th is represented by t;
hence tunst, storm.

The second root, du, meaning to burn, both in a
material and moral sense, yields in Sanskrit dava,
conflagration; davathti, inflammation, pain; in
Greek daw, dedaumai, to burn ; dye, misery. Under
its simple form it has not yet been discovered in the
other Aryan dialects; but in a secondary form it
may be recognised in Gothic tundnan, to light ; Old
High-German, zunden ; English, tinder. Another

9 -See Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, i. 224, 196, 192.

230 TREBLE BOOTS.

Sanskrit root, du, to move about, has as yet been
met with in Sanskrit grammarians only. But, be-
sides the participle dun a, mentioned by them, there
is the participle duta, a messenger, one who i&
moved or sent about on business, and in this sense
the root du may throw light on the origin of Gothic
taujan, German zauen, to do quickly, to speed an
act.

The third root, tu, appears in Sanskrit as taviti r
he grows, he is strong; in tavas, strong; tavisha r
strong; tuvi (in comp.), strong; in Greek, as tai/s r
great. The Latin totus has been derived from the
same root, though not without difficulty. The Um-
brian and Oscan words for city, on the contrary,,
certainly came from that root, tuta, tota, from which
tuticiis in meddix tuticus, 10 town magistrate. In
Lettish, tauta is people ; in Old Irish, tuath. 11 In
Gothic we have thiuda, 12 people ; thiudisk-s, belonging
to the people, theodiscus; thiudisko, ethnikos; in
Anglo-Saxon, theon, to grow; thedd and theddisc,
people ; getheSd, language (il volgare). The High-
German, which looks upon Sanskrit t and Gothic th
as d, possesses the same word, as diot. people, diutisc,
popularis; hence Deutsch, German, and deuten, to
explain, lit. to Germanize.

Throughout the whole of this process, as here ex-
plained, there was no transition of one letter into
another ; no gradual strengthening, no gradual decay,

10 Aufrecht und Kirchhoff, Die Umbrischcn SprachdenJcmdler, i.
p. 155; Kuhn, Zeitschrift, vii. 166. See, for a new interpretation of
meddix, Corssen, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xi. 332.

11 Lottner, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vii. 166.

12 Grimm, Deutsche GrammatiJc, first part, 3rd edition, 1840, Einleit-
ung, p. x. ' Excurs iiber Germanisch und Deutsch.'

G&IMM'S LAW. 231

as Grimm supposes. 13 From the very beginning
different branches of the Aryan family fixed the
three cardinal points of the common phonetic hori-
zon differently. While the Hindus fixed their East
on the gh, dh, and bh, the Low-Germans fixed it
on the g, d, and b, the High-Germans on Jc, t, p.
All the rest was only a question of what the French
call s'orienter. It would follow, if not of necessity, at
least according to intelligible principles. To make
my meaning more distinct, and to impress Grimm's
Law once for all upon your memory, I shall use a
familiar illustration, and ask you to recall to your
mind the arms of the Isle of Man, three legs on one
body, one leg kneeling towards England, the other
towards Scotland, the third towards Ireland. Let
England, Scotland, and Ireland represent the three
varieties of consonantal contact ; then Sanskrit would
bow its first knee to England (dh), its second to Ire-
land (d), its third to Scotland (t) ; Gothic would bow
its first knee to Ireland (d), its second to Scotland
(t), its third to England (th) ; Old High-German
would bow its first knee to Scotland (t), its second to
England (th), its third to Ireland (d). The three
languages would thus exhibit three different aspects
of the three points of the phonetic horizon ; we
should not have, according to Grimm's simile, one

13 Grimm supposes these changes to have been very gradual. He-
fixes the beginning of the first change (the Gothic) about the second half
of the first century after Christ, and supposes that it was carried through
in the second and third centuries. More towards the West of Europe,,
he says, it may have commenced even at ah earlier time, and have been
succeeded by the second change (the Old High-German), the beginning;
of which is difficult to fix, though we see it developed in the seventh
century.' Geschichte derDeutschcn Sprache. i. 437.

232

three-spoked wheel moving round from point to
point, but three concentric wheels fixed each from
the beginning in its own position.

I have dwelt so long on this point because I feel
convinced, that however important the facts may be
which have been arranged under the name of Grimm's
Law, a true appreciation of the causes which underlie
these facts is more important still. Nothing has
caused so much confusion as the vague way in which
these changes have been spoken of, even by scholars
who generally think deliberately and speak cautiously.
I am not so pedantic as to consider it necessary to
protest against the statement that Greek t becomes
Gothic th, and Gothic th becomes Old High- German
d, as long as such a statement is used simply for the
sake of brevity. But when such phrases are taken
literally, and when the change of Greek rpeis into
Gothic thrais, and Old High-German drei is repre-
sented as an historical process, it is high time indeed
to protest. Why have all accurate scholars so strongly
protested against looking upon Sanskrit as the mother
of Greek and Latin, if Greek or Latin or Sanskrit
may be represented as the mother of Gothic? Is
Gothic to be treated as a more modern language than
Sanskrit or Greek or Latin, because we happen to
know it only in the fourth century of our era ? And
again, is Old High-German to be treated as a more
modern dialect than Gothic, because its literature
dates from the eighth century only ? Are all the les-
sons of Greek scholarship to be thrown away when
we approach the dialects of German? No Greek
scholar would now venture to derive Attic from Doric
or Doric from Attic ; nor would he allow the existence

233

of a uniform Greek language, a kind of pre-Horneric
Kowrij from which the principal dialects of Greece
were derived. Why, then, should we mete a different
measure to German dialects, such as Low-German,
High-German, and Scandinavian? If it would be
considered contrary to the principles of the Science
of Language to derive Attic rscraapss from Doric
TSTopss, or even Doric rsropss from .ZEolic Tr&atrupss,
why should Old High-German drei be treated as the
degenerate descendant of Gothic thrais ?

I know there is one very plausible argument which
is always brought forward in support of the theory
that the changes from d to t and from t to z were
historical changes, following each other in regular
succession, and that the first change from the classi-
cal to the Gothic stage took place about the second
half of the first century after Christ, and the second
change from the Gothic to the Old High- German
stage about the sixth or seventh century. It is said
that the name of 8trassl>urg occurs in Gregory of
Tours 14 (died 594) as Strataburgum; in the Geographer
of Eavenna, 15 in the middle of the seventh century,
as Stratisburgo ; whereas, in the eighth century, it has
been changed into Strazpuruc. It is supposed, there-
fore, that, from the middle of the seventh to the middle
of the eighth century, the third change took place, all
mediae becoming tenues, all tenues becoming aspiratce,
and all aspirates mediae. Now does anybody really
believe that, soine day or other, the people of Strass-
burg became aware that they -called their town no
longer Strataburgum but Strazpuruc, and that accord-
ingly they changed the name in all official documents ?

14 Hist. Franc, ix. 36 ; x 16. 1S 231, 7 ; 232, 2.

234 GRIMM'S LAW.

Is there not a much more simple explanation, viz.
that about the eighth century the High-German races
became politically more preponderant in Germany,
whereas the Low-German tribes, the Goths and Saxons,
in particular, disappeared more and more from the
political and literary stage? These High-German
races, during their intercourse with their Low-German
neighbours and enemies, had naturally become aware
of the fact that, when they pronounced t, d, z, their
neighbours pronounced d, th, t, and the same in the
guttural and labial series. Under such circumstances
a kind of habit became established, which led the
speakers of High-German to replace without any
conscious effort the sounds of Low-German by the
corresponding sounds of High-German, and vice versa.
We can watch the same curious process even now,
when we try to speak a foreign language, and par-
ticularly when, while speaking High-German, we
try to express ourselves in Low-German. 16 Certain
phonetic rules become established in our mind, which
we obey without being aware of it, and which we are
inclined to follow even in cases where, for some reason
or other, they may not apply. Thus, if the High-
German tribes of the Frankish empire had once
become impressed with the general idea, that where
their Low-German predecessors or neighbours said
k, t, p, g, d, b, h, th, f, they always said ch, z, f, k,
t, p, g,d, b, nothing was more natural than that they
should apply the same rule to foreign words which they
heard either from their Low-German compatriots or

16 A child which pronounced all r's as Z's -was taught after some time
how to pronounce the r. The result was, that it proncTinced new words
which really began with I with r, saying rong instead of long, &c.

GRIMM'S LAW.

from the Eoman provincials. Over and over again
they had observed that, where in Low- German there
was a t, there was in their own language a z ; there-
fore, when they received a foreign word like Strata-
burgum, they at once received it on the same terms
and changed Strata to Strdz. The second word was
really German, and it would therefore at once be
replaced by the High-German puruc. The same
process is repeated in many foreign words which Old
High- German borrowed either directly from Latin
or indirectly from Low-German. 17 Thus pondus is in.
Gothic pund, in O.H.G. phunt ; sinapi, G. sinap,.
O.H.G. senaf; persicum, O.H.G. phersich, cuprum,
O.H.G. chuphar ; strata, O.H.G. strdza; Turicum?
O.H.G. Zurich; tegula, O.H.G. ziegal, &c. It i&
by no means necessary to suppose, that these foreign
words should all have passed through a Gothic chan-
nel before they reached Old High-German. Such a,
view would be necessary only if we looked upon Old
High German as the offspring of Gothic. All that is
really required for the explanation of the change of
Latin words in Old High-German is to admit that the
High-Germans possessed a phonetic sentiment which
would lead them at once to translate any foreign t
by z, d by t, th by d, and which therefore would
make them adopt Strataburgum as Strazpuruc with-
out a moment's thought as to whether it was origi-
nally a Latin or a Low-German word, being satisfied
that, before it should enter into High- German, it would,
have to submit to the same rules to which all other
words seemed to have submitted.

17 See W. Wackernagel, Die Umdeutschung fremder Worter. BaseV
1862.

236

And if on these grounds I feel convinced that the
consonantal system in High-German had become
settled long before the seventh century, I feel equally
certain that the consonantal system of Gothic does
not date from the first century of our era. We have
no reason to suppose that what is called the classical
system, or the first stage in Grimm's Law, prevailed
at any time in Gothic. The interesting researches
of Dr. W. Thomson 18 have at all events established
this fact, that at a much earlier period, when we see
Low-German dialects, in some respects more primi-
tive than Gothic, reflected on the surface of the
Finnish language, their consonantal system was the
same as at the time of Ulfilas.

Let us now examine a few words which form the
common property of the Aryan nations, and which
existed in some form or other before Sanskrit was
Sanskrit, Greek Greek, and Gothic Gothic. Some
of them have not only the same radical, but likewise
the same formative or derivative elements in all the
Aryan languages. These are, no doubt, the most
interesting, because they belong to the earliest stages
of Aryan speech, not only by their material, but
likewise by their workmanship. Such a word as
mother, for instance, has not only the same root in
Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, Slavonic, and Celtic,
namely, the root md, but likewise the same derivative
tar, so that there can be no doubt that in the
English mother we are handling the same word which

18 Uber den Einfluss der Germanise 'hen Sprachen auf die Finnisch-
Lappischen. Halle, 1870, p. 124.

19 Sk. m&ta; Greek ufa-np; Lat. mater; 0. H. G. muotar ; O. SL
mati ; Lith. moti ; Gaelic, mathair.

GEIMM'S LAW. 237

in ages commonly called prehistoric, but in reality as
historical as the days of Homer, or the more distant
times of the Yedic Bis his, was framed to express
the original conception of genitrix. But there are
other words which, though they differ in their deri-
vative elements, are identical in their roots and in
their meanings, so as to leave little doubt that though
they did not exist previous to the dispersion of the
Aryans, in exactly that form in which they are found
in Greek or Sanskrit, they are nevertheless mere
dialectic varieties, or modern modifications of earlier
words. Thus star is not exactly the same word as
stella, nor stella the same as the Sk. tar a; yet these
words show that, previous to the confusion of the
Aryan tongues, the root star, to strew, was applied to
the stars, as strewing about or sprinkling forth their
sparkling light. In that sense we find the stars
called s tr i , plural s t a r a s , in the Veda. The Latin
stella stands for sterula, and means a little star ; the
Gothic stair-no is a new feminine derivative ; and
the Sanskrit tar a has lost its initial s. As to the
Greek aster, it is supposed to be derived from a dif-
ferent root, as, to shoot, and to mean the shooters of
rays, the darters of light ; but it can, with greater
plausibility, be claimed for the same family as the
Sanskrit star.

It might be objected that this very word star
violates the law which we are going to examine,
though all philologists agree that it is a law that
cannot be violated with impunity. But, as in other
sciences, so in the science of language, a law is not
violated, on the contrary, it is confirmed, by excep-
tions of which a rational explanation can be given.

238 GKIMM'S LAW.

Now the fact is, that Grimm's law is most strictly
enforced on all initial consonants, much less so on
medial and final consonants. But whenever the
tennis is preceded at the beginning of words or syl-
lables by an s, h, or f, these letters protect the k, t,
p, and guard it against the execution of the law.
Thus the root std does not become sthd in Gothic ;
nor does the t at the end of noct-is become th, night
^being naht in Gothic. On the same ground, at in
star and stella could not appear in Gothic as th, but
xeniain st as in stairno.

In selecting a few words to illustrate each of the
nine cases in which the dislocation of consonants has
taken place, I shall confine myself, as much as pos-
sible, to words occurring in English ; and I have to
observe that, as a general rule, Anglo-Saxon stands
throughout on the same step as Gothic. Consonants
in the middle and at the end of words are liable to
various disturbing influences, and I shall therefore
dwell chiefly on the changes of initial consonants.

Let us begin with words which in English and
Anglo-Saxon begin with the soft g, d, and b. If
the same words exist in Sanskrit, what should we
expect instead of them ? Clearly the aspirates gh,
dh, bh, but never g, d, b, or k, t, p. In Greek we
expect x, $, </>. In the other languages there can be
no change, because they ignore the distinction be-
tween aspirates and soft checks, except the Latin,
which fluctuates between soft checks and guttural
and labial spiritus.

I. KH, Greek x ; Sanskrit gh, h ; Latin h, f.

G, Gothic g ; Latin gv, g, v ; Celtic g ; Slavonic g, z.
K, Old High-German k.

239

The English, yesterday is the Gothic gistra, the
Anglo-Saxon gystran or gyrstandceg, German gestern.
The radical portion is gis, the derivative tra just as
in Latin hes-ternus, lies is the base, ternus the deriva-
tive. In heri the s is changed to r, because it stands
between two vowels, like genus, generis. Now in
Sanskrit we look for initial gh, or h, and so we find
hyas, yesterday. In Greek we look for %, and so we
find Mhes. Old High- German, kestre. In Persian,
di-ruz.

Corresponding to gall, bile, we find Greek chole,
Latin fel instead of hel. 2Q

Similarly Gothic giuta, to pour out, is connected
with Greek ^e&>, x VT f > an( i the Sanskrit hu, to pour
out libations, the Latin fundo, fons, futilis.

The English goose, the A.S. gos, is the O.H.G. Jeans,
the Modern German Gans. 22 (It is a general rule
in A.S. that n before f, s, and $ is dropped; thus
Goth. munth-s = A..S. mu%, mouth; Latin dens, A.S.
to%, tooth ; German ander, Sk. an tar a, A.S. o%er,
other.) In Greek we find chen, in Latin anser, in-
stead of hanser, in Sanskrit hansa, in Russian gus',
in Bohemian 7ms, well known as the name of the
great reformer and martyr.

II. TH, Greek $, <l> ; Sanskrit dh ; Latin f.

D, Gothic d ; Latin d, b ; Celtic d : Slavonic d.
T, Old High- German t.

The English deer, A.S. deor, Goth, dius, corre-
spond to Greek ther, or pher; Latin, fera, wild beast;
O.H.G. tier.

The English to dare is the Gothic gadaursan, the

20 Lottner, Zcitschrift, vii. 167. 21 Grimm, D. G. i. 244.

22 Curtius, G. E. i. 222.

240

Greek tharsein or tharrem, the Sanskrit dhrish, the
O.S1. drizati, O.H.G. tarran. The Homeric Ther-
sites z * may come from the same root, meaning the
daring fellow. Greek, thrasys, bold, is Lithuanian
drasus.

The English doom means originally judgment;
hence, ' final doom,' the last judgment ; Doomsday,
the day of judgment. So in Gothic dom-s is judg-
ment, sentence. If this word exists in Greek, it
would be there derived from a root dhd or the
(tithemi), which means to place, to settle, and from
which we have at least one derivative in a strictly
legal sense, namely, themis, law, what is settled, then
the goddess of justice.

III. PH, Greek <p ; Sanskrit bh ; Latin f.

B, Gothic b ; Latin b ; Celtic and Slavonic b.
P, Old High-German p.

f l am/ in Anglo-Saxon is beom and eom. Eom
comes from the root as, and stands for eo(r)in, O.N.
e(r)m, Gothic i(s)m, Sanskrit as mi. Beom is the
O.H.G pi-m, the modern German bin, the Sanskrit
bhavami, the Greek phuo, Latin fu in/m.

Beech is the Gothic boka, Lat. fagus, O.H.G. puocha.
The Greek phegos, which is identically the same word,
does not mean beech, but oak. Was this change of
meaning accidental, or were there circumstances by
which it can be explained ? Was phegos originally the
name of the oak, meaning the food- tree, from phagein,
to eat ? And was the name which originally belonged
to the oak (the Quercus Esculus) transferred to the
beech, after the age of stone with its fir trees, and the

23 Curtius, G. E. i. 222.

GRIMM'S LA^\. 241!

age of bronze with its oak trees, had passed away, 24 '
and the age of iron and of beech trees had dawned on
the shores of Europe ? I hardly venture to say Yes ;-.
yet we shall meet with other words and other changes
of meaning suggesting similar ideas, and encouraging
the student of language in looking upon these words
as witnesses attesting more strikingly than flints and
6 tags ' the presence of human life and Aryan language
in Europe, previous to the beginning of history or by
tradition.

What is the English brim?** We say a glass is
brim full, or we fill our glasses to the brim, which
means simply c to the edge.' We also speak of the
brim of a hat, the German Brame. Now originally
brim did not mean every kind of edge or verge, but
only the line which separates the land from the sea.
It is derived from the root bhram, which, as it ought,
exhibits bh in Sanskrit, and means to whirl about,
applied to fire, such as bhram a, the leaping flame,
or to water, such asbhrama, a whirlpool, or to air,
such as bhrimi, a whirlwind. Now what was called
cestus by the Romans, namely, the swell or surge of
the sea, where the waves seemed to foam, to flame,
and to smoke (hence sestuary), the same point was
called by the Teutonic nations the whirl, or the brim.
After meaning the border-line between land and sea,
it came to mean any border, though in the ex-
pression, 'fill your glasses to the brim,' we still
imagine to see the original conception of the sea
rushing or pouring in toward the dry land. la

21 Sir Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, p. 9.
25 Kuhn, Zeitschrift, vi. 152.

II. B,

242

Greek we have a derivative verb phrimdssein, 26 to toss
about; in Latin fremo, chiefly in the sense of raging
or roaring, and perhaps frendo, to gnash, are akin to
this root. In the Teutonic languages other words of
a totally different character must be traced back to
the same original conception of bfiram, to whirl, to be
confused, to be rolled up together, namely, bramble,
broom, &c. 27

We now proceed to the second class, namely, words
which in Gothic and Anglo-Saxon are pronounced
with k, t, p, and which, therefore, in all the other
Indo-European languages, with the exception of Old
High-German, ought to be pronounced with g, d, b.

IV. G, Sanskrit g ; Greek, Latin, and Celtic g ; Slavonic g, z.
K, Gothic k.
KH, Old High-German ch.

(4.) The English corn is the Gothic kaurn, Slavonic
zr'no, Lith. zirnis. In Latin we find granum, in Sans-
krit we may compare girna., ground down, though
chiefly applied metaphorically to what is ground
down or destroyed by old age. O.H.G. clwrn.

The English kin is Gothic kuni, O.H.G. chunni.
In Greek genos, Latin genus, Sk. g an as, we have the
same word. The English child is in Old Saxon kind,
the Greek gonos, offspring. The English queen is the
Gothic qin6, or yens, the Old Saxon quena, A.S. cwen.
It meant originally, like the Greek gyne, 28 the Old

28 jSpt/ico and #pd,uos, which are compared by Kuhn, would violate
the law ; they express principally the sound, for instance in /SpoFTTj,
ttyi/SpeMeTTjs, Curtius, Cr. E. ii. 109. Grassmann, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift,
xii. 93.

27 Srande, sorte de broussaille dans le Berry, bruyere a balai.

23 Curtius, G. E. ii. 247.

GRIMM'S LAW. 243

Slavonic zena, the Sanskrit #ani and #ani, mother,
just as king, the German konig, the O.H.G. chuninc,
the A.S. cyn-ing, meant originally, like Sk. granaka,
father. 29

The English knot is the Old Norse knutr, the Latin
nodus, which stands for gnodus.

V. D, Sanskrit d ; Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic d.
T, Gothic t.
TH, Old High-German z.

(5.) English two is Gothic tvai, 0. H. G. zuei. In
all other languages we get the initial soft d ; Greek
duo, Latin duo, Lith. du, Slav, dva, Irish do. Dubius,
doubtful, is derived from duo, two ; and the same
idea is expressed by the German Zweifel, Old High-
German zwifal, Gothic tveifls.

English tree is Gothic triu; in Sanskrit dru, wood
and tree (daru, a log). In Greek drys is tree, but
especially the tree, namely, the oak. 30 In Irish darach
and in Welsh derw the meaning of oak is said to
preponderate, though originally they meant tree in
general. In Slavonic drjevo we hav.e again the same
word in the sense of tree. The Greek d6ry meant
originally a wooden shaft, then a spear.

English timber is Gothic timr or timbr, from which
timrjan, to build. We must compare it, therefore,
with Greek demein to build, domos, house, Lat. domus,
Sanskrit, dam a, the German Zimmer, room.

VI. B, Sanskrit b or v ; Greek, Latin, Celtic, and Slavonic b.
P, Gothic p (scarce).
PH, Old High-German ph or f.

29 See infra, p. 284.

30 Schol. a.l Horn. 77. xi. 86. Spu-roftos, uXoro'/iOS' Spvv yap
<H iraAcuoi a.7rb TOV ap^^ioTepov ira.v

R 2

2244 GRIMM'S LAW.

'6.) There are few really Saxon words beginning
with p, and there are no words in Gothic beginning
with that letter, except foreign words. In Sanskrit,
too, the consonant that ought to correspond to Gothic
p, namely b, is very seldom, if ever, an initial sound,
its place being occupied by the labial spiritus v.

We now proceed to the third class, i.e. words begin-
ning in English and Gothic with aspirates, or more
properly with breathings, which necessitate in all
other Aryan languages, except Old High- German,
corresponding consonants such as k, t, p. In Old
High-German the law breaks down. We find h and f
instead of g and b, and only in the dental series the
media d has been preserved, corresponding to Sans-
krit t and Gothic th.

VII. K, Sanskrit k; Greek k; Latin c, qu; Old Irish, c, ch;

Slavonic k.

KH, Gothic h, g (f). Sanskrit h.
G, Old High-German h (g, k).

(7.) The English heart is the Gothic hairto. Ac-
cordingly we find in Latin cor, cordis, in Greek Jcardia.
In Sanskrit we should expect krid, instead of which
we find the irregular form hrid. O.H.G. herza.

The English hart, cervus, is the Anglo-Saxon
heorot, the Old High-German hiruz. This points to
Greek Itera6s, horned, from keras, horn, and to cervus
in Latin. The same root produced in Latin cornu,
Gothic haurn, Old High-German horn. In Sk. sir as
is head, s ring a, horn.

The English who and what, though written with
wh, are in Anglo-Saxon hva and hvcet, in Gothic hvas,
hvo, hva. Transliterating this into Sanskrit, we get

GRIMM'S LAW. 245

kas, ka, kad ; Latin guis, quce, quid; Greek JcSs and
pos.

VIII. T, Sanskrit t ; Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic t.
TH, Gothic th and d.
D, Old High-German d.

(8.) The English that is the Gothic thata, the
neuter of sa, so, thata; A.S. se, se6, thcet; German
der, die, das. In Sanskrit sa, sa, tad; in Greek, ho,
he, t6.

In the same manner three, Gothic thrais, is Sanskrit
tray as, High- German drei.

Thou, Sanskrit tvam, Greek ty and sij, Latin tu,
High-German du.

Thin in old Norse is thunnr, Sanskrit tanu-s,
Latin tenuits, High-German dunn.

IX. P, Sanskrit p ; Greek, Latin, Celtic, Slavonic p.
PH, Gothic f and b.
B, Old High-German f and v.

(9.) The last case is that of the labial spiritus in
English or Gothic, which requires a hard labial as its
substitute in Sanskrit and the other Aryan dialects,
except in Old High-German, where it mostly re-
appears as f.

The English to fare in ' fare thee well ' corresponds
to Greek poros, a passage. Welfare, wohlfahrt, would
be in Greek euporia, opposed to aporia, helplessness.
In Sanskrit the same word appears, though slightly
altered, namely, &ar, 31 to walk.

The English feather would correspond to a Sanskrit
pattra, and this means a wing of a bird, i.e. the in-
strument of flying, from pat, to fly, and tra. As to

31 Cf. Grimm, s. v. 'fahren.'

346 GRIMM'S LAW.

penna, it comes from the same root but is formed with
another suffix. It would be in Sanskrit pat ana,
pesna and penna in Latin.

The English friend is a participle present. The
verb frijon in Gothic means to love ; hence, frijond, a
lover. It is the Sanskrit pri, to love.

The English few is the same word as the French
pen. Few, however, is not borrowed from Norman-
French, but the two are distant cousins. Peu goes
back to paucus ; few to A.S.feawa, Gothic fav-s; and
this is the true Gothic representative of the Latin
paucus. O.H.G. foh.

GENERAL TABLE OF GRIMM'S LAW.

(Sanskrit . .

gh (h)

dh(h)

bh (h)

1 Greek . . .

f Latin . . .
1 Old Irish . .
1 Old Slavonic

h f (g v)
g

" z

f (db)
d
d

t (b)
b
b

g
g
g z

d
d

b
b?
b

C qtl
C (ch)

t(th)
t

P
(P)?
P

^Lithuanian .

Gothic . . .

(P)?

hg(0

th d

Old High-German

z z

f ph

hgk

f b

32 Kuhn, Zcitschrift, i. 515. For exceptions to Grimm's law, ?<>e
an article by Professor Lottner, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xi. 161; and
Grassmann's observations in the same journal, xii. 131. See also Bleek,
Grimm's Law in South-Africa.

247
APPENDIX.

ON WORDS FOR FIR, OAK, AND BEECH.

IN the course of these illustrations of Grimm's law
I was led to remark on the peculiar change of mean-
ing in Latin fagus, Greek phegtis, and Gothic b6Jca+
Plieg6s in Greek means oak, never beech ; 33 in Latin
and Gothic fagus and boka signify beech, and beech
only. No real attempt, as far as I know, has ever
been made to explain how the same name came
to be attached to trees so different in outward ap-
pearance as oak and beech. In looking out for
analogous cases, and trying to find out whether
other names of trees were likewise used in different
senses in Greek, Latin, and German, one other name
occurred to me which in German means fir, and in
Latin oak. At first sight the English word/r does
not look very like the Latin quercus, yet it is the
same word. If we trace fir back to Anglo-Saxon we
find it there under the form of furh. According to
Grimm's Law, / points to p, h to k, so that in Latin
we should have to look for a word the consonantal
skeleton of which might be represented as p r c.
Guttural and labial tenues change, and as Anglo-
Saxon fif points to quinque, so furh leads to Latin
quercus, oak. In Old High-German, foraha is Pinus
silvestris; in modern German/oAre has the same mean-
ing. But in a passage quoted from the Lombard
laws of Eothar, fereha, evidently the same word, is
mentioned as a name of oak (roborem aut quercum.

38 Theophrastus, De Historia Plantarum, iii. 8, 2.

2 18 ON WORDS FOR FIR, OAK, AND BEECH.

quod est fereha) ; and Grimm, in his ' Dictionary of
the German Language/ gives ferch, in the sense of
oak, blood, life.

It would be easy enough to account for a change of
meaning from fir, or oak, or beech, to tree in general,
or vice versa. We find the Sanskrit dru, wood (cf.
druma, tree, daru, log), the Gothic triu, tree, used
in Greek chiefly in the sense of oak, drys. The Irish
darachy Welch derw, mean oak, and oak only. 34 But
what has to be explained here is the change of mean-
ing from fir to oak, and from oak to beech i.e. from
one particular tree to another particular tree. While
considering these curious changes, I happened to read
Sir Charles LyelPs new work, c The Antiquity of
Man,' and I was much struck by the following passage
(p. 8, seq.) :

The deposits of peat in Denmark, varying in depth from
ten to thirty feet, have been formed in hollows or depressions
In the northern drift or boulder formations hereafter to be
described. The lowest stratum, two or three feet thick, con-
sists of swamp peat, composed chiefly of moss or sphagnum,
above which lies another growth of peat, not made up exclu-
sively of aquatic or swamp plants. Around the borders of the
bogs, and at various depths in them, lie trunks of trees, espe-
cially of the Scotch fir (Pinus silvestris), often three feet
in diameter, which must have grown on the margin of the
peat-rnosses, and have frequently fallen into them. This tree-
is not now, nor has ever been in historical times, a native of
the Danish islands, and when introduced there has not thriven ;
yet it was evidently indigenous in the human period, for
Steenstrup has taken out with his own hands a flint instru-
ment from below a buried trunk of one of these pines. It
appears clear that the same Scotch fir was afterwards sup-
s Grimm, Warterbuch, s. v. ' Eiche.'

ON WORDS FOR FIR, OAK, AND BEECH. 249

planted by the sessile variety of the common oak, of which
many prostrate trunks occur in the peat at higher levels than
the pines ; and still higher the pedunculated variety of the
same oak (Quercus rcibur, L.} occurs with the alder, birch
(Betula verrucosa, Ehrh.\ and hazel. The oak has in its turn
been almost superseded in Denmark by the common beech.
Other trees, such as the white birch (Betula alba}, characterise
the lower part of the bogs, and disappear from the higher ;
while others again, like the aspen (Populus tremula), occur at
all levels, and still flourish in Denmark. All the land and
fresh-water shells, and all the mammalia as well as the plants,
whose remains occur buried in the Danish peat, are of recent
species.

It has been stated that a stone implement was found under
a buried Scotch fir at a great depth in the peat. By collecting
and studying a vast variety of such implements, and other
articles of human workmanship preserved in peat and in sand-
dunes on the coast, as also in certain shell-mounds of the ab-
origines presently to be described, the Danish and Swedish
antiquaries and naturalists, M.M. Nilson, Steenstrup, Forch-
hammer, Thomsen, Worsaae, and others, have succeeded in
establishing a chronological succession of periods, which they
have called the ages of stone, of bronze, and of iron, named
from the materials which have each in their turn served for
the fabrication of implements.

The age of stone in Denmark coincides with the period of
the first vegetation, or that of the Scotch fir, and in part at
least with the second vegetation, or that of the oak. But a
considerable portion of the oak epoch coincided with ' the age
of bronze,' for swords and shields of that metal, now in the
Museum of Copenhagen, have been taken out of peat in which
oaks abound. The age of iron corresponded more nearly with
that of the beach tree.

M. Morlot, to whom we are indebted for a masterly sketch
of the recent progress of this new line of research, followed up
with so much success in Scandinavia and Switzerland, observes

250 ON WORDS FOB FIR, OAK, AND BEECH.

that the introduction of the first tools made of bronze among
a people previously ignorant of the use of metals, implies a
great advance in the arts, for bronze is an alloy of about nine
parts of copper and one of tin ; and although the former metal,
copper, is by no means rare, and is occasionally found pure, or
in a native state, tin is not only scarce, but never occurs
native. To detect the existence of this metal in its ore, then
to disengage it from the matrix, and finally, after blending it
in due proportion with copper, to cast the fused mixture in a
mould, allowing time for it to acquire hardness by slow cool-
ing, all this bespeaks no small sagacity and skilful manipula-
tion. Accordingly, the pottery found associated with weapons
of bronze is of a more ornamental and tasteful style than any
which belongs to the age of stone. Some of the moulds in
which the bronze instruments were cast, and ' tags,' as they
are called, of bronze, which are formed in the hole through
which the fused metal was poured, have been found. The
number and variety of objects belonging to the age of bronze
indicates its long duration, as does the progress in the arts
implied by the rudeness of the earlier tools, often mere repe-
titions of those of the stone age, as contrasted with the more
skilfully-worked weapons of a later stage of the same period.

It has been suggested that an age of copper must always
have intervened between that of stone and bronze ; but if so,
the interval seems to have been short in Europe, owing
apparently to the territory occupied by the aboriginal inhabit-
ants having been invaded and conquered by a people coming
from the East, to whom the use of swords, spears, and other
weapons of bronze, was familiar. Hatchets, however, of
copper have been found in the Danish peat.

The next stage of improvement, or that manifested by the
substitution of iron for bronze, indicates another stride in the
progress of the arts. Iron never presents itself, except in
meteorites, in a native state, so that to recognise its ores, and
then to separate the metal from its matrix, demands no small
exercise of the powers of observation and invention. To

ON TVOEDS FOR FIE, OAK, AND BEECH. 251

fuse the ore requires an intense heat, not to be obtained with-
out artificial appliances, such as pipes inflated by the human
breath, or bellows, or some other suitable machinery.

After reading this extract I could hardly help
asking the question, Is it possible to explain the
change of meaning in one word which meant fir and
came to mean oak, and in another word which meant
oak and came to mean beech, by the change of vege-
tation which actually took place in those early a.ges ?
Can we suppose that members of the Aryan family
had settled in parts of Europe, that dialects of their
common language were spoken in the south and in
the north of this western peninsula of the primeval
Asiatic Continent, at a time which Mr. Steenstrup
estimates as at least 4,000 years ago ? Sir Charles
Lyell does not commit himself to such definite chro-
nological calculations.

What may be the antiquity (he writes) of the earli* st human
remains preserved in the Danish peat, cannot be estimated in
centuries with any approach to accuracy. In the first place,
in going back to the bronze age, we already find ourselves
beyond the reach of history or e^en of tradition. In the time
of the Romans, the Danish isles were covered, as now, with
magnificent beech forests. Nowhere in the world does this
tree flourish more luxuriantly than in Denmark, and eighteen
centuries seem to have done little or nothing towards modify-
ing the character of the forest vegetation. Yet in the ante-
cedent bronze period there were no beech trees, or, at most,
but a few stragglers, the country being covered with oak.
In the age of stone, again, the Scotch fir prevailed, and already
there were human inhabitants in those old pine forests. How
many generations of each species of tree flourished in succes-
sion before the pine was supplanted by the oak, and the oak
by the beech, can be but vaguely conjectured, but the minimum

252 ON WORDS FOR FIR, OAK, AND BEECH.

of time required for the formation of so much peat must,
according to the estimate of Steenstrup and other good
authorities, have amounted to at least 4,000 years ; and there
is nothing in the observed rate of the growth of peat opposed
to the conclusion that the number of centuries may not have
been four times as great, even though the signs of man's ex-
istence have not yet been traced down to the lowest or amor-
phous stratum. As to the ' shell-mounds,' they correspond in
date to the older portion of the peaty record, or to the earliest
part of the age of stone as known in Denmark.

To suppose the presence in Europe of people speak-
ing Aryan languages at so early a period in the history
of the world, is opposed to the ordinarily received
notions as to the advent of the Aryan race on the soil
of Europe. Yet if we ask ourselves, we shall have
to confess that these notions themselves rest on no
genuine evidence, nor is there for these early periods
any available measure of time, except what may be
read in the geological annals of the post-tertiary
period. The presence of human life during the fir
period or the stone age seems to be proved. The
question, whether the races then living were Aryan
or Turanian can be settled by language only. Skulls
may help to determine the physical character, but they
can in no way clear up our doubts as to the language
of the earliest inhabitants of Europe. JSTow, if we find
in the dialects of Aryan speech spoken in Europe,
if we find in Greek, Latin, and German, changes of
meaning running parallel with the changes of vege-
lation just described, may we not admit, though as an
hypothesis, and as an hypothesis only, that such
changes of meaning were as the shadows cast on.
language by passing events.

ON WORDS FOR FIR, OA.K, AND BEECH.

Let us look for analogies. A word like book, the
German Buch, being originally identical with beech,
the German Buche, is sufficient evidence to prove that
German was spoken before parchment and paper
superseded wooden tablets. If we knew the time
when tablets made of beech wood ceased to be em-
ployed as a common writing material, that date
would be a minimum date for the existence of that
language in which a book is called book, and not
either volumen, or liber, or biblos.

Old words, we know, are constantly transferred to
new things. People speak of an engine-driver, be-
cause they had before spoken of the driver of horses.
They speak of a steel pen and a pen-holder, because
they had before spoken of a pen, penna. When
hawks were supplanted by fire-arms, the names of
the birds of prey, formerly used in hawking, were
transferred to the new weapons. Mosquet, the name
of a sparrow-hawk, so called on account of its
dappled (muscatns) plumage, became the name of the
French mousquet, a musket. Fancon, hawk, was the
name given to a heavier sort of artillery. Sacre in
French and saker in English mean both hawk and
gun ; and the Italian terzeruolo, a small pistol, is
closely connected with terzuolo, a hawk. The Eng-
glish expression, t to let fly at a thing ' suggests a
similar explanation. In all these cases if we knew
the date when hawking went out and fire-arms came
in, we should be able to measure by that date the
antiquity of the language in which fire-arms were
called by names originally the names of hawks.

The Mexicans called their own copper or bronze
tepuzili, which is said to have meant originally

254 ON WOKDS FOR FIE, OAK, AND BEECH.

hatchet. The same word is now used for iron, with
which the Mexicans first became acquainted through
their intercourse with the Spaniards. Tepuztli then
became a general name for metal, and when copper
had to be distinguished from iron, the former was
called red, the latter black tepufali.** The conclusion
which we may draw from this, viz. that Mexican
was spoken before the introduction of iron into
Mexico, is one of no great value, because we know it
from other sources.

But let us apply the same line of reasoning to
Greek. Here, too, chalk6s, which at first meant
copper, 36 came afterwards to mean metal in general,
and chalkeus, originally a coppersmith, occurs in the
Odyssey (ix. 391) in the sense of blacksmith, or a
worker of iron (sidereus). What does this prove?
It proves that Greek was spoken before the discovery
of iron, and it shows that if we knew the exact date
of that discovery, which certainly took place before
the Homeric poems were finished, we should have
in it a minimum date for the antiquit} T of the Greek
language. Though the use of iron was known before
the composition of the Homeric poems, it certainly
was not known, as we shall see presentty, previously
to the breaking up of the Aryan family. Even in
Greek poetry there is a distinct recollection of an
age in which copper was the only metal used for
weapons, armour, and tools. Hesiod 37 speaks of the

35 Anahuac ; or, Mexico andtlic Mexicans, by E. B. Tylor. 1861, p. 140.

36 Gladstone, Homer and the Homeric Age, iii. p. 499.
17 Op. et. D. 150:

ToTs 5' %v x<*^ K * a H* v rei/xea, x^A/ceoi 5e re ol/coi,
XoA/c<j3 5' clpyd^ovTO' p.e\as 5' OVK IfffKe ffiSrjpos.

Cf. Lucretius, 5, J286.

ON WORDS FOR FIR, OAK, AXD BEECH. 2o5

third generation of men, i who had arms of copper,
houses of copper, who ploughed with copper, and the
black iron did not exist.' In the Homeric poems,
knives, spear-points, and armour were still made of
copper, and we can hardly doubt that the ancients
knew a process of hardening that pliant metal. 33
The discovery of iron marks a period in the history
of the world. Iron is not, like gold, silver, and
copper, found in a pure state : the iron ore has to be
searched for, and the process of extracting from it
the pure metal is by no means easy. 39 In New
Zealand, where there is good iron ore, there was no
knowledge of iron previously to the arrival of Euro-
peans. 40

What makes it likely that iron was not known
previous to the separation of the Aryan nations is
the fact that its names vary in every one of their
languages. It is true that chalJc6s 9 too, in the sense
of copper, occurs in Greek only, for it cannot be
compared phonetically with Sanskrit hrikii, which
is said to mean tin. But there is another name for
copper, which is shared in common by Latin and the
Teutonic languages, ces, ceris, Gothic ais, Old High-
German eV, Modern German Er-z, Anglo-Saxon dr,

S8 See J. P. Rossignol, membre de 1'Institut, Les Metaitx dans FAn-
tiquite: Paris, 1863, p. 215, 237. Proclus says, with regard to the
passage in Hesiod, Kal TO> %aA/c5 irp'bs TOVTO e'xpwyTO, ws T&J (TiS^pcf irpbs
yecap'yiav, Sia TWOS /3a$7js T^V %a\Kbv (TTtppoTrotoui/Tey. In Strabo, xiii.
p. 610, the process of making the alloy of copper and ^ifv^dpyvpoy is
described, and if tyfvSapyvpos is zinc, the result of its mixture with cop-
per can only lie brass. See Curtius, Grundzuge der Gricchischen Ety-
mologic, p. 231.

39 Rossignol, 1. c. p. 216. Buffon, Histoire naturdlc, article du Fer,
and article du Cuivre. Homer calls iron TtoXvK^ros <ri5ripos.

40 Tylor, Early History of Mankind, p. 167.

256 ON WORDS FOE FIR, OAK, AND BEECH.

English ore. Like chalkos, which originally meant
copper, but came to mean metal in general, bronze
or brass, the Latin ces, too, changed from the former
to the latter meaning ; and we can watch the same
transition in the corresponding words of the Teu-
tonic languages. ^Es, in fact, like Gothic aiz, meant
the one metal which, with the exception of gold and
silver, was largely used 'of old for practical purposes.
It meant copper whether in its pure state, or alloyed,
as in later times, with zin (bronze) and zinc (brass). 41
But neither ces in Latin nor aiz in Gothic ever came
to mean gold, silver, or iron. It is all the more
curious, therefore, that the Sanskrit ay as, which is
the same word as ces and aiz, should in Sanskrit
have assumed the almost exclusive meaning of iron.
I suspect, however, that in Sanskrit, too, ay as
meant originally the metal, i.e. copper, and that as
iron took the place of copper, the meaning of ay as
was changed and specified. In passages of . the
Atharva Veda (xi. 3, 1, 7), and the Vagrasaneyi-
R a n hit a, (xviii. 13), a distinction is made between
syamam ayas, dark-brown metal, and loham or
lohitam ayas, bright metal, the former meaning
copper, the latter iron. 42 The flesh of an animal is
likened to copper, its blood to iron. This shows
that the exclusive meaning of ayas as iron was of
later growth, and renders it more than probable that
the Hindus, like the Romans and Germans, attached
originally to ayas (ces and aiz), the meaning of the

41 Cf. Niebuhr, Edmische Geschichte, p. 259.

42 Lohitayas is given in Wilson's Dictionary as meaning copper.
If this were right, syamam ayas would be iron. The commentator
to the Va^asaneyi-sanhita is vague, but he gives copper as the first
explanation of syamam, iron as the first explanation of loham.

ON WOEDS FOR FIR, OAK, AND BEECH. 257

metal par excellence, i.e. copper. In Greek, ay as
would have dwindled to es, and was replaced by
chalk6s ; while to distinguish the new from the old
metals, iron was called by Homer sideros. In Latin,
different kinds of ces were distinguished by adjec-
tives, the best known being the ces Cyprium, brought
from Cyprus. Cyprus was taken possession of by the
Romans in 57 B.C. Herod was entrusted by Augustus
with the direction of the Cyprian copper-mines, and
received one-half of the profits. Pliny used ces Cyprium
and Cyprium by itself, for copper. The popular
form, cuprum, copper, was first used by Spartianus
in the third century, and became more frequent in
the fourth. 43 Iron in Latin received the name of
ferrum. In Gothic, aiz stands for Greek chalktis, but
in Old High- German chuphar appears as a more
special name, and er assumes the meaning of bronze.
This er is lost in Modern German, 44 except in the
adjective ehem, and a new word has been formed for
metal in general, the Old High- German ar-uzi, 45 the
modern German Erz. As ay as in Sanskrit assumed
the special meaning of iron, we find that in German,
too, the name for iron was derived from the older
name of copper. The Gothic eisarn, iron, is con-
sidered by Grimm as a derivative form of aiz, and
the same scholar concludes from this that ' in Ger-
many bronze must have been in use before iron.' 46

43 Rossignol, 1. c. p. 268-9.

44 It occurs as late as the fifteenth century. See Grimm, Deutschcs
Worterbuck, s. v. erin, and s. v. Erz, 4, sub fine.

45 Grimm throws out a hint that ruzi in aruzi might be the Latin
rudus, or raudus, rauderis, brass, but he qualifies the idea as bold.

46 See Grimm, Geschichte der Deutschen Sprache, where the first
chapter is devoted to the consideration of the names of metals. The

IT. S

258 ON WORDS FOE FIK, OAK, AND BEECH.

Eisarn is changed in Old High-German to isarn,
later to wan, the Modern German eisen; while the
Anglo-Saxon isern leads to wen and iron.

It may safely be concluded, I believe, that before
the Aryan separation, gold, silver, and a third metal,
i.e. copper, in a more or less pure state, were known.
Sanskrit, Greek, the Teutonic and Slavonic lan-
guages agree in their names for gold ; 47 Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin in their names for silver ; 48 Sans-
krit, Latin, and German in their names for the third
metal. The names for iron, on the contrary, are
different in each of the principal branches of the
Aryan family, the coincidences between the Celtic
and Teutonic names being of a doubtful character.
If, then, we consider that the Sanskrit ay as, which
meant, originally, the same as Latin oes and Gothic
aizy came to mean iron ; that the German word for
iron is derived from Gothic aiz, and that Greek
chalktis, after meaning copper, was used as a general
name for metal, and conveyed occasionally the mean-
ing of iron, we may conclude, I believe, that Sans-
krit, Greek, Latin, and German were spoken before
the discovery of iron, that each nation became ac-
quainted with that most useful of all metals after
the Aryan family was broken up, and that each of
the Aryan languages coined its name for iron from
its own resources, and marked it by its own national

same subject has been treated by M. A. Pictet, in his Origincs Indo-
Europeenncs, vol. i. p. 149 seq. The learned author arrives at results
. very different from those stated above ; but the evidence on which he
relies, and particularly the supposed coincidences between comparatively
late or purely hypothetical compounds in Sanskrit, and words in Greek
and Latin, would require much fuller proofs than he has given.

47 Curtius, Gricchische Etymologic, i. 172; ii. 314.

48 Curtius, I. c. i. 141.

ON WORDS FOE FIR, OAK, AND BEECH. 259

stamp, while it brought the names for gold, silver,
and copper from the common treasury of their
ancestral home.

Let us now apply the same line of reasoning to
the names of fir, oak, and beech, and their varying
significations. The Aryan tribes, all speaking dialects
of one and the same language, who came to settle in
Europe during the fir period, or the stone age, would
naturally have known the fir-tree only. They called
it by the same name which still exists in English as
fir, in German as fohre. How was it, then, that the
same word, as used in the Lombard dialect, means
oak, and that a second dialectic form exists in modern
German, meaning oak, and not fir? We can well
imagine that the name of the fir-tree should, during
the fir period, have become the appellative for tree in
general, just as chalk6s, copper, became the appella-
tive for metal in general. But how could that name
have been again individualised and attached to oak,
unless the dialect to which it belonged had been
living at a time when the fir vegetation was gradu-
ally replaced by an oak vegetation ? Although there
is as little evidence of the Latin quercus having ever
meant fir and not oak, as there is of the Gothic aiz
having ever meant copper and not bronze, yet, if
quercus is the same word as fir, I do not hesitate to
postulate for it the pre-historic meaning of fir.
That in some dialects the old name of fir should
have retained its meaning, while in others it assumed
that of oak, is in perfect harmony with what we
observed before, viz. that ces retained its meaning in
Latin, while ay as in Sanskrit tissumed the sense of
iron.

s 2

260 ON WORDS FOE FIR, OAK, AND BEECH.

The fact that phegos in Greek means oak, 49 and
oak only, while fagus in Latin, boJca in Gothic, mean
beech, requires surely an explanation; and, until a
better one can be given, I venture to suggest that
Teutonic and Italic Aryans witnessed the transition
of the oak period into the beech period, of the bronze
age into the iron age, and that while the Greeks re-
tained phegtis in its original sense, the Teutonic and
Italian colonists transferred the name, as an appel-
lative, to the new forests that were springing up in
their wild homes.

I am fully aware that many objections may be
urged against such an hypothesis. Migration from
a fir-country into an oak-country, and from an oak-
country into a beech-country, might be supposed to
have caused these changes of meaning in the ancient
Aryan words for fir and oak. I must leave it to the
geologist and botanist to determine whether this is a
more plausible explanation, and whether the changes
of vegetation, as described above, took place in the
same rotation over the whole of Europe, or in the
North only. Again, the skulls found in the peat
deposits are of the lowest type, and have been con-
fidently ascribed to races of non- Aryan descent. In
answer to this, I can only repeat my old protest, 50
that the Science of Language has nothing to do with

49 In Persian, too, bilk is said to mean oak. No authority, however,
has ever been given for that meaning, and it is left out in the last edition
of Johnson's Dictionary and in Vullers' Lexicon Persico-Latinum.
Though the Persian buk, in the sense of oak, would considerably
strengthen our argument, it is necessary to wait until the word has been
properly authenticated.

50 See M. M.'s Lectures on the Turanian Languages, p. 89 : 'Ethnology
v. Phonology.'

ON WOEDS FOR Fill, OAK, AND BEECH. 261

skulls. 51 Lastly, the date thus assigned to the Aryan
arrival in Europe will seem far too remote, particu-
larly if it be considered that long before the first
waves of the Aryan emigrants touched the shores of
Europe, Turanian tribes, Finns, Lapps, and Basks,
must have roved through the forests of our continent.
My answer is, that I feel the same difficulty myself,
but that I have always considered a full statement
of a difficulty a necessary step towards its solution.
I shall be as much pleased to see my hypothesis re-
futed as to see it confirmed. All that I request for
it is an impartial examination. 52

41 The same opinion has lately found a powerful supporter in Professor
Huxley. I refer particularly to his paper ' On the Methods and Eesults
of Ethnology,' published in the Fortnightly Review, No. 3, June 15,
1865 ; and his lecture on the ' Forefathers of the English People,' pub-
lished in Nature, March 17, 1870.

' If we confine our attention,' he says, ' to the British Islands, we have
absolutely no means of ascribing any special physical characters to the
Celtic-speaking people. A British or Irish " Celt" might be tall or
short, dark or fair, round-headed or long-headed ; and the remark of
Professor Max Muller, that it is as rational to speak of a dolichocephalic
language as of a Celtic skull, is, for the Celts of Britain, perfectly
justified.'

** Some notes on the causes of the change of the vegetation in ancient
Denmark, in GL P. Marsh, Man and Nature, p. 3, se$.

262

LECTURE VI.

ON THE PRINCIPLES OF ETYMOLOGY.

VOLTAIRE defined etymology as a science in
which vowels signify nothing at all, and
consonants very little. ' L'etymologie, 9 he said, c est
une science on les voyelles ne font rien, et lea consonnes
fort pen de cJiose. 9 Nor was this sarcasm quite un-
deserved by those who wrote on etymology in Vol-
taire's time, and we need not wonder that a man so
reluctant to believe in any miracles should have
declined to believe in the miracles of etymology. Of
course, not even Voltaire was so great a sceptic as
to maintain that the words of our modern languages
have no etymology, i. e. no origin, at all. Words do
not spring into life by an act of spontaneous genera-
tion, and the words of modern languages in particular
are in many cases so much like the words of ancient
languages that no doubt is possible as to their real
origin and derivation. Wherever there was a certain
similarity in sound and meaning between French
words and words belonging to Latin, German, He-
brew, or any other tongue, even Voltaire would have
acquiesced. No one, for instance, could ever have
doubted that the French word for God, Dieu, was
the same as the Latin Deus; that the French

GUESSING ETYMOLOGY. 263

homme, and even on, was the Latin homo ; the
French femme, the Latin femina. In these in-
stances there had been no change of meaning, and
the change of form, though the process by which it
took place remained unexplained, was not such as to
startle even the most sensitive conscience. There
was indeed one department of etymology which had
been cultivated with great success in Voltaire's time,
and even long before him, namely, the history of the
Neo-Latin or Romance dialects. We find in the
dictionary of Du Cange a most valuable collection of
extracts from mediseval Latin writers, which enables
us to trace, step by step, the gradual changes of form
and meaning from ancient to modern Latin ; and we
have in the much ridiculed dictionary of Menage
many an ingenious contribution towards tracing
those mediaeval Latin words in the earliest docu-
ments of French literature, from the times of the
Crusades to the Siecle of Louis XIY. Thus a mere
reference to Montaigne, who wrote in the sixteenth
century, is sufficient to prove that the modern French
gener was originally gehenner. Montaigne writes :
6 Je me suis contraint et gehenne,' meaning, 6 1 have
forced and tortured myself.' This verb gehenner is
easily traced back to the Latin gehenna, 1 used in the
Greek of the New Testament and in the ecclesiastical
writings of the middle ages not only in the sense of
hell, but in the more general sense of suffering and
pain. It is well known that Gehenna was originally
the name of the valley of Hinnom, near Jerusalem
(Darp-i), the Tophet, where the Jews burnt their sons
and their daughters in the fire, and of which Jere-

1 JVIoliere says, ' Je sens de son courroux des genes trop cruelles.'

264 GUESSING ETYMOLOGY.

miah prophesied that it should be called the valley of
slaughter : for ' They shall bury in Tophet till there
be no place.' 2 How few persons think now of the
sacrifices offered to Moloch in the valley of Hinnom
when they ask their friends to make themselves com-
fortable, and say, ( Ne vous genez pas. 9

It was well known not only to Yoltaire, but even
to Henri Estienne, 3 who wrote in the sixteenth
century, that it is in Latin we may expect to find
the original form and meaning of most of the words
which fill the dictionaries of the French, Italian,
and Spanish languages. But these early etymolo-
gists never knew of any test by which a true deriva-
tion might be distinguished from a false one, except

2 Jeremiah vii. 31, 32.

* Henri Estienne, Traicte de la Conformitk du Langage Francois avec
le Grec, 1566. What Estienne means by the conformite of French and
Greek refers chiefly to syntactical peculiarities, common to both lan-
guages. ' En une epistre Latine que je mi 1'an passe audevant de quelques
miens dialogues Greds, ce propos m'eschappa, Quia multo majorem
Gallica lingua cum Graeca habet affinitatem quam Latina ; et quidam
tantum (absit invidia dicto) ut Gallos eo ipso quod nati sint Galli,
maximum ad linguae Grsecae cognitionem irpoW/nj/io seu TrAeo^e/crTj/ia
afferre putem.' Estienne's etymologies are mostly sensible and sober;
those which are of a more doubtful character are marked as such by
himself. It is not right to class so great a scholar as H. Estienne
together with Perion, and to charge him with having ignored the Latin
origin of French. (See August Fuchs, Die Romanischen Sprachen, 1849,
p. 9.) What Estienne thought of Perion may be seen from the following
extract (Traicte de la Conformite, p. 139) : ' II trouvera assez bo nombre
de telles en un livre de nostre maistre Perion : je ne di pas seulemet de
phantastiques, mais de sottes et ineptes, et si lourdes et asnieres que
n'estoyent les autres temoignages que ce poure moine nous a laissez de
sa lourderie et asnerie, on pourroit penser son ceuvre estre suppose'e/
Estienne is wrongly charged with having derived admiral, French amiral*
from a*ij.vp6s. He says it is Arabic, and so it is. It is the Arab Emir,
prince, leader, possibly with the Arabic article. French amiral ; Span.
almirante; It. almiraglio, as if from admirabilis. Hammer's derivation
from amir al lahr, commander of the sea, is untenable.

GUESSING ETYMOLOGY. 265

similarity of sound and meaning ; and how far this
similarity might be extended may be seen in such
works as Perion's Dialogi de Linguce Gallicce Ori-
gine (1557), or Guichard's Harmonie Etymologique
des Langues Hebraique, Ghaldaique, Syriaque, Greque,
Latine, Italienne, Espagnole, Allemande, Flamende,
Angioise (Paris, 1606). Perion derives brebis, sheep
(the Italian berbice) from probaton, not from the Latin
vervexy like berger from berbicarius. Envoyer he de-
rives from the Greek pempein, not from the Latin
inviare. Heureux he derives from the Greek ourios.

Now, if we take the last instance, it is impossible
to deny that there is a certain similarity of form
and meaning between the Greek and French ; and as
there can be no doubt that certain Trench words,
such as parler, pretre, aumone, were derived from
Greek, it would have been very difficult to convince
M. Perion that his derivation of heureux was not quite
as good as a ay other. There is another etymology
of the same word, according to which it is derived
from the Latin hora. Bonheur is supposed to be bona
hora ; malheur, mala hora ; and therefore heureux is
referred to a supposed Latin form, horosus, in the
sense of fortunatus. This etymology, however, is no
better than that of Perion. It is a guess, and no
more, and it falls to the ground as soon as any of the
more rigid tests of etymological science are applied
to it. In this instance the test is very simple. There
is, first of all, the gender of malheur and bonheur,
masculine instead of feminine. 4 Secondly, we find

Appui de ma vieillesse, et comble de mon heur,
Touche ces chereux blancs a qui tu rends 1'honneur.

Cid.

206 GUESSING ETYMOLOGY.

that malheur was spelt in Old French mal aur, which
is malum augurium. (See Diez, ' Etymologisches
Worterbuch der Eomanischen Sprachen, 5 1858, s. v.)
Thirdly, we find in Prove^al agur, augur, and from
it the Spanish aguero, an omen. Augurium itself
comes from avis, bird, and gur, telling, gur being
connected with garrire, garrulus, and the Sanskrit
gar or gri, to shout.

We may form an idea of what etymological tests
were in former times when we read in Guichard's
' Harmonie Etymologique : ' 5 ' With regard to the
derivations of words by means of the addition, sub-
traction, transposition, and inversion of letters, it is
certain that this can and must be done, if we wish
to find true etymologies. Nor is it difficult to believe
this, if we consider that the Jews wrote from right to
left, whereas the Greeks and the other nations, who
derive their languages from Hebrew, write from left
to right.' Hence, he argues, there can be no harm
in inverting letters or changing them to any amount.
As long as etymology was carried on on such prin-
ciples, it could not claim the name of a science.
It was an amusement in which people might dis-
play more or less of learning or ingenuity, but it
was unworthy of its noble title, ' The Science of
Truth.'

It is only in the present century that etymology
has taken its rank as a science, and it is curious to
observe that what Voltaire intended as a sarcasm

5 ' Quant a la d&rivaison des mots par addition, substraction, trans-
position, et inversion des lettres, il est certain que cela se pent et doit
ainsi faire, si on vent trouver les etymologies. Ce qui n'est point difficile
a croire, si nous considerons que les He"breux escrivent de la droitc a la
senestre, et les Grecs et autres de la senestre a la droite.'

ETYMOLOGICAL TESTS. 267

has now become one of its acknowledged principles.
Etymology is indeed a science in which identity, or
even similarity, whether of sound or meaning, is of
no importance whatever. Sound etymology has no-
thing to do with sound. We know words to be of
the same origin which have not a single letter in
common, and which differ in meaning as much as
black and white. Mere guesses, however plausible,
are completely discarded from the province of scien-
tific etymology. What etymology professes to teach
is no longer merely that one word is derived from
another; but how to prove, step by step, that one
word was regularly and necessarily changed into
another. As in geometry it is of very little use to
know that the squares of the two sides of a rectangular
triangle are equal to the square of the hypotenuse, it
is of little value in etymology to know, for instance,
that the French larme is the same word as the English
tear. Geometry professes to teach the process by
which to prove that which seems at first sight so
incredible ; and etymology professes to do the same.
A derivation, even though it be true, is of no real
value if it cannot be proved a case which happens
not unfrequently, particularly with regard to ancient
languages, where we must often rest satisfied with
refuting fanciful etymologies, without being able to
give anything better in their place. It requires an
effort before we can completely free ourselves from
the idea that etymology must chiefly depend on
similarity of sound and meaning; and in order to
dispose of this prejudice effectually, it may be useful
to examine this subject in full detail.

If we wish to establish our thesis that sound ety-

268 USEFULNESS OP MODERN LANGUAGES.

inology lias nothing to do with sound, we must prove
four points :

1. That the same word takes different forms in
different languages.

2. That the same word takes different forms in one
and the same language.

3. That different words take the same form in dif-
ferent languages.

4. That different words take the same form in one
and the same language.

In order to establish these four points, we should
at first confine our attention to the history of modern
languages, or, as we should say more correctly, to the
modern history of language. The importance of the
modern languages for a true insight into the nature of
language, and for a true appreciation of the principles
which govern the growth of ancient languages, has
never been sufficiently appreciated. Because a study
of the ancient languages has always been confined to
a small minority, and because it is generally supposed
that it is easier to learn a modern than an ancient
tongue, people have become accustomed to look upon
the so-called classical languages Sanskrit, Greek, and
Latin as vehicles of thought more pure and perfect
than the spoken or so-called vulgar dialects of Europe.
We are not speaking at present of the literature of
Greece or Eome or ancient India, as compared with
the literature of England, France, Germany, and Italy.
We speak only of language, of the roots and words,
the declensions, conjugations, and constructions pecu-
liar to each, dialect ; and with regard to these, it must
be admitted that the modern stand on a perfect

USEFULNESS OF MODERN LANGUAGES. 269

equality with, the ancient languages. Can it be sup-
posed that we, who are always advancing in art, in
science, in philosophy, and religion, should have
allowed language, the most powerful instrument of
the mind, to fall from its pristine purity, to lose its
vigour and nobility, and to become a mere jargon ?
Language, though it changes continually, does by no
means continually decay ; or at all events, what we
are wont to call decay and corruption in the history
of language is in truth nothing but the necessary con-
dition of its life. Before the tribunal of the Science of
Language, the difference between ancient and modern
languages vanishes. As in botany aged trees are not
placed in a different class from young trees, it would
be against all the principles of scientific classification
to distinguish between old and young languages. We
must study the tree as a whole, from the time when
the seed is placed in the soil to the time when it bears
fruit ; and we must study language in the same
manner as a whole, tracing its life uninterruptedly
from the simplest roots to the most complex deriva-
tives. He who can see in modern languages nothing
but corruption or anomaly, understands but little of
the true nature of language. If the ancient languages
throw light on the origin of the modern dialects, many
secrets in the nature of the dead languages can only
be explained by the evidence of the living dialects.
Apart from all other considerations, modern languages
help us to establish, by evidence which cannot be
questioned, the leading principles of the science of
language. They are to the student of language what
the tertiary, or even more recent, formations are to
the geologist. The works of Diez, his ' Comparative

270 USEFULNESS OF MODERN LANGUAGES.

Grammar of the Romanic Languages ' and his ' Lexi-
con Comparativum Linguarum Romanarum ' are as
valuable in every respect as the labours of Bopp,
Grimm, Zeuss, and Miklosich ; nay, they seem to me
to form -the best introduction to the study of the more
ancient periods of Aryan speech. Many points which,
with regard to Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, can only
be proved by inductive reasoning, can here be settled
by historical evidence.

In the "modern Eomance dialects we have before
our eyes a more complete and distinct picture or
repetition of the origin and growth of language than
anywhere else in the whole history of human speech.
We can watch the Latin from the time of the first
Scipionic inscription (283 B.C.) to the time when we
meet with the first traces of Neo- Latin speech in
Italy, Spain, and France. We can then follow for a
thousand years the later history of modern Latin,
in its six distinct dialects, all possessing a rich and
well- authenticated literature. If certain forms of
grammar are doubtful in French, they receive light
from the collateral evidence which is to be found in
Italian or Spanish. If the origin of a word is obscure
in Italian, we have only to look to French and
Spanish, and we shall generally receive some useful
hints to guide us in our researches. Where, except
in these modern dialects, can we expect to find a
perfectly certain standard by which to measure the
possible changes which words may undergo both in
form and meaning without losing their identity?
We can here silence all objections by facts, and we
can force conviction by tracing, step by step, every
change of sound and sense from Latin to French;

USEFULNESS OP MODEEN LANGUAGES. 271

whereas when, we have to deal with Greek and Latin
and Sanskrit, we can only use the soft pressure of
inductive reasoning.

If we wish to prove that the Latin coquo is the
same word as the Greek pepto, I cook, we have to
establish the fact that the guttural and labial tenues,
k and p, are interchangeable in Greek and Latin.
No doubt there is sufficient evidence in the ancient
languages to prove this. Few would deny the iden-
tity ofpente and quinque, and if they did, a reference
to the Oscan dialect of Italy, where five is not quinque
but pomtis, would suffice to show that the two forms
differed from each other by dialectic pronunciation
only. Yet it strengthens the hands of the etymolo-
gist considerably if he can point to living languages
and trace in these exactly the same phonetic influ-
ences. Thus the Gaelic dialect shows the guttural
where the Welsh shows the labial tenuis. Five in
Irish is coic, in Welsh pimp. Four in Irish is cethir,
in Welsh petwar. Again, in Wallachian, a Latin qu
followed by a is changed into p. Thus, aqua becomes
in Wallachian apa ; equa epa ; quatuor, patru. It is
easier to prove that the French meme is the Latin
semetipsissimus, than to convince the incredulous
that the Latin sed is a reflective pronoun, and meant
originally by itself.

Where, again, except in the modern languages, can
we watch the secret growth of new forms, and so
understand the resources which are given for the for-
mation of the grammatical articulation of language ?
Everything that is now merely formal in the gram-
matical system of French can easily be proved to
have been originally substantial ; and after we have

272 USEFULNESS OF MODERN LANGUAGES.

once become fully impressed with this fact, we
shall feel less reluctance in acknowledging the same
principle with regard to the grammatical system of
more ancient languages. If we have learnt how the
French future faimerai is a compound tense, con-
sisting of the infinitive and the auxiliary verb, avoir,
to have, we shall be more ready to admit the same
explanation for the Latin future in bo, and the Greek
future in so. Modern dialects may be said to let out
the secrets of language. They often surprise us by
the wonderful simplicity of the means by which the
whole structure of language is erected, and they
frequently repeat in their new formations the exact
process which had given rise to more ancient forms.
There can be no doubt, for instance, about the
Modern German entzwei. Entzweireissen does not
mean only to tear into two parts, but it assumes the
more general sense of to tear in pieces. In English,
too, . a servant will say that a thing came a-two,
though he broke it into many pieces. Entzwei, in
fact, answers exactly the same purpose as the Latin
dis in dissolvo, disturbo, distraho. And what is the
original meaning of this dis? Exactly the same as
the German entzwei, the Low-German tivei. In Low-
German mine Schau sint twei means my shoes are
torn. The numeral duo, with the adverbial termina-
tion is, is liable to the following changes : Du-is
may become dvis, and dvis dbis. In dbis either the d
or the b must be dropt, thus leaving either dis or
bis. Bis in Latin is used in the sense of twice,
dis in the sense of a-two. The same process leads
from duellum, Zweikampf, duel, to dvellum, dbellum,
and bellum; from Greek dyis to dFis and dis (twice) ;

CHANGE OP MEANING.

from duiginti to dviginti and viginti, twenty ; from
dvi-fcosi to dFi-kosi, Fi-hosi, and ei-Jcosi.

And what applies to the form, applies to the mean-
ing of words. What should we say if we were told
that a word which means good in Sanskrit meant
bad in Greek ? Yet we have only to trace the Mo-
dern German schlecht back through a few centuries
before we find that the same word which now means
bad was then used in the sense of good, 6 and we are
enabled to perceive, by a reference to intermediate
writers, that this transition was by no means so
violent as it seems to be. Schlecht meant right and
straight, but it also meant simple; simple came to
mean foolish; foolish, useless; useless, bad. Ekelhaft
is used by Leibniz in the sense of fastidious, deli-
cate; 7 it now means only what causes disgust. In-
genium, which meant an inborn faculty, is degraded
into the Italian ingannare, which means to cheat.
Raisonniren meant originally to reason ; but its ordi-
nary acceptation in German now is to grumble, to
talk at random. Scelig, which in Anglo-Saxon meant
blessed, beatus, appears in English as silly, and the
same ill-natured change may be observed in the
Greek euethes, guileless, mild, silly, and in the Ger-
man albern, stupid, the Old High-German alawdr,
verissinms, alawdri, benignus.

Thus, a word which originally meant life or time
in Sanskrit, has given rise to a number of words
expressing eternity, the very opposite of life and

6 ' Er (Got) enwil niht tuon wan slehtes : ' ' God will do nothing but
what is good.' Fridank's Sescheidenheit, in M. M.'s German Classics,
p. 121.

7 Not mentioned in Grimm's Dictionary.
II. T

274 HISTORY OF WORDS.

time. Ever and never in English are derived from
the same source from, which we have age. Age is
of course the French age. This age was in Old
French edage, changed into eage and age. Edage,
again, represents a Latin form, wtaticum, which was
had recourse to after the original cetas had dwindled
away into a mere vowel, the Old French ae (Diez, s.v.) .
Now the Latin cetas is a contraction of aivitas, as
uetemus is a contraction of oeviternus (cf. sempiternus).
jffivum, again, corresponds by its radical, though not
by its derivative elements, to Greek aiFon and the
Gothic aiv-s, time and eternity. In Sanskrit we
meet with a ay us, a neuter, which, if literally trans-
lated into Greek, would give as a Greek form aios,
and an adjective, aies, neut. aies. Now, although
aios did not survive in the actual language of Greece,
its derivatives exist, the adverbs aies and aiei. This
aiei is a regular dative (or rather locative) of aies,
which would form aiesi, aiei, like genesi and genei.
In Gothic, we have from aivs, time, the adverbs aiv,
ever, the Modern German je; and ni aiv, never, the
Modern German nie.

There is a peculiar charm in watching the various
changes of form and meaning in words passing down
from the Ganges or the Tiber into the great ocean of
modern speech. In the eighth century B.C. the Latin
dialect was confined to a small territory. It was but
one dialect out of many that were spoken all over
Italy. But it grew it became the language of
Rome and of the Romans, it absorbed all the other
dialects of Italy, the Umbrian, the Oscan, the Etrus-
can, the Celtic, and became by conquest the language
of Central Italy, of Southern and Northern Italy.

c PALACE.' 275

Erom thence it spread to Gaul, to Spain, to Germany,
to Dacia on the Danube. It became the language
of law and government in the civilised portions of
Northern Africa and Asia, and it was carried through
the heralds of Christianity to the most distant parts
of the.globe. It supplanted in its victorious progress
the ancient vernaculars of Gaul, Spain, and Portugal,
and it struck deep roots in parts of Switzerland and
Walachia. When it came in contact with the more
vigorous idioms of the* Teutonic tribes, though it
could not supplant or annihilate them, it left on their
surface a thick layer of foreign words, and it thus
supplied the greater portion in the dictionary of
nearly all the civilised nations of the world. Words
which were first used by Italian shepherds are now
used by the statesmen of England, the poets of
France, the philosophers of Germany ; and the faint
echo of their pastoral conversation may be heard in
the senate of Washington, in the cathedral of Calcutta,
and in the settlements of New Zealand.

I shall trace the career of a few of those early
Roman words, in order to show how words may
change, and how they adapt themselves to the chang-
ing wants of each generation. I begin with the word
Palace. A palace now is the abode of a royal family.
But if we look at the history of the name we are soon
carried back to the shepherds of the Seven Hills.
There, on the Tiber, one of the Seven Hills was called
the Collis Palatinus, and the hill was called Palatinus,
from Pales, a pastoral deity, whose festival was cele-
brated every year on the 21st of April as the birth-
day of Eome. It was to commemorate the day on
which Eomulus, the wolf-child, was supposed to have

T 2

276 ' PALACE.'

drawn the first furrow on the foot of that hill, and
thus to have laid the foundation of the most ancient
part of Rome, the Roma Quadrata. On this hill, the
Collis Palatinus, stood in later times the houses of
Cicero and of his neighbour and enemy Catiline.
Augustus built his mansion on the same hill, and his
example was followed by Tiberius and Nero. Under
Nero, all private houses had to be pulled down on the
Collis Palatinus, in order to make room for the em-
peror's residence, the DomuSj, Aurea, as it was called,
the Golden House. This house of Nero's was hence-
forth called the Palatium, and it became the type of
all the palaces of the kings and emperors of Europe.

The Latin pcdatium has had another very strange
offspring the French le palais, in the sense of palate.
Before the establishment of phonetic rules to regulate
the possible changes of letters in various languages, no
one could have doubted that le palais, the palate, was
the Latin palatum. However, palatum could never
have become palais, but only pale. How palatium
was used instead is difficult to explain. It was a
word of frequent use, and with it was associated the
idea of vault (palais vouti). Now vault was a very
appropriate name for the palate. In Italian the palate
is called il cielo delld bocca; in Greek ouran6s, oura-
niskos. Ennius, again, speaks of the vault of heaven
as palatum cceli. There was evidently a similarity
of conception between palate and vault, and vault and
palace; and hence palatium was most likely in vulgar
Latin used by mistake forpalatus, and thus carried on
into French. 8

Another modern word, the English court, the

8 See Diez, Lexicon Comp. s. v.

'COURT.' 277

French, cour, the Italian corte, carries us back to the
same locality and to the same distant past. It was on
the hills of Latium that cohors or cors was first used
in the sense of a hurdle, an enclosure, a cattle-yard. 9
The cohortes, or divisions of the Roman army, were
called by the same name ; so many soldiers consti-
tuting a pen or a court. It is generally supposed
that cors is restricted in Latin to the sense of cattle-
yard, and that cohors is always used in a military
sense. This is not so. Ovid (Fasti, iv. 704) used
cohors in the sense of cattle-yard :

Abstulerat multas ilia cohortis aves ;

and on inscriptions cors has been found in the sense
of cohors. The difference between the two words was
a difference of pronunciation merely. As nihil and
nil, mihi and mi, nehemo and nemo, prehendo and
prendo, so cohors, in the language of Italian peasants,
glided into cors.

Thus cors, cortis, from meaning a pen, a cattle-yard,
became in mediaeval Latin curtis, and was used, like
the German Hof, of the farms and castles built by
Roman settlers in the provinces of the empire. These
farms became the centres of villages and towns, and in
the modern names of Vraucourt, Graincourt, Liencourt,
Magnicourt, Aubignicourt, the older names of Vari
curtis, Grani curtis, Leonii curtis, Manii curtis, Albini
curtis, have been discovered. 10

Lastly, from meaning a fortified place, curtis rose

9 Town, too, is originally a hedge, the German Zaun. In Scotland
town still means a farmhouse, a hamlet.

10 Mannier, Etudes sur les Noms des Vilks : Paris, 1861, p. xxvi
Houze, Etude sur la Signification des Noms de Lieux en France : Paris,
1864.

278 ' COURT.'

to the dignity of a royal residence, and became syno-
nymous with palace. The two names having started
from the same place, met again at the end of their
long career.

Now, if we were told that a word which in Sanskrit
means cow-pen had assumed in Greek the meaning of
palace, and had given rise to derivatives such as
courteous (civil, refined), courtesy (a graceful inclina-
tion of the body, expressive of respect), to court (to
pay attentions, or to propose marriage), many people
would be incredulous. It is therefore of the greatest
use to see with our own eyes how, in modern lan-
guages, words are polished down, in order to feel less
sceptical as to a similar process of attrition in the
history of the more ancient languages of the world;

While names such as palace and court, and many
others, point back to an early pastoral state of society,
and could have arisen only among shepherds and hus-
bandmen, there are other words which we still use,
and which originally could have arisen only in a sea-
faring community. Thus government, or to govern,
is derived from the Latin gubernare. This gubernare
is a foreign word in Latin; that is to say, it was
borrowed by the Romans from the Greeks, who at a
very early time had sailed westward, discovered Italy,
and founded colonies there, just as in later times the
nations of Europe sailed further west, discovered
America, and planted new colonies there. The Greek
word which in Italy was changed into gubernare was
hubemdn, and it meant originally to handle the rudder,
or to steer. It was then transferred to the person or
persons entrusted with the direction of public affairs,
and at last came to mean to rule.

TITLES. 27f'

Minister meant, etymologically, a small man ; and
it was used in opposition to magister, a big man*
Minister is connected with minus, less ; magister with
magis, more. Hence minister, a servant, a servant
of the Crown, a minister. From minister came the
Latin ministerium, service; in French contracted
into metier, a profession. A minstrel was originally
a professional artist, and more particularly a singer
or poet. Even in the Mystery Plays, the theatrical
representations of portions of the Old or New Testa-
ment story, such as still continue to be performed
at Ammergau in Bavaria, mystery is a corruption
of ministerium; it meant a religious ministry or
service, and had nothing to do with mystery. It
ought to be spelt with an i, therefore, and not with
a y.

There is a background to almost every word which
we are using ; only it is darkened by ages, and re-
quires to be lighted up. Thus lord, which in modern
English has become synonymous with nobleman, was
in Anglo-Saxon hldf-ord, which is supposed by some
to mean ord, the origin, of hldf, loaf; while others,
more correctly, look upon it as a corruption of hldf-
weard, the warder of bread. 11 It corresponds to the
German Brotherr, and meant originally employer,,
master, lord. Lady in Anglo-Saxon is hlcefdige (ori-

11 See Grimm, Deutsches Worterbuch, s. v. ' Broth err,' first series,
p. 133. Grimm, in his Rechtsalterthumer, p. 230, note, says: Lord,
lady, are in A.S. hlaford, hldfdie, hldfdige. If we derive them from
hldf (loaf), they should be written with d and a ; but I do not consider
this derivation certain. We ought to consider the Old Norse lafavardr
(not hleifvardr, leifvardr). Vilk. cap. 86, p. 159 ; with Bion, lavardr,
who derives it from lav, collegium. The West Gothic law has lavardfor
master as opposed to servant.'

^80 TITLES.

ginally hldf-w ear dige), the feminine of hldf-weard.
Earl, the same as the Danish Jarl, was, I believe,
originally a contraction of ald-or (senior), elder; 12 earl,
therefore, and alder in alderman were originally the
same word. In Latin, an elder would be senior, and
this became changed into seigneur, sieur, and at last
dwindled down to sir. 13 Duke meant originally a
leader ; count, the Latin comes, a companion ; baron,
the mediaeval Latin baro, meant man ; and knight, the
German Knecht, was a servant. Each of these words
has risen in rank, but they have kept the same dis-
tance from each other.

As families rose into clans, clans into tribes, tribes
into confederacies, confederacies into nations, the
elders of each family naturally formed themselves
into a senate, senatus meaning a collection of elders.
The elders were also called the grey-headed, or the

12 See Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. p. 141. That A.S. earl was
A contraction of ealdor was first pointed out by Lappenberg in his
History of England. 'Ealdor or aldor, in Anglo-Saxon, denotes
princely dignity, without any definition of function whatever. In
Beowulf it is used as a synonym for cyning, freoden, and other words
applied to royal personages. Like many other titles of rank in the
various Teutonic tongues, it is derived from an adjective implying
age, though practically this idea does not by any means survive in it,
-any more than it does in the word senior, the origin of the feudal term
Seigneur. The Roman senatus, the Greek yepovvia, the ecclesiastical
irpeafivrepoi, are all examples of a like usage.' Kemble, Saxons, ii.
p. 128. That the etymological meaning, however, was never quite for-
gotten, we see from such passages as Bede, ii. 13 seg., where ' natu
majores ac regis conciliarii ' is translated by ealdormen and fccis cyningas
freahteras.

The phonetic changes from ealdor to earl find their analogy in the
German erle, alnus, which is the same word as eller (O.H.G. elira and
erila), and in eUer in ellermutter, which is a substitute for elder ; that is
io say, Ider became Her, and Her, rl.

13 Sere and siri occur as early as 1127. See Trinchera, Syllab. Memb.
Grcec. p. 134 : <re'pe a\efdv5uov

TITLES. 281

Greys, and hence the German Graf, gravio, originally
der Graue. 14 But at the head of such senates the

74 Grimm, in his Bechtsalterthumer, called attention to what he con-
sidered a difficulty in the derivation of Graf, from grau, grey. Grey in
Old High-German isgrdw, inflect, grdwer ; it is written with w, not with
v ; and w in the middle of words cannot regularly be changed into v or/.
Besides, he adds, the i in the Old Frankish grafio would remain un-
explained.

It would be impossible to deny the weight of these objections ; and if
Grimm had been able to propound another etymology of Graf, free from
all difficulties, it would be useless to inquire whether the difficulties
pointed out by him in the common etymology of the word, can be re-
moved. Let us first consider Grimm's etymology, and let us bear in
mind that in the true spirit of a truth-seeking scholar Grimm was very
far from claiming for it absolute certainty.

' I shall venture a new guess,' he writes, with his usual modesty.
' Rdvo was in Old High-German tigmim, tectum, perhaps also domus,
aula ; gardvjo, giravjo, girdvo, would signify comes, socius, like gistallo,
and gisaljo, gisello. This full form may perhaps be traced in old docu-
ments. It is supported by the Anglo-Saxon gerefa, which in the sense
of socius, comes, prcesul, tribunus, corresponds completely with the
Frankish grojio, and becomes in English reeve, rif ; so that the
abbreviated form sheriff is to be explained as scire-gerefa. ' The
difficulty that the A.S. word does not sound gerafa (cf. rcefter,
tignum, a rafter), I know not how to meet, except by the hypothesis that
the Anglo-Saxons, too, borrowed the name and the dignity from the
Franks, and therefore disfigured the vowel. We see from the lex 35
Edouardi Confess. (Cane. 4, 34 la) that greve was foreign to the genuine
Anglo-Saxon law.'

Let us look at the facts placed before us by Grimm, and on which he
bases his etymology of Graf. In O.H.G. rdvo means a beam, not a
house. If it meant ' a house,' then giravjo might have been derived
from it in the sense of companion. This word giravjo, however, does
not exist in O.H.G. ; it is merely formed in analogy with gisaljo
(giselljo), Gesellc, i. e. sharing the same sal or house, and on the suppo-
sition that rdvo, a rafter, may also have meant a house.

Now if we consult historical documents, we find that in the earliest
specimens of Old High-German, in the Vocabularius St. Galli (vii.
cent.), presses is rendered, not by giravjo, but by graiie. In the Vocabu-
larius Optimus (ed. Wackernagel, 1847, p. 38), i.e. in the 14th cen-
tury, comes is still explained by Graue, comitissa by Grafinna. How and
at what time could giravjo have been changed intograue?

Secondly: if we try to apply the same etymology to the Anglo-Saxon

282 TITLES.

German nations at an early time placed a king. In
Latin the king is called rex, the Sanskrit r a,g (r &t) and

gerefa, we find that it refuses to be derived from O.H.G. rdvo, beam,
which exists in A.S. in the form of rcef-ter, rafter. According to this
etymology the A.S. word would have been gercefa, not gerefa. Grimm,
in order to meet this difficulty, is driven to consider gerefa as a foreign
word in A.S., and he tries to show, but without success, that both
the name and the dignity of gerefa were simply taken over from the
Franks.

Seeing, therefore, that giravjo is no real word, and that if it were it
would not explain the A.S. gerefa, I looked again at Grimm's objections
to the former etymology of Graf, and I did not think they were unan-
swerable. ' Grdwo, grey? he says, ' has a w, not v.' Can w become v?
Certainly not in the regular growth of German words. But let us con-
sider that we are dealing here with a word which, at a very early time,
became a title, and a title recognised not only by people speaking Ger-
man, but likewise by people speaking Latin dialects. Now to a Roman
the sound of the German w was well-nigh unpronounceable. At the
beginning of words a Koman pronounced the German w as gu ; in the
middle of words he pronounced it v. Hence the O.H.G. bid, inflect.
blawer, is in Old Span, blavo, in Italian dialects biavo, in mediaeval
Latin blavus.* The O.H.G. iwa, yew-tree, is Italian iva, French if.

In trying to pronounce grd, or grawer, a Roman provincial would have
pronounced the w as v ; and, with the usual termination io, he would have
changed the German word into the Latin gravio. And is this a merely
hypothetical form? By no means. We find the form gravio in the
Charta Chlodovei III., apud Mabillonium, torn. iii. SS. Ord. S. Benedict]',
p. 617 (see Du Cange, s. v.). We find it in Paulus Warnefridus, lib. v.
'De Gestis Langob.' cap. 36 : ' Cum Comite Bajoariorum quam Gravioncin
dicunt.' Grafio, graffio, and graphic are modifications of one and the
same word, all authenticated by passages from mediaeval charters and
books.

If the original form of Graf had \}Q&o.giravjo, how could it be explained
that neither in German nor in Latin documents do we ever meet with
the initial syllable ge or gi, but always with gr? A If, on the contrary.

See Schmidt, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, p. 597.

b See Diez, Grammatik, p. 305 ; Lexicon, s. v. ' Biavo.

See Du Cange, s. v. ' Grafio,' in Lege Salica, tit. 34, 5. Graffio in
Vita 8. Eligii, lib. ii. cap. 52. Charta Kenulfi Regis Merciorum, torn. i.
Monast. Angl. p. 100. Graphio, Anastasius, in Hadriano P. P. p. 106.

d Waitz found garafio in one MS. See Leo Meyer, in Kuhn's Zeit*
tchrift, v. p. 157.

TITLES. 283

r a #an, in Maharaja; and this rex, the French
roiy meant originally steersman, from regere, to

we look on gramo as the latinised form of an old German word, the
anomalous change of w into v is explained, and the official form gramo
serves as a new starting-point in the history of this much disputed
title.

Grimm's etymology of Graf is by no means the only one which has
been opposed to that of Graf as the grey or the elder. Kemble, in his
Saxons in England, ii. p. 151, writes :

' The exact meaning and etymology of gerefa have hitherto eluded the
researches of our best scholars, and yet, perhaps, few words have been
more zealously investigated ; if I add another to the number of attempts
to solve the riddle, it is only because I believe the force of the word will
become much more evident when we have settled its genuine derivation ;
and that philology has yet a part to play in history which has not been
duly recognised.'

After recapitulating Grimm's objections to the etymology of graf =
grey, Kemble continues :

' More plausibility lay in the etymology of gerefa adopted by Spelman.
This rested upon the assumption that gerefa was equivalent to gereafa,
and that it was derived from reafan, to plunder. This view was
strengthened by the circumstance of the word being frequently translated
by exactor, the levying of fines and the like being a characteristic part
of a reeve's duties. But this view is unquestionably erroneous. In the
first place gerefa could not have been universally substituted for the
more accurate gereafa, which last word never occurs, any more than on
the other hand does refan or reafan. Secondly, an Anglo-Saxon gerefa,
if for gereafa, would necessarily imply a High-Dutch garaupjo, a word
which we not only do not find, but which bears no resemblance to kravo
and gravo, which we do find. ... I am naturally very diffident of
my own opinion in a case of so much obscurity, and where many
profound thinkers have failed of success ; still it seems to me that
gerefa may possibly be referable to the word rofan or refan, to
call aloud; if this be so, the names denote bannitor, the summoning
or proclaiming officer, him by whose summons or proclamation the
court and the levy of the foremen were called together ; and this sugges-
tion answers more nearly than any other to the nature of the origi-
nal office. In this sense, too, a reeve's district is called his manung
bannum.'

Schmidt, in his Gesetze der Angelsachsen, is inclined to defend Spel-
man's view, and brings evidence to show that the diphthong ea in Anglo-
Saxon may be spelt as e, and that forms like gereafa, geroefa, occur

284 TITLES.

steer. 15 The Teutonic nations, on the contrary, used
the name Konig or King, and this corresponds to the
Sanskrit granaka. What did it mean? It simply
meant father, the father of a family, ' the king of his
own Jcin,' the first of a clan, the father of a people. 16

Lappenberg, too, in his History of England, and his translator, Mr.
Thorpe (vol. ii. p. 328, note), both seem favourable to this etymology.

Richthofen in his Altfriesisches Wbrterbuch, after rejecting the ety-
mologies of Grimm, Spelman, Lappenberg, and others, takes up the
defence of an old derivation of Graf from ypdtyeiv, which Kemble had
consigned 'to the storehouse of blunders.' 'Nothing remains,' says
Richthofen, ' but to return to the opinion so common in old books, that
the word is borrowed from the Greek ypcupevs, a writer. He points to the
French greffier, i. e. graphiarius, and he thinks that the word was intro-
duced by the Franks into Germany, and from Germany imported into
the Northern countries.

The chief objection to Richthofen's derivation is the fact that,
according to Savigny's researches, the office of gruf was an old German
office, and could not have had originally a Greek or Latin name.
4 Whatever its etymology,' says Waitz, no mean authority, ' the name of
Graf is certainly German.'

For that very reason the derivation from graw, grey, would, I think,
be preferable. But though I consider that the derivation of gravio
from graw can be defended, I am by no means certain that a better
etymology may not be discovered; nor should I be at all surprised if
the Anglo-Saxon gcrefa turned out to be etymologically unconnected with
the German graf.

Prof. Leo Meyer (in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, v. 155), called attention to the
Gothic ga-grefti in the sense of command, as supplying an etymology of
the O.H.G. gravo, and he derived gagrtfti from the Sanskrit root kalp
or kip. But this would be in defiance of Grimm's law, which requires
& Sanskrit aspirate in place of the Gothic media. For the same reason
Gothic gritan cannot be identified with Sanskrit krand.

15 Though in Sanskrit rd^an seems to be derived from ra^, to be
brilliant, it is really derived from the root ar<7, from which rigu,
straight, and ra^ish^a, straightest.

16 The exact derivation and meaning of king have been mooted points
among German scholars. That king corresponds to Sanskrit ^anaka
has never been denied, but opinions differ as to the exact process by
which the Sanskrit and German words were derived from the root # an
(gan), to create, and how they came to assume the meaning of king.
In Sanskrit </anaka e means producing, parent, then king, (ranaki, in

Pan. vii. 3, 35, schol.

TITLES. 285

Need I add what was the original, and what is still
the true, meaning of queen ? In German we have
simply formed a feminine of Konig, namely, Konigin.
In English, on the contrary, the old word for mother
has been retained, and cwen in A.S. means queen.
In the translation of the Bible by Ulfilas, in the

the sense of mother or queen, does not exist in Sanskrit, but the analo-
gous form yvvaKi has been preserved in the Greek genitive ywaiK-6s. r
Wife in Sanskrit is gna (i.e. gana). ganih, and ^ana, mother and
wife.

Grimm (Rcchtsalterthumer, p. 230), after putting together the Old
Norse konung-r (shortened to kongr}, the A.S. cyning, the Old Saxon
Jcuning, the Old High-German chuninc, remarks : ' I think we are not
allowed to derive chuninc, tuning, from kuni (genus), O.H.G. ckunni,
Old Norse Jcyn, because from kyn, the Old Norse, could only have
formed kynlngr, not konungrj* He then points out that there exists
in Old Norse konr, in the sense of noble and king. This Jconr is repre-
sented in the Edda (Rigsmal, 38) as the youngest son of Jarl, Jarl him-
self being the son of Fdfrir oJc Moftir, father and mother. The forms
corresponding to the O.N. Jconr in Gothic and Old High-German would
have been kuns and cliun or chon, which have not been preserved ; but the-
O.H.S. chuninc may be considered as derived from it. The correspond-
ing Gothic form would have been kuniggs.

I hold that O.N. konr and konungr, O.H.G. chuninc, A.S. cyning, were
common Aryan words, not formed out of German materials, and there-
fore not to be explained as regular German derivatives, but preserved as
relics of an earlier period of language, and phonetically adapted to the
peculiar pronunciation of the different Aryan races. I find that Bopp
(Comp. Gr. 950) takes nearly the same view. He considers the n of
ing as a phonetic modification, and identifies the Teutonic suffix ing
with Sanskrit aka. He then continues : ' If this be so, we are allowed
to compare O.H.G. forms like kun-ing, king (also kun-ig], thence kun-
inga, with Sanskrit formations in aka (nart-aka, dancer), and with
Greek formations in O.-KOS (<J>V\-O.-KO-S). I prefer this to ascribing the i
to the time of the undivided Aryan language, and explaining i-nga by
Sanskrit i-ka, as, for instance, in khan-i-ka, digger. Probably
kun-in-g signified originally man KOT' Qo%i\v and corresponds in root
and suffix to the Sanskrit g a n - a - k a, father, as creator.

f See Curtius, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, iv. 216.

Richthofen in his Altfriesisches Worterbuch, p. 870, brings further
evidence to show that the German words for king cannot be derived from
the German words for race.

286 TITLES.

fourth century, we meet wiih qvens and qvino, mean-
ing wife and woman. In the eleventh century we
read in Nbtker, Sol chena iro charal furhten unde
minnon, ' a wife shall fear and love her husband.'
After the fifteenth century the word is no longer
used in High-German, but in the Scandinavian lan-
guages the word still lives, Jcarl a-nd kona still mean-
ing man and wife.

We thus see how languages reflect the history of
nations, and how, if .properly analysed, almost every
word will tell us of many vicissitudes through which
it passed on its way from Central Asia to India or to
Persia, to Asia Minor, Greece, and Italy, to Eussia,
Gaul, Germany, the British Isles, America, New Zea-
land ; nay, back again, in its world-encompassing
migrations, to India and the Himalayan regions from
which it started. Many a word has thus gone the
round of the world, and it may go the same round
again and again. For although words change in
sound and meaning to such an extent that not one
single letter remains the same, and that their meaning
becomes the very opposite of what it originally was,
yet it is important to observe, that since the beginning
of the world no new addition has ever been made to
the substantial elements of speech, any more than to
the substantial elements of nature. There is a con-
stant change in language, a coming and going of
words ; but no man can ever invent an entirely new
word. We speak to all intents and purposes substan-
tially the same language as the earliest ancestors of
our race ; and, guided by the hand of scientific ety-
mology, we may pass on from century to century
through the darkest periods of the world's history,

DIFFERENT FOEMS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 287

till the stream of language on which, we ourselves
are moving carries us back to those distant regions
where we seem to feel the presence of our earliest
forefathers, and to hear the voices of the earth-born
sons of Man u.

Those distant regions in the history of language
are, no doubt, the most attractive, and, if cautiously
explored, full of instructive lessons to the historian
and the philosopher. But before we ascend to those
distant heights, we must learn to walk on the smoother
ground of modern speech. The advice of Leibniz,
that the Science of Language should be based on the
study of modern dialects, has been but too much
neglected, and the results of that neglect are visible
in many works on Comparative Philology. Confining
ourselves therefore for the present chiefly to the
modern languages of Europe, let us see how we can
establish the four fundamental points which constitute
the Magna Charta of our science.

1. The same Word takes different Forms in Different
Languages.

This sounds almost like a truism. If the six
dialects which sprang from Latin have become six
independent languages, it would seem to follow that
the same Latin word must have taken a different form
in each of them. French became different from
Italian, Italian from Spanish, Spanish from Portu-
guese, because the same Latin words were pro-
nounced differently by the inhabitants of the coun-
tries conquered or colonised by Rome, so that, after
a time, the language spoken by the colonists of Gaul

288 DIFFERENT FOB MS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

grew to be unintelligible to the colonists of Spain.
Nevertheless, if we are told that the French meme is
the same as the Italian medesimo, and that both are
derived from the Latin ipse, we begin to see that even
this first point requires to be carefully examined, and
may help to strengthen our arguments against all
etymology which trusts to vague similarity of sound
or meaning.

How then can French meme be derived from Latin
ipse? By a process which is strictly genealogical,
and which furnishes us with a safer pedigree than that
of the Montmorencys, or any other noble family. In
Old French meme is spelt meisme, which comes very
near to Spanish mismo and Portuguese mesmo. The
corresponding term in Prove^al is medesme, which
throws light on the Italian medesimo. Instead of
medesme, Old Proven9al supplies smetessme. In order
to connect this with Latin ipse, we have only to con-
sider that ipse passes through Old Prove^al eps into
Provenal eis, Italian esso, Spanish ese, and that the
Old Spanish esora represents ipsd hord, as French en-
core represents hanc horam. If es is ipse, essme would
be ipsissimum, Provencal medesme, metipsissimum, and
Old Provencal smetessme, semetipsissimum. 17

To a certain point it is a matter of historical rather
than of philological inquiry, to find out whether the
English beam is the German Baum. Beam in Anglo-
Saxon is beam, Frisian bam, Old Saxon bam and bom,
Middle High-German bourn, Modern High-German
Baum. It is only when we come to Gothic bagms that
philological arguments come in, in order to explain

17 Diez, GrammatiJo and Lexicon, s. v.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 289

the loss of g before m. This must be explained by a
change of beagm into beawm, and lastly into beam. 18

If we take any word common to all the Teutonic
dialects, we shall find that it varies in each, and that
it varies according to certain laws. Thus, to hear is
in Gothic hausjan, in Old Norse heyra, in Old Saxon
horian, in Anglo-Saxon hyran, in Old High- German
horran, in Swedish hora, in Danish hore, in Dutch
liooren, in Modern German horen.

We have only to remember that English ranges,
as far as its consonants go, with Gothic and Low-
German, while Modern German belongs to the third
or High- German stage, in order to discover without
difficulty the meaning of many a German word by
the mere application of Grimm's Law. Thus :

in.

Drei is three
Du is thou
Denn is then

Zehn is ten
Zagel is tail
Zahn is tooth

Tag is day
Trommel is drum
Traum is dream

Durch is through
Denken is to think
Drang is throng

Zaun is town
Zinn is tin
Zerrtn is to tear

T(h)euer is dear
T(h)au is dew
Taube is dove

Durst is thirst Zange is tong Teich is dough.

If we compare tear with the French larme, a mere
consultation of historical documents would carry us
from tear to the earlier forms, taer, tehr, teher, tceher,
to Gothic tagr. The A.S. tocher, however, carries us
back, even more simply than the Gothic tagr, to the
corresponding form dakry in Greek, and (d)asru in
Sanskrit. We saw in our last Lecture how every
Greek d is legitimately represented in Anglo-Saxon
by t, and fc by h. Hence tceher is dakry. In the
same manner there is no difficulty in tracing the

18 Grimm, Deutsche GrammatiJc, ii. 66 ; i. 261.
II. U

290 DIFFERENT FORMS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

French larme back to Latin lacruma. The question
then arises, are ddkry and lacruma cognate terms ?
The secondary suffix ma in lacruma is easily ex-
plained, and we then have Greek ddkry and Latin
lacru, differing only by their initals. Here a pho-
netic law must remove the last difference. D, if
pronounced without a will, is apt to lapse into L.
Ddkry, therefore, could become lacru, and both can
be derived from a root dak, to bite. 19 Only let it
be borne in mind that, although an original d may
dwindle down to I, no I in the Aryan languages
was ever changed into d, and that it would be wrong
to say that I and d are interchangeable.

The following table will show at a glance a few of
the descendants of the Latin preposition ante

ANTE, before.
It. ami; Sp. antes; Old Fr. ans. aim (ainsnc=aine, elder).

ANTE IPSUM.

Old Fr. -ahifois, before.

It. anzian? ; Sp. anciano; Fr. ancien, old.

ABANTE, from before.

It. avanti; Fr. avanf, before.

It. avanzare; Sp. avanzar ; Fr. avaticer, to bring forward.
It. vantaggio; Sp. ventaja; Fr. avantage, advantage.

DEABANTE.
It. davanti; Fr. (levant, before.

Fr. devancer, to get before.

If instead of a Latin we take a Sanskrit word, and
follow it through all its vicissitudes from the earliest
to the latest times, we see no less clearly how in-
evitably one and the same word assumes different
forms in different dialects. Tooth in Sanskrit is

19 SecM.M., in Kuhn's Zeitschrtft, v. 152 ; Pott, Etymologischc Forsch-
ungen, ii. 58-60, 442, 450.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 291

dat (uom. d ant aft, but genitive of the old base,
data ft). The same word appears in Latin as dens,
dentis, in Gothic as tunthus, in English as tooth, in
Modern German as Zahn. All the changes are ac-
cording to law, and it is not too much to say that in
the different languages the common word for tooth
could hardly have appeared under any form but that
in which we find it. But is the Greek odous, odontos,
the same word as dens ? And is the Greek od6ntes,
the Latin denies, a mere variety of edontes and
edentes, the eaters ? I am inclined to admit that the
o in odontes is a merely phonetic excrescence, for
although I know of 110 other well-established case in
Greek where a simple initial d assumes this prosthetic
vowel, it would be against all rules of probability to
suppose that Greek had lost the common Aryan term
for teeth, danta, and replaced it by a new and inde-
pendent word so exactly like the one which it had
given up. Prosthetic vowels are very common in
Greek before certain double consonants, and before
r, I, n, m. 20 The addition of an initial o in od6ntes
may provisionally be admitted. But if so, it follows
that odSntes cannot be a mere variety of edontes.
For wherever Greek has these initial vowels, while
they are wanting in Sanskrit, Latin, &c., they are,
in the true sense of the word, prosthetic vowels.
They are not radical, but merely adscititious in
Greek, while if od6ntes were derived from the root
td, we should have to admit the loss of a radical
initial vowel in all the members of the Aryan family

20 Curtius, Grundzuge der Gricchischen Etymologic, ii. 291 ; Savels-
berg, in Hofer's Zdtschrift, iv. p. 91.

u 2

292 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

except Greek an admission unsupported by any
analogy. 21

In languages which possess no ancient literature
the charm of tracing words back from century to
century to its earliest form is of course lost. Con-
temporary dialects, however, with their extraordinary
varieties, teach us even there the same lessons, show-
ing that language must change and is always chang-
ing, and that similarity of sound is the same unsafe
guide here as elsewhere. One instance must suffice.
Man in Malay is orang ; hence orang utan, the man
of the forest, the Orangutang. This orang is pro-
nounced in different Polynesian dialects, rang, oran,
olan, Ian, ala, la, na, da, ra.

We now proceed to a consideration of our second
point.

2. The same Word takes different Forms in the

same Language.

There are, as you know, many Teutonic words
which, through two distinct channels, found their
way twice into the literary language of Chaucer,
Shakespeare, and Milton. They were imported into
England at first by Saxon pirates, who gradually
dislodged the Eoman conquerors and colonists from
their castra and colonice, and the Welsh inhabitants
from their villages, and whose language formed the
first permanent stratum of Teutonic speech in these
islands. They introduced such words as, for in-
stance, weardian, to ward, wile, cunning, wise, manner.
These words were German words, peculiar to that soft

21 See Schleicher, Compendium, 43.

22 Logan, Journal of Indian Archipelago, iii. p. 665.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 293

dialect of German which, is known by the name of
Low-German, and which was spoken on those north-
ern coasts from whence the Juts, the Angles, and
Saxons embarked on their freebooting expeditions.

Another branch of the same German stem was the
High- German, spoken by the Franks and other
Teutonic tribes, who became the conquerors of Gaul,
and who, though they adopted in time the language
of their Roman subjects, preserved nevertheless in
their conversational idiom a large number of their
own home-spun words. The French or Frankish
language is now a Romanic dialect, and its grammar
is but a blurred copy of the grammar of Cicero.
But its dictionary is full of Teutonic words, more or
less Romanised to suit the pronunciation of the
Roman inhabitants of Gaul, Among warlike terms
of German origin, we find in French guerre, the same
as ivar ; massacre, from metzeln, to cut down, or metz-
gen, to butcher, which was originally derived from
Latin macellum, meat-markets ; macellarius, butcher ;
auberge, Italian albergo, the German Herberge, bar-
racks for the army, Old High-German heriberga ;
bivouac, the German Beiwaclit ; boulevard, German
Bolliverk; bourg, German Burg; breche, a breach, from
brechen; havresac, German Hafersack; haveron, Old
High- German habaro, oats ; 23 canapsa, the German
Kitappsack, Ess-sack, from knappen, knabern, or
Schnappsack; 2 * eperon, Italian sperone, German
Spom; heraut, Italian araldo, German Herold, i.e.

- 3 See M. M., ffber Dcutsche Schattirung Romanischcr Worte, in Kuhn's
Zeittchrift, \. p. 14.

''* Danneil, Worterbuch der AltmarJcisch-plattdetttschen Mundart.
1859, s. v.

294 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

Heerwalt, or from Old High-German haren, French
harer, to call ; marechal, Old German mariscalco.

Many maritime words, again, came from German,
more particularly from Low-German. French cha-
loupe = Sloop, Dutch sloep ; cahute = Dutch kajuit,
German Kaue, or Koje ; stribord, the right side of
a ship, English starboard, Anglo-Saxon steorbord,
Steuerbord ; hdvre, Hafen ; Nord, Sud, Est, Guest, all
come from German.

But much commoner words are discovered to be
German under a French disguise. Thus, haie, hedge,
is the Old High-German haga, the Modern German
Hecke, the English hay, and probably haha ; 25 pre-
served also in hips and haws ; hair, to hate, Anglo-
Saxon hatian ; hameau, hamlet, Heim; hater, to haste ;
honnir, to blame, Gothic hdunjan, hb'hnen; harangue,
(h)ring, as in ringleader. The initial h betrays the
German origin of all these words. Again, choisir, to
choose, is kiesen, A.S. ceosan, Gothic kiusan, or Gothic
kausjan, to examine ; danser, tanzen ; causer, to chat,
kosen ; derober, to rob, rauben; epier, to spy, spahen;
gratter, kratzen; gritnper, to climb, klimmen; grincer,
grinsen, or Old High- German grimison ; gripper,
greifen; rotir, rosten; tirer, to tear; tomber, to tumble;
guinder, to wind; deguerpir, to throw away, werfen. 2 ^

It was this language, this Germanised Latin, which
was adopted by the Norman invaders of France,
themselves equally Teutonic, and representing ori-
ginally that third branch of the Teutonic stock of

25 Capitulaires de Charles le Chauve, tit. xxxvi. : ' Quicunque istis
temporibus castella et firmitates et haias sine nostro verbo fecerint.'
Brachet, Diction, etymologique.

26 See Diez, Grammatik der Romanischen Sprachen, passim. Borring,
Stir la Limite meridionale de la Monarchic danoise.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 295

speech which is known by the name of Scandinavian.
These Normans, or Northmen, speaking their newly-
acquired Franco-Roman dialect, became afterwards
the victors of Hastings, and their language, for a
time, ruled supreme in the palaces, law courts,
churches, and colleges of England. The same thing,
however, which had happened to the Frank con-
querors of Gaul and the Norman conquerors of Neus-
tria happened again to the Norman conquerors of
England. They had to acquire the language of
their conquered subjects 5 and as the Franks, though
attempting to speak the language of the Eoman
provincials, retained large numbers of barbaric terms,
the Normans, though attempting to conform to the
rules of the Saxon grammar, retained many a Nor-
man word which they had brought with them from
France.

Thus the German word wise was common to the
High and the Low branches of the German language ;
it was a word as familiar to the Frank invaders of Gaul
as it was to the Saxon invaders of England. In the
mouths of the Eoman citizens of France, however, the
German initial W had been replaced by the more gut-
tural sound of gu. Wise had become guise, and in this
new form it succeeded in gaining a place side by side
with its ancient prototype, wise. By the same process
guile, the old French guile, was adopted in English,
though it was the same word originally as the Anglo-
Saxon wile, which we have in wily. The changes
have been more violent through which the Old High-
German wetti, a pledge (Gothic vadi), became changed
into the mediaeval Latin wadium or vadium,* 7 Italian

27 Diez, Lexicon Comparativum, s. r.

29(5 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

gaggio, and French gage. Nevertheless, we must re-
cognise in the verbs to engage or disengage Norman,
varieties of the same word, which is preserved in the
pure Saxon forms to bet and to wed** literally to bind
or to pledge.

There are many words of the same kind which
have obtained admittance twice into the language of
England, once in their pure Saxon form, and again
in their Eoman disguise. Words beginning in Italian
with gua, gue, gui are almost invariably of German
origin. A few words are mentioned, indeed, in
which a Latin v seems to have been changed into g.
But as, according to general usage, Latin v remains v
in the Romance dialects, it would be more correct to
admit that in these exceptional cases Latin words had
first been adopted and corrupted by the Germans, and
then, as beginning with German w, and not with
Latin v, been readopted by the Eoman provincials.

These exceptional cases, however, are very few, and
somewhat doubtful. It was natural, no doubt, to
derive the Italian guado, a ford, the French gue, from
Latin vadum. But the initial gua points first to
German, and there we find in Old High- German wat,
a ford, watan, to wade. The Spanish vadear may be
derived from Latin, or it may owe its origin to a
confusion in the minds of those who were speaking
and thinking in two languages, a Teutonic and a
Bomanic. The Latin vadum and the German wat
may claim a distant relationship.

Guere in je ne crois guere was for a time traced
back to parum, varium, valide, avare, or grandem rem,

28 In tlie North one still hears such expressions as ' I'll wad ye a
pound ;' ' I'll wad it is so.'

DIFFEBENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 297

the Proven9al granren. But, like the Italian guari,
it comes from wdri, true, which gradually assumed
the meaning of very. The Latin verus changes to
vero and vrai.

Gkiastare, French gdter, has been traced back to
Latin vastare ; but it is clearly derived from Old
High- German wastjan, to waste, though again a con-
fusion of the two words may be admitted in the minds
of the bilingual Franks.

Guepe, wasp, is generally derived from vespa; it
really comes from the German Wespe.*

It has frequently been pointed out that this very
fact, the double existence of the same word (warden
and guardian, &c.), has added much to the strength
and variety of English. Slight shades of meaning can
thus be kept distinct, which in other languages must
be allowed to run together. The English brisk, frisky,
and fresh, all come from the same source. 31 Yet
there is a great difference between a brisk horse, a
frisky horse, and a fresh horse a difference which it
would be difficult to express in any other language.
It is a cause of weakness in language if many ideas
have to be expressed by the same word, and fresh in
English, though relieved by brisk, and frisky, em-
braces still a great variety of conceptions. We hear
of a fresh breeze, of fresh water (opposed to stag-

29 Diez, Lexicon Comp. s. v., second edition, proposes weiger instead
of wdri.

30 In Ital. golpe and wipe, Span, vulpeja, Fr. goupil, Lat. vulpecula,
and a few more words of the same kind, mentioned by Diez (p. 267), the
cause of confusion is less clear ; but even if admitted as real exceptions,
they would in no way invalidate the very general rule.

31 Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. 63, frisJcan, frasJc, fruskun ;
O.TL.G.friscing, victima (caro recens), frischling, porcellus.

298 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

iiant), of fresh butter, of fresh news, of a fresh hand,
a freshman, of freshness of body and mind ; and such
a variation as a brisk fire, a brisk debate, is therefore
all the more welcome. Fresh has passed through a
Latin channel, as may be seen from the change of its
vowel, and to a certain extent from its taking in
refreshment the suffix ment, which is generally, though
not entirely, restricted to Latin words. 32 Under a tho-
roughly foreign form it exists in English as fresco,
in fresco-paintings, so called because the paint was
applied to the walls whilst the plaster was still fresh
or damp.

The same process explains the presence of double
forms, such as sMp and skiff, the French esquif; from
which is derived the Old French esquiper, the Modern
French equiper, the English to equip. Or again, sloop
and shallop, the French chaloupe.

Thus bank and bench are German ; banquet is Ger-
man Eomanised.

Bar is German (O.H.G. para); barrier is Ro-
manised. Of. Span, barra, a bar, French embarras,
and English embarrassed.

Ball is German ; balloon Romanised.

To pack is German ; bagage Eomanised.

Ring, a circle, is German; O.H.G. hring. To ha-
rangue, to address a ring, to act as a ringleader, is
Romanised ; It. aringa, Fr. la harangue.

Sometimes it happens that the popular instinct
of etymology reacts on these Romanised German
words, and, after tearing off their foreign mask, re-
stores to them a more homely expression. Thus the

32 After Saxon verbs, ment is found in shipment, easement, fulfilment,
forebodement.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 299

German Krebs, the O.H.G. krebiz, is originally the
same word as the English crab. This krebiz appears
in French as ecrevisse ; it returned to England in this
outlandish form, and was by an off-hand etymology
reduced to the Modern English crayfish.

Thus filibuster seems to be derived from the Spanish
filibote or flibote, but the Spanish word itself was a
corruption of the English fly-boat.

And as the German elements entered into the
English language at various times and under various
forms, so did the Latin. Latin elements flowed into
England at four distinct periods, and through four
distinct channels.

First, through the Roman legions and Roman
colonists, from the time of Caesar's conquest, 55 B.C.,
to the withdrawal of the Roman legions in 412 :
e.g. colonia x coin ; castra = Chester (ceastra); stratum =
street (street).

Secondly, through the Christian missionaries and
priests, from, the time of St. Augustine's landing in
597 to the time of Alfred: e.g. candela = candle ;
Kyriake = church ; decanus = dean ; regula = rule ;
corona = crown ; discus dish ; uncia = inch.

Thirdly, through the Norman nobility and Norman
ecclesiastics and lawyers, who, from the days of Ed-
ward the Confessor, brought into England a large
number of Latin terms, either in their classical or in
their vulgar and Romanised form.

Fourthly, through the students of the classical
literature of Rome, since the revival of learning to
the present day. These repeated importations of
Latin words account for the coexistence in English
of such terms as minster and monastery. Minster

300 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

found its way into English through the Christian
missionaries, and is found in its corrupt or Anglicised
form in the earliest documents of the Anglo-Saxon
language. Monastery was the same word, only pro-
nounced with less corruption by later scholars, or
clergymen, familiar with the Latin idiom. Thus
paragraph is the Latin paragraphus, but slightly
altered ; pilcrow, pylcrafte, and paraf, are vulgar cor-
ruptions of the same word. 33 Arithmetic in the
middle ages was called Awgrim or algrim. The idea
which children at school connected with the name,
requires no explanation. But even more extraordi-
nary is the etymology of the word suggested by the
author of an early English treatise, Craft of Algrim,
mentioned in Mr. Thomas Wright's edition of the
Alliterative Poem on the Deposition of King Richard II. ,
1838, p. 58. c The name of this craft is in Latyn
Algorismus, and in English Algrim, and it is namid
off Algos y that is to say, craft, and rismus, that is,
nounbre, and ffor this skille it is called craft of
nounbringe. Or it is named off en, that is, in, and
gogos, that is, ledyng, and rismus, that is, nounbre,
as to say, ledynge in to nounbre. Or it is named
after the Philozophare that frrist coiitrevyd it, wos
name was Algus, &c.'

The real origin of the word algorismus is explained
by M. Keinaud in his Memoire sur I'Inde, p. 303.

<Je me permettrai ici une conjecture. Dans les
traites latins du moyen age, le nouveau systerne de
numeration est designe par la denomination d' Algo-
rismus ou Algorithmus. D'uii autre cote, les mots
Algorismus et' AlJchorismus et Algorithmus servent a

83 See Promptorium Parwiloncm, p. 398.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 301

designer un ecrivain arabe surnomme Al-Kharizmy
ou le Kharizmin, du nom du Kharizm, sa patrie ; et
cet ecrivain s'etait occupe de la science des nombres.
II me parait que le nom donne an. nouveau systeme
de numeration n'est pas autre qne celui du personnage
dont les ecrits, traduits en latin, avaient repandu la
connaissance de ce systeme en Occident.' This native
of Kharizm, quoted as Alchoarizam magister Indorum,
was Mohammed ben Musa, who wrote in the first
half of the ninth century, and whose treatise on
Algebra was at an early time translated into
Latin. 31

In a similar way, the verb to blame became natu-
ralised in England through the Norman Conquest.
The original Latin or Greek word from which the
French bldmer was derived kept its place in the form
of to blaspheme in the more cultivated language of
the realm. Triumph was a Latin word, naturally
used in the ecclesiastical and military language of
every country. In its degraded form, la triomphe, it
was peculiar to French, and was brought into Eng-
land by the Norman nobility as trump, trump card. 35
We can watch the same process more fully in the
history of the French language. That language
teems with Latin words which, under various dis-
guises, obtained repeated admittance into its dic-
tionary. They came first with the legions that
settled in Gaul, and whose more or less vulgar
dialects supplanted the Celtic idiom of the country.
They came again in the track of Christian mission-
aries, and not unfrequently were smuggled in for the
third time by the classical scholars of a later age.

31 See Lectures, vol. i. p. 166. 35 Trench, On Words, p. 156.

302 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

The Latin sacramentum, in its military acceptation,
became the French serment ; in its ecclesiastical
meaning it appears as sacrement. Redemptio, in its
military sense, became the French rancon, ransom ; in
its religious meaning it preserved the less mutilated
form of redemption. Other words belonging to the
same class are acheter, to buy, accepter, to accept,
both derived from the Latin acceptare. Chetif,
miserable (sometimes pronounced ch'ti), 37 and captif,
both from Latin captivus. Chose, a thing, cause, a
cause, both from Latin causa. Facon and faction,
from Latin factio ; meaning originally the manner
of doing a thing, then peculiarity, then party. Both
fraile and fragile come from fragilis. On and
Vhomme, from homo. Noel, Christmas, and natal,
from natalis. Naif and natif from nativus. Parole
and parabole from parabola. Penser, to weigh or
ponder in one's mind, and peser, to weigh on scales,
both come from Latin pensare. Pension also is de-
rived from pensum. In Latin, too, expendo is used
in the sense of spending money, and of weighing or
considering.

The Latin pronoun ille exists in French under two
different forms. It is the il of the pronoun of the
third person, and the le of the definite article. Of
course it must not be supposed for a moment that by
any kind of agreement ille was divided into two parts,
il being put aside for the pronoun, and le for the
article. The pronoun il and elle in French, egli and
ella in Italian, el and ella in Spanish, are nothing but
provincial varieties of ille and ilia. The same words,
ille and ilia, used as articles, and therefore pronounced

Sfi Fuehs, p. 125. S7 Jicnic critique, i. p. 3oO.

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 308

more rapidly and without an accent, became gradual!}
changed from il, which we see in the Italian il, to el,
which we have in Spanish ; to lo (ilium), which
exists in Provencal and in Italian (lo spirito) ; and
to le, which appears in Provencal 38 dialects and in
French.

As there are certain laws which govern the trans-
ition of Latin into French and Italian, it is easy to
determine whether such a word as opera in French is
of native growth, or imported from Italian. French
has invariably shortened the final a into e, and a
Latin p in the' middle of words is generally changed
into French b or v. This is not the case in Italian.
Thus the Latin apis, a bee, becomes in Italian ape,
in French abeille. 39 The Latin capillus is the Italian
capello, the French cheveu. Thus opera has become
ceuvre in French, whereas in Italian it remained
opera,* Spanish obra.

There is a small class of words in French which
ought to be mentioned here, in order to show under
how many disguises words have slipped in again
and again into the precincts of that language. They

38 Diez, Itomanische Grammatik, ii. 35.

S9 Ibid. i. 177. There are exceptions to this rule; for instance,
Italian rivet, for ripa ; savio for sapio ; and in French, such words as
vapcur, stupide, capitaine, Old French cJwvetain.

40 Ibid. ii. 20. Opera is not the Latin opus, used as a feminine, but
the plural of opus. Such neutral plurals were frequently changed into
Romance feminines, and used in the singular. Thus Latin gaudia,
plural neut., is the French jaw, fern, sing., Italian gioja. A diminutive
of the French joie is the Old French joel, a little pleasure ; the English
jewel, the French joyau.

Latin arma, neut. plur. Italian and Sp. arma Fr. Tarmc
folia It.foglia Tr.fcuille

,, vda It. and Sp. vela Fr. voile

batnalia It. battaglia Fr. batailk.

304 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

are words neither Teutonic nor Romance, but a cross
between the two. They are Latin in appearance,
but it would be impossible to trace them back to
Latin unless we knew that the people who spoke
this Latin were Germans who still thought in German.
If a German speaks a foreign tongue, he commits
certain mistakes which a Frenchman never would
commit, and vice versa. A German speaking English
would be inclined to say to bring a sacrifice; a French-
man would never make that mistake. A French-
man, on the contrary, is apt to say that he cannot
attend any longer, meaning that he cannot wait any
longer. Englishmen, again, travelling abroad, have
been heard to call for Wdchter, meaning the waiter ;
they have declared, in German, Ich habe einen grossen
Geist Sie nieder zu Jclopfen, meaning they had a great
mind to knock a person down ; and they have an-
nounced in French, J'ai change mon esprit autour de
cette tasse de cafe, meaning that they had changed
their mind about a cup of coffee.

There are many more mistakes of that kind, which
grammarians call Germanisms, Gallicisms, or Angli-
cisms, and for which pupils are constantly reproved
by their masters.

Now the Germans who came to settle in Italy and
Gaul, and who learnt to express themselves in Latin
tant bien que mal, had no such masters to reprove
them. On the contrary, their Roman subjects did
the best they could to understand their Latin jargon,
and, if they wished to be very polite, they would
probably repeat the mistakes which their masters
had committed. In this manner, the most un-
grammatical, the most unidiomatic phrases would,

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 305-

after a time, become current in the vulgar lan-
guage. 41

No Roman would have expressed the idea of en-
tertaining or amusing by intertenere. Such an ex-
pression would have conveyed no meaning at all
to Csesar or Cicero. The Germans, however, were
accustomed to the idiomatic use of unterhalten,
Unterlialtung ; and when they had to make themselves
understood in Latin, they rendered unter by inter,
halten by tenere, and thus formed entretenir, a word
owned neither by La-tin nor German.

It is difficult, no doubt, to determine in each case
whether words like intertenere, in the sense of enter-
taining, were formed by Germans speaking in Latin
but thinking in German, or whether one and the
same metaphor suggested itself both to Romans and

41 I received a curious confirmation of this theory in a letter from a
friend of mine at Calcutta. ' I well remember,' he writes, ' that Shur-
fuddin told me that the ungrammatical Hindustani of the Sahibs was
adopted by Hindus and Mohammedans as the language of command/
He especially instanced the palki bearers, i. e. the men who carry the
palankin for hire. He said that the only way to make them mind was
to use Sahib's Hindustani. Most English people in Calcutta say 'sabu
karo ' for ' stop ! ' instead of the proper ' khara raho.' I have often
heard only 'sabu.' Now this is a corruption of 'zabut karo.' Zabiit
means ' to grasp,' and I believe it is a literal translation of ' hold ! ' ' hold
hard ! ' or it may be from sabat, to rest. Even zabut karo is a wrong
idiom. Similarly nearly all English people in Calcutta say to the man
who pulls the punkah 'jose tano,' ' pull harder,' instead of the proper,
' zorse tano ;' and even this latter is wrong : it should be ' zorse kaincho.'

Castelvetro, in his Correttione dtalcune cose del dialogo delle lingue
di Benedetto Varchi, et unG, giunta al prime libro delle Prose di M. Pietro
Bembo : Basilsea, 1572, expressed the same view in almost the same
words : ' Et cominciarono i fanciulli italiani a dimesticarsi, et a mes-
colarsi co' fanciulli longobardi, cui havendo rispetto, et portando honore
per la signoria che havevano sopra se, cercarono di rassomigliare le
parole guaste iusegnate loro dalle nutrici, et dalle madri, et da padri
poco puramente parlanti.' (p. 154.)

II. X

306 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

Germans. It might seem at first sight that the
French circonstance, circumstance, was a barbarous
translation of the German Umstand, which expresses
the same idea by exactly the same metaphor. But
if we consult the later Latin literature, we find there,
in works which could hardly have experienced any
influence of German idiom, circumstantm, in the sense
of quality or accident ; and we learn from Quintilian,
Y. 10, 104, that the word had been formed in Latin
as an equivalent of the Greek peristasis.

In some cases, however, it admits of no doubt that
words now classical in the modern languages of
Europe were originally the unidiomatic blunders of
Germans attempting to express themselves in the
Latin of their conquered provinces.

The future is called in German Zukunft, which
means c what is to come.' 42 There is no such word
in ancient Latin, but the Germans again translated
their conception of future time literally into Latin,
and thus formed I'avenir, what is to come, ce qui est
a venir.

One of the many German expressions for sick or
unwell is unpass. It is used even now, unpasslich,
UnpasslichJceit. The corresponding Latin expression
would have been ceger, but instead of this we find
the Proven9?l malapte. It. malato, Fr. malade. Mal-
apte is the Latin male-aptus, meaning unfit, again an
unidiomatic rendering of unpass. What happened
was this. Male-aptus 43 was at first as great a mis-

42 In Klaus Groth's Fiv nie Leder ton Singn un Beden veer Schleswig-
Holsteen, 1 864, tokum, i. e. to come, is used as an adjective : ' Se kamt
wedder to tokum Jahr.'

43 There was also an ancient form, ate, signifying well or pat. In
Barlaam et Josaphat (p. 26, r. 21), Josaphat asks whether all men are iJl,

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 307

take in Latin as if a German speaking English were
to take unpass in the sense of unpassend, and were to
say, ' that he was unfit/ meaning he was unwell.
But as there was no one to correct the German lords
and masters, the expression male-aptus was tolerated,
was probably repeated by good-natured Boraan
physicians, and became after a time a recognised
term.

One more word of the same kind, the presence of
which in French, Italian, and English it would be
impossible to explain except as a Germanism, as a
blunder committed by people who spoke in Latin,
but thought in German.

Gegend in German means region or country. It is
a recognised term, and it signified originally that
which is before or against, what forms the object of
our view. Now in Latin gegen, or against, would be
expressed by contra; and the Germans, not recol-
lecting at once the Latin word regio, took to trans-
lating their idea of Gegend, that which was before
them, by contratum, or terra contrata. This became
the Italian contrada, the French contree, the English
country.**

and the answer is : ' Nenil, ates i a asses.' - Cf. Graston Paris, Memoires
de la Societe de Linguistigue, torn. i. p. 91.

44 Cf. M. M., Ueber Deutsche Schattirung Eomanischer Worte, in
Kuhn's Zeitschrift, v. 11.

I take this opportunity of stating that I never held the opinion ascribed
to me byM. Littre (Journal des Savants, avril 1856; Histoire de la
Langue frangaise, 1863, vol. i. p. 94), with regard to the origin of the
Romance languages. My object was to explain certain features of these
languages, which, I hold, would be inexplicable if we looked upon French,
Italian, and Spanish merely as secondary developments of Latin. They
must be explained, as I tried to show, by the fact that the people
in whose minds and mouths these modern dialects grew up, were
not all Romans or Roman provincials, but tribes thinking in German

x 2

308 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAEG.

Accidents like those which we have hitherto dis-
cussed are, no doubt, more frequent in the modern
history of speech, because, owing to ethnic migra-
tions and political convulsions, the dialects of neigh-
bouring or distant races have become mixed up
together more and more with every century that has
passed over the ethnological surface of Europe. But
in ancient times also there had been migrations, and
wars, and colonies, causing a dislocation and inter-
mixture of the various strata of human speech, and
the literary languages of Greece and Rome, however
uniform they may seem to us in their classical writings,
had grown up, like French or English, by a constant
process of absorption and appropriation, exercised on
the various dialects of Italy and Greece. What
happened in French happened in Latin. As the
French are no longer aware that their paysan, a
peasant, and paien, a pagan, were originally but
slight dialectic varieties of the same Latin word
paganus, a villager, the citizen of Rome used the two

and trying to express themselves in Latin. It was this additional dis-
turbing agency to which I endeavoured to call attention, without for a
moment wishing to deny other more normal and generally admitted
agencies which were at work in the formation of the Neo-Latin dialects,
as much as in all other languages advancing from what has been called
a synthetic to an analytic state of grammar. In trying to place this
special agency in its proper light, I may have expressed myself somewhat
incautiously ; but if I had to express again my own view on the origin
of the Romance languages, I could not do it more clearly and accurately
than in adopting the words of my eminent critic: ' A mon tour, venant,
par la serie de ces etudes, a m'occuper du debat ouvert, j'y prends une
position intermediaire, pensant que, essentiellement, c'est la tradition
latine qui domine dans les langues romanes, mais que 1'invasion ger-
manique leur a port6 un rude coup, et que de ce conflit ou elles ont failli
succomber, et avec elles la civilisation, il leur est reste des cicatrice*
encore apparentes et qui sont, a un certain point de vue, ces nuances
gennaniques signalees par Max Miiller.'

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 309

words luna, moon, and Lucina, the goddess, without
being aware that both were derived from the same
root. In luna the c belonging to the root lucere, to
shine, is elided; not by caprice or accident, but
according to a general phonetic rule which sanctions
the omission of a guttural before a liquid. Thus
lumen, light, stands for lucmen; examen for exagmen
(but agmeri) ; flamma, flame, for flagma, from flagrare,
to burn ; flamen for flagmen, the lighter, the priest
(not brahman) ; lanio, a butcher, if derived from a
root akin to lacerare, to lacerate, stands for lacnio.
Contaminare, to contaminate, is certainly derived
from the same verb tango, to touch, from which we
have contagio, contagion, as well as integer, intact,
entire. Contaminare, therefore, was originally con-
tagminare. This is in fact the same phonetic rule
which, if applied to the Teutonic languages, accounts
for the change of German Nagel into nail, Zagel into
tail, Hagel into hail, Riegel into rail, Regen into rain,
Pflegel into flail, Segel into sail; and which, if applied
to Greek and Latin, helps us to discover the identity
of the Greek lachne, wool, and Latin lana ; of Greek
ardchne, a spider, and Latin ardnea. Though a
scholar like Cicero 45 might have been aware that ala,
a wing, was but an abbreviated form of axilla, the
arm-pit, the two words were as distinct to the
common citizen of Eome as pawn and paysan to the
modern Frenchman. Tela, a web, must, on the same
principle, be derived from texela, and this from the
verb texere, to weave. Thus mala, the cheek, is de-

45 ' Quomodo enim vester Axilla Ala factus est nisi fuga literae vas-
tioris, quam literam etiam e maxillis et taxillis et vexillo et paxillo
consuetude elegans Latini sermonis evellit.' Cicero Or at. 45, 15.3.
In spite of this, Latin dictionaries give axilla as a diminutive of ala.

310 DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

rived from maxilla, the jawbone, and velum, a sail or
veil, from vexillum, anything flying or moved by the
wind, a streamer, a flag, or a banner. Once in pos-
session of this rule, we are able to discover even in
such modern and corrupt forms as subtle, the same
Latin root texere, to weave, which appeared in tela.
From texere was formed the Latin adjective subtilis,
that which is woven under or beneath, with the same
metaphor which leads us to say fine spun ; and this
dwindled down into the English subtle.

Other words in Latin, the difference of which must
be ascribed to the influence of local pronunciation, are
cors and cohors, nil and nihil, mi and mihi, prendo and
prehendo, prudens and providens, bruma, the winter
solstice, and brevissima, scil. dies, the shortest day. 46
Thus, again, susum stands for sursum, upward, from
sub and versum. Sub, it is true, means generally
below, under ; but, like the Greek hyp6, it is used in
the sense of 'from below,' and thus may seem to
have two meanings diametrically opposed to each
other, below and upward. Submittere means to place
below, to lay down, to submit ; sublevare, to lift from
below, to raise up. Summus, a superlative of sub,
hypatos, a superlative of hyp6, do not mean the lowest
but the highest. 47 As sub-versum glides into sursum
and susum, so retroversum becomes retrorsum, retro-
sum, and rursum. Proversum becomes prorsum, ori-
ginally forward, straightforward; and hence oratio
prosa, straightforward speech or prose, opposed to
oratio vincta, fettered or measured speech, poetry. 48

48 Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, i. p. 645.

47 The Sanskrit up a and upari correspond to Greek vv6 and vir4p>
Latin sub and super, Gothic uf and ufar.

48 Quint. 9,4:' oratio alia vincta atque contexta, alia soluta,'

DIFFERENT FORMS IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 311

Now as we look upon -ZEolic and Doric, Ionic and!
Attic, as dialects of one and the same language ; as we
discover in the Romance languages mere varieties of
the Latin, and in the Scandinavian, the High-German,
and Low-German, only three branches of one and the
same stock, we must learn to look upon Greek and
Latin, Teutonic and Celtic, Slavonic, Sanskrit, and
the ancient Persian, as so many varieties of one and
the same original type of speech, which were fixed in
the end as the classical organs of the literature of the
world. Taking this point of view, we shall be able
to understand how what happens in the modern,
happened in the ancient periods of the history of
language. The same word, with but slight dialectic
variations, exists in Greek, Latin, Gothic, and Sans-
krit ; and vocables, which at first sight appear totally
different, are separated from each other by no greater
difference than that which separates an Italian word
from its cognate term in French. There is little
similarity to the naked eye between pen and feather ?
yet if placed under the microscope of comparative
grammar, both words disclose exactly the same struc-
ture. Both are derived from a root pat, which in
Sanskrit means to fly, and which is easily recognised
in the Greek petomai, I fly. From this root a Sans-
krit word is derived by means of the instrumental
suffix tra, pat-tra, or pata-tra, meaning the in-
strument of flying, a wing, or a feather. From the
same root another substantive was derived, which
became current in the Latin dialect of the Aryan
speech, patna or petna, meaning equally an instru-
ment of flying, or a feather. This petna became
changed into penna a change which rests not

312 THE SAME FORM IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

merely on phonetic analogy, but is confirmed by
JTestus, who mentions the intermediate Italian form,
pesna. 49 The Teutonic dialect retained the same de-
rivative which we saw in Sanskrit, only modifying its
pronunciation by substituting aspirated for hard con-
sonants, according to rule. Thus patra had to be
changed into phathra, in which we easily recognise
the English feather. Thus pen and feather, the one
from a Latin, the other from a Teutonic source, are
established as merely phonetic varieties of the same
word, analogous in every respect to such double words
as those which we pointed out in Latin, which we saw
in much larger numbers in French, and which impart
not only the charm of variety, but the power of
minute exactness to the language of Chaucer, Shake-
speare, and Milton.

3. Different Words take the same Form in
Different Languages.

We have examined in full detail two of the propo-
sitions which serve to prove that in scientific ety-
mology identity of origin is in no way dependent on
identity of sound or meaning. If words could for
ever retain their original sound and their original
meaning, language would have no history at all;
there would have been no confusion of tongues, and
our language would still be the language of our first
ancestors. But it is the very nature of language to
grow and to change, and unless we are able to dis-
cover the rules of this change, and the laws of this

49 Cf. Greek perfj.6s, Latin resmus and remus. Triresmos occurs
in the inscription of the Columna Rostrata.

THE SAME FORM IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 313

growth, we shall never succeed in tracing back to
their original source and primitive import the mani-
fold formations of human speech, scattered in endless
variety over all the villages, towns, countries, and
continents of our globe. The radical elements of lan-
guage are so extremely few, and the words which
constitute the dialects of mankind so countless, that
unless it had been possible to express the infinitesimal
shades of human thought by the slightest differences
in derivation or pronunciation, we should never
understand how so colossal a fabric could have been
reared from, materials so scanty. Etymology is the
knowledge of the changes of words, and so far from
expecting identity, or even similarity of sound in the
outward appearance of a word, as now used in
English, and as used by the poets of the Veda, we
should always be on our guard against any etymology
which would fain make us believe that certain words
which exist in French existed in exactly the same
form in Latin, or that certain Latin words could be
discovered without the change of a single letter in
Greek or Sanskrit. If there is any truth in the
laws which govern the growth of language, we can
lay it down with perfect certainty, that words of
identically the same sound in English and in Sanskrit
cannot be the same words. And this leads us to our
third proposition. It does happen now and then
that in languages, whether related to each other or
not, certain words appear of identically the same
sound and with some similarity of meaning. These
words, which former etymologists seized upon as
most confirmatory of their views, are now looked
upon with well-founded mistrust. Attempts, for

314 THE SAME FORM IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

instance, are frequently made at comparing Hebrew
words with the words of Aryan languages. If this is
done with a proper regard to the immense distance
which separates the Semitic from the Aryan lan-
guages, it deserves the highest credit. But if instead
of being satisfied with pointing out the faint coin-
cidences in the lowest and most general elements of
speech, scholars imagine they can discover isolated
cases of minute coincidence amidst the general dis-
parity in the grammar and dictionary of the Aryan
and Semitic families of speech, their attempts be-
come unscientific and reprehensible.

It is surprising, considering the immense number
of words that might be formed by freely mixing the
twenty-five letters of our alphabet, that in languages
belonging to totally different families, the same ideas
should sometimes be expressed by the same or very
similar words. Dr. Eae, in order to prove some kind
of relationship between the Polynesian and Aryan
languages, quotes the Tahitian pura, to blaze as a fire,
the New Zealand kapura, fire, as similar to Greek
pyr, fire. He compares Polynesian ao, sunrise, with
Eos; Hawaian mauna with mons; Hawaian ike, he
saw or knew, with Sanskrit iksh, to see; manao, I
think, with Sanskrit man, to think; noo, I perceive,
and noo-noo, wise, with Sanskrit g n a, to know ; orero
or orelo, a continuous speech, with oratio; kala, I
proclaim, with Greek halein, to call; kalanga, con-
tinuous speech, with harangue; Jcani and Jcakani,
to sing, with cano; mele, a chaunted poem, with melos.

50 See M. M., Turanian Languages, p. 95, seq. Pott, in Deutsche
Morgenldndische Gesellschaft, ix. 430, containing an elaborate criticism
on M. M.'s Turanian Languages. The same author has collected some
more accidental coincidences in his Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 430.

THE SAME FORM IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 315

It is easy to multiply instances of the same kind.
Thus in the Kafir language to beat is beta, to tell is
tyelo, hollow is uholo. 51

In Modern Greek eye is mati, a corruption of om~
mationj in Polynesian eye is mata, and in Lithuanian
matau is to see.

And what applies to languages which, in the usual
sense of the word, are not related at all, such as
Hebrew and English, or Hawaian and Greek, applies
with equal force to cognate languages. Here, too, a
perfect identity of sound between words of various
dialects is always suspicious. No scholar would
now-a-days venture to compare to look with Sanskrit
lokayati; to speed with Greek speudo ; to call with
Greek Jcalem ; to care with Latin cura. The English
sound of i which in English expresses an eye, oculus,
is used in German in the sense of egg, ovum ; and it
would not be unreasonable to take both words as
expressive of roundness, applied in the one case to
an egg, in the other to an eye. The English eye,
however, must be traced back to the Anglo-Saxon
edge, Gothic augo, German Auge, words akin to San-
skrit akshi, the Latin oculus, the Greek osse; whereas
the German Ei, which in Old High-German forms its
plural eigir, is identical with the English egg, the
Latin ovum, the Greek dVon, and possibly connected
with avis, bird. This Anglo-Saxon edge, eye, dwindles
down to y in daisy, and to ow in window, supposing
that window is the Old Norse vindauga, the Swedish
vindoga, the Old English windor. 52 In Gothic a
window is called augadauro, in Anglo-Saxon, edgduru,

51 Appleyard, Kafir Language, p. 3.

52 Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik, ii. pp. 193, 421.

316 THE SAME FORM IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES.

i. e. eye-door. In island (which ought to be spelt
Hand), the first portion is neither egg nor eye, but a
corruption of Gothic ahva, i. e. aqua, water ; hence
Anglo-Saxon eoland, the Old Norse aland, water-
land.

What can be more tempting than to derive ' on
the whole 9 from the Greek Jcath h6lon, from which
Catholic? 5 * Buttinann, in his c Lexilogus/ has no
misgivings whatever as to the identity of the Greek
holos and the English hale and whole and wholesome.
At present, a mere reference to f Grimm's Law '
enables any tyro in etymology to reject this iden-
tification as impossible. First of all, whole, in the
sense of sound, is really the same word as hale.
Both exist in Anglo-Saxon under the form of hdl,
in Gothic as hail, German h&il. 6 * Now, an initial
aspirate in Anglo-Saxon or Gothic presupposes a
tenuis in Greek, and if, therefore, the same word
existed in Greek, it could only have been Jc6los, not
htilos.

In h6los the asper points to an original s in Sanskrit
and Latin, and holos has therefore been rightly
identified with Sanskrit sarva and Latin salvus and
sollus, in sollers, sollemnis, solliferreus, &c.

There is perhaps no etymology so generally ac-
quiesced in as that which derives God from good.
In Danish good is god, but the identity of sound
between the English God and the Danish god is
merely accidental; the two words are distinct, and
are kept distinct in every dialect of the Teutonic

43 Pott, Etymol. Forschungen, i. 774, seq. ' Sollum Osce totum et
flolidum significat.' Festus.

44 Grimm, Deutsche Grammatlk, i. pp. 389, 394.

THE SAME FOEM IN DIFFERENT LANGUAGES. 317

family. As in English we have God and good, we
have in Anglo-Saxon God and g6d ; in Gothic GutJi
and god; in Old High-German, Got and cuot; in
German, Gott and gut ; in Danish, Gud and god ; in
Dutch, 6r0c and goed. Though it is impossible to
give a satisfactory etymology of either God or good,
it is clear that two words which thus run parallel in
all these dialects without ever meeting, cannot be
traced back to one central point. God was most
likely an old heathen name of the Deity, and for
such a name the supposed etymological meaning of
good would be far too modern, too abstract, too
Christian. 55 In the Old Norse, Goft is actually found
in the sense of a graven image, an idol, and is then
used as a neuter, whereas, in the sa,me language,
Gu^>, as a masculine, means God. When, after their
conversion to Christianity, the Teutonic races used
God as the name of the true God, in the same manner
as the Eomanic nations retained their old heathen
word Deus, we find that in Old High-German a new
word was formed for false gods or idols. They were
called apcot, as if ex-gods. The Modern German
word for idol, Gotze, is but a modified form of God, 56
and the compound Oelgotze, which is used in the same
sense, seems actually to point back to ancient stone
idols, before which, in the days of old, lamps were
lighted and incense burned. Luther, in translating

55 In the language of the gipsies, dcvel, meaning God, is connected
with Sanskrit deva. Kuhn, Beitrage, i. p. 147. Pott, Die Zigeuner, ii.
p. 311.

56 Grimm, Deutsche GrammatiJc, iii. p. 694. Others have derived
Gotze from goz, the modern German Guss, ein Gussbtid, a cast or molten
image, or goz-opfer, libation ; but the transition from goz to Gotze has
not been accounted for.

318 THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

the passage of Deuteronomy, 'And ye shall hew down
the graven images of their gods,' uses the expression,
' die Gb'tzen ihrer Goiter. 3

What thus happens in different dialects may
happen also in one and the same language; and
this leads us to the consideration of our fourth and
last proposition.

4. Different Words may take the same Form in one
and the same Language.

The same causes which make words which are
perfectly distinct in their origin to assume the same,
or very nearly the same, sound in English and German,
may produce a similar convergence between two words
in one and the same language. Nay, the chances are
if we take into account the peculiarities of pronun-
ciation and grammar in each dialect, that perfect
identity of sound between two words, differing in
origin, will occur more frequently in one and the
same than in different dialects. It would seem to
follow, also, that these cases of verbal convergence
are more frequent in modern than in ancient lan-
guages ; for it is only by a constant process of
phonetic corruption, by a constant wearing off of the
sharp edges of words, that this verbal assimilation
can be explained. Many words in Latin differ by
their terminations only; these terminations were
generally omitted in the modern Romance dialects,
and the result is, that these words are no longer
distinguishable in sound. Thus novus in Latin
means new; novem, nine: the terminations being
dropped, both become in French neuf. Suum, his,

THE SAME FOEM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 319

is pronounced in French son; sonum, sound, is re-
duced to the same form. In the same manner tuum,
thine, and tonus, tone, become ton. The French feu,
fire, is the Latin focus ; feu, in the sense of late, is
not exactly Latin : at least, it is derived from Latin
in the most barbarous way. In the same manner as
we find in Spanish somos, sois, son, where sois stands
ungrammatically for Latin estis ; as in the same lan-
guage a gerund siendo is formed which would seem
to point to a barbarous Latin form, essendo, so a past
participle fuitus may have been derived from the
Latin fuere or fore, to be, from which fui, fuam,
forem, futurus, &c., and this may have given rise to
the French feu, late. We find both feu la reine and
lafeue reine.

It sometimes happens that three Latin words are
absorbed into one French sound. The sound of mer
conveys in French three distinct meanings ; it means
sea, mother, and mayor. Suppose that French had
never been written down, and had to be reduced to
writing for the first time by missionaries sent to Paris
from New Zealand, would not mer, in their dictionary
of the French language, be put down with three dis-
tinct meanings meanings having no more in com-
mon than the explanations given in some of our old
Greek and Latin dictionaries ? It is no doubt one
of the advantages of the historical system of spelling
that the French are able to distinguish between la
mer, mare, le maire, major, la mere, mater j yet if these
words produce no confusion in the course of a rapid
conversation, they would hardly be more perplexing
in reading, even though written phonetically.

There are instances where four and five words, all

320 THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

of Latin origin, have dwindled away into one French
term. Ver, the worm, is Latin vermis; vers, a verse,
is Latin versus ; verre, a glass, is Latin vitrum ; vert,
green, is Latin viridis ; vair, fur, is Latin varius.
Nor is there much difference in pronunciation be-
tween the French mai, the month of May, the Latin
majus ; mais, but, the Latin magis ; mes, the plural
of my, Latin mei ; and la maie, a trough, the Latin
magis, or rather the Greek magis, magidos, a knead-
ing-trough ; or between sang, blood, sanguis ; cent, a
hundred, centum; sans, without, sine; sent, he feels,
sentit ; s 9 en, in il se 9 en va, inde.

Where the spelling is the same, as it is, for instance,
in louer, to praise, and louer, to let, attempts have not
been wanting to show that the second meaning was
derived from the first ; that louer, for instance, was
used in the sense of letting, because you have to praise
your lodgings before you can let them. Thus fin,
fine, was connected with fin, the end, because the end
occasionally expresses the smallest point of an object.
Now, in the first instance, both louer, to let, and louer,
to praise, are derived from Latin ; the one is laudare,
the other locare. In the other instance we have to
mark a second cause of verbal confusion in French.
Two words, the one derived from a Latin, the other
from a German source, met on the neutral soil of
France, and, after being divested of their national
dress, ceased to be distinguishable from each other.
The same applies to the French causer. In one sense
it is the Latin causare, to cause : in another, the Old
German choson, the Modern German kosen. As French
borrows not only from German, but also from Greek,
we need not be surprised if in le page, page, we meet

THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 321

with the Greek paidion, a small boy, whereas la page
is the Latin pdgina, a page or leaf.

There are cases, however, where French, Italian, and
Spanish words, though apparently invested with two
quite heterogeneous meanings, must nevertheless be
referred to one and the same original. Voler, to fly, is
clearly the Latin volare; but voler, to steal, would seem
at first sight to require a different etymology. There
is, however, no simple word, whether in Latin, or
Celtic, or Greek, or German, from which voler, to steal,
could be derived. Now, as we observed that the same
Latin word branched off into two distinct French
words by a gradual change of pronunciation, we must
here admit a similar bifurcation, brought on by a
gradual change of meaning. It would not, of course,
be satisfactory to have recourse to a mere gratuitous
assumption, and to say that a thief was called volator,
a flyer, because he flew away like a bird from his
pursuers. But Professor Diez has shown that, in Old
French, to steal is embler, which is the mediaeval Latin
imbulare, used, for instance, in the Lex Salica. This
imbulare is the genuine Latin involare, which is used
in Latin of birds flying down, 57 of men and women
flying at each other in a rage, 58 of soldiers dashing
upon an enemy, 59 and of thieves pouncing upon a
thing not their own. 60 The same involare is used in
Italian in the sense of stealing, and in the Florentine

57 ' Neque enim debent (aves) ipsis nidis involare ; ne, dum adsiliunt,
pedibus ova confringant.' Col. 8, 3, 5.

48 ' Vix me contineo, quin involem in capillum, monstrum.' Teiv
Eun. 5, 2, 20.

* ' Adeoque improvisi castra involavere.' Tac. H. 4, 33.

60 ' Kemitte pallium mihi meum quod involasti.' Cat. 25, 6. These
passages are taken from White and Kiddle's Latin-English Dictionary,
a work which deserves the highest credit for the careful and thoughtful
II. Y

322 THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

dialect it is pronounced imbolare, like the French
embler. From embler we have d'emblee, suddenly.
It was this involare, with the sense of seizing, which
was abbreviated to the French voler. Voler, therefore,
meant originally, not to fly away, but to fly upon, just
as the Latin impetus, assault, is derived from the root
pat, to fly, in Sanskrit, from which we derived penna
and feather. A complete dictionary of words of this
kind in French has been published by M. E. Zlata-
gorskoi, under the title, ' Essai d'un Diction naire
des Homonymes de la Langue fra^aise ' (Leipzig,
1862), and a similar dictionary might be composed
in English. For here, too, we find not only Eomaiice
words differing in origin and becoming identical in
form, but Saxon words likewise; nay, not unfre-
quently we meet with words of Saxon origin which
have become outwardly identical with words of Ro-
mance origin. For instance :

I. to blow . A.S. bldwan, the wind blows

to blow . A.S. blowian, the flower blows

to cleave . A.S. clijian, to stick

to cleave . A.S. clufan, to sunder

a hawk . A.S. hafuc, a bird ; German Habicht

to hawk . to offer for sale, German hdken

to last . A.S. gelcestan, to endure

last . . A.S. latost, latest

last . . A.S. lilcest, burden

last . . A.S. last, mould for making shoes

to lie . . A.S. licgan, to repose

to lie . . A.S. leogan, to speak untruth

ear . . A.S. care, the ear; Lat. auris

ear . . A.S. ear, the ear of corn ; Gothic ahs ;
German Ahre

manner in which the meanings of each word are arranged and built up
architecturally, story on story.

THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 323

II. count . . Latin comes

to count . Latin computare

to repair . Latin reparare

to repair . Latin repatriare

tense . . Latin tempus

tense . . Latin tensus

vice . . Latin vitium

vice . . Latin vice

III. corn . . A.S. corn, in the fields

corn . . Latin corrm, on the feet

sage . . Latin salvia, French sauge, A.S. salwiga

German salwey, a plant

sage . . Latin sapius

to see . . A.S. seohan

see . . . Latin sedes

scale . . A.S. scalu, of a balance

scale . . A.S. scealu, of a fish

scale . . Latin scala, steps

sound . . A.S. sund, hale

sound . . A.N. sund, of the sea, from swimman

sound . . Latin sonus, tone

sound . . Latin subundare, to dive. 61

Although, as I said before, the number of these
equivocal words will increase with the progress of
phonetic corruption, yet they exist likewise in what
we are accustomed to call ancient languages. There
is not one of these languages so ancient as not to dis-
close to the eye of an accurate observer a distant past.
In Latin, in Greek, and even in Sanskrit, phonetic
corruption has been at work, smoothing the primitive
asperity of language, and now and then producing
exactly the same effects which we have just been

61 Large numbers of similar words in Matziier, Englische Gram-
matik, i. p. 187 ; Koch, Historische GrammatiJc der Engllschen Sprachc,
i. p. 223.

Y 2

324 THE SAME FOKM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

watching in French, and English. Thus, Latin est is
not only the Sanskrit asti, the Greek esti, hut it like-
wise stands for Latin edit, he eats. As ist in German
has equally these two meanings, though they are
kept distinct by a difference of spelling, elaborate
attempts have been made to prove that the auxiliary
verb was derived from a verb which originally meant
to eat eating being supposed to have been the most
natural assertion of our existence.

The Greek i6s means both arrow and poison ; and
here again attempts were made to derive either arrow
from poison, or poison from arrow. 62 Though these
two words occur in the most ancient Greek, they are
nevertheless each of them secondary modifications of
two originally distinct words. This can be seen by
reference to Sanskrit, where arrow is ishu, whereas
poison is vis ha, Latin virus. It is through the in-
fluence of two phonetic laws peculiar to the Greek
language the one allowing the dropping of a sibilant
between two vowels, the other the elision of the initial
v, the so-called digamma that ishu and vis ha con-
verged towards the Greek \6s.

There are three roots in Sanskrit which in Greek
assume one and the same form, and would be almost
undistinguishable except for the light which is thrown
upon them from cognate idioms. Nah, in Sanskrit,
means to bind, to join together; snu, in Sanskrit,
means to flow, or to swim; nas, in Sanskrit, means
to come. These three roots assume in Greek the
form neo.

Ned, fut. neso (the Sanskrit NAH), means to spin,

62 The coincidence of r6ov, a bow, and roiK6v y poison for smearing
arrows (hence intoxication), is curious.

THE SAME FOBM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 325

originally to join together ; it is the German nahen,
(O.H.G-. ndan), to sew, Latin, nere. Here we have
only to observe in Greek the absence of the final h
in Sanskrit nah, which reappears, however, in the
Greek verb netho, I spin ; and the former existence
of which can be discovered in Latin also, where the
c of necto points to the original guttural h.

SNTJ, snauti, to run, appears in Greek as neo.
This neo stands for sneVo. S is elided as in mikrds
for smikr6s and the diganirna disappears, as usual,
between two vowels. It reappears, however, as soon
as it stands no longer in this position. Hence fut.
neusomai, aor. eneusa. From this root, or rather from
the still simpler and more primitive root nu, the
Aryan languages derived their words for ship, origi-
nally the swimmer; Sanskrit naus, navas; Greek
naus, neos; Latin navis. Secondary forms of nu or
snu are the Sanskrit causative snavayati, corre-
sponding to the Latin nare, which grows again into
natare. By the addition of a guttural we receive the
Greek nechd, I swim, from which nesds, an island, and
Ndxos, the island. The German Nachen, too, shows
the same tendency to replace the final v by a guttural.

The third root is the Sanskrit nas, to come, the
Yedic na s at i. Here we have only to apply the Greek
euphonic law, which necessitates the elision of an s
between two vowels ; and, as our former rule with
regard to the digamma reduced nefo to neo, this will
reduce the original nesd to the same neo. Again, as
in our former instance, the removal of the cause re-
moved the effect, the digamma reappearing whenever

63 Cf. Mehlhorn, 54. Also <r</x\A< } fallo ; a<]>6yyos, fungus. Festus
mentions in Latin, smitto and mitto, stritavus and tritavus.

326 THE SAME FOEM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

it was followed by a consonant, so in this instance the
s rises again to the surface when it is followed by
a consonant, as we see in nostos, the return, from
neesthai.

And here, in discussing words which, though ori-
ginally distinct in origin and meaning, have in the
course of time become identical or nearly identical in
sound, I ought not to pass over in silence the name of
a scholar who, though best known in the annals of the
physical sciences, deserves an honourable place in the
history of the Science of Language. Eoger Bacon's
views on language and etymology are strangely in
advance of his age. He called etymology the tale of
truth, 64 and he was probably the first who conceived
the idea of a Comparative Grammar. He uses the
strongest language against those who proposed deri-
vations of words in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew without
a due regard to the history of these languages.
' Brito,' he says, ' dares to derive Gehenna from the
Greek ge, earth, and ennos, deep, though Gehenna is a
Hebrew word, and cannot have its origin in Greek.' 65
As an instance of words becoming identical in the
course of time, he quotes Jcenon as used in many
mediaeval compounds. In cenotaph, an empty tomb,
ceno represents the Greek KSVOS, empty. In cenobite,
one of a religious order living in a convent, ceno is

84 Eoger Bacon, Compendium Studii, cap. 7 (ed. Brewer, p. 449) :
'quoniam etymologia est sermo vel ratio veritatis.' Cicero rendered
etymology by veriloquium.

65 L. c. cap. 7, p. 450 : 'Brito quidein indignissimus auctoritate, pluries
redit in vitium de quo reprehendit Hugutionem et Papiam. Nam cum.
dicit quod Gehenna dicitur a ge, quod est terra, et ennos, quod est profun-
dum, Hebrsemn vocabulum docet oriri ex Grseco ; quia ge pro terra est
Grsecum, et gchenna est Hebrseum.' Cicero rendered etymology by
verUoquium.

THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE. 327

the Greek KOWOS, common. In encenia, festivals kept
in commemoration of the foundation of churches, &c.,
cenia answers to the Greek KCUVOS, new, these festivals
being intended as renewals of the memory of pious
founders. 66 Surely this does honour to the thirteenth
century !

If, then, we have established that sound etymology
has nothing to do with sound, what other method is
to be followed in order to prove the derivation of a
word to be true and trustworthy ? Our answer is, We
must discover the laws which regulate the changes of
letters. If it were by mere accident that the ancient
word for tear, derived from the root as, to be sharp,
or das, to bite, took the form asru in Sanskrit, assara
in Lithuanian, ddJcry in Greek, lacrumain Sanskrit,
tagr in Gothic, a scientific treatment of etymology
would be an impossibility. But this is not the case.
In spite of the apparent dissimilarity of the words for
tear in English and French, there is not an inch of
ground between these two extremes, tear and larme,
that cannot be bridged over by Comparative Philo-
logy. We believe therefore, until the contrary has

66 L. c. cap. 7, p. 457 : ' Similiter multa falsa dicuntur cum istis
nominibus, cenobium, cenodoxia, encenia, cinomia, scenophagia, et hujus-
modi similia. Et est error in simplicibus et compositis, et ignorantia
horribilis. Propter quod diligenter considerandum est quod multa
istorum dicuntur a /tevqJ Greece, sed non omnia. Et sciendum quod
cenon, apud nos prolatum uno modo, scribitur apud Grsecos tribus modis.
Primo per e breve, sicut kcnon, et sic est inane seu vacuum, a quo ceno-
doxia, quse est vana gloria. . . . Secundo modo scribitur per diphthongum
ex alpha et iota, sicut kainon, et tune idem est quod novum; unde
encania, quod est innovatio vel dedicatio, vel nova festa et dedicationes
ecclesiarum. . . . Tertio modo scribitur per diphthongum ex omicron et
iota, sicut koinos. . . . Unde dicunt cenon, a quo epicenum, communis
generis. . . . Item a cenon, quod est commune, et bios, quod est vita,
dicitur cenobium, et eenobitce, quasi communiter viventes.'

328 THE SAME FORM IN THE SAME LANGUAGE.

been proved, that there is law and order in the
growth of language, as in the growth of any other
production of nature, and that the changes which we
observe in the history of human speech are not the
result of chance, but are constrained by general and
ascertainable laws.

329

LECTURE VII.

ON THE POWERS OF EOOTS.

AFTER we have removed everything that is for-
mal, artificial, intelligible in words, there re-
mains always something that is not merely formal,
not the result of grammatical art, not intelligible,
and this we call for the present a root or a radical
element. If we take such a word as historically, we
can separate from it the termination of the adverb,
ly, the termination of the adjective, al. This leaves
us historic, the Latin historicus. Here we can again
remove the adjectival suffix cus, by which historicus
is derived from histor or historia. Now historia,
again, is formed by means of the feminine suffix ia,
which produces abstract nouns, from histor. Histor
is a Greek word, and it is in reality a corruption of
%stdr. Both forms, however, occur; the spiritus
asper instead of the spiritus lenis, in the beginning
of the word, may be ascribed to dialectic influences.
Then 'istor, again, has to be divided into is and tor,
tor being the nom. sing, of the derivative suffix tar,
which we have in Latin dd-tor, Sanskrit da- tar,
Greek do-ter, a giver, and the radical element is. In
is, the s is a modification of d, for d in Greek, if
followed immediately by a t, is changed to s. Thus

330 ROOTS.

we arrive at last at the root id, which we have in
Greek oida. in Sanskrit v e d a, the non-reduplicated
perfect of the root vid, the English to wit, to know.
Histor, therefore, meant originally a knower, or a
finder, historia, knowledge. Beyond the root vid
we cannot go, nor can we tell why vid means to see,
or to find, or to know. Nor should we gain mnch if
from, vid we appealed to the preposition vi, which
means asunder, and might be supposed to have im-
parted to vid the power of dividing, singling out,
perceiving (dis-cerno). 1 It is true there is the same
similarity of meaning in the Hebrew preposition bin,
between, and the verb bin, to know, but why bin
should mean between is again a question which we
cannot hope to clear up by mere etymological
analysis.

All that we can safely maintain with regard to
the nature of the Aryan roots is this, that they have
definite forms and definite meanings. However
chaotic the origin of language may by some scholars
be supposed to have been, certain it is that here, as
iii all other subjects of physical research, we must
attempt to draw a line which may separate the Chaos
from the Kosmos. When the Aryan languages began
to assume their distinct individuality, their roots had
become typical, both in form and meaning. They
were no longer mere interjections with varying and
indeterminate vowels, with consonants floating about
from guttural to labial contact, and uncertain be-
tween surd, sonant, or aspirated enunciation. Nor
were they the expressions of mere impressions of the

1 On the supposed original connection between vi and dvi, see Pott,
Etym. Unters. i. 705. Lectures, First Series, p. 46.

ONOMATOPOEIA. 331

moment, of single, abrupt states of feeling that had
no reference to other sensations of a similar or
dissimilar character. Language, if it then deserved
that name, may at one time have been in that chaotic
condition ; nay, there are some small portions in
almost every language which seem to date from that
lowest epoch. Interjections, though they cannot be
treated as parts of speech, are nevertheless ingre-
dients in our conversation ; so are the clicks of the
Bushmen and Hottentots, which have been well
described as remnants of animal speech. Again,
there are in many languages words, if we may call
them so, consisting of mere imitations of the cries of
animals or the sounds of nature, and some of them
have been carried along by the stream of language
into the current of nouns and verbs.

It is this class of words which the Greeks meant
when they spoke of onomatopoeia. But do not let
us suppose that because onomatopoeia means making
of words, the Greeks supposed all words to owe their
origin to onomatopoeia, or imitation of sound. Nothing
would have been more remote from their minds. By
onomatopoeia they meant to designate not real words,
but made, artificial, imitative words words that
anyone could make at a moment's notice. Even the
earliest of Greek philosophers had seen enough of
language to know that the key to its mysteries could
not be bought so cheaply. When Aristotle 2 calls
words imitations (mimemata), he does not mean those
downright imitations, as when we call a cow a moo,
or a dog a bow-wow. His statements and those of

2 Ehet. iii. 1 : ret ykp ovfyara ni^fj-ard f<rnv t fori}p|e 5e /cot ?j
rdvTuv p.ifj.ririK6Ta.Tov TWV popicav TJIIIV.

332 GREEK THEOEIES ON LANGUAGE.

Plato 3 on language must be read in connection with
the statements of earlier philosophers, such as Pytha-
goras (540-510), Heraclitus (503), Democritus (430-
410), and others, that we may see how much had
been achieved before them, how many guesses on
language had been made- and refuted before they in
turn pronounced their verdict. Although we possess
but scant, abrupt, and oracular sayings which are
ascribed to those early sages, yet these are sufficient
to show that they had pierced through the surface
of language, and that the real difficulties of the
origin of speech had not escaped their notice. When
we translate the enigmatic and poetical utterances
of Heraclitus into our modern, dry, and definite
phraseology, we can hardly do them justice. Perfect
as they are when seen in their dark shrines, they
crumble to dust as soon as they are touched by the
bright rays of our modern philosophy. Yet if we
can descend ourselves into the dark catacombs of
ancient thought, we feel that we are there in the
presence of men who, if they lived with us and could
but speak our language, would be looked upon as
giants. They certainly had this one advantage over
us, that their eyes had not been dimmed by the dust
raised in the wars of words that have been going on
since their time for more than two thousand years.
When we are told that the principal difference of
opinion that separated the philosophers of old with
regard to the nature and origin of language is ex-
pressed by the two words pJiysei and thesei, ' natu-
rally ' and ( conventionally, 5 we learn very little from

8 Plato, Cratylus, 423 B : ovo^a &pa t<niv, &s eoiice, /j.i/j.-r)ij.a
lufivov b /j.i/jLe?Tai Kal ovo/j-d^i 6 /xtyioi^uevos rf) ({xavy, '6rav /j.iurJTat.

GREEK THEORIES ON LANGUAGE. 333

such general terms. We must know the history of
those words, which were watchwords in every school
of philosophy, before they dwindled down to mere
technical terms. With the later sophists thesei,
' conventionally,' or the still earlier nrfmo, e according
to rule/ meant no longer what they meant with the
fathers of Greek philosophy; nay, they sometimes
assumed the very opposite meaning. A sophist
like Hermogenes, in order to prove that language ex-
isted conventionally, maintained that an apple might
have been called a plum, and a plum an apple, if
people had only agreed to do so. 4 Another 5 pointed
in triumph to his slave, to whom he had actually
given a new name, by calling him ' Yet, 5 in order to
prove that any word might be significative. Nor
were the arguments in favour of the natural origin
of language of a better kind, when the efficacy of
curses was quoted to show that words endowed with
such powers could not have a merely human or con-
ventional origin. 6

Such was not the reasoning of Heraclitus or Demo-
critus. The language in which they spoke, the whole

4 Lersch, Sprachphilosophie der Alten, i. p. 28. Ammonius Hermias
ad Aristot. de Interpr, p. 25 A : Of ytiev OUTW T& de<r \eyov<riy &s cbv
&V avQp&Ttwv tKaffrov r&v TrpayfJ-drcov bvofjideiv orw &i/ iQ4\r) 6v6fj.a,Ti t
'Ep/j.oyfvt]s f/iou. ... Of 5e oi>x ovrws, oAAcii rl9e(rOai p.fv T&
inrb it.6vov rov 6vo/j.a6fTov, rovrov 8 flvai rbv Giriffr-fifj.ova rrjs
ruv irpay/jLaTcav, oltteiov Trj fKaffrov TWV OVTWV (pvcei iri(pi][j.i^ovTa
foofjia, ^ rbv vTrf)peToi'>/j.Gvov rtf ^iria"ri]p.ovi.

3 L. c. i. 42. Ammonius Hermias ad Aristot. de Interpret, p. 103 j
Ei Se Tcura bpGSis \4yerai, SrjAo*' us OVK airofie^/jieda rbi> 8ia\KTiicbv
Ai.65(i}pov Tratfav ol6/j.vov (pwitfyv o"t]fJ.avriK^]v eTvot, /cal irpbs iriffTiv TOVTOV
Ka\ecravra T&V laurou nva o'lK^ruv rep (rv\\oyiffriKy ffvi>8ffffj.y '
xal &\\ov &\\cf (rvvSefffj-tf}' iroiav yap 'Qovffiv at rotavrai cpowal

WOS ^ evepyeias ^ ndOovs, KaOdnsp ret ffi/jLara xa\irbv Kal
Lersch, 1. c. i. p. 44.

334 GBEEK THEORIES ON LANGUAGE.

world of thought in which they lived, did not allow
them to discuss the nature and origin of language after
the fashion of these sophists, nor after our own fashion.
They had to speak in parables, in full, weighty, sugges-
tive poetry, poetry that cannot be translated without
an anachronism. We must take their words, such as
they are, with all their vagueness and all their depth,
but we must not judge them by these words as if these
words were spoken by ourselves. The oracle on
language which is ascribed to Heraclitus was cer-
tainly his own. Commentators may have spoiled,
but they could not have invented it. Heraclitus held
that words exist naturally, but he did not confine
himself to that technical phraseology. Words, he
said, 7 are like the shadows of things, like the pictures
of trees and mountains reflected in the river, like our
own images when we look into a mirror. This sounds
like Heraclitus ; his sentences are always like nuggets
of gold, to use his own simile, 8 without any of the
rubbish through which philosophers have to dig before
they can bring to light solid truth. He is likewise
reported to have said, that to use any words except
those supplied by nature for each thing, was not to
speak, but only to make a noise. What Heraclitus
meant by his simile, or by the word ' nature,' if he
used it, we cannot know definitely ; but we know, at
all events, what he did not mean, namely, that man
imposed what names he pleased on the objects around
him. To have perceived that at that time, to have

7 Lersch, 1. c. i. 11. Ammonius ad Arist.de Interpret, p. 24 B, ed. Aid.

8 Bernays, Neue EruchstucJce des Heraclitus von Ephesus, Eheinisches
.^hiseum fur Philologie, x. p. 242 : xP vff ^ v ' L 5tCV ei/ot *W
opiWoucrt Kal fvplffKovfft 6\iyov. Clemens Stromat. iy. 2, p. 565 P.

GREEK THEORIES ON LANGUAGE. 335

given any thought to that problem in the days when
Heraclitus lived, stamps him once for all as a philo-
sopher, ignorant though he may have been of all the
rules of our logic, our rhetoric, and our grammar.
It is commonly supposed that, as on all other subjects,
so on the subject of language, Democritus took the
opposite view of the dark thinker, nor can we doubt
that Democritus represented language as due to
thesis, i.e. institution, art, convention. None of
these terms, however, can more than indicate the
meaning of thesis. The lengthy arguments which
are ascribed to him 9 in support of his theory savour
of modern thought, but the similes again, which go
by his name, are certainly his own. Democritus
called words agdlmata phoneenta, statues in sound.
Here, too, we have the pithy expression of ancient
philosophy. Words are not natural images, images
thrown by nature on the mirror of the soul; they
are statues, works of art, only not in stone or brass,
but in sound. Such is the opinion of Democritus,
though we must take care not to stretch his words
be} oiid their proper intent. If we translate thesei by
artificial, we must not take artificial in the sense of
arbitrary. If we translate nomo by conventional, we
must not take it to mean accidental. The same

9 Lersch, i. p. 14. Proclus, ad Plat. Crat. p. 6 : 'O Se
ideVfi \4-)wv TO. ov6/ji.ara } 5ia Tecr<rapwj/ eirixetpTj/iciTcoz/ rovro
fK TTJS 6/j.owvfj.ias ' TO. yap 8id(popa irpdyfj.ara TQ avry KO.\OVVTO.I
ovK apa (pvffei rb ovona Kal e'/c TTJS iroKv(avvfj.ias ' el yap Sidtyopa ovduara
7rl rb aurb Kal ev irpay/j.a f^apfj.offova'iv, Kal eTraAArjXo, OTrep advvaTOV Tpirbv
K TTJS TUV ovop-drcov fj.raQi(Tus' 810 TI yap rbv 'ApitrroifXfa jutj/ n\drcoi/a t
rbv Se Tvprafj-ov e6(f)pa(rr ov ^r(avo{j.dffa^v, ei Buffet ra o/^dftara ; e/c
5e TTJS ru>v 6fj.oia)V eAAei-^ecos* Sia T'I airb /xef rrjs fyp<jovi]<T<as \4yo/jify
<t>poveiv, atrb Se rris SiKajocrwTjs OVK en Trapovofj.do/j.v ; Tv^y apa Kal oi/
ipvffti TO. ov6fj.a-ra.

836 GREEK THEORIES ON" LANGUAGE.

philosopher would, for instance, have maintained
that what we call sweet or sour, warm or cold, is
likewise so thesei or conventionally, but by no means
arbitrarily. The war-cries of physei or thesei, which
are heard through the whole history of these distant
battles of thought, involved not only philosophical,
but political, moral, religious interests. We shall
best understand their meaning if we watch their
application to moral ideas. Philolaos, the famous
Pythagorean philosopher, held that virtue existed
by nature, not by institution. What did he mean ?
He meant what we mean when we say that virtue
was not an invention of men who agreed to call
some things good and others bad, but that there is a
voice of conscience within us, the utterance of a divine
law, independent of human statutes and traditions,
self-evident, irrefragable. Yet even those who main-
tained that morality was but another name for
legality, and that good and bad were simply con-
ventional terms, insisted strongly on the broad dis-
tinction between law and the caprice of individuals.
The same in language. When Democritus said that
words were not natural images, natural echoes, but
works of art in sound, he did not mean to degrade
language to a mere conglomerate of sound. On the
contrary, had he, with his terminology, ascribed lan-
guage to nature, nature being with him the mere con-
currence of atoms, he would have shown less insight
into the origin, less regard for the law and order
which pervade language. Language, he said, exists
by institution; but how he must have guarded his
words against any possible misapprehension, how
he must have protested against the confusion of

GREEK THEORIES ON LANGUAGE. 337

the two ideas, conventional and arbitrary, we may
gather from the expression ascribed to him. by a later
scholiast, that words were statues in sound, but statues
not made by the hands of men, but by the gods them-
selves. 10 The boldness and pregnancy of such ex-
pressions are the best guarantee of their genuineness,
and to throw them aside as inventions of later writers
would betray an utter disregard of the criteria by
which we distinguish ancient and modern thought.

Our present object, however, is not to find out what
these early philosophers thought of language I am
afraid we shall never be able to do that but only to
guard against their memory being insulted, and their
names abused for sanctioning the shallow wisdom
of later ages. It is sufficient if we only see clearly
that, with the ancient Greeks, language was not con-
sidered as mere onomatopoeia, although that name
means, literally, making of names. I should not ven-
ture to explain what Pythagoras meant by saying,
'the wisest of all things is Number, and, next to
Number, that which gives names.' 11 But of this I
feel certain, that by the Second in Wisdom in the
universe, even though he may have represented him
exoterically as a human being, as the oldest and
wisest of men, 12 Pythagoras did not mean the man
who, when he heard a cow say moo ! succeeded in
repeating that sound and fixed it as the name of the
animal. As to Plato and Aristotle, it is hardly ne-
cessary to defend them against the imputation of

10 Olympiodorus ad Plat. Philebum, p. 242, $TI ayd^ara Qwfierra /col
ravra eori TWV Sewv, us ATjjurf/cpiTOS. It is curious that Lersch, who
quotes this passage (iii. 19), should, nevertheless, have ascribed to
Democritus the opinion of the purely human origin of language, (i. 13.)

11 Lersch, I.e. i. 25. > 2 Ibid. I. c. i. 27.
II. Z

"338 GREEK THEORIES ON LANGUAGE.

tracing language back to onomatopoeia. Even Epi-
curus, who is reported to have said that in the first
formation of language men acted unconsciously,
moved by nature, as in coughing, sneezing, lowing,
barking, or sighing, admitted that this would account
only for one-half of language, and that some agree-
ment must have taken place before language really
began, before people could know what each person
meant by these uncouth utterances. 13 In this
Epicurus shows a more correct appreciation of the
nature of language than many who profess to hold
his theories at present. He met the objection that
words, if suggested by nature, ought to be the same
in all countries, by a remark in which he anticipated
Humboldt, viz. that human nature is affected dif-
ferently in different countries, that different views are
formed of things, and that these different affections
and views influence the formation of words peculiar
to each nation. He saw that the sounds of nature
would never have grown into articulate language with-
out passing through a second stage, which he repre-
sents as an agreement or an understanding to use
a certain sound for a certain conception. Let us
substitute for this Epicurean idea of a conventional
agreement an idea which did not exist in his time,

13 Diogenes Laertius, Epicurus, 75 : *O6ev Kal TO. ov6^ara.

i, a\\' avras ras (pixreis T&V av6pu>Tr<i)i> Kaff fKaffra fdvrf JfSio
irdQi), Kal ftua Xapfiavovaas ^cwTctoyiOTa, i5i'a>s -rbv aepa fKirf/j.-
affTuv rS>v irdduv Kal TWV <pa.vraff^d.r(av^ ws &v TTOTC

KOI f] irapa TOUS T^TTOVS TUV tQv<av Siafyopa efty. "fffrepov 8e KOIV&S natf
e/cacrra edvrj ra I5ta reOTJvai, irpbs rb ras STjAcicrets ^rrov ap.<pi^6\ovs yeveoOai
a\\-f]\oL$, Kal (Ti/i/TO/xoTe'jOcos STjAou/ieVaj TWO. 8e Kal oil ffvvop<ap.^va irpdy-
elcrtyepuvras, TOVS avvei^dras irapeyyinja'ai nvas (f)66yyovs uv Toiy ^kv
a.va.$u>VT}aa.\., TOVS 5e Ttf \oyifffj.cp eXofJ-evovs Kara r^v Tr\ei-
alriav OVTWS epfjL^vfva'ai. Lersch, i. 39.

NATURAL SELECTION. 339

and the full elaboration of which, in our own time we
owe to the genius of Darwin; let us place instead of
agreement, Natural Selection, or, as I called it in my
former Lectures, Natural Elimination, and we shall
then arrive, I believe, at an understanding with
Epicurus, and even with some of his modern followers.
As a number of sensuous impressions, received by
man, produce a mental image or a perception, and
secondly, as a number of such perceptions produce a
general notion or conception, we may understand that
a number of sensuous impressions may cause a corre-
sponding vocal expression, a cry, an interjection, or
some imitation of the sound that happens to form
part of the sensuous impressions ; and, secondly, that
a number of such vocal expressions may be merged
into one general expression, and leave behind the
root as the sign belonging to a general notion. But
as there is in man a faculty of reason which guides
and governs the formation of sensuous impressions
into perceptions, and of perceptions into general
notions, the gradual formation of roots out of mere
natural cries or imitations takes place under the same
rational control. General notions are not formed at
random, but according to law, that law being our
reason within corresponding to the reason without
to the reason, if I may so call it, of nature. Natural
selection, if we could but always see it, is invariably
rational selection. It is not any accidental variety
that survives and perpetuates itself; it is the indi-
vidual which comes nearest to the original intention
of its creator, or what is best calculated to accomplish
the ends for which the type or species to which it be-
longs was called into being, that conquers in the great

z 2

340 NATURAL SELECTION.

struggle for life. So it is in thought and language.
Not every random perception is raised to the dignity
of a general notion, but only the constantly recurring,
the strongest, the most useful ; and out of the endless
number of general notions that suggest themselves to
the observing and gathering mind, those only survive
and receive definite phonetic expression which are
absolutely requisite for carrying on the work of life.
Many perceptions which naturally present themselves
to our minds have never been gathered up into
general notions, and accordingly they have not re-
ceived a name. There is no general notion to com-
prehend all blue flowers or all red stones ; no name
that includes horses and dogs, but excludes oxen and
sheep. The Greek language has never produced a word
to express animal as opposed to man, and the word
zdon, which, like animal, comprises all living crea-
tures, is post-Homeric. 14 Locke has called attention
to the fact that in English there is a special word for
killing a man, namely, murder, while there is none for
killing a sheep ; that there is a special designation for
the murder of a father, namely, parricide, but none
for the murder of a son or a neighbour. ' Thus the
mind,' he writes, 15 ' in mixed modes, arbitrarily unites
into complex ideas such as it finds convenient ; whilst
others that have altogether as much union in nature
are left loose, and never combined into one idea
because they have no need of one name.' And again,
' Colshire, drilling, filtration, coholation, are words
standing for certain complex ideas, which, being
seldom in the minds of any but the few whose

14 Curtius, Grundzuge, i. 78. L. Greiger, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 14.

15 Locke, On the Understanding, iii. 5, 6.

NATURAL SELECTION. 341

particular employments do at every turn suggest
them to their thoughts, those names of them are not
generally understood but by smiths and chymists,
who having framed the complex ideas which these
words stand for, and having given names to them or
received them from others upon hearing of these
names in communication, readily conceive those ideas
in their minds ; as by cohobation, all the simple ideas
of distilling and the pouring the liquor distilled from
anything back upon the remaining matter, and dis-
tilling it again. Thus we see that there are great
varieties of simple ideas, as of tastes and smells, which
have no names, and of modes many more, which either
not having been generally enough observed, or else not
being of any great use to be taken notice of in the
affairs and concerns of men, they have not had names
given to them, and so pass not for species.' 16

Of course, when new combinations arise, and again
and again assert their independence, they at last
receive admittance into the commonwealth of ideas
and the republic of words. This applies to ancient
even more than to modern times to the early ages
of language more than to its present state. It was
an event in the history of man when the ideas of
father, mother, brother, sister, husband, wife were
first conceived and first uttered. It was a new era
when the numerals from one to ten had been framed,
and when words like law, right, duty, virtue, gene-
rosity, love, had been added to the dictionary of man.
It was a revelation the greatest of all revelations
when the conception of a Creator, a Ruler, a Father

16 Locke, I. c. ii. 18, 7.

342 STATUBAL SELECTION.

of man, when the name of God was for the first time
tittered in this world. Such were the general notions
that were wanted and that were coined into intellec-
tual currency. Other notions started up, lived for a
time, and disappeared again when no longer required.
Others will still rise up, unless our intellectual life
becomes stagnant, and will receive the baptism of
language. Who has thought about the changes which
are brought about apparently by the exertions of
individuals, but for the accomplishment of which,
nevertheless, individual exertions would seem to be
totally unavailing, without feeling the want of a
word, that is to say, in reality, of an idea, to com-
prehend the influence of individuals on the world at
large and of the world at large on individuals an
idea that should explain the failure of a Huss in re-
forming the Church, and the success of a Luther, the
defeat of a Pitt in carrying parliamentary reform,
and the success of a Russell ? How are we to express
that historical process in which the individual seems
to be a free agent and yet is the slave of the masses
whom he wants to influence, in which the masses
seem irresistible, and are yet swayed by the pen of
an unknown writer ? Or, to descend to smaller mat-
ters, how does a poet become popular ? How does a
new style of art or architecture prevail ? How, again,
does fashion change ? how does what seemed absurd
last year become recognised in this, and what is ad-
mired in this become ridiculous in the next season ?
Or take language itself. How is it that a new word,
such as to shunt, 11 or a new pronunciation, such as
gold instead of goold, is sometimes accepted, while at

17 See vol. i. p. 38.

NATURAL SELECTION. 343'.

other times the best words newly coined or newly-
revived by our best writers are completely ignored
and fall dead ? We want an idea that is to exclude
caprice as well as necessity that is to include in-
dividual exertion as well as general co-operation an
idea applicable neither to the unconscious building
of bees nor to the conscious architecture of human
beings, yet combining within itself both these opera-
tions, and raising them to a new and higher concep-
tion. You will guess both the idea and the word, if
I add that it is likewise to explain the extinction of
fossil kingdoms and the origin of new species it is
the idea of Natural Selection that was wanted, and
being wanted it was found, and being found it was
named. It is a new category a new engine of
thought ; and if naturalists are proud to affix their
names to a new species which they discover, Mr.
Darwin may be prouder, for his name will remain
affixed to a new idea, a new genus of thought.

There are languages which do not possess numerals
beyond four. All beyond four is lumped together in
the general idea of many. There are dialects, such
as the Hawaian, in which 18 black and blue and dark-
green are not distinguished, nor bright yellow and
white, nor brown and red. This arises from no ob-
tuseness of sense, for the slightest variation of tint is
immediately detected by the people, but from slug-
gishness of mind. In the same way the Eawaians
are said to have but one term for love, friendship,
gratitude, benevolence, esteem, &c., which they call
indiscriminately aloha, though the same people dis-
tinguish in their dictionary between aneane, a gentle

18 The Polynesian, September 27, 1862.

344 ALL NAMES ARE GENERAL TERMS.

breeze, matani, wind, puhi, blowing or puffing with
the inouth, and hano, blowing through the nose,
asthma. 19 It is the same in the lower classes of our
own country. People who would never use such
words as quadruped, or mineral, or beverage, have
different names for the tail of a fox, the tail of a dog,
the tail of a hare. 20

Castren, the highest authority on the languages,
literature, and civilisation of the Northern Turanian
races, such as the Finns, Lapps, Tatars, and Mongo-
lians, speaks of tribes which have no word for river,
though they have names for the smallest rivulet; no
word for finger, but names for the thumb, the ring-
finger, &c. ; no word for berry, but many names for
cranberry, strawberry, blueberry; no word for tree, but
names for birch, fir, ash, and other trees. 21 He states
in another place (p. 18) that in Finnish the word for
thumb gradually assumed the meaning of finger, the
word for ivaterberry (empetrum nigrurn) the meaning
of berry.

But even these, the most special names, are really
general terms, and express originally a general quality;
nor is there any other way in which they could have
been formed. It is difficult to place ourselves in the
position of people with whom the framing of new
ideas and new words was the chief occupation of their
life. 22 But suppose we had no word for dog; what
could we do ? If we, with a full-grown language at
our command, became for the first time acquainted

19 Hale, Polynesian Lexicon, s. v.

20 Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 439.

* ! Vorlcsungen iiber Finnische Mythologie, p. 1 1 .
22 Daniel Wilson, Prehistoric Man, third chapter.

ALL NAMES ARE GENERAL TEEMS. 345

with a dog, we should probably discover some simi-
larity between it and some other animal, and call it
accordingly. We might call it a tame wolf, just as
the inhabitants of Mallicolo,* 3 when they saw the first
dogs that had been sent to them from the Society
Islands, called them brooas, their name for pig.
Exactly the same happened in the island of Tanna.
Here, too, the inhabitants called the dogs that were
sent to them pigs (buga). It would, however, very
soon be felt as an inconvenience not to be able to
distinguish between a dog and a pig, and some dis-
tinguishing mark of the dog would have to be chosen
by which to name it. How could that be effected ?
It might be effected by imitating the barking of the
animal, and calling it low-wow; yet, strange to say,
we hardly ever find a civilised language in which the
dog was so called. What really took place was this.
The mind received numerous impressions from every-
thing that came within its ken. A dog did not stand
before it at once, properly defined and classified, but
it was observed under different aspects now as a
savage animal, now as a companion, sometimes as a
watcher, sometimes as a thief, occasionally as a swift
hunter, at other times as a coward or an unclean
beast. From every one of these impressions a name
might be framed, and after a time the process of
natural elimination would reduce the number of
these names, and leave only a few, or only one,
which, like cams, would become the proper name
of dog.

But in order that any such name could be given,
it was requisite that general ideas, such as roving,

23 Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, ii. 138.

346 CLUSTERS OF ROOTS.

following, watching, stealing, running, resting, should
previously have been formed in the mind, and should
have received expression in language. These gene-
ral ideas are expressed by roots. As they are more
simple and primitive, they are expressed by more
simple and primitive roots, whereas complex ideas
found expression in secondary radicals. Thus to go
would be expressed by sar, to creep by sarp ; to shout
by nad, to rejoice by nand, to join by yu or yug, to
glue together by yaut . We thus find in Sanskrit and
in all the Aryan languages clusters of roots, expressive
of one common idea, and differing from each other
merely by one or two additional letters, either at the
end or at the beginning. The most natural suppo-
sition is that which I have just stated, namely, that
as ideas grew and multiplied, simple roots were in-
creased and became diversified. But the opposite
view might likewise be defended, namely, that lan-
guage began with variety, that many special roots
were thrown out first, and from them the more
general roots elaborated by leaving out those letters
which constituted the specific differences of each.

Much may be said in support of either of these
views, nor is it at all unlikely that both processes,
that of accretion and that of elimination, may have
been at work simultaneously. But the fact is that we
know nothing even of the most ancient of the Aryan
languages, the Sanskrit, till after it had long passed
through its radical and agglutinative stages, and we
shall never know for certain by what slow degrees it
advanced through both, and became settled as an
inflectional language. Chronologically speaking, the
question whether sarp existed before sar, is unan-

PHONETIC TYPES. 347

swerable ; logically, no doubt, sar comes first, but we
have seen enough of the history of speech to know
that what ought to have been according to the strict
laws of logic is very different from what has been
according to the pleasure of language. 24

What it is of the greatest importance to observe is
this, that out of many possible general notions, and
out of many possible general terms, those only be-
come, through a process of natural selection, typical
in each language which are now called the roots, the
fertile germs of that language. These roots are
definite in form and meaning : they are what I called
phonetic types, firm in their outline, though still liable
to important modifications. They are the 'specific
centres ' of language, and without them the science
of language would be impossible.

All this will become clearer by a few examples.
Let us take a root and follow it through its adven-
tures in its way through the world. There is an
Aryan root MAR, which means to crush, to pound,
to destroy by friction. I should not venture to say
that those are mistaken who imagine they perceive
in this root the grating noise of some solid bodies
grinding against each other. Our idiosyncrasies as
to the nature of certain sounds are formed, no doubt,
very much through the silent influence of the lan-
guages which we speak or with which we are ac-
quainted. It is perfectly true also that this jarring
or rasping noise is rendered very differently in

24 On clusters of roots, or the gradual growth of roots, see some
interesting remarks by Benfey, Kurze Sanskrit Grammatik, 60 seq.,
and Pott, Etymologische Forschungen, ii. p. 283. Bopp, Verghichcnde
Grammatik, 109 a, 3, 109 b, 1. Lectures, vol. i. p. 305.

348 THE ROOT MAR.

different languages. Nevertheless, there being such
a root as mar, meaning to pound, it is natural to
imagine that we hear in it something like the noise
of two mill-stones, or of a metal-crushing engine. 25
But let us mark at once the difference between a
mere imitation of the inarticulate groaning and
moaning noises produced by crushing hard sub-
stances, and the articulate sound mar. Every pos-
sible combination of consonants with final r or I
was suggested ; kr, tr, chr, glr, all would have
answered the purpose, and may have been used, for
all we know, previous to the first beginning of
articulate speech. But, as soon as mr had got the
upperhand, all other combinations were discarded ;
mr had conquered, and became by that very fact the
ancestor of a large family of words. If, then, we
either follow the history of this root MAR in an

25 The following remarks of St. Augustine on this subject are
curious : ' Donee perveniatur eo ut res cum sono verbi aliqua simili-
tudine concinat, ut cum dicimus aeris tinnitum, equorum hinnitum,
ovium balatum, tubarum clangorem,stridorem catenarum (perspicis enim
haec verba ita sonare ut ipsae res quae his verbis significantur). Sed
quia sunt res quae non sonant, in his similitudinem tactus valere, ut si
leniter vel aspere sensum tangunt, lenitas vel asperitas literarum ut
tangit auditum sic eis nomina peperit : ut ipsum lene cum dicimus leniter
sonat; quis item asperitatem non et ipso nomine asperam judicet? Lene
est auribus cum dicimus voluptas, asperum cum dicimus crux. Ita res
ipsse adficiunt, ut verba sentiuntur. Mel, quam suaviter gustum res ipsa,
tarn leniter nomine tangit auditum, acre in utroque asperum est. Lana
et vepres ut audiuntur verba, sic ilia tanguntur. Haec quasi cunabula
verborum esse crediderunt, ubi sensus rerum cum sonorum sensu
concordarent. Hinc ad ipsarum inter se rerum similitudinem processisse
licentiam nominandi ; ut cum verbi causa crux propterea dicta sit, quod
ipsius verbi asperitas cum doloris quern crux efficit asperitate concordat,
crura tamen non propter asperitatem doloris sed, quod longitudine atque
duritia inter membra cetera sint ligno similiora sic appellata fiint.'
Augustinus, De Dialectica, as corrected by Crecelius in Hoefer's Zeit-
schrift, iv. 152.

THE BOOT MAE. 349

ascending line and spreading direction, or if we
trace its offshoots back in a descending line to their
specific germ, we must be able to explain all later
modifications, as necessitated by phonetic and ety-
mological laws ; in all the various settings, the
jewel must be the same ; and, in all its various
corruptions, the causes must be apparent that pro-
duced the damage.

I begin, then, with the root MAR, and ascribe to
it the meaning of grinding down. In all the words
that are derived from mar there must be no phonetic
change, whether by increase, decrease, or corruption,
that cannot be supported by analogy; in all the
ideas expressed by these words there must always be
a connecting link by which the most elevated and
abstract notions can be connected, directly or indi-
rectly, with the original conception of 'grinding. 9
In the phonetic analysis, all that is fanciful and
arbitrary is at once excluded: nothing is tolerated
for which there is not some precedent. In the web
of ideas, on the contrary, which the Aryan mind has
spun out of that one homely conception we must be
prepared not only for the orderly procession of logi-
cal thought, but frequently for the poetic flights of
fancy. The production of new words rests on poetry
as much, if not more 3 than on judgment; and to
exclude the poetical or fanciful element in the early
periods of the history of human speech would be to
deprive ourselves of the most important aid in un-
ravelling its early beginnings.

Before we enter on our survey of this family of
words, we must bear in mind (1) that r and I are
cognate and interchangeable; therefore mar=mal.

350 THE ROOT MAR.

2. That ar in Sanskrit is shortened to a simple
vowel, and then pronounced ri ; hence mar=mri.

3. That ar may be pronounced ra, 26 and al, la;
hence mar=mra, mal=mla.

4. That mra and mla in Greek are changed into
mbroy mblo, and, after dropping the m, into bro and
bio.

In Sanskrit we find malana in the sense of rub-
bing or grinding, but the root does not seem in that
language to have yielded any names for mill. This
may be important historically, if it should indicate
that real mills were unknown previous to the Aryan
separation. In Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Sla-
vonic, the name for mill is throughout derived from
the root mar. Thus, Latin mola, 27 Greek myle, Old
High- German muli, Irish meile, Bohemian mlyn,
Lithuanian malunas. From these close coincidences
among all the members of the Northern branch of
the Aryan family, it has been concluded that mills
were known previous to the separation of the
Northern branch, though it ought to be borne in
mind that some of these nations may have borrowed
the name from others who were the inventors of
mills.

With the name for mill we have at the same
time the names for miller, mill-stone, milling, meal.
In Greek mylos, mill-stone ; myllo, I mill. In
Gothic malan, to mill; melo, meal; muljan, to rub
to pieces.

26 In Sanskrit we have mardita and mradita, he will grind to
pieces, as the future of m ar d. See M. M.'s Sanskrit Grammar (2nd ed.),
p. 255.

27 See Pott, Etym. Forsch. (I.) i. 220. Kuhn, IndiscJie Studien, i.
359. Curtius, G. E. i. 302.

THE ROOT MAR. 351

What in English are called the mill-teeth are
the myUtai in Greek ; the moldres, or grinders, in
Latin.

To anyone acquainted with the living language of
England, the transition from milling to fighting does
not require any long explanation. Hence we trace
back to mar without difficulty the Homeric mdr-na-
mai, I fight, I pound, as applied to boxers in the
Odyssey. 28 In Sanskrit, we find mri-na-mi used in
the more serious sense of smashing, i. e. killing. 29
We shall now understand more readily the Greek
molos in molos Areos, the toil and moil of war, and
likewise the Greek molops, a weal, originally a blow,
a contusion.

Hitherto we have treated mar as a transitive verb,
as expressive of the action of grinding exerted on
some object or other. But most verbs were used
originally intransitively as well as transitively, and
so was mar. What then would mar express if used
as an intransitive verb, if expressive of a mere con-
dition or status? It would mean c to be wearing
away,' 'to be in a state of decay/ 'to crumble away
as if ground to dust.' We say in German, sich auf-
reiben, to become exhausted ; and aufgerieben means
nearly destroyed. Goethe says, 'Die Kraft der
Erregbarkeit nimmt mit dem Leben ab, bis endlich den
aufgeriebenen Menschen nichts mehr auf der leeren Welt
erregt als die kunftige; ' c Our excitability decreases
with our life, till at last nothing can excite the

28 Od. xviii. 31 :

Zwcrcu vvv, Iva, Travres tTriyvduffi Kal o75e
Mapva / uej'ovs TTUS 8' &v <rv veorepcp aySpt pdixou).

29 Kigveda, vi. 44, 17: 'pra mriwa #ahia;' strike (them) down
and till them.

352 THE ROOT MAR.

ground-down mortal in this empty world except the
world to come.' What then is the meaning of the
Greek maraino and marasmos ? Marain6, as a trans-
itive verb, means to wear out ; as n6sos marainei me,
illness wears me out ; but it is used also as a neuter
verb in the sense of to wither away, to die away.
Hence marasmSs, decay, the French marasme. The
adjective molys, formed like molos, means worn out,
feeble, and a new verb, molynomai, to be worn out,
to vanish.

The Sanskrit murfe/i, to faint, is derived from
mar by a regular process for forming inchoative
verbs ; it means to begin to die.

Now let us suppose that the ancient Aryans wanted
to express for the first time what they constantly saw
around them, namely, the gradual wearing away of
the human frame, the slow decay which at last is
followed by a complete breaking up of the body.
How should they express what we call dying or
death? One of the nearest ideas that would be
evoked by the constant impressions of decay and
death was that expressed by mar, the grinding of
stone to dust. And thus we find in Latin mor-i-or,
I die, mortuus, dead, mors, death. Tn Sanskrit
mriye, I die, mrita, dead, mrityu, death. One
of the earliest names for man was mart a, the
dying, the frail creature, a significant name for man
to give to himself ; in Greek brotos, mortal. Having
chosen that name for himself, the next step was to
give the opposite name to the gods, who were called
dmbrotoi, without decay, immortal, and their food
ambrosia, immortality. In the Teutonic languages
these words are absent, but that mar was used in the

THE ROOT MAR. 353

sense, if not of dying, at least of killing, we learn
from the Gothic m&wrikr, the English murder.
In Old Slavonic we find mrUi, to die, moru, pesti-
lence, death ; smrltt, death ; in Lithuanian mir-ti, to
die, smertis, death.

If morior in Latin is originally to decay, then what

'ses decay is morbus, illness.

In Sanskrit the body itself, our frame, is called
iniirti, which originally would seem to have meant
decay or decayed, a corpse, rather than a corpus.

The Sanskrit marman, a joint, a member, is like-
wise by Sanskrit grammarians derived from mar.
Ones it mean the decaying members ? or is it derived
from mar in its original sense of grinding, so as to
express the movement of the articulated joints ? The
Latin membrum is memrum, and this possibly by re-
duplication derived from mar, like membletai from
mel6, membloka from mol in emolon, the present being

Let us next examine the Latin mora. It means
iLvay, and from it we have the French demeurer, to
dwell. Now mora was originally applied to time, and
in mora temporis we have the natural expression of
the slow dying away, the gradual wasting away of
time. ' Sine mord,' without delay, originally without
decay, without loss of time.

From mar in the secondary but definite sense of
withering, dying, we have the Sanskrit maru, a
desert, a dead soil. There is another desert, the sea,
which the Greeks called atrygeton, unfruitful, barren.
The Aryans had not seen that watery desert before they
separated from each other on leaving their central
homes. But when the Romans for the first time saw

II. A A

354 THE ROOT MAR.

the Mediterranean, they called it mare, and the same
word is found among the Celtic, the Slavonic, and the
Teutonic nations. 30 We can hardly doubt that their
idea in applying this name to the sea was the dead
or stagnant water as opposed to the running streams
(Veau vive), or the unfruitful expanse. Of course
there is always some uncertainty in these guesses at
the original thoughts which guided the primitive
framers of language. All we can do is to guard
against mixing together words which may have had
an independent origin ; but if it is once established
that there is no other root from which mare can be
derived more regularly than from mar, to die (Bopp's
derivation from the Sk. vari, water, is not tenable),
then we are at liberty to draw some connecting line
between the root and its offshoot, and we need not
suppose that in ancient days new words were framed
less boldly than in our own time. Language has
been called by Jean Paul c a dictionary of faded
metaphors : ' so it is, and it is the duty of the ety-
mologist to try to restore them to their original
brightness. If, then, in English we can speak of
dead water, meaning stagnant water, or if the
French 31 use eau morte in the same sense, why should
not the Northern Aryans have derived one of their
names for the sea from the root mar, to die ? Of
course they would have other names besides, and the
more poetical the tribe, the richer it would be in
names for the ocean. The Greeks, who of all Aryan
nations were most familiar with the sea, called it not

80 Curtius, Zeitschrift, i. 30. Slav, more; Lith. marios and marts;
Goth, mardf Jr. muir.

81 Pott, Khhn's Zeitschrift, ii. 107.

THE BOOT MAR. 355

the dead water, but thdlassa (tardsso), the commotion,
-hdls. the briny, pelayos (pldzo), the tossing, pontos y
the high-road. 32

Let us now return to the original sense of mar and
riial, which was, as we saw, to grind or to pouild,
chiefly applied to the grinding of corn and to the
blows of boxers. The Greeks derived from it one of
their mythological characters, namely, Molion, a word
which, according to Ilesychius, would mean a fighter
in general, but which, in the fables of Greece, is chiefly
known by the two Moliones, the millers, who had
one body, but two heads, four feet, and four hands.
Even HeraMes could not vanquish them when they
fought against him in defence of their uncle Augeias
with his herd of three thousand oxen. He killed
them afterwards by surprise. These heroes having
been called originally Moliones or Molionidae, i.e.
pounders, were afterwards fabled to have been the
sons of Molione, the mill, and AJctor, the corn-man.
Some mythologists 33 have identified these twins with
thunder and lightning, and it is curious that the name
of Thor's thunderbolt should be derived from the
same root ; for the hammer of Thor Mib'lnir ?l4 means
simply the smasher. Again, among the Slavonic
tribes, molnija is a name for lightning ; and in the
Serbian songs Munja is spoken of as the sister of

32 Curtius, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, i. 33.

83 Friedreich, Eealien in der Iliade und Odyssee, p. 562; Preller,
Griechiscke Mythologic, ii. 165.

34 Grimm, DeutscJie Mythologie, 164, 1171. 'The holy mawle
(maul, maillet, malleus) is referred by Grimm to the hammer of Thor
'The holy mawle, which they fancy hung behind the church-door,
which, when the father was seaventie, the sonne might fetch to knock
his father on the head, as effete and of no more use.' Haupt's Zeit-
schrift, v. 72.

A A 2

3-56 THE EOOT MAR.

G~rom, the thunder, and has become a mythological
personage.

Besides these heroic millers, there is another pair
of Greek giants, known by the name of Aloadae, Otos,
and Ephialtes. In their pride they piled Ossa on
Olympus, and Pelion on Ossa, like another Tower of
Babel, in order to scale the abode of the gods. They
were defeated by Apollo. The name of these giants
has much the same meaning as that of the Moliones.
It is derived from alotf, a threshing-floor, and means
threshers. The question, then, is whether aloe', thresh-
ing-floor, and dleuron and ta dleura, wheat-flour, can
be traced back to the root mal. It is sometimes
said that Greek words may assume an initial m for
euphony's sake. That has never been proved. But
it can be proved by several analogous cases that Greek
words, originally beginning with m, occasionally drop
that m. This, no doubt, is a violent change, and a
change apparently without any physiological necessity,
as there is no more difficulty in pronouncing an initial
m than in pronouncing an initial vowel. However.
tho re is no lack of analogies; and by analogies we
must be guided. Thus moschos, a tender shoot, exists
also as 6sckos or osche, a young branch. Instead of
ram, one, in the feminine, we find ia in Homer.
Nay, instead of our very word dleuron, wheaten flour,
another form, mdleuron, is mentioned by Helladius. 35
Again, if we compare Greek and Latin, we find that
what the Eomans called mola namely, meal, or
rather the grits of spelt, coarsely ground, which were
mixed with salt, and thus strewed on the victims at

3i /j.ct:\K^, a weal, seems connected with ov\at, scars. Cf. Lobeck,
Pathologia GrcBC. Sennonis, p. 112.

THE BOOT MAR. 357

sacrifices were called in Greek oulai or olai, though
supposed to be barley instead of spelt. 36 On the strength
of these analogies we may, I believe, admit the pos-
sibility of an initial m being dropt in Greek, which
would enable us to trace the names both of the
MoUones and Aloadae back to the root mar. And if
the Moliones and Aloadae 37 derive their names from
the root mar, we can hardly doubt that Mars and
Ares, the prisoner of the Aloadae, came both from
the same source. In Sanskrit the root mar yields
Marut, the storm, literally the pounder or smasher; 38
and in the character of the Maruts, the companions
of Indra in his daily battle with Vritra, it is easy
to discover the germs of martial deities. The same
root would fully explain the Latin Mars, 39 Martis ;
and, considering the uncertain character of the initial
m, the Greek Ares, Areos. Marmar and Marmor, old
Latin names for Mars, are reduplicated forms ; and
in the Oscan Mdmers the r of the reduplicated syllable

36 Of. Buttmann, Lcxilogus, p. 450.

37 Otos arid Ephialtes, the wind (vata) and the hurricane.

38 Professor Kuhn takes Marut as a participle in at, and explains it
as dying or dead. He considers the Maruts were originally conceived
as the souls of the departed, and that because the souls were conceived
as ghosts, or spirits, or winds, the Maruts assumed afterwards the
character of storm-deities. Such a view, however, finds no support in
the hymns of the Veda. In Pilumnus, the brother of Picumnus, both
companions of Mars, we have a name of similar import, viz. a pounder.
Jupiter Pistor, too, was originally the god who crushes with the
thunderbolt (Preller, Ebmische Mythologie, p. 173), and the Moles
Martis seem to rest on an analogous conception of the nature of
Mars.

39 The suffix in Mars, Martis, is different from that in Marut. The
Sanskrit Marut is Mar-vat; Mars, Martis, is formed, like pars, partis,
which happens to correspond with Sanskrit par -us or par- van. The
Greek, dres is again formed differently, but the JEolic form, Areus, would
come nearer to Marut. Kuhn, Zeitschrift, i. 376.

358 THE ROO'i' MAR.

is lost. Mdvors is more difficult to explain, 40 for
there is no instance in Latin of in in the middle of a
word being changed into v. But although etymolo-
gically there is no difficulty in deriving the Indian
name Marut, the Latin name Mars, and the Greek
name Ares, from one and the same root, 41 there is
certainly neither in the legends of Mars nor in those
of Ares any very distinct trace of their having been
representatives of the storm. Mars at Eome and
Ares in Thracia, though their worship was restricted
to small territories, both assumed there the character
of supreme tutelary deities. The only connecting
link between the classical deities Mars and Ares and
the Indian Maruts is their warlike character ; and if
we take Indra as the conqueror of winter, as the
destroyer of darkness, as the constant victor in the-
battle against the hostile powers of nature, then he,
as the leader of the Maruts, who act as his army,,
assumes a more marked similarity with Mars, the
god of spring, the giver of fertility, the destroyer
of evil. 42 In Ares, Preller, without any thought of

40 See Corssen, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, ii. 1-35.

41 That Marut and Mars were radically connected, was first pointed
out by Professor Kuhn, in Haupt's Zeitschrift, v. 491 ; but he derived
both words from mar in the sense of dying. Other derivations are dis-
cussed by Corssen, in Kuhn's Zeitschrtft, ii. 1. He- quotes Cicero (Nat.
Deor. ii. 28) : ' Jam qui magna verteret Mavors ;' Cedrenus (Corp. Byz.
Nicbuhr, t. i. p. 295, 21 ff.) : '6n rbi/ Mdprffj. ol 'Pcctyicuot /j.6pre/j. tuaXovv
oiovsl Sdvarov, ^ KJVTJT^J/ TUV T^vSiv^ $) T^V trap aftpsvuv nal fj.6i/a)v
njuwjuej/ov ; Varro (L.L. v. 73, ed. 0. Miiller). ' Mars ab eo quod
maribus in bello prseest, aut quod ab Sabinis acceptus, ibi est Mamers.'
Ho himself explains Mars from mas-t, the male, the creative. He takes
mamcrt and marmar as reduplicated forms, and explains Mdvort by

rt. The typical form would be Mas, and Varro and Priscianus-
have Maspiter for Marspiter. See also Leo Meyer, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift^
v. 387.

42 See Preller, Romische Mythologie, p. 300, seq.

THE ROOT MAR. 359

the relationship between Ares and the Maruts, dis-
covered the personification of the sky as excited by
storm. 43

We have hitherto examined the direct offshoots
only of the root mar, but we have not yet taken into
account the different modifications to which that root
itself is liable. This is a subject of considerable im-
portance, though at the same time beset with great
difficulties and uncertainties. I stated in a former
Lecture that Hindu grammarians have reduced the
whole wealth of their language to about 1,700 roots.
These roots once granted, there remained not a single
word unexplained in Sanskrit. But the fact is that
many of these roots are clearly themselves deriva-
tives. Thus, besides yu, to join, we found yu#, to
join, and yudh, to join in battle. Here g and dh

43 Preller, Griechische Mythologie, p. 202-3 : ' Endlich deuten aber
auch verschiedene bildliche Erzahlungen in der Ilias eine solche Natur-
beziehung an, besonders die Beschreibung der Kampfe zwischen Ares
und Athena, welche als Gottin der reinen Luft und des Aethers dio
natiirliche Feindin des Ares ist, und gewohnlich sehr unbarmherzig mit
ihm umgeht. So II. v. 583 if., wo sie ihn durch Diomedes verwundet,
Ares aber mit solchem Gretose niederrasselt (l#paxe), wie neuntausend
oder zehntausend Manner in der Schlacht zu larmen pflegen, worauf er
als dunkles Grewolk zum Himmel emporfahrt. Ebenso II. xxi. 400 ff.,
wo Athena den Ares durch einen Steinwurf verwundet, er aber fallt und
bedeckt sieben Morgen Landes im Fall, und seine Haare vermischen sich
mit dem Staube, seine Waffen rasseln : was wieder ganz den Eindruck
eines solchen alten Naturgemaldes macht, wo die Ereignisse der Natur,
Donnerwetter, Wolkenbruch, gemaltiges Sturmen und Brausen in der
Luft als Acte einer himmlischen Grottergeschichte erscheinen, in denen
gewohnlich Zeus, Hera, Athena, Hephastos, Ares und Hermes als die
handlenden Personen auftreten. Indessen ist diese allgemeine Bedeu-
tung des Ares bald vor der speeiellen des blutigen Kriegsgottes zuriick-
getreten.' See also 11. xx. 51 : Aue 8* "Apijs Irepcoflej', epefMvfj \ai\a-m
Tcros.

21. ix. 4 : 'ls 5' Hi/e^oi 8vo irovrov oplverov i~)(jdv6fvTa,
Boperjs iia.1 Zf<pvpos, rca re 0p?;/O}0ej' a.T]rov.

360 THE ROOT MAR.

are clearly modificatory letters, which must origin-
ally have had some meaning. Another root, yau,
in the sense of joining or glueing together, must
likewise be considered as a dialectic variety of yugr.

Let us apply this to our root MAR. As yu forms
yudh, so mar forms mardh or mridh, and this
root exists in Sanskrit in the sense of destroying,
killing; hence mridh, enemy. 44

Again, as yu produces yugr, so mar produces
inargr or mrig. This is a root of very common
occurrence. It means to rub, but not in the sense
of destroying, like mridh, but in the sense of clean-
ing or purifying. This is its usual meaning in
Sanskrit, and it explains the Sanskrit name for cat,
namely, margrara, literally the animal that always
rubs or cleans itself. In Greek we find omorg-ny-mi
in the same sense. But this general meaning be-
came still more defined in Greek, Latin, German,
and Slavonic, and by changing r into I the root malg
was formed, meaning to rub or stroke the udder of
the cow, i.e. to milk. Thus melgo, and amelgo, in
Greek, mean to milk ; in Latin, mulgere has the
same meaning. In Old High- German we find the
substantive milchu, and from it new verbal deriva-
tives in the sense of milking. In Lithuanian, milzti
means both to milk and to stroke. These two cog-
nate meanings are kept asunder in Latin by mulgere,
as distinct from mulcere, to stroke, and we thus dis-
cover a third modification of mar with final guttural
or palatal tenuis, namely, mar A;, like Sanskrit ya&,
to ask, from ya, to go (ambire or adire). Formed
by a similar process, though for a different purpose,

44 Kigveda, vi. 53, 4: 'vi mridh a h ^ahi,' kill the enemies.

THE ROOT MAJt. 361

is the Latin marcus, a large hammer or pestle, which
was used at Eome as a personal name, Marcus,
Marcius, Marcianus, Marcellus, and occurs again in
later times in the historical name of Charles Martel.
In Sanskrit, on the contrary, the verb mris, with
final palatal s, expresses the idea of gentle stroking,
and with certain prepositions comes to mean to
revolve, to meditate, to think. As mori, to die, meant,
originally, to wither, so marcere exhibits the same
idea in a secondary form. It means to droop, to
faint, to fade, and is supported by the adjective
marcidus. In Greek we have to mention the adjec-
tive malaJcos. It means soft and smooth, originally
rubbed down or polished ; and it comes to mean at
last weak, or sick, or effeminate. 45

One of the most regular modifications of mar
would be mra, and this, under the form of ml a,
means in Sanskrit to wither, to fade away. In
Greek, ml being frequently rendered by bl, we can
hardly be wrong in referring to this base bldx, mean-
ing slack in body and in mind, and the Gothic
rnalsk-s, foolish. 46 Soft and foolish are used synony-
mously in many languages, nor is it at all unlikely
that the Greek moros, foolish, may come from our
root mar, and have meant at first soft.

Here we see how different meanings play into each
other; how what from one point of view is looked
upon as worn down and destroyed, is from another
point of view considered as smooth and brilliant, and
how the creative genius of man succeeded in express-

45 Cf. Latin levis ; a/jLa\6s, if for na^.a\os, soft, may belong to the same
root. We have to consider, however, the Attic afj.a\6s.
< 6 Curtius, G. E. i. 303.

362 THE BOOT MAR.

ing both ideas by means of the same radical element.
We saw that in omorgnymi the meaning fixed upon
was that of rubbing or wiping clean, in amelgo that
of rubbing or milking ; and we can see how a third
sense, that of rubbing in the sense of tearing off or
plucking off, is expressed in Greek by mergo or

If we suppose our root mar strengthened by means
of a final labial, instead of the final guttural which
we have just been considering, we have marp, a base
frequently used by Greek poets. It is generally
translated by catching (and identified with harpdzo),
but we perceive traces of its original meaning in such
expressions as gems emarpse,* 7 old age ground him
down; Mli6na mdrpte podonn (II. xiv. 228), he
struck or pounded the soil with his feet.

Let us keep to this new base, marp, and consider
that it may assume the forms of malp and mlap ; let
us then remember that ml, in Greek, is interchange-
able with bl, and we arrive at the new base, blap,
well known in the Greek bldpto, I damage, I hinder,
I mar. This bldpto still lives in the English to
blame, the French bldmer, for blasmer, which is a
corruption of blasphemer. The Greek blasphemem,
again, stands for blapsiphemem, i.e. to use damaging
words; and in blapsi we see the verb bldpto, the
legitimate offspring of our root mar.

One of the most prolific descendants of mar is the
root mard. It occurs in Sanskrit as mridnati(Kri-
class), and as mradati (Bhu-class), in the sense of
rubbing down; but it is likewise used, particularly if
joined with prepositions, in the sense of to squash, to

47 Od. xxiv. 390.

THE KOOT MAR. 363

overcome, to conquer. From this root we have the
Sanskrit mridu, soft, 48 the Latin mollis (mard, maid,
mall), the Old Slavonic mladu (maldu), and, though
formed by a different suffix, the English mellow. In
all these words what is ground down to powder was
used as the representative of smoothness, and was
readily transferred to moral gentleness and kindness.
Dust itself was called by the same root in its simplest
form, namely, mrid, which, after meaning dust, came
to mean soil in general, or earth.

The Gothic malma, sand, belongs to the same class
of words ; so does the Modern German zermalmen, to
grind to pieces, and the Gothic malvjan, used by
Ulfilas in the same sense.

In Latin this root has thrown out several offshoots.
Malleus, a hammer, stands probably for mardeus; and
even martellus, unless it stands for marcellus, claims
the same kin. In a secondary form we find our root
in Latin as mordere, to bifce, originally to grind or
worry.

In English, to smart has been well compared with
mordere, the s being a formative letter with which
we shall meet again. 49 ' A wound smarts/ means a
wound bites or hurts. It is thus applied to every
sharp pain, and in German Schmerz means pain in
general. 50

This root mard, the Greek meldo, to make liquid,

48 Curtius (G. E. i. 92) points out the analogous case of Greek rfprjv,
tender, if derived from tep, as inreipw. If so, terra also, dust, might be
explained like Sanskrit mrid, dust, earth.

49 See Grimm, Deutsche Grammati/c, ii. p. 701.

50 Cf. Ebel, in Kuhn's Zdtschrift, vii. 226, where truepoaAe'os is like-
wise traced to this root, and the Gothic marzjan, to mar. See also.
Benary, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, iv. 48.

364 THE BOOT MAR.

assumes in English regularly the form malt or melt;
nor is there any doubt that the English to melt meant
originally to make soft, if not by the blows of the
hammer, at least by the licking of the fire, and the
absorbing action of the heat. Mulciber, a name of
Vulcan, means the smelter, and is derived from.
mulcere. 51 The German schmelzen has the same power,
and is used both as a transitive and an intransitive
verb. Now let us watch the clever ways of language.
An expression was wanted for the softening influence
which man exercises on man by looks, gestures,
words, or prayers. What could be done ? The same
root was taken which had conveyed before the idea
of smoothing a rough surface, of softening a hard
substance ; and, with a slight modification, the root
mard became fixed as the Sanskrit mrid, or niriZ,
to soften, to propitiate. 62 It was used in that sense
chiefly with regard to the gods, who were to be pro-
pitiated by prayers and sacrifices. It was likewise
used in an intransitive sense of the gods themselves,
who were implored to melt, to become softened and
gracious; and prayers which we now translate by
' Be gracious to us,' meant originally ' Melt to us,
gods.' 53

From this source springs the Gothic mild, the
English mild, originally soft or gentle. The Lithua-
nian takes from it its name for love, meilej and in
Greek we find meilia, gladdening gifts or appease-
ments, and such derivatives as meilisso, to soothe,
and meilichoSy gentle.

51 Corssen, Beitrage, p. 356.

52 The lingual d appears regularly in Sanskrit m rift may a, made of
earth.

58 Rigveda, vi. 51, 5 : 'Yasava^ mrilata

THE ROOT MAR. 365

This was one aspect of the process of melting ; but
there was a second, equally natural, namely, that of
melting or dying away in the sense of desiring, yearn-
ing, grieving after a thing. We might say a man
melts in love, in grief (in German er zerschmilzt, er
vergeht vor Liebe), and the Greeks said in the same
sense meledaind, I melt, i. e. I care for, meledone,
anxiety, grief. Meldomenos, too, is explained by
He sy chins in the sense of desiring. 54 But more than
this. We saw before that there is sufficient evidence
for the occasional disappearance of the initial m in the
root mar. We therefore are justified in identifying
the Greek eldomai with an original meldomai. And
what does eldomai mean in Greek ? It means to die
for a thing, to desire a thing ; 55 that is to say, it
means exactly what it ought to mean if it is derived
from the root which we have in meldo, I melt.

We have, while engaged in these investigations, met
on several occasions with an s prefixed to mar, and
we have treated it simply as a modificatory element
added for the purpose of distinguishing words which
it was felt desirable to keep distinct. Without in-
quiring into the real origin of this s, which has lately
been the subject of violent disputes between Professors
Pott and Curtius, we may take it for granted that the
Sanskrit root s mar is closely related to the root mar ;
nor is it difficult 56 to discover how the meaning of

64 Of. Curtius. G. E. ii. 167.

55 In Wallachian, dor means desire, but it is in reality the same as
Italian duolo, pain. Of. Diez, s. v. Analogous constructions in Latin
Cory don ardebat Alexin.

56 Curtius mentions smar as one of the roots which, if not from the
'^ginning, ' had, at all events before the Aryan separation, assumed an
entirely intellectual meaning.' G. E. i. 84.

366 THE ROOT MAR.

s mar, namely, to remember, could have been ela-
borated out of mar, to grind. We saw over and over
again that the idea of melting glided into that of
loving, hoping, and desiring, and we shall find that
the original meaning of s mar in Sanskrit is to desire,
to brood, not to remember. 57 Thus Sk. s mar a is love,
very much like the Lithuanian meile, love, i. e. melt-
ing. From this meaning of desiring, new meanings
branched off, such as dwelling on, brooding over,
musing over, and then recollecting. In the other
Aryan languages the initial specific s does not appear.
We have memor in Latin, memoria, memorare, all in
the special sense of remembering ; but in Greek mer-
mair6 means simply I brood, I care, I mourn ; merimna
is anxiety, and even martyr need not necessarily mean
a man who remembers, but a man who cares for, who
cherishes, who holds a thing. 58

In unravelling this cluster of words, it Las been
my chief object to trace the gradual growth of ideas,
the slow progress of the mind from the single to the
general, from the material to the spiritual, from the
concrete to the abstract. To rub down or to polish
leads to the idea of propitiation ; to wear off or to
wither are expressions applied to the consuming
feeling of hopes deferred and hearts sickening, and
ideas like memory and martyrdom are clothed in
words taken from the same source.

57 Paw.ini, Dhatupa^a, 19, 46: 'smri ddhyane, Vp. autkye,'
which Colebrooke translates by to regret or remember with tenderness.
Madhava explains the term by utkaw^M-purvakara smarawam,
recollection preceded by longing.

88 Cf. i6/ji(apos, yxe<ri'/i&>pos, i n the sense of caring for arrows, spears,
&c., Benary, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, iv. 53 ; and fa-ropes 0eo, "AypavXcs,
s, "A/JTJS, Zevs, Preller, Griechisclie Mythologie, p. 205.

THE ROOT MAR. 30 7

The fates and fortunes of this one root mar form
but a small chapter in the history and growth of the
Aryan languages ; but we may derive from this small
chapter some idea as to the power and elasticity of
roots, and the unlimited sway of metaphor in the for-
mation of new ideas.

868

LECTURE VIII.

METAPHOK.

FEW philosophers have so clearly perceived the im-
portance of language in all the operations of the
human mind, few have so constantly insisted on the
necessity of .watching the influence of words on
thought, as Locke in his Essay concerning Human
Understanding. Of the four books into which this
great work is divided, one, the third, is entirely de-
voted to Words or Language in general. At the time
when Locke wrote, but little attention had been paid
to the philosophy of language, and the author, afraid
that he might seem to have given more prominence
to this subject than it deserved, thought it necessary
to defend himself against such a charge in the fol-
lowing words : ' What I have here said concerning
words in this third book will possibly be thought by
some to be much more than what so slight a subject
required. I allow it might be brought into a nar-
rower compass ; but I was willing to stay my reader
on an argument that appears to me new, and a little
out of the way (I am sure it is one I thought not of
when I began to write) ; that by searching it to the
bottom, and turning it on every side, some part or
other might meet with every one's thoughts, and give
occasion to the most averse or negligent to reflect on

LOCKE. 369

a general miscarriage, which, though of great conse-
quence, is little taken notice of. When it is con-
sidered what a pudder is made about essences, and
how much all sorts of knowledge, discourse, and con-
versation are pestered and disordered by the careless
and confused use and application of words, it will,
perhaps, be thought worth while thoroughly to lay it
open. And I shall be pardoned if I have dwelt long
on an argument which I think, therefore, needs to be
inculcated ; because the faults men are usually guilty
of in this kind are not only the greatest hindrances of
true knowledge, but are so well thought of as to pass
for it. Men would often see what a small pittance of
reason and truth, or possibly none at all, is mixed
with those huffing opinions they are swelled with,
if they would but look beyond fashionable sounds,
and observe what ideas are, or are not, comprehended
under those words with which they are so armed at
all points, and with which they so confidently lay
about them. I shall imagine I have done some ser-
vice to truth, peace, and learning, if, by an enlarge-
ment on this subject, I can make men reflect on their
own use of language, and give them reason to suspect,
that since it is frequent for others, it may also be
possible for them, to have sometimes very good and
approved words in their mouths and writings, with
very uncertain, little, or no signification. And, there-
fore, it is not unreasonable for them to be wary herein
themselves, and not to be unwilling to have these
examined by others.' l

And again, when summing up the results of his
inquiries, Locke says : ' For since the things the mind

1 Locke, On the Understanding, iii. 5, 16.
II. B B

#70 LOCKE.

contemplates are none of them, besides itself, present
to the understanding, it is necessary that something
else, as a sign or representation of the thing it con-
siders, should be present to it ; and these are ideas.
And because the scene of ideas that make one man's
thoughts cannot be laid open to the immediate view
of another, nor laid up anywhere but in the memory
a no very sure repository therefore, to communi-
cate our thoughts to one another, as well as record
them for our own use, signs of our ideas are also
necessary. Those which men have found most con-
venient, and therefore generally make use of, are
articulate sounds. The consideration, then, of ideas and
words as the great instruments of knowledge, makes no
despicable part of their consideration, who would taJce
a view of human Tcnowledge in the whole extent of it.
And, perhaps, if they were distinctly weighed and duly
considered they would afford us another sort of logic
and critic, than what we have been hitherto acquainted
with. 9

But, although so strongly impressed with the im-
portance which language, as such, claims in the ope-
rations of the understanding, Locke never perceived
that general ideas and words are inseparable, that
the one cannot exist without the other, and that an
arbitrary imposition of articulate sounds to eignify
definite ideas, is an assumption unsupported by any
evidence. Locke never seems to have realised the
intricacies of the names-giving process, and though
he admits frequently the difficulty, nay, sometimes,
the impossibility, of our handling any general ideas
without the outward signs of language, he never
questions for a moment the received theory that at

THE HISTORICAL SCHOOL. 371

some time or other in the history of the world men
had accumulated a treasure of anonymous general
conceptions, to which, when the time of intellectual
and social intercourse had arrived, they skilfully
attached those phonetic labels which we call words.

The age in which Locke lived and wrote was not
partial to those inquiries into the early history of
mankind which have, during the last two generations,
engaged the attention of the most eminent philoso-
phers. Instead of gathering the fragments of the
primitive language, poetry, and religion, not only of
the Greeks and Romans, but of all the nations of the
world, and instead of trying to penetrate, as far as
possible, into the real and actual life of the fathers of
the human race, and thus to learn how both in our
thoughts and words we came to be what we are, the
great schools of philosophy in the 18th century were
satisfied with building up theories how language
might have sprung into life, how religion might have
been revealed or invented, how mythology might
have been put together by priests, or poets, or states-
men, for the purposes of instruction, of amusement,
or of fraud. Such systems, though ingenious and
plausible, and still in full possession of many of our
handbooks of history and philosophy, will have to give
way to the spirit of what may be called the Historical
School of the 19th century. The principles of these
two schools are diametrically opposed ; the one begins
with theories without facts, the other with facts with-
out theories. The systems of Locke, Voltaire, and
Rousseau, and in later times of Comte, are plain, intelli-
gible, and perfectly rational ; the facts collected by men
like Wolf, NiebuJir, F. Schlegel, W. vonHumboldt, Bopp,

B Tl 2

372 THE HISTOEICAL SCHOOL.

Burnouf, Grimm, Bunsen, and others, are fragmentary,
the inductions to which they point incomplete and
obscure, and opposed to many of our received ideas.
Nevertheless, the study of the antiquity of man, the
Palaeontology of the human mind, can never again be
allowed to become the playground of mere theorisers,
.however bold and brilliant, but must henceforth be
cultivated in accordance with those principles that
have produced rich harvests in other fields of in-
ductive research. It is no want of respect for the
great men of former ages to say that they would have
written differently if they had lived in our days*
Locke, with the results of Comparative Philology
before him, would have cancelled, I believe, the whole
of his third book ' On the Human Understanding ; *
and even his zealous and ingenious pupil, Home Tooke,
would have given us a very different volume of
' Diversions of Purley.' But in spite of this, there
are no books which with all their faults nay, on
account of these very faults are so instructive to
the student of language as Locke's Essay, and Home
Tooke's Diversions ; nay, there are many points bear-
ing on the later growth of language which they have
handled and cleared up with greater mastery than
even those who came after them.

Thus the fact that all words expressive of im-
material conceptions are derived by metaphor from
words expressive of sensible ideas was for the first
time clearly and definitely put forward by Locke, and
is now fully confirmed by the researches of compa-
rative philologists. All roots, i.e. all the material
elements of language, are expressive of sensuous im-
pressions, and of sensuous impressions only ; and as

LOCKE. 373

all "words, even the most abstract and sublime, are
derived from roots, comparative philology, fully en-
dorses the conclusions arrived at by Locke. This is
what Locke says (iii. 4, 3) :

It may also lead us a little toward the original of all our
notions and knowledge, if we remark, how great a dependence
our words have on common sensible ideas ; and how those,
which are made use of to stand for actions and notions quite
removed from sense, have their rise from thence, and, from
obvious sensible ideas, are transferred to more abstruse signi-
fications, and made to stand for ideas that come not under the
cognisance of our senses : e.g. to imagine, apprehend, compre-
hend, adhere, conceive, instil, disgust, disturbance, tranquillity,
&c., are all words taken from the operations of sensible things,
and applied to certain modes of thinking. Spirit, in its pri-
mary signification, is breath ; angel, a messenger ; and I doubt
not, but if we could trace them to their sources, we should find,
in all languages, the names which stand for things that fall
not under our senses, to have had their first rise from sensible
ideas. By which we may give some kind of guess, what kind
of notions they were and whence derived, which filled their
minds, who were the first beginners of languages ; arid how
nature, even in the naming of things, unawares suggested to
men the originals and principles of all their knowledge ;
whilst, to give names, that might make known to others any
operations they felt in themselves, or any other ideas that
come not under their senses, they were fain to borrow words
from ordinary known ideas of sensation, by that means to
make others the more easily to conceive those operations they
experimented in themselves, which made no outward sensible
appearances; and then, when they had got known and agreed
names, to signify these internal operations of their own minds,
they were sufficiently furnished to make known by words all
their other ideas, since they could consist of nothing but either
of outward sensible perceptions, or of the inward operations

374 LOCKE.

of their minds about them ; we having, as has been proved,
no ideas at all, but what originally came either from sensible
objects without, or what we feel within ourselves from the
inward workings of our own spirits, of which we are conscious-
to ourselves within.

This passage though somewhat involved and ob-
scure, is a classical passage, and has formed the
subject of many commentaries, both favourable and
unfavourable. Some of Locke's followers, particularly
Home Tooke, used the statement that all abstract
words had originally a material meaning, in order to
prove that all our knowledge was restricted to sen-
suous knowledge ; and such was the apparent cogency
of their arguments, that, to the present day, those
who are opposed to materialistic theories consider it
necessary to controvert the facts alleged by Locke
and Home Tooke, instead of examining the cogency
of the consequences that are supposed to flow from
them. Now the facts stated by Locke seem to be
above all doubt. Spiritus is certainly derived from a
verb spirare, which means to draw breath. The same
applies to animus. Animus, the mind, as Cicero says, 2
is so called from anima, air. The root is an, which, in
Sanskrit means to blow, and which has given rise to
the Sanskrit and Greek words for wind, an-ila and
dn-emos. Thus the Greek thymos, the soul, comes
from thyein, to rush, to move violently, the Sanskrit
dhu, to shake. From dhu we have in Sanskrit dhuli,
dust, which comes from the same root, and dhu ma,
smoke, the Latin fumus. In Greek, the same root

2 Cicero, TuscuL i. 9, sub Jin. Locke, Human Understanding, iv.
3, 6, note (ed. London, 1836, p. 412). Anima sit animus ignisve
nescio,' &c.

METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS. 375

supplied, thyellcu storm-wind, and thymes, the soul, as
the seat of the passions. Plato guesses correctly
when he says (Crat. p. 419) that thymos, soul, is so
called CLTTO rijs Qvcrsws KOI ^sascos TTJS "^fv^rjs. To imagine
certainly meant in its original conception to make
pictures, to picture to ourselves ; but even to picture
is far too mixed an idea to have been expressed by a
simple root. Imago, picture, stands for mimago, as
imitor for mimitor, the Greek mimeomai, all from a
root md, to measure, and therefore meaning originally
to measure again and again, to copy, to imitate. To
apprehend and to comprehend meant to grasp at a
thing and to grasp a thing together ; to adhere to
one's opinions was literally to stick to one's opinions ;
to conceive was to take and hold together; to instil
was to drop or pour in; to disgust was to create a
bad taste ; to disturb was to throw into disorder ;
and tranquillity was calmness, and particularly the
smoothness of the sea.

Look at any words expressive of objects which
cannot fall under the immediate cognisance of the
senses, and you will not have much difficulty in test-
ing the truth of Locke's assertion that such words
are invariably derived from others which originally
were meant to express the objects of the senses.

I begin with a list of Kafir metaphors :

Words Literal meaning Figurative meaning

beta . . . beat . . . punish
dhlelana . . to eat together . . to be on terms of

intercourse

fa . . . to be dying . . to be sick
hlala . . . to sit . . .to dwell, live, con-
tinue

376

METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS.

Words
ihlati .
ingcala
inncwadi
inja .
kolwa
lila .
mnandi
gauka
umsila
zidhla .

akasiboni

nikela indhlebe
ukudhla ubomi
ukudhla umntu

Literal meaning
. bush
. flying-ant

. kind of bulbous plant
. dog .

. to be satisfied .
. to cry
. sweet

. to be snapped asunder
.tail ...

. to eat oneself .
. he does not see us .

. give the ears .

. to eat life

. to eat a person .

ukumgekeza inkloko, to break his head
ukunuka umntu . to smell a person

Figurative meaning

refuge

uncommon dexterity

book, glass

a dependant

to believe

to mourn

pleased, agreeable

to be quite dead

court messenger

to be proud

he is above noticing
us

listen attentively

to live

to confiscate his pro-
perty

to weary one

to accuse one of
witchcraft 3

Tribulation, anxiety, is derived from tribulum^ a
sledge used by the ancient Romans for rubbing out
the corn, consisting of a wooden platform, studded
underneath with sharp pieces of flint or with iron
teeth. 4 The similarity between the state of mind
that had to be expressed and the state of the grains
of corn shaken in a tribulum is evident, and so
striking that, if once used, it was not likely to be
forgotten again. This tribulum, again, is derived
from the verb terere, to rub or grind. Tribulare is
used by Tertullian in the sense of oppressing. 5 Now
suppose a man's mind so oppressed with the weight of

s Appleyard, 1. c. p. 70.

4 See White, Latin-English Dictionary, s. v.

* Diez, Grammatik, p. 27.

METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS. 377

his former misdeeds that he can hardly breathe, or look
up, or resist the pressure, but feels crushed and
ground to dust within himself, that man would
describe his state of mind as a state of contrition,
which means being ground to pieces,' from the
same verb terere, to grind.

The French penser, to think, is the Latin pensare,
which would mean to weigh, and lead us back to
pendere, to hang. ' To be in suspense ' literally
means to be hung up, and swaying to and fro. ' To
suspend judgment ' means to hang it up, to keep it
from taking effect.

Doubt, again, the Latin dubium, expresses literally
the position between two points, from duo, just as
the German Zweifel points back to zwei, two.

To believe is generally identified with the German
belieben, to be pleased with a thing, to approve of it ;
the Latin libet, it pleases. But to believe, as well as
the German glauben, meant originally more than
simply to approve of a thing. Both words must be
traced back to the root lubh, which has retained its
original meaning in the Sanskrit lob ha, desire, and
the Latin libido, violent, irresistible desire. 6 The
same root was taken to express that irresistible
passion of the soul, which makes man break ap-
parently through the evidence of the senses and the
laws of reason (credo quid absurdum), and drives him,
by a power which nothing can control, to embrace
some truth which alone can satisfy the natural
cravings of his being. This is belief in its truest
sense, though it dwindles down in the course of

6 'Der Glaube 1st wie die Liebe: er lasst sich nicht erzwingen.'
Schopenhauer, Parerga, ii. 326.

378 METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS.

time to mean no more than to suppose, or to be
pleased, just as I love, which is derived from the
same root as to believe, comes to mean, I like.

Truth has been explained by Home Tooke as that
which a man troweth. This, however, would explain
very little. To trow is but a derivative verb, mean-
ing to make or hold a thing true. But what is true ?
True is the Sanskrit dhruva, 7 and means firm, solid,
anything that will hold; from dhar, to hold.

Another word for true in Sanskrit is satya, an
adjective formed from the participle present of the
auxiliary verb as, to be. Sat is the Latin ens,
being; from it. satya, true, the Greek ete6s* the
English sooth. If I say that sat is the Latin ens, the
similarity may not seem very striking. Yet Latin
ens clearly stands for sens, which appears in prce-sens.*
The nominative singular of sat is san, because in
Sanskrit you cannot have a word ending in ns. But
the accusative sing, is s ant am = sentem, the nom.
plur. s ant as = sentes ; so that there can be no doubt
as to the identity of the two words in Sanskrit and
Latin.

And how did language express what, if it were a
rational conception at all, would seem to be the most
immaterial of all conceptions namely, nothing ? It

7 Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vii. 62.

8 See Pott, Etymologischc Forschungen, ii. p. 364 ; Kern, in Kuhn's
Zcitschrift, viii. 400. It should be remembered that in satya, the t
belongs to the base, and that the derivative element is not tya, Greek ffibs,
but ya. "Whether e&s represents the same suffix as ya in Sanskrit may
be doubtful. See, however, Bopp, Vergleich. Gr, (2), 109 a, 2 (p. 212) ;
and 956. Sattva in Sanskrit means being and a being.

9 Essentia is a word formed in defiance of the rules of philology. It
was meant to express the Greek ovata, in which case it ought to have
been entia. Seneca, Ep. 58, holds Cicero responsible for the word.

METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS. 879

was expressed in the only way in which it could be
expressed namely, by the negation of, or the com-
parison with, something real and tangible. It was
called in Sanskrit as at, that which is not being; in
Latin nihil, i.e. nihilum, }0 which stands for nifilum,
i.e. ne-filum, and means f not a thread or shred.' In
French rien is actually a mere corruption of rem, the
accusative of res, and retains its negative sense even
without the negative particle by which it was origi-
nally preceded. Thus ne-pas is non-passum, not a
step; ne-point is non-punctum, not a point. The
French neant, Italian niente, are the Latin non ens.
And now observe for a moment how fables will grow-
up under the charm of language. It was perfectly
correct to say, ' I give you nothing/ i. e. 'I give you
not even a shred.' Here we are speaking of a relative
nothing ; in fact, we only deny something, or decline
to give something. It is likewise perfectly correct
to say, on stepping into an empty room, ' There is
nothing here,' meaning not that there is absolutely
nothing, but only that things which we expect to
find in a room are not there. But by dint of using

16 Cf. Kuhn, Zeitschrtft, i. 544. Dietrich mentions similar cases of
shortening, such as cogmtus and notus, pejero and juro. Bo^p haa
clearly given up the etymology of nihil, which he proposed in the first
edition of his Comparative Grammar, as it is suppressed in the second.
It is to be regretted that Mr. White, in his excellent Latin-English
Dictionary, should still quote from the first edition only of Bopp's
work. As to h taking the place of/, we know that in Spanish Latin /is
frequently represented by h, e.g. hablar=fabidari, hijo=JUius, hierro =
ferrum, hilo=filum. Instead of filii we find JfAAi in Trinchera, p. 194.
In Latin itself, too, these two letters are occasionally interchanged.
Instead of htrcus, the Sabines said fircus; instead of hoed us, fcedus;
instead of harena, /arena. Nay, double forms are mentioned in Latin,
such as hordeum andfordcum; host is and/os^w; hariolus and fariolus.
See Corssen, Aussprache der Lateinischen Sprache, p. 46.

380 METAPHORICAL EXPRESSIONS.

sucli phrases over and over again, a vague idea is gra-
dually formed in the mind of a Nothing, and Nihil
becomes the name of something positive and real.
People at a very early time began to talk of the No-
thing as if it were a something ; and they gradually
brought themselves to tremble at the idea of annihila-
tion an idea utterly inconceivable, except in the brain
of a madman. Annihilation, if it meant anything, could
etymologically and in this case, we may add, logically
too mean nothing but to be reduced to a something
which is not a shred surely no very fearful state,
considering that in strict logic it would comprehend
the whole realm of existence, exclusive only of what
is meant by slired,. Yet what speculations, what
fears, what ravings, have sprung from this word
Nihil a mere word, and nothing else ! We see
things grow and decay, we witness the birth and
death of living things, but we never see anything
lost or annihilated. Now, what does not fall within
the cognisance of our senses, and what contradicts
every principle of our reasoning faculties, has no
right to be expressed in language. We may use the
names of material objects to express immaterial
objects, if they can be rationally conceived. We can
conceive, for instance, powers not within the ken of
our senses, yet endowed with a material reality. We
can call them spirits, literally breezes, though we
understand perfectly well that by spirits we mean
something else than mere breezes. We can call
them ghosts, a name connected with gust, yeast, gas,
and other almost imperceptible vapours. But a
Nothing, an absolute Nothing, that is neither visible,
nor conceivable, nor imaginable, ought never to have

METAPHOEICAL EXPEESSIONS. 381

found expression, ought never to have been admitted
into the dictionary of rational beings.

Now, if we consider how people talk about the
Nothing, how poets make it the subject of the most
harrowing strains; n how it has been, and still is, one
of the principal ingredients in most systems of philo-
sophy nay, how it has been dragged into the do-
main of religious thought, and, under the name of
Nirvana, has become the highest goal of millions
among the followers of Buddha we may perhaps,
even at this preliminary stage of our inquiries, be-
gin to appreciate the power of language over thought,
and feel less surprise at the ancient nations for
having allowed the names of natural objects, the sky,
the sun, the moon, the dawn, and winds, to assume
the character of supernatural powers or divine per-
sonalities, or for having offered worship and sacrifice
to such abstract names as Fate, Justice, or Victory.
There is as much mythology in our use of the word
Nothing as in the most absurd portions of the mytho-
logical phraseology of India, Greece, and Rome ; and
if we ascribe the former to a disease of language, the
causes of which we are able to explain, we shall have
to admit that, in the latter, language has reached to
an ahnosfc delirious state, and has ceased to be what
it was meant to be, the expression of the impressions
received through the senses, or of the conceptions of
a rational mind.

But to return to Locke's statement, that all names

11 'The thought of an immense abysmal Nothing is awful, only less
so than that of All and Grod ; and thus a grain of sand, being a fact, a
reality, rises before us into something prodigious and immeasurable
a fact that opposes and counterbalances the immensity of non-existence.'
Sterling, in his Thoughts and Images.

382 COUSIN VERSUS LOCKE.

of ^material objects are derived from the names of
material objects. Many philosophers, as I remarked,
instead of grappling manfully with the conclusions
that are supposed to flow from Locke's observation,
have preferred to question the accuracy of his obser-
vation.

Victor Cousin, in his ' Lectures on the History of
Philosophy during the Eighteenth Century, 5 12 endea-
vours to controvert Locke's assertion by the following
process :

I shall give you two words (he says), and I shall ask you to
trace them back to primitive words expressive of sensible
ideas. Take the word je, I. This word, at least in all lan-
guages known to me, is not to be reduced, not to be decom-
posed, primitive ; and it expresses no sensible idea, it repre-
sents nothing but the meaning which the mind attaches to it;
it is a pure and true sign, without any reference to any
sensible idea. The word etre, to be, is exactly in the same
case ; it is primitive and altogether intellectual. I know of
no language in which the French verb etre is rendered by a
corresponding word that expresses a sensible idea ; and there-
fore it is not true that all the roots of language, in their last
analysis, are signs of sensible ideas.

No wit must be admitted that the French je, which
is the Sanskrit a ham, is a word of doubtful etymo-
logy. It belongs to the earliest formations of Aryan
speech, and we need not wonder that even in Sans-
krit the materials out of which this pronoun was
formed should have disappeared. We can explain in
English such words as myself or your honour; but we
could not attempt, with the means supplied by English
alone, to analyse /, thou, and he. It is the same with the

12 Paris, 1841. Vol. ii. p. 274.

COUSIN FERSUS LOCKE. 383

Sanskrit a ham, a word carried down by the stream of
language from such, distant ages, that even the Ye das,
as compared with them, are but, as it were, of yester-
day. But though the etymology of ah am is doubtful,
it has never been doubtful to any scholar that, like
all other words, it must have an etymology ; that it
must be derived either from a predicative or from a
demonstrative root. Those who would derive ah am
from a predicative root, have thought of the root ah,
to breathe, to speak. 13 Those who would derive it
from a demonstrative root, refer us to theVedic gha,
the later h a, this, used like the Greek o8s. How the
pronoun of the first person is expressed in Chinese
we saw in an earlier Lecture, and although such ex-
pressions as e servant says,' instead of ' I say,' may
seem to us modern and artificial, they are not so in
Chinese, and show at all events that even so colourless
an idea as J may meet with signs sufficiently pale and
faded to express it. 14

With regard to etre, to be, the case is different.
Etre } * is the Latin esse, changed into essere and con-

13 I thought it possible, in my History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 21,
to connect ah -am with Sanskrit aha, I said, Greek ^, Latin ajo and
nego, nay, with Gothic ahma (instead of agmd), spirit ; but I do so no
longer. Nor do I accept the opinion of Benfey (Sanskrit Grammatik,
773), who derives aham from the pronominal root gha with a pro-
sthetic a. It is a word which, for the present, must remain without a

14 Jean Paul, in his Lcvana, p. 32, says, ' " I " is excepting God, the
true I and true Thou at once the highest and most incomprehensible
that can be uttered by language, or contemplated. It is there all at
once, as the whole realm of truth and conscience, which, without " I,"
is nothing. We must ascribe it to God, as well as to unconscious
beings, if we want to conceive the being of the One, and the existence
of the others.'

15 Cf. Diez, Lexicon, s. v. ' essere.'

384 COUSIN VEKSUS LOCKE.

tracted. The root, therefore, is as, which, in all the
Aryan languages, has supplied the material for the
auxiliary verb. Now, even in Sanskrit, it is true,
this root as is completely divested of its material
character; it means to be, and nothing else. But
there is in Sanskrit a derivative of the root as,
namely, asu, and in this asu, which means the vital
breath, the original meaning of the root as has been
preserved. As, in order to give rise to .such a noun
as asu, musb have meant to breathe, then to live, then
to exist, and it must have passed through all these
stages before it could have been used as the abstract
auxiliary verb which we find not only in Sanskrit
but in all Aryan languages. Unless this one deriva-
tive asu, life, had been preserved in Sanskrit, it would
have been impossible to guess the original material
meaning of the root as, to be; yet even then the
student of language would have been justified in
postulating such a meaning. And even in French,
though etre may seem an entirely abstract word, the
imperfect fetais, the participle ete, like the Spanish
estaba and estado, are clearly derived from Latin
stare, to stand, and show how easily so definite an
idea as to stand may dwindle down to the abstract
idea of being. If we look to other languages, we shall
find again and again the French verb etre rendered
by corresponding words that expressed originally a
sensible idea. Our verb to be is derived from Sans-
krit bhu, which, as we learn from Greek phyo, meant
originally to grow. 16 I was is connected with the
Gothic visan, which means to dwell.

16 See M. M.'s Essay on the Aryan and Aboriginal Languages of India,
j). 34-t.

METAPHOR. 385

But though, on this point the student of language
must side with Locke, and admit, without one single
exception, the material character of all words, nothing
can be more convincing than the manner in which
Victor Cousin disposes of the conclusions which some
philosophers, though certainly not Locke himself,
seem inclined to draw from such premises.

Further (he writes) even if this were true, and absolutely
true, which is not the case, we could conclude no more than
this. Man is at first, by the action of all his faculties, carried
out of himself and toward the external world ; the pheno-
mena of the external world strike him first, and hence these
phenomena receive the first names. The first signs are
borrowed from sensible objects, and they are tinged to a cer-
tain extent by their colours. When man afterwards turns
back on himself, and lays hold more or less distinctly of the
intellectual phenomena which he had always, though some-
what vaguely, perceived ; if, then, he wants to give expression
to the new phenomena of mind and soul, analogy leads him to
connect the signs he seeks with those he already possesses :
for analogy is the law of each growing or developed language.
Hence the metaphors to which our analysis traces back most
of the signs and names of the most abstract moral ideas.

Nothing can be truer than the caution thus given
by Cousin to those who would use Locke's observa-
tion as an argument in favour of a one-sided sen-
sualistic philosophy.

Metaphor is 'one of the most powerful engines in
the construction of human speech, and without it we
can hardly imagine how any language could have
progressed beyond the simplest rudiments. Metaphor
generally means the transferring of a name from the
object to which it properly belongs to other objects
which strike the mind as in some way or other par-

n. c c

386 METAPHOR.

ticipating in the peculiarities of the first object.
The mental process which gave to the root mar the
meaning of to propitiate was no other than this,
that men perceived some analogy between the smooth
surface produced by rubbing and polishing and the
smooth expression of countenance, the smoothness of
voice, and the calmness of looks produced even in
an enemy by kind and gentle words. Thus, when
we speak of a crane, we apply the name of a bird
to an engine. People were struck with some kind
of similarity between the long-legged bird picking
up his food with his long beak and their rude engines
for lifting weights. In Greek, too, geranos has both
meanings. This is metaphor. Again, cutting remarks,
glowing words, fervent prayers, slashing articles, all
are metaphor. Spiritus in Latin meant originally
blowing, or wind. But when the principle of life
within man or animal had to be named, its outward
sign, namely, the breath of the mouth, was naturally
chosen to express it. Hence in Sanskrit asu, breath
and life ; in Latin spiritus, breath and life. Again,
when it was perceived that there was something else
to be named, not the mere animal life, but that which
was supported by this animal life, the same word was
chosen, in the Modern Latin dialects, to express the
spiritual as opposed to the mere material or animal
element in man. All this is metaphor.

We read in the Ye da, ii. 3, 4: 17 'Who saw the
first-born when he who had no form (lit. bones) bore
him that had form? Where was the breath (as life),
the blood (asrik), the self (at ma) of the earth?
Who went to ask this from any that knew it ? '

17 M. M., History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 20.

RADICAL AND POETICAL METAPHOR. 387

Here breath, bloody self are so many attempts at
expressing what we should now call cause.

But let us now consider for a moment that what phi-
losophers, and particularly Locke, have pointed out as
a peculiarity of certain words, such as to apprehend, to
comprehend, to understand, to fathom, to imagine, spirit,
and angel, must have been, in reality, a peculiarity of
a whole period in the early history of speech. No
advance was possible in the intellectual life of man
without metaphor. Most roots that have yet been dis-
covered, had originally a material meaning, and a
meaning so general and comprehensive 18 that they
could easily be applied to many special objects. We
meet with roots meaning to strike, to shine, to creep,
to grow, to fall, but we never meet with primitive
roots expressive of states or actions that do not fall
under the cognisance of the senses, nor even with roots
expressive of such special acts as e raining, thundering,
hailing, sneezing, trying, helping.' Yet Language has
been a very good housewife to her husband, the human
Mind ; she has made very little go a long way. With
a very small store of such material roots as we just
mentioned, she has furnished decent clothing for the
numberless offspring of the Mind, leaving no idea, no
sentiment unprovided for, except, perhaps, the few
which, as we are told by some poets, are inexpres-
sible.

Thus from roots meaning to shine, to be bright,
names were formed for sun, moon, stars, the eyes of.
man, gold, silver, play, joy, happiness, love. With
roots meaning to strike, it was possible to name an

18 The specialisation of general roots is more common than the gene-
ralisation of special roots, though both processes must be admitted.

cc 2

388 RADICAL AND POETICAL METAPHOR.

.axe, the thunderbolt, a fist, a paralytic stroke, a strik-
ing remark, and a stroke of business. From roots
meaning to go, names were derived for clouds, for
ivy, for creepers, serpents, cattle, and chattel, move-
able and immoveable property. With a root meaning
to crumble, expressions were formed for sickness and
death, for evening and night, for old age, and for the
fall of the year.

We must now endeavour to distinguish between
two kinds of metaphor, which I call radical and
poetical. I call it radical metaphor when a root
which means to shine is applied to form the names,
not only of the fire or the sun, but of the spring of
the year, the morning light, the brightness of
thought, or the joyous outburst of hymns of praise.
Ancient languages are brimful of such metaphors,
and under the tnicroscope of the etymologist every
word almost discloses traces of its first metaphorical
conception.

From this we must distinguish poetical metaphor,
namely, when a noun or verb, ready made and as-
signed to one definite object or action, is transferred
poetically to another object or action. For instance,
when the rays of the sun are called the hands or
fingers of the sun, the noun which means hand or
finger existed ready made, and was, as such, trans-
ferred poetically to the stretched out rays of the sun.
By the same process the clouds are called mountains,
the rain-clouds are spoken of as cows with heavy
udders, the thunder-cloud as a goat or as a goat-
skin, the sun as a horse, or as a bull, or as a giant
bird, the lightning as an arrow, or as a serpent.

What applies to nouns, applies likewise to verbs.

EADICAL AND POETICAL METAPHOR. 389'

A verb such, as ' to give birth ' is used, for in-
stance, of the night producing, or, more correctly,
preceding the day, as well as of the day preceding
the night. The sun, under one name, is said to
beget the dawn, because the approach of daylight
gives rise to the dawn ; under another name the sun
is said to love the dawn, because he follows her as a
bridegroom follows after his bride; and lastly, the
sun is said to destroy the dawn, because the dawn
disappears as soon as the sun has risen. From an-
other point of view the dawn may be said to give
birth to the sun, because the sun seems to spring
from her lap ; she may be said to die or disappear
after having given birth to her brilliant son, because
as soon as the sun is born, the dawn must vanish.
AH these metaphors, however full of contradictions,
were perfectly intelligible to the ancient poets,
though to our modern understanding they are fre-
quently riddles difficult to solve. We read in the
Rigveda (x. 189), 19 where the sunrise is described,
that the dawn comes near to the sun, and breathes
her last when the sun draws his first breath. The
commentators indulge in the most fanciful ex-
planations of this expression without suspecting the
simple conception of the poet, which after all is very
natural.

Let us consider, then, that there was, necessarily
and really, a period in the history of our race when
all the thoughts that went beyond the narrow horizon
of our every-day life had to be expressed by means
of metaphors, and that these metaphors had not yet
become what they are to us, mere conventional and

19 See M. M., Die Todtenbestattung der Srahmancn, p. xi.

390 HOMONTMT AND POLYONYMY.

traditional expressions, but were felt and understood
half in their original and half in their modified cha-
racter. We shall then perceive that such a period of
thought and speech must be marked by features very
different from those of any later age.

One of the first results would naturally be that
objects in themselves quite distinct, and originally
conceived as distinct by the human intellect, would
nevertheless receive the same name. If there was a
root meaning to shine forth, to revive, to gladden, that
root might be applied to the dawn, as the burst of
brightness after the dark night, to a spring of water,
gushing forth from the rock and gladdening the heart
of the traveller, and to the spring of the year, that
awakens the earth after the death-like rest of winter. 20
The spring of the year, the spring of water, the
dayspring, would thus go by the same name, they
would be what Aristotle calls homonymous or name-
sakes. On the other hand, the same object might
strike the human mind in various ways. The sun
might be called the warming and generating, but
likewise the scorching and killing ; the sea might
be called the barrier as well as the bridge, and the
high-road of commerce ; the clouds might be spoken
of as bright cows with heavy udders, or as dark
and roaring demons. Every day that dawns in the
morning might be called the twin of the night that
follows the day, or all the days of the year might be
called brothers, or so many head of cattle which are
driven to their heavenly pasture every morning, and
shut up in the dark stable of Augeias at night. In
this manner one and the same object would receive

20 See M. M. in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, xix. 44.

HOMONYM Y AND POLYONYMY. 391

many names, or would become, as the Stoics called
it, polyonymous, many-named having many aliases.
"Now it has always been pointed out as a peculiarity
of what we call ancient languages, that they have
many words for the same thing, these words being
sometimes called synonymes; and likewise, that their
words have frequently very numerous meanings. Yet
what we call ancient languages, such as the Sanskrit
of the Ye das or the Greek of Homer, are in reality
very modern languages ; that is to say, they show
clear traces of having passed through many, many
successive periods of growth and decay, before they
became what we know them to be in the earliest
literary documents of India and Greece. What, then,
must have been the state of these languages in their
earlier periods, before many names, that might have
been and were applied to various objects, were re-
stricted to one object, and before each object, that
might have been and was called by various names,
was reduced to one name ! Even in our days we
confess that there is a great deal in a name ; how
much more must that have been the case during
the primitive ages of man's childhood !

The period in the history of language and thought
which I have thus endeavoured to describe as charac-
terised by what we may call two tendencies, the
homonymous and the polyonymous, 21 I shall hence-
forth call the mythic or mythological period, and I
shall try to show how much that has hitherto been a
riddle in the origin and spread of myths becomes
intelligible if considered in connection with the early

21 Augustinus, De Civ. Dei, vii. 16: 'Et aliquando unum deum res
plures, aliquando unam rem deos plures faciunt.'

392 THE MYTHIC PERIOD.

phases through which language and thought must
necessarily pass.

Before I enter, however, on a fuller explanation of
my meaning, I think it right to guard from the be-
ginning against two mistakes, to which the name of
Mythic Period might possibly give rise. What I call
a period is not so in the strict sense of the word : it
has no fixed limits that could be laid down with
chronological accuracy. There is a time in the early
history of all nations in which the mythological cha-
racter predominates to such an extent that we may
speak of it as the mythological period, just as we
might call the age in which we live the age of dis-
coveries. But the tendencies which characterise the
mythological period, though they necessarily lose
much of that power with which, at one time, they
swayed every intellectual movement, continue to
work under different disguises in all ages, even in
our own, though perhaps the least given to metaphor,
poetry, and mythology.

Secondly, when I speak of a mythological period,
I do not use mythological in the restricted sense in
which it is generally used, namely, as being neces-
sarily connected with stories about gods, heroes, and
heroines. In the sense in which I use mythological, it
is applicable to every sphere of thought and every
class of words, though, from reasons to be explained
hereafter, religious ideas are most liable to mytho-
logical expression. Whenever any word, that was
at first used metaphorically, is used without a clear
conception of the steps that led from its original
to its metaphorical meaning, there is danger of my-
thology; whenever those steps are forgotten and

RADICAL METAPHOR.

artificial steps put in their places, we have mythology,
or, if I may say so, we have diseased language,
whether that language refers to religious or secular
interests. Why I use the term mythological in this
wide sense, a sense not justified by Greek or Eoman
usage, will appear when we come to see how what
is commonly called mythology is but a part of a much
more general phase through which all language has
at one time or other to pass.

After these preliminary remarks, I now proceed to
examine some cases of what I called radical and
poetical metaphor.

Cases of -radical metaphor, though numerous in
radical and agglutinative languages, are less frequent
in inflectional languages, such as Sanskrit, Greek,
and Latin. Nor is it difficult to account for this.
It was the very inconvenience caused by words
which failed to convey distinctly the intention of
the speaker that gave the impulse to that new phase
of life in language which we call inflectional. Because
it was felt to be important to distinguish between
the bright one, i. e. the sun, and the bright one, i. e.
the day, and the bright one, i. e. wealth, therefore the
root vas, to be bright, was modified by inflection,
and broken up into Vi- vas -vat, the sun, vas-ara,
day, vas-u, wealth. In a radical and in many an
agglutinative language, the mere root vas would
have been considered sufficient to express, pro re
natd, any one of these meanings. Yet inflectional
languages, too, yield frequent instances of radical
metaphor, some of which, as we shall see, have led
to very ancient misunderstandings, and, in course of
time, to mythology.

394 AREA, SUN AND HYMN.

There is, for instance, in Sanskrit, a root ark or
ar&, which means to be bright; but, like most
primitive verbs, it is used both in a transitive and
intransitive sense, thus meaning both to lye bright and
to make bright. Only c to make bright ' meant more
in that ancient language than it means with us. To
make bright meant to cheer, to gladden, to celebrate,
to glorify, and it is constantly used in these different
senses by the ancient poets of the Ye da. Now, by a
very simple and intelligible process, the meaning of
this root arfc might be transferred to the sun, or the
moon, or the stars; all of them might be called ar&
or riJc without any change in the outward appear-
ance of the root. For all we know, ri&, as a sub-
stantive, may really have conveyed all these meanings
during the earliest period of the Aryan languages.
But if we look at the fully developed branches of
that family of speech, we find that in this, its sim-
plest form, rik has been divested of all meanings
except one ; it only means a song of praise, a hymn,
that gladdens the heart and brightens the counte-
nance of the gods, or that makes their power efful-
gent and manifest. 22 The other meanings, however,
which rife might have expressed were not entirely
given up ; they were only rendered more definite by
new and distinct grammatical modifications of the
same root. Thus, in order to express light or ray,
arM was formed, a masculine, and very soon also a
neuter, arMs. Neither of these nouns is ever used

22 The passage in the Va^asaneyi Sanhita, 13, 39, 'riJck tva
ru&e tva,' contains either an isolated remnant of the original import
of the root, preserved in a proverbial phrase, or it is an etymological
play.

AREA, SUN AND HYMN. 395

in the sense of praise which clings to rik; they
have only the sense of light and splendour.

Again, quite regularly, a new derivative was formed,
namely, ark a h, a masculine. This likewise means
light, or ray of light, but it has been fixed upon as
the proper name of the light of lights, the sun.
Arka/t, then, by a very natural metaphor, became
one of the many names of the sun ; but by another
metaphor, which we explained before, ark a A,, with
exactly the same accent and gender, was also used
in the sense of hymn of praise. Now here we have
a clear case of radical metaphor in Sanskrit. It was
not the noun arka/i, in the sense of sun, that was,
by a bold flight of fancy, transferred to become the
name of a hymn of praise, nor vice versa. The same
root ar&, under exactly the same form, was bestowed
independently on two distinct conceptions. If the
reason of the independent bestowal of the same root
011 these two distinct ideas, sun and hymn, was for-
gotten, there was danger of mythology, and we actually
find in India that a myth sprang up, and that hymns
of praise were fabled to have proceeded from, or to
have originally been revealed by, the sun.

Our root ar& offers us another instance of the
same kind of metaphor, but slightly differing from
that just examined. From rik in the sense of
shining, it was possible to form a derivative rikta,
in the sense of lighted up, or bright. This form
does not exist in Sanskrit, but as kt in Sanskrit is
liable to be changed into ks, 23 we may recognise in

28 Kuhn, in the Zeitsckrift fur die Wissenschaft der Sprache, i. 155,
was the first to point out the identity of Sk. riksha and Greek &PKTOS
in their mythological application. He proved that ksh in Sanskrit

396 THE GREAT BEAR.

riksha the same derivative of rile. .Riksha, in
the sense of bright^ has become the name of the bear,
so called either from his bright eyes or from his
brilliant tawny fur. 24 The same name riksha was
given in Sanskrit to the stars, the bright ones. It
is used as a masculine and neuter in the later Sans-
krit, as a masculine only in the Veda. In one pas-
sage of the Rigveda, i. 24, 10, we read as follows :
' These stars fixed high above, which are seen by
night, whither did they go by day ? ' The commen-
tator, it is curious to observe, is not satisfied here
with this translation of riksha in the sense of stars
in general, but appeals to the tradition of the Vagra-
saneyins, in order to show that the stars here called
rikshas, are the same constellation which in later
Sanskrit is called 'the Seven JSishis/ or 'the Seven
Sages.' They are the stars that never seem to set
during the night, and therefore the question whither
they went by day would naturally suggest itself to
people in the North of India. Anyhow, the tradition
is there, and the question is whether it can be ex-
represented an original kt, in takshan, carpenter, Gr. T/CTJ/ ; in kshi,
to dwell, Krlca; in vakshas, Lat. pectus (?). Curtius, in his Grund-
zuge, added kshan, to kill, G-r. KTO.V; Aufreclit (Kuhn's Zeitschrift,
viii. 71), kshi, to kill, KTI in Krivvvfjn; Leo Meyer (v. 374), ksham,
earth, Gr. \6(!)v. To these may be added kshi, to possess, or kshaya
= KTdo(j.ar, and perhaps kshu, to sneeze, TTTVW, if it stands for KTVW.
In <t>Qi-(ns, also, the root may be kshi ; kshiyate, he perishes.

2< Grimm (D, W. s. v. Auge and Bar) compares riksha, Bar, not
only with &PKTOS, ursus, Lith. loJcis (instead of olJcis, orkis), Irish art
(instead of arct), but also with Old High-German elah, which is not the
bear, but the elk, the alces described by Caesar, B. G. vi. 27. This dices,
however, the Old High-German elah, would agree better with risa. or
risya, some kind of roebuck, mentioned in the Veda (Kv. viii. 4, 10),
with which Dr. Weber (K. Z. vi. 320) compares irciis, the primitive form
of hircus (Qxiintil. i. 5, 20). See, however, p. 379, note 10.

THE GREAT BEAR. 397

plained. Now, remember, that the constellation here
called the .Rikshas, in the sense of the bright ones,
would be homonymous in Sanskrit with the Bears.
Remember also, that, apparently without rhyme or
reason, the same constellation is called by Greeks
and Romans the Bear, in the singular, drJitos and
ursa. There may be some similarity between that
constellation and a waggon or wain, but there is not
a shadow of a likeness to a bear. 25 You will now
perceive the influence of words on thought, or the
spontaneous growth of mythology. The name r i k s h a
was applied to the bear in the sense of the bright
fuscous animal, and in that sense it became most
popular in the later Sanskrit, and in Greek and

25 The following facts would seem to qualify this statement. I find
in the Journal of the Asiat. Soc. of Bengal (1865, p. 235), that the
Karens call the Great Bear the Elephant. The pole star is a mouse
crawling into the elephant's trunk. Mr. Tylor sent me a curious extract
from Charlevoix, Hist. etDescr.gen. de la Nouvelle- France : Paris, 1744:
vol. vi. p. 148: 'Ils donnent le nom d'Ours aux quatre premieres de ce
que nous appelons la grande Ourse ; les trois, qui composent sa queue ou
qui font le train du Chariot de David, sont, selon eux, trois Chasseurs,
qui poursuivent 1'Ours ; et la petite etoile, qui accompagne celle du mi-
lieu, est la Chaudiere, dont le second est charged Les sauvages de 1'Acadie
nommoient tout simplement cette constellation et la suivante la grande
et la petite Ourse ; mais ne pourroit-on pas juger que, quand ils parloient
ainsi au sieur Lescarbot, ils ne repetoient que ce qu'ils avoient ou'i dire
a plusieurs Fran9ois ? '

This last suspicion ought no doubt to be taken into account, but the
following extract from Cotton Mather's The Life and Death of the Rev.
Mr. John Eliot, 3rd. ed. London, 1694, p. 86, seems to confirm the state-
ment : ' Their division of time is by sleeps, and moons, and winters ; and,
by lodging abroad, they have somewhat observed the motions of the stars ;
among which it has been surprising unto me to find, that they have
always called Charles' "Wain by the name Paukunnawaw, or the Bear.'
Lastly, Cranz, in his Grbnland (Barby, 1765, p. 294), says : ' Den Sternen
geben sie auch besondfre Namen. Ursa major heisst bei ihnen Tukto, das
Eennthier ; die Siebensterne Kettukhuset, d. i. einige Hunde, die einen
Baren hetzen, und nach denselben rechnen sie die Nachtzeiten '

398 THE GREAT BEAR.

Latin. The same name, in the sense of the bright
ones, had been applied by the Yedic poets to the
stars in general, and more particularly to that con-
stellation which, in the northern parts of India, was
the most prominent. The etymological meaning of
riksha, as simply the bright stars, was forgotten, the
popular meaning of riksha, bear, was known to
everybody. And thus it happened that when the
Greeks had left their central home and settled in
Europe, they retained the name of ArUos for the
s-ame unchanging stars, but not knowing why these
stars had originally received that name, they ceased
to speak of them as drktoi, or many bears, and spoke
of them as the Bear, the Great Bear, adding a bear-
ward, the Arcturus (ouros, ward), 26 and in time even
a Little Bear. Thus the name of the Arctic regions
rests on a misunderstanding of a name framed thou-
sands of years ago in Central Asia ; and the surprise
with which many a thoughtful observer has looked at
these seven bright stars, wondering why they were
ever called the Bear, is removed by a reference to the
early annals of human speech.

On the other hand, the Hindus also forgot the
original meaning of riksha. It became a mere
name, apparently with two meanings, star and bear.
In India, however, the meaning of bear predomi-
nated, and as riksha became more and more the
established name of the animal, it lost in the same
degree its connection with the stars. So when, in
later times, their Seven Sages had become familiar
to all under the name of the Seven Bis his, the seven

26 Cf. dvputpos, a door- ward; Goth, daura vards; eiriovpos, overseer;
Qpovpd, watch ; Latin, vereor.

THE GEEAT BEAE. 399

JRikshas, being unattached, gradually drifted to-
wards the Seven Eishis, and many a fable sprang
up as to the seven poets dwelling in the seven stars.
Such is the origin of a myth.

The only doubtful point in the history of the myth
of the Great Bear is the uncertainty which attaches
to the exact etymological meaning of riksha, bear.
We do not see why of all other animals the bear
should have been called the bright animal. 27 It is
true that the reason of many a name is beyond our
reach, and that we must frequently rest satisfied with
the fact that such a name is derived from such a root,
and therefore had originally such a meaning. The
bear was the king of beasts with many northern na-
tions, who did not know the lion ; and it would be
difficult to say why the ancient Germans called him
Goldfusz, golden-footed. But even if the derivation of
riksha from ar k had to be given up, the later chap-
ters in the history of the word would still remain the
same. We should have riksha, star, derived from
arfc, to shine, mixed up with riksha, bear, derived
from some other root, such as, for instance, ars or ris,
to hurt ; but the reason why certain stars were after-
wards conceived as bears would not be affected by
this. It should also be stated that the bear is little
known in the Ye da. In the two passages of the
Kigveda where riksha occurs, it is explained by
Say aw a, in the sense of hurtful and of fire, not in
that of bear. In the later literature, however, riksha,
bear, is of very common occurrence.

Another name of the Great Bear, or originally the

27 See, however, "Welcker's remarks on the wolf in his Griechische
Gotterlehre, p. 64.

400 SEPTEMTKIONES.

Seven Bears, or really the seven bright stars, is Sep-
temtriones. The two words which form the name are
occasionally used separately; for instance, ' quasnostri
septem soliti vocitare triones.' * s Yarro (L. L. vii. 73
75), in a passage which is not very clear, tells us that
triones was the name by which, even at his time,
ploughmen used to call oxen when actually employed
for ploughing the earth. 29 If we could quite depend
on the fact that oxen were ever called triones, we
might accept the explanation of Yarro, and should
have to admit that at one time the seven stars were
conceived as seven oxen. But as a matter of fact,
trio is never used in this sense, except by Yarro, for
the purpose of an etymology; nor are the seven stars
ever again spoken of as seven oxen, but only as ' the
oxen and the shaft,' loves et temo, a much more ap-
propriate name. , Bootes, too, the ploughman or cow-
driver, given to the same star which before we saw
called Arcturus, or bear-keeper, would only imply
that the waggon (hdmaxa) was conceived as drawn
by two or three oxen, but not that all the seven stars
were ever spoken of as oxen. Though, in matters of
this kind, it is impossible to speak very positively, it
seems not improbable that the name triones , which
certainly cannot be derived from terra, may be an
old name for star in general. We saw that the stars

28 Arat. in N. D. ii. 41, 105.

29 Triones enim boves appellantur a bubulcis etiam nunc maxume
quom arant terrain ; e quis ut dicti valentes glcbarii qui facile proscin-
dunt glebas, sic omnis qui terram arabant a terra tcrriones, unde triones
ut dicerentur e detrito.' In another place Varro says : ' Possunt triones
dici septem quod ita sitse stellae ut terna trigona faciant.' See also
Festus, and G-ellius, ii. 21, 7. A curious coincidence occurs in Chinese,
where, as Chalmers states (Origin of the Chinese, p. 23), the septem
triones are represented as seven stars making three triangles.

' BOVES ET TEMO. 5 401

in Sanskrit were called star-as, the strewers of
light; and the Latin stella is but a contraction of
sterula. The English star, the German Stern, come
from the same source. But besides star, we find in
Sanskrit another name for star, namely, tar a, where
the initial s of the root is lost. Such a loss is by no
means unfrequent, 30 and trio, in Latin, might there-
fore represent an original strio, star. The name strio,
star, having become obsolete, like riksha, the Sep-
tentriones remained a mere traditional name ; and if,
as Yarro tells us, there was a vulgar name for ox in
Latin, namely, trio, which then would have to be de-
rived from tero, to pound, the peasants speaking of
the Septem triones, the seven stars, would naturally
imagine themselves speaking of seven oxen.

But as it has been doubted whether the seven stars
ever suggested by themselves the picture of seven
animals, whether bears or cows, I equally question
whether the seven were ever spoken of as temo, the
shaft. Yarro says they were called ' loves et temo, 9
' oxen and shaft,' but not that they were called both
oxen and shaft. We can well imagine the four stars
being taken for oxen, and the three for the shaft ; or
again, the four stars being taken for the cart, one star
for the shaft, and two for the oxen; but no one, I
think, could ever have called the seven together the
shaft. But then it might be objected that temo, in
Latin, means not only shaft, but carriage, and should
be taken as an equivalent of ham ax a. This might
be, only it has never been shown that temo in Latin

30 See Kuhn, Zeitschrift, iv. 4 seq. Torus is connected with sternere>
tonare with Sk. stan, atkvu.

II. D D

402 'BOVES ET TEMO.'

meant a carriage. Varro, 31 no doubt, affirms that it
was so, but we have no further evidence. For if
Juvenal says (Sat. iv. 126), ' De temone Britanno ex-
cidet Arviragus, 9 this really means from the shaft,
because it was the custom of the Britons to stand
fighting on the shafts of their chariots. 32 And in the
other passages, 33 where temo is supposed to mean car
in general, it only means our constellation, which can
in no wise prove that temo by itself ever had the
meaning of car.

Temo stands for tegmo, and is derived from the root
taksh, which likewise yields tignum, a beam. In
French, too, le timon is never a carriage, but the
shaft, the German Deiclisel, the Anglo-Saxon tyixl or
jfrisZ, 34 words which are themselves, in strict accord-
ance with Grimm's law, derived from the same root
(tvaksh, or taksh) as temo. The English team, on
the contrary, has no connection with temo or timon,
but comes from the Anglo-Saxon verb teon, to draw,
the German ziehen, the Gothic tiuhan, the Latin duco.
It means drawing, and a team of horses means literally

" L. L. vii. 75 : ' Temo dictus a tenendo, is enim continet jugum. Et
plaustrum appellatum, a parte totum, ut multa.'
32 Caes. B. G. iv. 33, v. 16.

83 Stat. Theb. i. 692 : ' Sed jam temone supino Languet hyperborese
glacialis portitor Ursae.'

Stat. Theb. i. 370 : ' Hyberno deprensus navita ponto, Cui neque temo
piger, neque amico sidere monstrat Luna vias.'

Cic. N. D. ii. 42 : ' (Vertens Arati carmina) Arctophylax, vulgo qui
dicitur esse Bootes, Quod quasi temone adjunctam prae se quatit Arcton.'

Ovid, Met. x. 447: 'Interque triones Flexerat obliquo plaustrum
temone Bootes.'

Lucan, lib. iv. v. 523 : ' Flexoque Ursae temone paverent.'

Propert. iii. 5, 35 : ' Our serus versare boves et plaustra Bootes.'

84 In A.S. $isl is used as a name of the constellation of Charles's
Wain ; like temo.

WALNUT. 403

a draught of horses, a line of horses, ein Zug Pferde.
The verb teon, however, like the German ziehen, had
likewise the meaning of bringing up, or rearing ; and
as in German ziehen, Zuclit, and zuchten, so in Anglo-
Saxon team was used in the sense of issue, progeny ;
teamian (in English, for distinctness sake, spelt to
teem) took the sense of producing, propagating, and
lastly of abounding.

According to the very nature of language, mytho-
logical misunderstandings such as that which gave
rise to the stories of the Great Bear must be
more frequent in ancient than in modern dialects.
Nevertheless, the same mythological accidents will
happen even in modern French and English. To
speak of the seven bright stars, the .Rikshas, as the
Bear, is no more than if in speaking of a walnut we
were to imagine that it had anything to do with a
wall. Walnut is the A.S. wealh-hnut, in German
Wdlsche Nuss. Wtilsch in German means originally
foreigner, barbarian, and was especially applied by
the Germans to the Italians. Hence Italy is to the
present day called Welschland in German. The
Saxon invaders gave the same name to the Celtic
inhabitants of the British Isles, who are called wealh
in Anglo-Saxon (plur. wealas). Hence the walnut
meant originally the foreign nut. In Lithuanian the
walnut goes by the name of the ' Italian nut,' in
Eussian by that of c Greek nut.' 35 What English-
man, in speaking of walnut, thinks that it means

35 Pott, E. F. ii. 127: 'Itoliskas ressutys; Greczkoi orjecli.' Th*
German Lamhertsnuss is nux Lombardica. Instead of walnut we find
welshnut, Philos. Transact.-xvni.p. 819, andwalshnut inGerarde's/fr-nW.
In the Index to the Herbal walnut is spelt with two Ps, and classed with
wallflower.

T> D 2

404 <LA TOUR SANS VENIN. 5

foreign or Italian nut? But for the accident that
walnuts are no wall fruit, I have little doubt that by
this time schoolmasters would have insisted on spelling
the word with two Z's, and that many a gardener would
have planted his walnut trees against the wall.

There is a soup called Palestine soup. It is made,
I believe, of artichokes called Jerusalem articliokes, but
the Jerusalem artichoke is so called from a mere mis-
understanding. The artichoke, being a kind of sun-
flower, was called in Italian girasole, from the Latin
gyrus, circle, and sol, sun. Hence Jerusalem arti-
chokes and Palestine soups ! 36

One other instance may here suffice, because we
shall have to return to this subject of modern mytho-
logy. One of the seven wonders of Dauphiny in
France is la Tour sans venin* 7 the Tower without
poison, near Grenoble. It is said that poisonous
animals die as soon as they approach it. Though the
experiment has been tried, and has invariably failed,
yet the common people believe in the miraculous
power of the locality as mucji as ever. They appeal
to the name of la Tour sans venin, and all that the
more enlightened among them can be made to concede
is that the tower may have lost its miraculous charac-
ter in the present age, but that it certainly possessed
it in former days. The real name, however, of the
tower and of the chapel near it is San Verena or Saint
Vrain. This became san veneno, and at last sans venin.

But we must return to ancient mythology. There

36 Similar instances in Grimm, Deutsche Gr. ii. 548 ; iii. 558. Forste-
mann, 'Ueber Deutsche Volksetymologie ' (Kuhn's Zeitschrift, i. p. 1).
Koch, Histor. GrammatiJc der Englischen Sprache, vol. iii. p. 161. Lec-
tures, see infra, p. 576.

" Brosses, Formation mecanique des Langues, ii. 133.

CHARIS. 405

is a root in Sanskrit, GH AB, which, like ark, means
to be bright and to make bright. 38 It was originally
used of the glittering of fat and ointment. This
earliest sense is preserved in passages of the Ye da,
where the priest is said to brighten np the fire by-
sprinkling butter on it. It never means sprinkling
in general, but always sprinkling with a bright fatty
substance (beglitzern] , 39 From this root we have
ghrita, the modern, ghee, melted butter, and in
general anything fat (Schmalz), the fatness of the
land and of the clouds. Fat, however, means also
bright, and hence the Dawn is called ghritapratika,
bright-faced. Again, the fire claims the same name,
as well as ghritanir^igr, with garments dripping
with fat, or with brilliant garments. The horses of
Agni or fire, too, are called ghritaprish^Aa/i,
literally whose backs are covered with fat; but,
according to the commentator, well fed and shining.
The same horses are called vitaprish^a, with
beautiful backs, and ghritasna^, bathed in fat,
glittering, bedewed. Other derivatives of this root
ghar are ghrina, 40 heat of the sun; in later Sans-
krit ghriwa, warmth of the heart or pity, but like-
wise heat or contempt; ghrirai, 41 the burning heat
of the sun ; ghar ma, heat in general, also anything

38 Cf. Kuhn's Zeitschrift, i. 154, 566; iii. 346 (Schweizer), iv. 354
(Pictet).

39 Rv. ii. 10, 4: '(righarmy agnim havisha ghritena,' I
anoint or brighten up the fire with oblations of fat.'

40 Grhri n a means heat or summer. Ev. x. 37, 10: '$am hem sam
ghriwfcna,' 'Be thou propitious to us with winter and summer.'

41 Grhrini means heat, sunshine. Kv. vi. 16, 38: 'upa &Mayam
iva ghriwer aganma sarma te vayam,' ' As from heat into shade
we went to thee for refuge.'

In Greek x^ la ^ va > means I warm ; x^' l<a > I become warm, I melt, I am

406 CHAEIS.

that is hot, the sun, the fire, warm milk, and even
the kettle. It is identical with Greek thermos, and
Latin formus, warm.

Instead of ghar we also find the root har, a slight
modification of the former, and having the same mean-
ing. This root has given rise to several derivatives.
Two very well-known derivatives are hari andharit,
both meaning originally bright, resplendent. Now
let us remember that though occasionally both the
Sun and the Dawn are conceived by the Vedic poets
as themselves horses, 42 that is to say, as racers, it
became a more familiar conception of theirs to speak
of the Sun and the Dawn as drawn by horses. These
horses are very naturally called hari, or harit,
bright and brilliant ; and many similar names, such
as aruwa, arusha, rohit, &c., 43 are applied to them,
all expressive of brightness of colour in its various
shades. After a time these adjectives became sub-
stantives. Just as harm a, from meaning bright
brown, came to mean the antelope, as we speak of a
bay instead of a bay horse, the Yedic poets spoke of
the Har its as the horses of the Sun and the Dawn,
of the two Har is as the horses of Indra, of the
R oh its as the horses of Agni or fire. After a time
the etymological meaning of these words was lost
sight of, and hari and harit became traditional
names for the horses which either represented the
Dawn and the Sun, or were supposed to be yoked to

soft or delicate ; x At P<k means warm, lukewarm. In Anglo-Saxon we
have gli-mo, gleam.

42 M. M.'s Essay on Comparative Mythology, p. 82; Chips, ii. 134.
BbhtlingJc-Roth, Wbrterbuch, s. v. 'asva.'

43 Cf. M. M.'s Essay on Comparative Mythology, pp. 81-83. Chips, ii.
133-136.

CHARIS. 407

their chariots. When the Vedic poet says, ' The
Sun has yoked the Harits for his course/ what did
that language originally mean ? It meant no more
than what was manifest to every eye, namely, that
the bright rays of light which are seen at dawn
before sunrise, gathered in the east, rearing up to the
sky, and bounding forth in all directions with the
quickness of lightning, draw forth the light of the
sun, as horses draw the car of a warrior. But who
can keep the reins of language ? The bright ones,
the Harits, run away like horses, and very soon they
who were originally themselves the dawn, or the rays
of the Dawn, are recalled to be yoked as horses to
the car of the Dawn. Thus we read (Eigveda, vii.
75, 6), ' The bright brilliant horses are seen bringing
to us the shining Dawn.'

If it be asked how it came to pass that rays of light
should be spoken of as horses, the most natural answer
would be that it was a poetical expression such as any
one might use. But if we watch the growth of lan-
guage and poetry, we find that many of the later
poetical expressions rest on the same metaphorical
principle which we considered before as so important
an agent in the original formation of nouns, and that
they were suggested to later poets by earlier poets,
i. e. by the framers of the very language which they
spoke. Thus in our case we can see that the same
name which was given to the flames of fire, namely,
vahni, was likewise used as a name for horse, vahni
being derived from a root vah, to carry along. There
are several other names which rays of light and horses
share in common, so that the idea of horse would
naturally ring through the mind whenever these

408 CHARTS,

names for rays of light were touched. And here we
are once again in the midst of mythology ; for all
the fables of Helios, the Sun, and his horses, flow
irresistibly from this source.

But more than this. Kemember that one of the
names given to the horses of the Sun was Harit ;
remember also that originally these horses of the Sun
were intended for the rays of the Dawn, or, if you
like, for the Dawn itself. In some passages the
Dawn is simply called asva, the mare, originally the
racing light. Even in the Veda, however, the
Harits are not always represented as mere horses,
but assume occasionally, like the Dawn, a more
human aspect. Thus (vii. 66, 15) they are called the
Seven Sisters, and in another passage (ix. 86, 37)
they are represented with beautiful wings. Let us
now see whether we can find any trace of these
Harits or bright ones in Greek mythology, which,
like Sanskrit, is but another dialect of the common
Aryan mythology. If their name exists at all in
Greek, it could only be under the form of Charis,
Charites. The name, as you know, exists, but what
is its meaning? It never means ahorse. The name
never passed through that phase in the minds of the
Greek poets which is so familiar in the poetry of the
Indian bards. It retained its etymological meaning
of lustrous brightness, and became, as such, the name
of the brightest brightness of the sky, of the dawn.
In Homer, Charis is still used as one of the many
names of Aphrodite, and, like Aphrodite, she is called
the wife of Hephcestos. 44 Aphrodite, the sea-born,

44 n. xriii. 382 :

rrjv 8e 5

CHARIS. 409

was originally the dawn, the most lovely of all the
sights of nature, and hence very naturally raised in
the Greek mind to the rank of goddess of beauty and
love. As the Dawn is called in the VedaDuhita
Diva/z,, the daughter of Dyaus, Charis, the Dawn,
is to the Greeks the daughter of Zeus. One of the
names of Aphrodite, Argynnis, which the Greeks
derived from a name of a sacred place near the
Cephissus, where Argynnis, the beloved of Agamemnon,
had died, has been identified 45 with the Sanskrit
argruni, the bright, the name of the Dawn. In pro-
gress of time the different names of the Dawn ceased
to be understood, and Eos, Ushas, as the most in-
telligible of them, became in Greece the chief repre-
sentative of the deity of the morning, drawn, as in
the Yeda, by her bright horses. Aphrodite, the sea-
born, also called Enalia 46 and Pontia, became the
goddess of beauty and love, and was afterwards de-
graded by an admixture of Syrian mythology. Charis,
on the contrary, was merged in the Charites, 47 who
instead of being, as in India, the horses of the Dawn,
were changed by an equally natural process into the

In the Odyssey, the wife of Hephaestos is Aphrodite ; and Nagelsbach,
not perceiving the synonymous character of the two names, actually as-
cribed the passage in Od. viii. to another poet, because the system of
names in Homer, he says, is too firmly established to allow of such
variation. He likewise considers the marriage of Hephsestos as purely
allegorical. (Homerische Theologie, p. 114.)

45 Sonne, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, x. 350. Kigveda, i.49, 3. Ar^una,
a name of Indra, mentioned in the B rah maw as, &c.

Cf. Apyd yosha, Kigveda, x. 10, 4; apya yoshawa, 11, 2.

47 Kuhn, Zeitschrift, i. 518, x. 125. The same change of one deity
into many took place in the case of the Moira, or fate. The passages
in Homer where more than one Moira are mentioned, are considered as
not genuine (Od, vii. 197, II. xxiv. 49) ; but Hesiod and the later poets
are familiar with the plurality of the Moiras. See Nagelsbach, NacJi-
homerische Thcologic, p. 150. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, p. 53.

41 U CHARIS.

attendants of the bright gods, and particularly of
Zeus 48 and Aphrodite, whom c they wash at Paphos
and anoint with oil/ 49 as if in remembrance of their
descent from the root ghar, which, as we saw, meant
to anoint, to render brilliant by oil. 50

It has been considered a fatal objection to the
history of the word Charis, as here given, that in
Greek it would be impossible to separate Charis from
other words of a more general meaning. ' What
shall we do,' says Curtius, 51 'with chdris, chard, chairo,
charizomai, charieis ?' Why, it would be extraordinary
if such words did not exist, if the root ghar had be-
come withered as soon as it had produced this one
name of Charis. These words which Curtius enume-
rates are nothing but collateral offshoots of the same
root which produced the Harits in India and Charis
ia Greece. In Sanskrit, too, we cannot separate
haryati, from harit, yet the one means to like,
like chairein, in Greek, the other means the horses of
the Dawn, like Charis, the Dawn. One of the deriva-
tives of the root har was carried off by the stream of
mythology, the others remained on their native soil.
Thus the root dyu or div gives rise among others to
the name of Zeus, in Sanskrit Dyaus; but this is no

48 Phidias represented the gods in the Olympic temple in the following
order : avafiefiriK&s eVl app.a "HAtos Kal Zeus re e<m Kal "Hpa, irapa 8e
avrbv Xdpis TCIUTTJS 8e 'Epfir/s e^erou, rov 'Epp.ov 5e 'Etrria pera 8e rty
^Epoas fffrlv e/c &a\a.cra"r)S 'A.fypoSirrivaviovffa.v inroSe^ofj.ei'os ' T^V Se
e^aj/oT TIeiOw. 'Eirelpya<TTai Se Kal 'Air6\\uj/ <rvv 'Apre/juSi,
)va re /cal 'Hpaf\7}s, Kal ^Sij rov fiddpov irpbs T(f Trepan 'Afupirpirrj Kal

"fivrj re 'lirirov eju.ol SoKeiv e\avvovcra,
Od. vii. 364.

50 In German mythology the legends of Gerda, the beloved of Freyr t
also some of the Hilda stories, seem to flow from the same source.

51 Curtius, G. E. i. 97-

CHARIS. 411

reason why the same word should not be used in the
original sense of heaven, and produce other nouns
expressive of light, day, and similar notions. The
very word which in most Slavonic languages appears
in the sense of brightness, has in Illyrian, under the
form of zora, become the name of the Dawn. 52 Are
we to suppose that Gharis in Greek meant first grace,
beauty, and was then raised to the rank of an abstract
deity? It would be difficult to find another such
deity in Homer, originally a mere abstract concep-
tion, 53 and yet made of such flesh and bone as Charis?
the wife of Hephcestos. Or shall we suppose that
Charis was first, for some reason or other, the wife
of Hephsestos, and that her name afterwards dwindled
down to mean splendour 54 or charm in general ; so
that another goddess, Athene, could be said to
shower charis or charms upon a man ? To this, too,
I doubt whether any parallel could be found in
Homer. Everything, on the contrary, is clear and
natural, if we admit that from the root ghar or har r
to be fat, to be glittering, was derived, besides harit,
the bright horse of the Sun in Sanskrit, and Charis,
the bright Dawn in Greece, charis meaning bright-
ness and fatness, then gladness and pleasantness in
general, according to a metaphor so common in
ancient language. It may seem strange to us that
the charis, that indescribable grace of Greek poetry
and art, should come from a root meaning to be fat,
to be greasy. Yet lipartis, too, meant fat and oily
before it meant lovely. As fat and greasy infants

52 Pictet, Origines, i. 155; Sonne, Kuhn's Zeitschrift, x. 354.

53 See Kuhn, Herabholung des Feuers, p. 17.

54 Sonne, L c. x. 355-6.

412 CHARTS.

grow into ' airy, fairy Lilians,' so do words and ideas.
The Psalmist (cxxxiii. 2) does not shrink from even
bolder metaphors. 'Behold, how good and how
pleasant (charieri) it is for brethren to dwell together
in unity ! It is like the precious ointment upon the
head that ran down upon the beard, even Aaron's
beard : that went down to the skirts of his garments.'
After the Greek chdris had grown, and assumed the
sense of charm, such as it was conceived by the most
highly-cultivated of races, no doubt it reacted on the
mythological Charis and Charites, and made them the
embodiment of all that the Greeks had learnt to call
lovely and graceful, so that in the end it is sometimes
difficult to say whether chdris is meant as an appel-
lative or as a mythological proper name. Yet though
thus converging in the later Greek, the starting-
points of the two words were clearly distinct as
distinct at least as those of ark a, sun, and arka,
hymn of praise, which we examined before, or as
Dyaus, Zeus, a masculine, and dyaus, a feminine,
meaning heaven and day. Which of the two is
older, the appellative or the proper name, Charis, the
bright dawn, or chdris, loveliness, is a question which
it is impossible to answer, though Curtius declares
in favour of the priority of the appellative. This is
by no means so certain as he imagines. I fully agree
with him when he says that no etymology of any
proper name can be satisfactory which fails to explain
the appellative nouns with which it is connected ; but
the etymology of Charis does not fail there. On the
contrary, it lays bare the deepest roots from which
all its cognate offshoots can be fully traced both in
form and meaning, and it can defy the closest criti-

CHARIS. 413

cism, both of the student of comparative philology
and of the lover of ancient mythology. 55

In the cases which we have hitherto examined, a
mythological misunderstanding arose from the fact
that one and the same root was made to yield the
names of different conceptions ; that after a time the
two names were supposed to be one and the same,
which led to the transference of the meaning of one
to the other. There was one point of similarity
between the bright bear and the bright stars to justify
the ancient framers of language in deriving from the
same root the names of both. But when the similarity
in quality was mistaken for identity in substance,
mythology became inevitable. The fact of the seven
bright stars being called Arktos, and being supposed
to mean the bear, I call mythology; and it is important
to observe that this myth has no connection whatever
with religious ideas, or with the so-called gods of an-
tiquity. The legend of Kallisto, the beloved of Zeus,
and the mother of Arkas, has nothing to do with
the original naming of the stars. On the contrary,
Kallisto was supposed to have been changed into the
ArJctos, or the Great Bear, because she was the mother
of Arkas, that is to say, of the Arcadian or bear
race; and her name, or that of her son, reminded the
Greeks of their long-established name of the North-
ern constellation. Here, then, we have mythology
apart from religion ; we have a mythological misun-
derstanding very like in character to those which we
alluded to in f Palestine soup ' and La Tour sans venin.

Let us now consider another class of metaphorical
expressions. The first class comprehended those cases

55 See Appendix at the end of this Lecture, p. 418.

414 POETICAL METAPHORS.

which owed their origin to the fact that two substan-
tially distinct conceptions received their name from
the same root, differently applied. The metaphor
had taken place simultaneously with the formation of
the words ; the root itself and its meaning had been
modified in being adapted to the different concep-
tions that waited to be named. This is radical
metaphor. If, on the contrary, we take such a word
as star and apply it to a flower; if we take the word
ship and apply it to a cloud, or wing and apply it to
a sail; if we call the sun horse, or the moon cow ; or
with verbs, if we take such a verb as to die and apply
it to the setting sun, or if we read,

The moonlight clasps the earth,
And the sunbeams kiss the sea, 58

we have throughout poetical metaphors. These, too,
are of very frequent occurrence in the history of early
language and early thought. It was, for instance, a
very natural idea for people who watched the golden
beams of the sun playing as it were with the foliage
of the trees, to speak of these outstretched rays as
hands or arms. Thus we see that in the Veda, 57
Savitar, one of the names of the sun, is called
golden-handed. Who would have thought that such
a simple metaphor could ever have caused any my-
thological misunderstanding ? Nevertheless, we find
that the commentators of the Ye da see in the name
golden-handed, as applied to the Sun, not the golden

56 Cox, Tales of the Gods and Heroes, p. 55. Mythology of Greece
and Italy, by Keightley, p. 9.

37 i. 22, 5: ' hirawyapawim utaye Savitaram upa hvaye.'

i. 35 9: 'hirawyapawiA Savita vi&arshawiA ubhe dyiva-
prithivi antar iyate.'

i. 35, 10: 'hirawyahasta.'

THE GOLDEN-HANDED SUN. 415

splendour of his rays, but the gold which he carries
in his hands, and which he is ready to shower on his
pious worshippers. A kind of moral is drawn from
the old natural epithet, and people are encouraged to
worship the sun because he has gold in his hands to
bestow on his priests. We have a proverb in German,
( Morgenstunde hat Gold im Munde,' ' Morning-hour
has gold in her mouth, 3 which is intended to inculcate
the same lesson as,

Early to bed and early to rise,

Makes a man healthy, and wealthy, and wise.

But the origin of the German proverb is mythological.
It was the conception of the dawn as the golden light,
some similarity like that between aurum and aurora,
which suggested the proverbial or mythological ex-
pression of the ' golden-mouthed Dawn ' for many
proverbs are chips of mythology. But to return to
the golden-handed Sun. He was not only turned
into a lesson, but he also grew into a respectable
myth. Whether people failed to see the natural
meaning of the golden-handed Sun, or whether they
would not see it, certain it is that the early theolo-
gical treatises of the Brahmans 58 tell of the Sun as
having cut his hand at a sacrifice, and the priests
having replaced it by an artificial hand made of gold.
Nay, in later times, the Sun, under the name of
Savitar, becomes himself a priest, and a legend is
told how at a sacrifice he cut off his hand, and how
the other priests made a golden hand for him.

All these myths and legends which we have hitherto
examined are clear enough ; they are like fossils of the
most recent period, and their similarity with living

68 Kanshitaki-brahmawa, I.e. and Sayawa.

416 THE GOLDEN-HANDED SUN.

species is not to be mistaken. But if we dig some-
what deeper, the similarity is less palpable, though
it may be traced by careful research. If the German
god Tyr, whom Grimm identifies with the Sanskrit
sun-god, 59 is spoken of as one-handed, it is because the
name of the golden-handed Sun had led to the con-
ception of the Sun with one artificial hand, and after-
wards, by a strict logical conclusion, to a sun with but
one hand. Each nation invented its own story how
Savitaror Tyr came to lose their hands ; and while
the priests of India imagined that Savitar hurt his
hand at a sacrifice, the sportsmen of the North told
how Tyr placed his hand, as a pledge, into the mouth
of the wolf, and how the wolf bit it off. Grimm
compares the legend of Tyr placing his hand, as a
pledge, into the mouth of the wolf, and thus losing
it, with an Indian legend of Surya or Savitar, the
Sun, laying hold of a sacrificial animal and losing his
hand by its bite. This explanation is possible, but
it wants confirmation, particularly as the one-handed
German god Tyr has been accounted for in some other
way. Tyr is the god of victory, as Wackernagel points
out, and as victory can only be on one side, the god of
victory might well have been thought of and spoken
of as himself one-handed. 60

It was a simple case of poetical metaphor if the
Greeks spoke of the stars as the eyes of the night.
But when they speak of Argos the all-seeing (Pan6ptes),
and tell of his body being covered with eyes, we have
a clear case of mythology.

It is likewise perfectly intelligible when the poets
of the Yeda speak of the Maruts or storms as
singers. This is no more than when poets speak of

48 Deutsche Mythologie, xlvii. p. 187. 60 Schweitzer Museum, i. 107.

RADICAL AND POETICAL METAPHOR. 417

the music of the winds ; and in German such an ex-
pression as ' The wind sings ' (der Wind singt) means
no more than the wind blows. But when the Mar uts
are called not only singers, but musicians nay, wise
poets in the Ye da 61 then again language has ex-
ceeded its proper limits, and has landed us in the
realm of fables.

Although the distinction between radical and
poetical metaphor is very essential, and helps us more
than anything else toward a clear perception of the
origin of fables, it must be admitted that there are
cases where it is difficult to carry out this distinction.
If modern poets call the clouds mountains, this is
clearly poetical metaphor; for mountain, by itself,
never means cloud. But when we see that in the
Ye da the clouds are constantly called par vat a, and
that parvata means, etymologically, knotty or
rugged, it is difficult to say positively whether in
India the clouds were called mountains by a simple
poetical metaphor, or whether both the clouds and
the mountains were from the beginning conceived as
full of ruggedness and undulation, and thence called
parvata. 62 The result, however, is the same, namely,
mythology; for if in the Ye da it is said that the
Maruts or storms make the mountains to tremble
(i. 39, 5), or pass through the mountains (i. 116, 20),
this, though meaning originally that the storms made
the clouds shake, or passed through the clouds, came
to mean, in the eyes of later commentators, that the
Maruts actually shook the mountains or rent them
asunder.

61 Kigveda, i. 19, 4; 38, 15; 52, 15. Kuhn, Zeitschrift, i. 521.

62 See Kigveda-Sanhita, translated by M. M., vol. i. p. 43.
II. E E

418

APPENDIX TO LECTURE VIII.

DR. SONNE, in several learned articles published in ' Kuhn's
Zeitschrift' (x. 96, 161, 321, 401), has subjected my conjec-
ture as to the identity of harit and charts to the most search-
ing criticism. On most points I fully agree with him, as he
will see from the more complete statement of my views given
in this Lecture ; and I feel most grateful to him for much
additional light which his exhaustive treatise has thrown on
the subject. We differ as to the original meaning of the
root ghar, which Dr. Sonne takes to be effusion or shedding
of light, while I ascribe to it the meaning of glittering and
fatness ; yet we meet again in the explanation of such words
as ghrina, pity; haras, wrath; hrini, wrath; hrinfte,
he is angry. These meanings Dr. Sonne explains by a re-
ference to the Russian kraska, colour ; krasnot, red, beauti-
ful ; krasa, beauty ; krasnjett, to blush ; krasovattsja, to re-
joice. Dr. Sonne is certainly right in doubting the identity
of chairo and Sanskrit hrish, the Latin horreo, and in ex-
plaining chairo as the Greek form of ghar, to be bright and
glad, conjugated according to the fourth class. Whether the
Sanskrit haryati, he desires, is the Greek the'lei, seems to me
doubtful.

Why Dr. Sonne should prefer to identify charts, chdritos t
with the Sanskrit hdri, rather than with harit, he does not
state. Is it on account of the accent ? I certainly think that
there was a form charts, corresponding to hdri, and I should
derive from it the accusative charm, instead of chdrita ; also
adjectives like chaneis (harivat). But I should certainly re-
tain the base which we have in harit, in order to explain such
forms as charts, chdritos. That charts in Greek ever passed
through the same metamorphosis as the Sanskrit harit, that it
ever to a Greek mind conveyed the meaning of horse, there is

NOTES ON CHARTS. 419

110 evidence whatever. Greek and Sanskrit myths, like Greek
and Sanskrit words, must be treated as co-ordinate, not as
subordinate ; nor have I ever, as far as I recollect, referred
Greek myths or Greek words to Sanskrit as their prototypes.
What I said about the Charites was very little. On page 81
of my ' Essay on Comparative Mythology,' I said :

In other passages, however, they (the Harits) take a more human
form ; and as the Dawn, which is sometimes simply called asva, the
mare, is well known by the name of the sister, these Harits also are
called the Seven Sisters (vii. 66, 15); and in one passage (ix. 86, 37)
they appear as the Harits with beautiful wings. After this I need
hardly say that we have here the prototype of the Grecian Charites.

If on any other occasion I had derived Greek from Sanskrit
myths, or, as Dr. Sonne expresses it, ethnic from ethnic myths,
instead of deriving both from a common Aryan or pro-ethnic
source, my words might have been liable to misapprehension. 63
But as they stand in my essay, they were only intended to
point out that, after tracing the Harits to their most primitive
source, and after showing how, starting from thence, they
entered on their mythological career in India, we might dis-
cover there, in their earliest form, the mould in which the
myth of the Greek Charites was cast, while such epithets as
1 the sisters,' and ' with beautiful wings,' might indicate how
conceptions that remained sterile in Indian mythology, grew
up under a Grecian sky into those charming human forms
which we have all learned to admire in the Graces of Hellas.
That I had recognised the personal identity, if we may say
so, of the Greek Charis, the Aphrodite, the Dawn, and the

83 I ought to mention, however, that "Mr. Cox, in the Introduction to
his Tales of the Gods and Heroes, p. 67, has understood my words in the
same sense as Dr. Sonne. ' The horses of the sun,' he writes, ' are called
Harits ; and in these we have the prototype of the Greek Charites
an inverse transmutation, for while in the other instances the human
is changed into a brute personality, in this the beasts are converted into
maidens.'

B B 2

420 NOTES ON CHARIS.

Sanskrit Ushas, the Dawn, will be seen from a short sentence
towards the end of my essay, p. 86 :

He (Eros) is the youngest of the gods, the son of Zeits, the friend of
the Charites ; also the son of the chief Churls, Aphrodite, in whom we
can hardly fail to discover a female Eros (an Usha, Dawn, instead of an
Agni aushasya).

Dr. Sonne will thus perceive that our roads, even where
they do not exactly coincide, run parallel, and that we work
in the same spirit and with the same objects in view.

421

LECTURE IX.

THE MYTHOLOGY OP THE GBEEKS.

those who are acquainted with the history of
- Greece, and have learnt to appreciate the intellec-
tual, moral, and artistic excellencies of the Greek mind,
it has often been a subject of wonderment how such
a nation could have accepted, could have tolerated
for a moment, such a religion. What the inhabitants
of the small city of Athens achieved in philosophy, in
poetry, in art, in science, in politics, is known to all
of us ; and our admiration for them increases tenfold
if, by a study of other literatures, such as the litera-
tures of India, Persia, and China, we are enabled to
compare their achievements with those of other na-
tions of antiquity. The rudiments of almost every-
thing, with the exception of religion, we, the people
of Europe, the heirs to a fortune accumulated during
twenty or thirty centuries of intellectual toil, owe
to the Greeks; and, strange as it may sound, but
few, I think, would gainsay it, to the present day
the achievements of these our distant ancestors and
earliest masters, the songs of Homer, the dialogues of
Plato, the speeches of Demosthenes, and the statues
of Phidias stand, if not unrivalled, at least unsur-
passed by anything that has been achieved by their

422 GREEK MYTHOLOGY.

descendants and pupils. How the Greeks came to be
what they were, and how, alone of all other nations,
they opened almost every mine of thought that has
since been worked by mankind ; how they invented
and perfected almost every style of poetry and prose
which has since been cultivated by the greatest minds
of our race ; how they laid the lasting foundation of
the principal arts and sciences, and in some of them
achieved triumphs never since equalled, is a problem
which neither historian nor philosopher has as yet
been able to solve. Like their own goddess Athene,
a people seems at Athens to spring full armed into
the arena of history, and we look in vain to Egypt,
Syria, or India for more than a few of the seeds that
burst into such marvellous growth on the soil of
Attica.

But the more we admire the native genius of
Hellas, the more we feel surprised at the crudities and
absurdities of what is handed down to us as their
religion. Their earliest philosophers knew as well as
we that the Deity, in order to be Deity, must be either
perfect or nothing that it must be one, not many,
and without parts and passions ; yet they believed in
many gods, and ascribed to all of them, and more
particularly to Jupiter, almost every vice and weak-
ness that disgraces human nature. Their poets had
an instinctive aversion to everything excessive or
monstrous ; yet they would relate of their gods what
would make the most savage of the Red Indians
creep and shudder : how that Uranos was maimed
by his son Kronos how Kronos swallowed his own
children, and, after years of digestion, vomited out
alive his whole progeny how Apollo, their fairest

PKOTESTS OP GREEK PHILOSOPHERS. 423

god, hung Marsyas on a tree and flayed him alive
how Demeter, the sister of Zeus, partook of the
shoulder of Pelops who had been butchered and
roasted by his own father, Tantalus, as a feast for the
gods. I will not add any further horrors, or dwell on
crimes that have become unmentionable, but of which
the most highly cultivated Greek had to tell his sons
and daughters in teaching them the history of their
gods and heroes.

It would indeed be a problem, more difficult than
the problem of the origin of these stories themselves,
if the Greeks, such as we know them, had never been
startled by this, had never asked, How can these
things be, and how did such stories spring up ? But
be it said to the honour of Greece, although her
philosophers did not succeed in explaining the origin
of these religious fables, they certainly were, from the
earliest times, shocked by them. Xenophanes, who
lived, as far as we know, before Pythagoras, accuses l
Homer and Hesiod of having ascribed to the gods
everything that is disgraceful among men stealing,
adultery, and deceit. He remarks that 2 men seem to
have created their gods, and to have given to them

Havra Beats avsQ^Kav "OfJ.'np6s 6' 'Hcn'oSJs re,

Trap' avQp<aTroiffiv oveiSea Kal \l*6yos effrlv. ....
rXeTo-T' tyQeyfcvro dew aOeplffria epya,
eiv jjioixeveiv re Ka\ a\\"f)\ovs airarti
Of. Sextus Emp. adv. Math. i. 289, ix. 193.

'AAA.& Pporol SoKtovffi Qeovs
rty (T(pTepijv T' afodrjo'iv %X* lv ^^vi\v re
'AA\' eiroz x^ipas y' e?%oj/ &6es ije \eovres,
j) ypdtyat xeipeffffi Kal fpya reXeiv $.irep
Kai /ce 6eG>v Ideas eypacpov Kal ff&nar* tiroiovv
roiavff oi6v irep tcavrol Sefj.as elxpv d^olov,
tTTTrot fj.fv ff l-mroiffi, fioes $4 re fiovviv bfj.oia.
Cf. Clem. Alex. Strom, v. p. 601 C.

424 PKOTESTS OF GEEEK PHILOSOPHERS.

their own mind, voice, and figure ; that the Ethio-
pians made their gods black and flat-nosed, the
Thracians red-haired and blue-eyed just as cows
or lions, if they could but draw, would draw their
gods like cows and lions. He himself declares, in
the most unhesitating manner and this nearly 600
years before our era that ' God 3 is one, the greatest
.among gods and men, neither in form nor in thought
like unto men.' He calls the battles of the Titans,
the Giants, and Centaurs, the inventions of former
generations 4 (TrXacr/zara TCOV Trpo-rfytov), and requires
that the Deity should be praised in holy stories and
pure strains.

Similar sentiments were entertained by most of the
great philosophers of Greece. Heraclitus seems to
have looked upon the Homeric system of theology,
if we may so call it, as flippant infidelity. Accord-
ing to Diogenes Laertius, 5 Heraclitus declared that
Homer, as well as Archilochus, deserved to be
ejected from public assemblies and flogged. The
same author relates 6 a story that Pythagoras saw the
soul of Homer in the lower world hanging on a tree,
and surrounded by serpents, as a punishment for
what he had said of the gods. No doubt the views

Ely 6ebs ev re deotffi KOI avOpdiroHn fi4yiffros t
oft n Se'juos 6vyToi(ri dfj.olios ot'Se j/(%ta.
Cf. Clem. Alex. ibid.

* Cf. Isocrates, ii. 38 (Nagelsbach, p. 45).

5 l6v ff "OfJ-iipov fyaffKcv &tov tic rwv aydivui/ fKd\\f(rQai nai
pa.irtr6ai, Kal 'Apx i '*X OI/ fywi'aw. Diog. Laert. ix. 1.

'HrrtgTjcre t /XT; T}\\iiy6pi<Tf, "Opypos. Bertrand, Les Dieux Protecteurs
p. 143.

6 *7j<rl 8' '\tp<i>i>vfJios Kare\66vTa avrbf els a8ov r^v fj.fV 'H(Ti68ov tyvxfa
iSf'tv irpbs K'IOVI x^ K V SeSejuevTjj/ Kal rpl^ovffav, r^jv 8' 'OfJ."fipov Kpe/j.afj.fvrji'
airb SevSpov Kal txpfis trtpl aurty avff wv flirov Trfpl 0&v. Diog. Laert.
viii. 21.

PROTESTS OF GREEK PHILOSOPHEES. 425

of these philosophers about the gods were far more
exalted and pure than those of the Homeric poets,
who represented their gods as in many cases hardly
better than men. But as religion became mixed up
with politics, it was more and more dangerous to
profess these sublimer views, or to attempt to ex-
plain the Homeric myths in any but the most literal
sense. Anaxagoras, who endeavoured to give to the
Homeric legends a moral meaning, and is said to
have interpreted the names of the gods allegorically
nay, to have called Fate an empty name, was thrown
into prison at Athens, from whence he only escaped
through the powerful protection of his friend and
pupil Pericles. Protagoras, another friend of Pericles, 7
was expelled from Athens, and his books were pub-
licly burnt, because he had said that nothing could
be known about the gods, whether they existed or
no. 8 Socrates, though he never attacked the sacred
traditions and popular legends, 9 was suspected of
being no very strict believer in the ancient Homeric
theology, and he had to suffer martyrdom. After
the death of Socrates greater freedom of thought was
permitted at Athens in exchange for the loss of
political liberty. Plato declared that many a myth

7 AojceT 8e irpwros, Ka8d (pTjtrt ftaSapivos *v Travrotiairrj iffropiq, T)JV
'OfJL-fjpov irot^inv aTTO(p'hvao~6ai slvai irspl aperys Kal SiKaioffvvrjs ' fvl
3T\eoj/ 8e irpoffr^vat rov \6yov MrjrpJSwpo*' rbv Aafj.^/aKrjv6v ) yvdapi^ov
fivra avrov, $>v Kal irpcarov (nrovod<rai rov iroir]TOv Trepl rfyv (pvffiK^iv
TTpa.yfjia.rdav. Diog. Laert. ii. 11.

8 lie pi per Oewv OVK exw etSeVoi ofttf us elfflv, ot/0' &s OVK ticriv iro\\a
yap ra KuKvovra. ctSeyat, 7} r' dSijA^TTys Kal fipaxvs &>v 6 fiios rov
av0pci>Trov. Aia ravri)v 5e rty apx*iv TOV ffvyypd/j./ji.aros e|eg\^07j Trpbs
t A8ijval<av ' Kal ra j8igA.fo attrov KarfKav<rav v rr) ayopa, inrb K^pvKos
mva\edfjici'oi trap' (Kdffrov rwv KeKr-n^fvcav. Diog. Laert. ix. 51. Cicero,
tfat. Deor. i. 23, 63.

9 Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. p. 504.

426 PEOTESTS OF GREEK POETS.

had a symbolical or allegorical meaning; but lie
insisted, nevertheless, that the Homeric poems, such
as they were, should be banished from hisEepublic. 10
Nothing can be more distinct and outspoken than the
words attributed to Epicurus : e The gods are indeed,,
but they are not as the many believe them to be.
Not he is an infidel who denies the gods of the many,
but he who fastens on the gods the opinions of the
many.' 11

In still later times an accommodation was attempted
between mythology and philosophy. Chrysippus (died
207), after stating his views about the immortal
gods, is said to have written a second book to show
how these might be brought into harmony with the
fables of Homer. 12

And not philosophers only felt these difficulties
about the gods as represented by Homer and Hesiod ;
most of the ancient poets also were distressed by
the same doubts, and constantly find themselves in-
volved in contradictions which they are unable to
solve. Thus, in the Eumenides of jEschylus (v. 640),
the Chorus asks how Zeus could have called on
Orestes to avenge the murder of his father, he who
himself had dethroned his father and bound him in

10 Otis 'Ho~lo86s re, elirov, Ka\"Op.T]pos TIJUV f\y4rT]V Ka\ ol &\\ot

ovroi yap TTOV fivdovs rots avOptairois i^euScTs avvriQtvrts e\ey6v re Kal
\4yovo-iy. Plat. Polit. $. 377d. Grote, History, i. 593.

11 Diog. Laert. x. 123. Bitter and Preller, Historia Philosophic,
p. 419. Qeol fJLfV yap flffiv fvapyfys 8e fffrtv avrwv TJ yvaffis' olous 8*
aurous of iro\\ol vo^ovffiv OVK e\<riv ov yap QvXdrrovffiv avrovs olovs
voiLifyvaiv. affeGi]s 8' ovx & robs ruv tro\\G)v Oeovs avaipStv, eiAA.' 6 ras roa*
iro\\u>v S6as deals irpocrdirruv.

12 * In secundo autem libro Homeri fabulas accommodare roluit ad ea
quse ipse primo libro de diis immortalibus dixerit.' Cic. Nat. Dear. i. 15.
Bertrand, Sur les Dicux Protecteurs (Kennes, 1858), p. 38.

PROTESTS OF GREEK POETS. 427

chains. Pindar, who is fond of weaving the tradi-
tions of gods and heroes into his songs of victory,
suddenly starts when he meets with anything dis-
honourable to the gods. ( Lips,' he says, 13 e throw
away this word, for it is an evil wisdom to speak evil
of the gods.' His criterion in judging of mythology
would seem to have been very simple and straight-
forward, namely, that nothing can be true in mytho-
logy that is dishonourable to the gods. The whole
poetry of Euripides oscillates between two extremes :
he either taxes the gods with all the injustice and
crimes they are fabled to have committed, or he turns
round and denies the truth of the ancient myths
because they relate of the gods what is incompatible
with a divine nature. Thus, while in the Ion, 14 the
gods, even Apollo, Jupiter, and Neptune, are accused
of every crime, we read in another play : 15 c I do not
think that the gods delight in unlawful marriages,

13 Olymp. ix. 38, ed. Boekh: 'A.ir6 poi \6yov rovrov, erS^a,
eVel r6 "ye AoiSopTjcrat deovs e';0pa ffo<f>ia.
" Ion, 444, ed. Paley:

Et 5', ov yap cerai, r$ X6ycp 8e xpfaopai,

SiKas fiiaiwi' Severer' avOpcfarois yd/j.a>v,

ffv Ka\ TlofftiSSiv Zeus 6' 6s ovpavov /fpare?,

vaovs rivovres dSi/cias /cei/wa^re .....

Sinaiov, el ret T&V Qeuv Ka/co

', a\Aa TOVS
Cf. Here. fur. 339.

15 Here. fur. 1341, ed. Paley:

'70; Se TOVS Oeovs oiire \tKrp'
crrepyfiv voiilfa, Sffffj.d T'
o&r' T)iucra TTC&TTOT'

5e?rot yap 6 Qebs, eforep etrr* Svrcas dtbs,
ovSfvds aoiSwv ot5e SvffTijvoi \6yoi.
See Euripides, ed. Paley, vol. i. Preface, p. xx.

428 PKOTESTS OF GREEK POETS.

nor did I ever hold or shall ever believe that they
fasten chains on their hands, or that one is lord of
another. For a god, if he is really god, has no need
of anything : these are the miserable stories of poets ! '
Or, again : 16 ' If the gods commit anything that is
evil, they are no gods. 5

These passages, to which many more might be
added, will be sufficient to show that the more thought-
ful among the Greeks were as much startled at their
mythology as we are. They would not have been
Greeks if they had not seen that those fables were ir-
rational, if they had not perceived that the whole of
their mythology presented a problem that required a
solution at the hand of the philosopher. If the Greeks
did not succeed in solving it, if they preferred a com-
promise between what they knew to be true and what
they knew to be false, if the wisest among their wise
men spoke cautiously on the subject or kept aloof from
it altogether, let us remember that these myths, which
we now handle as freely as the geologist his fossil
bones, were then living things, sacred things,, im-
planted by parents in the minds of their children,
accepted with an unquestioning faith, hallowed by
the memory of the departed, sanctioned by the state,
the foundation on which some of the most venerable
institutions had been built up and established for
ages. It is enough for us to know that the Greeks
expressed surprise and dissatisfaction at these fables :
to explain their origin was a task left to a more dis-
passionate age.

The principal solutions that offered themselves to

16 Eur. Fragm. Belleroph. 300 : et Qsol ri Spwffiv alffxpbi*, ovx eialt
eoi.

ETHICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 429

the Greeks, when inquiring into the origin of their
mythology, may be classed under three heads, which
I call ethical, physical, historical, according to the dif-
ferent objects which the original framers of mythology
were supposed to have had in view. 17

Seeing how powerful an engine was supplied by
religion for awing individuals and keeping political
communities in order, some Greeks imagined that the
stories telling of the omniscience and omnipotence of
the gods, of their rewarding the good and punishing
the wicked, were invented by wise people of old for
the improvement and better government of men. ls
This view, though extremely shallow, and supported
by no evidence, was held by many among the ancients ;
and even Aristotle, though admitting, as we shall see,
a deeper foundation of religion, was inclined to con-
sider the mythological form of the Greek religion as
invented for the sake of persuasion, and as useful for
the support of law and order. Well might Cicero,
when examining this view, exclaim, ' Have not those
who said that the idea of immortal gods was made
up by wise men for the sake of the commonwealth, in
order that those who could not be led by reason
might be led to their duty by religion, destroyed all
religion from the bottom ? ' 19 Nay, it would seem to
follow that if the useful portions of mythology were
invented by wise men, the immoral stories about gods
and men must be ascribed to foolish poets a view,
as we saw before, more than hinted at by Euripides.

17 Of. Augustinus, De Civ. Dei, vii. 5 : ' De paganorum secretiore doc-
trina physicisque rationibus.'

18 Cf. Wagner, Fragm. Trag. iii. p. 102. Nagelsbach, Naehhomerische
Thedogie, pp. 435, 445.

19 Cic. N. D. i. 42, 118.

430 PHYSICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

A second class of interpretations may be compre-
hended under the name of physical, using that term in
the most general sense, so as to include even what are
commonly called metaphysical interpretations. Ac-
cording to this school of interpreters, it was the
intention of the authors of mythology to convey to
the people at large a knowledge of certain facts of
nature, or certain views of natural philosophy, which
they did in a phraseology peculiar to themselves or
to the times they lived in, or, according to others, in
a language that was to veil rather than to unveil the
mysteries of their sacred wisdom. As all interpreters
of this class, though differing on the exact original
intention of each individual myth, agree in this, that
no myth must be understood literally, their system
of interpretation is best known under the name of
allegorical, allegorical being the most general name
for that kind of language which says one thing but
means another. 20

So early a philosopher as Epicharmus* 1 the pupil
of Pythagoras, declared that the gods were really
wind, water, earth, the sun, fire, and the stars. Not
long after him, Empedocles (about 444 B.C.) ascribed to

20 Cf. Miiller, Prolegomena, p. 335, n. 6 : &\\o p.\v ayopevei, &\\o 5e
j/oe?. The difference between a myth and an allegory has been simply
but most happily explained by Professor Blackie, in his article on My-
thology in Chambers' Cyclopaedia : ' A myth is not to be confounded with
an allegory ; the one being an unconscious act of the popular mind at an
early stage of society, the other a conscious act of the individual mind at
any stage of social progress.'

21 Stobseus, Flor. xci. 29 :

'O pev 'ETn'xap/ios rovs Oeovs eli/ot \eyei
'Avfji.ovs, vScap, yyv, ^\iov, trvp, affrepas.

Cf. Bernays, Skein. Mus. 1853, p. 280. Kruseman, Epicharmi Frag-

menta, Harlemi, 1834.

PHYSICAL INTERPEETATIONS. 431

tlie names of Zeus, Here, Aidoneus, and Nestis, the
meaning of the four elements, fire, air, earth, and
water. 22 Whatever the philosophers of Greece suc-
cessively discovered as the first principles of being and
thought, whether the air of Anaximenes 23 (about 548),
or the fire of Heraditus 2 * (about 503), or the Nous, the
mind, of Anaxagoras (died 428), was gladly identified
by them with Jupiter or other divine powers. Anax-
agoras and his school are said to have explained the
whole of the Homeric mythology allegorically. With
them Zeus was mind, Athene, art ; while Metrodorus,
the contemporary of Anaxagoras, resolved not only
the persons of Zeus, Here, and Athene, but also those
of Agamemnon, Achilles, and Hector, into various
elemental combinations and physical agencies, and
treated the adventures ascribed to them as natural
facts concealed under the veil of allegory.' 25

Socrates declined this labour of explaining all fables
allegorically as too arduous and unprofitable ; yet he,
as well as Plato, frequently pointed to what they called
the hyponoia, the under-meaning, if I may say so, of
the ancient myths.

There is a passage in the eleventh book of Aristotle's

22 Pint, de Plac. Phil. i. 30 : 'E/i7r6&oK\7js tybaiv ^\v eTrcu, fuiv Si
Ttav oT<nx e tav Kal SidffTaaiv. ypdcpei yap ovrcas 4v T< irp&rcp (pvffiKy.
Teffffapa rv travruv ptfa/jutTa irpwrov &Kove
Zeus ap7$7s"Hp7j re, <pep(rios f/S' 'At'Scopefo,
"Nrfffrls ff $? SaKpvois reyyei Kpovvu^ia. ftporeiov.

28 Cic. N. D. i. 10. Hitter and Preller, 27.

24 Clem. Alex. Strom, v. p. 603 D. Eitter and Preller, 38. Bernays,
Neue Bruchstucke des Heraklit, p. 256: ev rb votpvv /J.QVVOV \4ye<r9a.i
0eAet, Kal OVK e^eAet ZTJJ/^S O^VOJJLO..

25 Syncellus, Ckron.p. 149, ed. Paris. 'EpfjLijve^ovfft 5e ol 'Avafrytpeioi
rovs /^vOwSety Oeovs, vovv /j.kv rbv Ala, TTJV 8e 'AflTjvaj/ T^VT\V. Grote,
vol. i. p. 563. Hitter and Preller, Hist. Phil. 48. Lobeck, Aglaoph.
p. 1<)6. Diog. Laert. ii. 11.

432 PHYSICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

Metaphysics which, has often been quoted 26 as show-
ing the clear insight of that philosopher into the origin
of mythology, though in reality it does not rise much
above the narrow views of other Greek philosophers.
This is what Aristotle writes :

It has been handed down by early and very ancient people,
and left, in the form of myths, to those who came after, that
these (the first principles of the world) are the gods, and that
the divine embraces the whole of nature. The rest has been
added mythically, in order to persuade the many, and in
order to be used in support of laws and other interests.
Thus they say that the gods have a human form, and that
they are like to some of the other living beings, and other
things consequent on this, and similar to what has been
said. If one separated out of these fables, and took only that
first point, that they believed the first essences to be gods, one
would think that it had been divinely said, and that while
every art and every philosophy was probably invented ever
so many times and lost again, these opinions had, like frag-
ments of them, been preserved until now. So far only is the
opinion of our fathers, and that received from our first
ancestors, clear to us.

The attempts at finding in mythology the remnants
of ancient philosophy, have been carried on in differ-
ent ways from the days of Socrates to our own time.
Some writers thought they discovered astronomy, or
other physical sciences in the mythology of Greece :
and in our own days the great work of Creuzer,
< Symbolik und Mythologie der alten Volker ' (1819-
21), was written with the one object of proving that
Greek mythology was composed by priests, born or
instructed in the East, who wished to raise the semi-
barbarous races of Greece to a higher civilisation and

26 Bunsen, Gottinder Geschichte, vol. iii. p. 532. Ar. Met.xi. 8, 19.

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 433

a purer knowledge of the Deity. There was, according
to Creuzer and his school, a deep mysterious wisdom,
and a monotheistic religion veiled under the symbol-
ical language of mythology, which language, though
unintelligible to the people, was understood by the
priests, and may be interpreted even now by the
thoughtful student of mythology.

The third theory on the origin of mythology I call
the historical. It goes generally by the name of Eu-
hemerusy though we find traces of it both before and
after his time. Euhemerus was a contemporary of
Alexander, and lived at the court of Cassander, in
Macedonia, by whom he is said to have been sent out
on an exploring expedition. Whether he really ex-
plored the Eed Sea and the southern coasts of Asia
we have no means of ascertaining. All we know is that,
in a religious novel which he wrote, he represented
himself as having sailed in that direction to a great
distance, until he came to the island of Panchsea. In
that island he said that he discovered a number of
inscriptions (dvaypa<f>ai, hence the title of his book,
e lspa 'Avarypa<j)r}), containing an account of the prin-
cipal gods of Greece, but representing them, not as
gods, but as kings, heroes, and philosophers, who after
their death had received divine honours among their
fellow-men. 27

Though the book of Euhemerus itself and its
translation by Ennius are both lost, and we know
little either of its general spirit or of its treatment of

27 ' Quid ? qui aut fortes aut claros aut potentes viros tradunt post
mortem ad deos pervenisse, eosque esse ipsos quos nos colere, precari,
venerarique soleamus, nonne expertes sunt religionum omnium ? Quae
ratio maxima tractata ab Euhemero est, quam noster et interpretatus et
secutus est praeter oseteros Ennius.' Cic. De Nat. Dear. i. 42.
II. P P

434 HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

individual deities, such was the sensation produced by
it at the time, that Euhemerism has become the re-
cognised title of that system of mythological inter-
pretation which denies the existence of divine beings,
and reduces the gods of old to the level of men. A
distinction, however, must be made between the com-
plete and systematic denial of all gods, which is as-
cribed to Euhernerus, and the partial application of
his principles which we find in many Greek writers.
Thus Hecataeus, a most orthodox Greek, 28 declares
that Geryon of Erytheia was really a king of Epirus,
rich in cattle ; and that Cerberus, the dog of Hades,
was a certain serpent inhabiting a cavern on Cape
Taenarus. 29 Ephorus converted Tityos into a bandit,
and the serpent Python 30 into a rather troublesome
person, Python by name, alias Dracon, whom Apollo
killed with his arrows. Herodotus tells us that the
priests of Jupiter at Thebes informed him that two
priestesses had been carried off from Thebes by Phe-
nicians, and sold as slaves in Libya and in Greece,
and that they had founded oracles there. He then
continues that at Dodona he heard that two black
doves had come from Thebes in Egypt, one going to
Libya, the other to Dodona ; that the dove at Dodona
settled in an oak, and declared in a human voice
that an oracle of Zeus should be founded on the spot ;
that the people of Dodona took this as a divine mes-
sage, and acted accordingly. Putting these two
stories together, Herodotus concludes that both refer
to the same fact, that two Egyptian priestesses had
been carried off by Phenicians as slaves, had founded

28 Grote, History of Greece, vol. i. p. 526.

29 Strabo, ix. p. 422. Grote, H. G-. i. p. 652.

80 Possibly connected with the Vedic Ahir Budhuya.

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 435

the sanctuaries of Zeus both at Dodona and in Libya ;
and he adds that, probably, they were called doves by
the people of Dodona because they were strangers
and seemed to twitter like birds, and, when they had
learnt to speak better, it was said that the dove spoke
with a human voice ; but he adds, in a truly rational-
istic spirit, how could a real dove have spoken with
a human voice ? and he explains her black colour as
meaning no more than that she came from Egypt.

Now it is important to remark that Herodotus,
though he was at Dodona, tells us nothing of any
doves being kept there in his time, nor of priestesses
called Peleiades. All this seems to belong to a later
time. Strabo evidently knew of doves being used for
the purposes of divination at Dodona. But he too, in
a rationalising spirit, remarks that possibly the priest-
esses there prophesied according to the peculiar flight
of doves. And he gives a still better explanation by
saying that, in the language of the Molossians and
Thesprotians, old women were called peliae, old men
pelioi; and that, therefore, the famous Peleiades at
Dodona may have been simply those old women offi-
ciating at the oracle. Pausanius, in the 2nd century,
mentions the doves (Peleiae) and the oracles from the
oak at Dodona (vii. 21, 2) ; and in x. 12, 10 he, too,
takes the Peleiae as priestesses at Dodona, divinely
inspired, yet not called Sibyllce. They were the first
among women, he says, vrho sang

Zeve T)J>, ZfVQ ecrri, Zeuc tWerai, <5 yutyaXe Zev*
To. KapirovQ avt'ei, tiio /cArf^erg (jtarepa. yaiav.

Similar explanations become more frequent in later
Greek historians, who, unable to admit anything

FF2

436 H1STOEICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

supernatural or miraculous as historical fact, strip
the ancient legends of all that renders them incre-
dible, and then treat them as narratives of real
events, and not as fiction. 31 With them, ^Eolus, the
god of the winds, became an ancient mariner skilled
in predicting weather ; the Cyclopes were a race of
savages inhabiting Sicily ; the Centaurs were horse-
men ; Atlas was a great astronomer, and Scylla a
fast-sailing filibuster. This system, too, like the
former, maintained itself almost to the present day.
The early Christian controversialists, St. Augustine,
Lactantius, Arnobius, availed themselves of this argu-
ment in their attacks on the religious belief of the
Greeks and Romans, taunting them with worshipping
gods that were no gods, but known and admitted to
have been mere deified mortals. In their attacks on
the religion of the German nations, the Eoman mis-
sionaries recurred to the same argument. One of
them told the Angli in England that Woden, whom
they believed to be the principal and the best of their
gods, from whom they derived their origin, and to
whom they had consecrated the fourth day in the
week, had been a mortal, a king of the Saxons, from
whom many tribes claim to be descended. When
his body had been reduced to dust, his soul was
buried in hell, and suffers eternal fire. 32 In many
of our handbooks of mythology and history, we still
find traces of this system. Jupiter is still spoken of
as a ruler of Crete, Hercules as a successful general
or knight- err ant, Priam as an eastern king, and
Achilles, the son of Jupiter and Thetis, as a valiant

81 Grote, i. 554.

32 Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 338 ; Legend. Nova, foL 210 1).

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 437

champion in the siege of Troy. The siege of Troy
still retains its place in the minds of many as a his-
torical fact, though resting on no better authority
than the carrying off of Helena by Theseus and her
recovery by the Dioskuri, the siege of Olympus by
the Titans, or the taking of Jerusalem by Charle-
magne, described in the chivalrous romances 33 of the
Middle Ages.

In later times the same theory was revived, though
not for such practical purposes, and it became during
the last century the favourite theory with philoso-
phical historians, particularly in France. The compre-
hensive work of the Abbe Banier, * The Mythology
and Fables of Antiquity, explained from History,'
secured to this school a temporary ascendancy in
France; and in England, too, his work, translated
into English, was quoted as an authority. His de-
sign was, as he says, 34 e to prove that, notwithstand-
ing all the ornaments which accompany fables, it is
no difficult matter to see that they contain a part of
the history of primitive times.' It is useful to read
these books, written only about a hundred years ago,
if it were only as a warning against a too confident
spirit in working out theories which now seem so in-
controvertible, and which a hundred years hence may
be equally antiquated. ' Shall we believe,' says the

33 Grote, i. 636. ' The series of articles by M. Fauriel, published in
'the Revue des deux Mondes, vol. xiii., are full of instruction respecting
the origin, tenor, and influence of the romances of chivalry. Though the
name of Charlemagne appears, the romancers are really unable to dis-
tinguish him from Charles Martel, or from Charles the Bald (pp. 537-39).
They ascribe to him an expedition to the Holy Land, in which he con-
quered Jerusalem from the Saracens,' &c.

34 Tlie Mythology and Fables of the Ancients, explained from History^
by the Abbe Banier. London, 1739, in six vols. Vol. i. p. ix.

438 HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

Abbe Banier and no doubt he thought his argument
unanswerable ' shall we believe in good earnest that
Alexander would have held Homer in such esteem,
had he looked upon him only as a mere relater of
fables ? and would he have envied the happy lot of
Achilles in having such a one to sing his praises ? 35 . . .
When Cicero is enumerating the sages, does he not
bring in Nestor and Ulysses ? would he have given
mere phantoms a place among them ? Are we not
taught by Cicero (Tusc. Quaest. i. 5) that what gave
occasion to feign that one god supported the heavens
on his shoulders, and that the other was chained to
Mount Caucasus, was their indefatigable application
to contemplate the heavenly bodies ? I might bring
in here the authority of most of the ancients : I
might produce that of the primitive Fathers of the
Church, Arnobius, Lactantius, and several others^
who looked upon fables to be founded on true his-
tories ; and I might finish this list with the names of
the most illustrious of our moderns, who have traced
out in ancient fictions so many remains of the tradi-
tions of the primitive ages.' How like in tone to
some incontrovertible arguments used in our own
days ! And again : 36 ' I shall make it appear that
Minotaur with Pasiphae, and the rest of that fable,
contain nothing but an intrigue of the Queen of Crete
with a captain named Taurus, and the artifice of
Daedalus, only a sly confidant. Atlas bearing heaven
upon his shoulders was a king that studied astro-
nomy with a globe in his hand. The golden apples
of the delightful garden of the Hesperides, and their
dragon, were oranges watched by mastiff dogs.'

35 Vol. i. p. 21. 36 Vol. i. p. 29.

HISTOEICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 439

As belonging in spirit to the same school, we have
still to mention those scholars who looked to Greek
mythology for traces, not of profane, but of sacred
personages, and who, like Bochart, imagined they
could recognise in Saturn the features of Noah, and
in his three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, the
three sons of Noah, Ham, Japhet, and Shem. 37 G-. J.
Vossius, in his learned work, 6 De Theologia Gentili et
Physiologic*, Christiana, sive De Origine et Progressu
Idolatrice,' 38 identified Saturn with Adam or with
Noah, Janus and Prometheus with Noah again, Pluto
with Japhet or Ham, Neptune with Japhet, Minerva
with Naamah, the sister of Tubal Cain, Vulcanus with
Tubal Cain, Typhon with Og, king of Bashan, &c.
Gerardus Croesus, in his e Homerus Ebrseus,' maintains
that the Odyssey gives the history of the patriarchs,
the emigration of Lot from Sodom, and the death of
Moses, while the Iliad tells the conquest and destruc-
tion of Jericho. Huet, in his ' Demonstratio Evan-
gelica,' 39 went still further. His object was to prove
the genuineness of the books of the Old Testament by
showing that nearly the whole theology of the heathen
nations was borrowed from Moses. Moses himself

87 Geographic, Sacra, lib. i. : ' " Noam esse Saturnum tarn multa
decent ut vix sit dubitandi locus." Ut Noam esse Saturnum multis argu-
mentis constitit, sic tres Nose filios cum Saturni tribus filiis conferenti,
Hamum vel Chamum esse Jovem probabunt hse rationes. Japhet idem
qui Neptunus. Semum Plutonis nomine detruserunt in inferos. Lib.
i. c. 2. Jam si libet etiam ad nepotes descendere ; in familia Hami
sive Jovis Hammonis, Put est Apollo Pythius ; Chanaan idem qui Mer-
curius. Quis non videt Nimrodum esse Bacchum ? Bacchus enim
idem qui bar-chus, i.e. Chusi filius. Videtur et Magog esse Prome-
theus.'

38 Amsterdami, 1668, pp. 71, 73, 77, 97: 'Og est iste qui a Grsecis
dicitur TvQwv,' &c.

39 Parisiis, 1677.

440 HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

is represented by him as having assumed the most in-
congruous characters in the traditions of the Gentiles ;
and not only ancient lawgivers like Zoroaster and
Orpheus, but gods like Apollo, Vulcan, and Faunus,
are traced back by the learned and pious bishop to
the same historical prototype. And as Moses was
the prototype of the Gentile gods, his sister Miriam
or his wife Zippora were supposed to have been the
models of all their goddesses. 40

You are aware that Mr. Gladstone, in his interest-
ing and important work on Homer, takes a similar
view, and tries to discover in parts of the Greek
mythology a dimmed image of the sacred traditions
of the Jews ; not so dimmed, however, as to prevent
us from recognising, as he thinks, in Jupiter, and es-
pecially in Apollo and Minerva, a marked resemblance
to those traditions. 41 In the last number of one of the

40 ' Caput tertium : i. Universa propemodum Ethnicorum Theologia ex
Mose, Mosisve actis aut scriptis manavit. n. Velut ilia Phoenician.
Tautus idem ac Moses, in. Adonis idem ac Moses, iv. Thammus
Ezechielis idem ac Moses, v. IIo\v(avv/j.os fuit Moses, vi. Mamas
Gazeusium Deus idem ac Moses. Caput quartum : vni. Vulcanus idem
ac Moses, ix. Typhon idem ac Moses. Caput quintum : n. Zoroastres
idem ac Moses. Caput octavum : in. Apollo idem ac Moses, iv. Pan
idem ac Moses, v. Priapus idem ac Moses, &c, &c. p. 121. Curade-
monstratum sit G-rgecanicos Deos, in ipsa Mosis persona larvata, et
ascititio babitu contecta provenisse, nunc probare aggrfdior ex Mosis
scriptionibus, verbis, doctrina, et institutis, aliquos etiam Graecorum
eorundem Deos, ac bonam Mythologise ipsorum partem manasse.'

41 The following extract from a letter addressed to me by Mr. Glad-
stone, and printed here with his permission, will place his opinions on the
relation of the Homeric Mythology to the sacred traditions of the
Jewish race in a clearer and more definite light :

' It is not, I assure you, true, that I have seen in the Hellenic Mytho-
logy a dimmed image of the history of the Jews ; or that Zeus, Apollo,
and Athene are in my view representations of the Three Persons of the
Trinity. I go much further than this, and venture to say that, although
I fear there may be deeper points of difference between us than such as

HISTOEICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 441

best edited quarterlies, in the ' Home and Foreign Re-
view,' a Roman Catholic organ, Mr. F. A. Paley, the

appear on the surface of your "work, "yet I would accept the whole of your
theory respecting the origin of the personages of the Hellenic mythology
in perfect consistency with what I have myself intended, and very crudely
and imperfectly laboured to express. I do not mean to say that I
accept in full the creed of the Dawn ; but then, speaking generally, I feel
myself wholly incompetent to pass any real judgment upon the evidence
you adduce in its favour. Let me venture, however, to express my dis-
sent from your statements about Aphrodite. I do not mean as to the
origin of the name, on which I cannot presume to pronounce, or as to
the functions with which it may have been originally associated. But I
think you draw a picture of her as a personage in the earliest known,
that is the Homeric, stage of the Hellenic mythology. Now I will not
deny that the epithet " golden " may have become her property by in-
heritance from some prior tradition which may have associated her with
the Dawn : there are grounds which would lead me to think it not im-
probable. But this would of itself be a poor foundation on which to
build a theory ; and, as far as the Homeric mythology is concerned, I am
not aware of any other. But what I am most struck with is your ap-
pearing to hold that the degradation of her idea and worship came in at
a later period. Now I hold that throughout Homer, from beginning to
end, this degradation is not to be mistaken by any careful observer, who
goes straight to his author, and does not allow himself, as is so common,
to interpret Homeric personages through Virgilian representations. As
to the sea-birth, there is not in Homer a vestige of it. It appears
curiously in Pausanias; in a temple of Poseidon she is held up by
Thalassa apparently as a child of the sea-god; but I think he mentions
that the work is a late work, or a work of his own time. I do not, pray
observe, enter into the application to her of your theory ; but I think
you cannot sustain it from early, I mean the earliest, Greek evidence.
When we come down to the traditions of Aphrodite Ourania, distinct
from the Pandemos and the Apostrophia, I admit you may draw certain
favourable presumptions from them.

' Now, what I should like to do, if I were able, would be to convey to
your mind a clear conception of the standing-point from which I regard
the Homeric, or, as I venture to call it, the Olympian mythology. For
you would find that it is one of deep and fruitful interest, while it lies
somewhat off the path of your great undertaking. In conversation I
should have more hope of doing it than in a letter. I shall fail, and fail
by my own fault, not by yours. But I will put down a few words ; and
not one among them which I should not endeavour to support by evidence
if occasion served.

442 HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

well-known editor of 6 Euripides,' advocates the same
sacred Euhemerism. 'Atlas/ he writes, symbolises

'I find Homer, then, as respects the department of mythology,,
deserving of the testimony which Herodotus gave him, and leaving but
a very small share in the partnership to Hesiod, or to the author of the
Theogony, whoever he may be, and who was not properly a maker, but
a very useful reporter, of mythological tradition as it came into his
hand. He surely was not a man of the power required to manipulate
and modify such materials. But Homer, with the vast mechanism of
the Trojan war (be that Dawn too, or be it not) in his hands, and in such
hands, and almost compelled to employ an elaborate and varied theurgy,
and obtaining the key to the- heart and mind of his people, and becoming
by his genius in a great degree the maker of that Hellenic nation which
has done so much to make us all was in a position of advantage with-
out parallel for giving form to the religious traditions of his country.
Now let us suppose it to be true, and I admit it so appears, that the
materials out of which the Hellenic mythology grew or was constructed,
were in great part supplied by some system or systems of Nature
worship. But surely it cannot be denied that, in the hands of the Hel-
lenic race (chiefly and before all I should say in the hands of Homer),
these materials were moulded, almost indeed coerced, into a new shape ;
they were brought to submit to the dominion of a new spirit. From
some quarter or other, the anthropomorphic force came in ; and this
force either subordinated or repelled all others ; built up the system in
complete subserviency to itself ; left the traditions of the old eidtus of
Nature to take refuge in the recesses of Arcadia, or (perhaps) to veil
themselves in the mysteries of Eleusis, but forbade them utterly the use
of the Achaian or the Hellenic stamp; humanised in a marvellous
manner, by reflection, the Olympian life ; contaminated it indeed, but did
even this in a manner intensely human ; and then, having everywhere
saturated the divine idea with the human element, applied this idea, as
a principle, to life in a multitude of forms : as, for example, in concentrat-
ing the idea of art upon the human frame ; in the lofty and singularly
comprehensive idea of human nature ; in a profound self-respect and a
great value for human life. Great as was the change imposed on the
cru4e materials supplied by Egypt (if they were so supplied) in order
thiii. they might issue in the perfect forms of Hellenic art, it was no
greater, ad it seems to me, than the change wrought by masterly work-
manship, in obedience to the wants and tendencies of the national mind,
upon the mythological materials supplied from so many ethnic sources,
before they became the Olympian system.

' Now comes the question, What was the source of this anthropomorphic
influence ? I conclude, or rather I assume, that the worker, whether

HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS. 443

the endurance of labour. He is placed by Hesiod
close to the garden of the Hesperides, and it is im*

Homer, or his race, or both, did not in this point, more than in any
other, work without materials. If you are right, or if the competing
systems to which you refer are right, you must I think feel that, in order
to effect the transition from the stage you describe to a religion provided
with the apparatus of the Olympian mythology, something is wanting
which must be sought elsewhere. From whence did it come ; and come,
too, endowed with a power so subtle and so commanding ?

' Now, here I take my stand upon Homer as a great and comprehensive
depository of evidence, which is only now beginning to be worked upon,
and which in the main is scarcely less entitled to be reasoned from for
the purposes in view, though of course after a somewhat different manner
than is the evidence afforded by geological research with reference to its
proper sphere.

'When I come to examine these poems, I find the anthropomorphic
force at work, and in its fullest vigour. Moreover, I find it developed in,
certain cases with an astonishing purity and elevation. I find that the
mythological system, though it has effectually banished or subdued the
elements not anthropomorphic, yet is morally as far as possible from
being homogeneous ; and that the differences of structure seem to point
to differences of origin. But, you will say, I brought to Homer the de-
termination to find all this. Here, however, we are upon a matter of
fact ; and I am ashamed to say that, when I began the systematic study
of Homer about ten years ago, I not only had no vision or even inkling
of a theory about the Hellenic mythology ; but I had never before
learned to feel an interest in it ; and everything that I have since said or
written has come to me, in the first instance, by suggestion from the text
of Homer itself, though it has been also supported from other quarters^
and I think most of all from the truthful archaeology of Pausanias.

' Of course I do not now in anything attempt to prove, but I assert
that the text of Homer contains a vast mass of what may be called
evidence at first hand, bearing upon the question how and from whence
the anthropomorphic element came into the Hellenic religion with the
deep vital energy that inspired it, and that the conclusion, to which the
evidence points, is as follows : I suppose it is not denied that there were
in the world, at a very early period as compared with the Hellenic
civilisation, certain Semitic traditions, which for a large part of mankind
are also Christian beliefs, but which may here be rudely and conve-
niently described as Messianic ideas. They related to the appearance
at a future time of a Deliverer, and the establishment in Him of an
identifying relation between the divine and the human nature ; and to the
Divine Word or Wisdom, as concerned in the order and government of'

444 HISTORICAL INTERPRETATIONS.

possible to doubt that here we have a tradition of the
garden of Eden, the golden apples guarded by a

the world; as well as to other matters which need not here be further
stated. I do not now speak of these traditions as matter of religious
obligation, or even interest : I speak of them merely as facts. And I
affirm, taking my stand upon the evidence supplied by the poems
especially, that if these traditions had filtered through the intermediate
space, by whatever channel, into the sphere of the earliest Hellenic life,
they supply us with what was wanting towards a complete and rational
genesis of the Homeric or Olympian mythology ; and that, without this
hypothesis, that wonderful formation must remain utterly inexplicable.
I therefore really know nothing about what you term sacred euhemerism.
The question is one not of mere theory or presupposition, but of testi-
mony ; and of hypothesis only called in to meet and answer the demands
of fact.

' If I am asked more specifically as to the mode of operation by which
the result was accomplished, I would roughly answer thus : Homer,
whom I take partly for the maker and partly for the symbol of his
people, sits in his mighty workshop, like the young Hephaistos in the
ocean cave, making into toy-bracelets and the like the materials with which
he was supplied by (I think) the nymph Eurunome. The materials
brought to Homer are the mythological traditions of the various races
and nations and families that contributed to the formation of the com-
posite Hellenic stock. He fits together names and attributes, bound by
no severe anterior law, and able to follow the bent of his own and his
nation's genius. What he cannot use (like Nereus, a pure elemental
god), he casts aside. What he can, like Zeus, or suppose we call him
Dyaus, he modifies and clothes, so as to satisfy the main idea. On the
whole, the Nature Powers, passing through the crucible of his mind, are
at once compressed and spiritualised, so that the human element, both
of form and character, becomes dominant, and physical functions swell
into the class of attributes more or less ab extra. Now I may be met
with an outcry : What, is it to be supposed that any man or people ever
so dealt with its religion ? To which I answer by seeking shelter from
those admirable and delightful pages, in which you point out the dis-
tinction between the mythological system of Greece and the religion of
its people individually. Secondly, I am describing roughly and briefly
a process long, subtle, in great part unconscious. Thomas Aquinas in
a certain sense made a theology. Much more largely was Homer, and
were the Hellenes, makers. The Theomachy, the Theo-andro-machies,
and much else in the poems, show us not only that the severance
between God and good had begun, but that it had made alarming
progress.'

COMPAEATIVE PHILOLOGY. 445

dragon being the apple which the serpent tempted
Eve to gather, or the garden kept by an angel with
a flaming sword.' 42

Though it was felt by all unprejudiced scholars
that none of these three systems of interpretation
was in the least satisfactory, yet it seemed impossible
suggest any better solution of the problem ; and
though at the present moment few, I believe, could
be found who adopt any of these three systems ex-
clusively who hold that the whole of Greek mytho-
logy was invented for the sake of inculcating moral
precepts, or of promulgating physical or metaphysical
doctrines, or of relating facts of ancient history,
many have acquiesced in a kind of compromise, ad-
mitting that some parts of mythology might have a
moral, others a physical, others an historical cha-
racter, but that there remained a great body of
fables, which yielded to no tests whatever. The
riddle of the Sphinx of Mythology remained un-
solved.

The first impulse to a new consideration of the
mythological problem came from the study of com-
parative philology. Through the discovery of the
ancient language of India, the classical Sanskrit,
which was due to the labours of Wilkins, 43 Sir W.
Jones, and Colebrooke, some eighty years ago; and
through the discovery of the intimate relationship
between that language and the languages of the prin-
cipal races of Europe, due to the genius of Schlegel,

42 Home and Foreign Review, No. 7, p. Ill, 1864: 'The Cyclopes
were probably a race of pastoral and metal-working people from the
the East, characterised by their rounder faces, whence arose the story of
their one eye.' F. A. P.

43 Bbagavadgita, ed. Wilkins, 1785.

446 COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY.

Humboldt, Bopp, and others, a complete revolution
took place in the views commonly entertained of the
ancient history of the world. I have no time to give
a full account of these researches ; but I may state it
as a fact, suspected, I suppose, by no one before, and
doubted by no one after it was enunciated, that the
languages spoken by the Brahman s of India, by the
followers of Zoroaster and the subjects of Darius in
Persia ; by the Greeks, by the Eomans ; by Celtic,
Teutonic, and Slavonic races, were all mere varieties
of one common type stood, in fact, to each other in
the same relation as French, Italian, Spanish, and
Portuguese stand to each other as modern dialects of
Latin. This was, indeed, 'the discovery of a new
world,' or, if you like, the recovery of an old world.
All the landmarks of what was called the ancient
history of the human race had to be shifted, and it
had to be explained, in some way or other, how all
these languages, separated from each other by thou-
sands of miles and thousands of years, could have
originally started from one common centre.

On this, 4 * however, I cannot dwell now ; and I
must proceed at once to state how, after some time,
it was discovered that not only the radical elements
of all these languages which are called Aryan or
Indo-European not only the numerals, pronouns,
prepositions, and grammatical terminations not
only their household words, such as father, mother,
brother, daughter, husband, brother-in-law, cow, dog,
horse, cattle, tree, ox, corn, mill, earth, sky, water,
stars, and many hundreds more, were identically the
same, but that each possessed the elements of a

44 Lectures on the Science of Language, First Series, p. 161 seq.

COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 447

mythological phraseology, displaying the palpable
traces of a common origin.

What followed from this for the Science of Mytho-
logy? Exactly the same as what followed for the
Science of Language from the discovery that Sanskrit,
Greek, Latin, German, Celtic, and Slavonic had all
one and the same origin. Before that discovery was
made, it was allowable to treat each language by
itself, and any etymological explanation that was in
accordance with the laws of each particular language
might have been considered satisfactory. If Plato
derived theos, the Greek word for god, from the Greek
verb theein, to run, because the first gods were the
sun and moon, always running through the sky ; 45
or if Herodotus 46 derived the same word from tithenai,
to set, because the gods set everything in order, we
can find no fault with either. But if we find that
the same name for god exists in Sanskrit and Latin,
as deva and deus, 47 it is clear that we cannot accept
any etymology for the Greek word that is not equally
applicable to the corresponding terms in Sanskrit
and Latin. If we knew French only, we might
derive the French feu, lire, from the German Feuer.
But if we see that the same word exists in Italian as
fuoco, in Spanish as fuego, it is clear that we must
look for an etymology applicable to all three, which
we find in the Latin focus, and not in the German
Feuer. Even so thoughtful a scholar as Grimm does
not seem to have perceived the absolute stringency
of this rule. Before it was known that there existed
in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Slavonic, the same

45 Plat. Crat. 397 C. 46 Her. ii. 52.

47 On tho relation of deva and deus to deo's, see Ascoli, Frammenti
Linguistici, iii., and Schweizer-Siedler, in Kuhn'sZeitsckrift, xvii. p. 142.

448 COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY.

word for name, identical with the Gothic namo (gen.
namins), it would have been allowable to derive the
German word from a German root. Thns Grimm
( c Grammatik,' ii. 30) derived the German Name from
the verb nelimen, to take. This would have been a
perfectly legitimate etymology. But when it became
evident that the Sanskrit naman stood for gna-
man, just as nomen, for gnomen (cognomen, igno-
minia), and was derived from a verb gna, to know,
it became impossible to retain the derivation of Name
from nehmen, and at the same time to admit that of
naman from gna. 48 Each word can have but one
etymology, as each living being can have but one
mother.

Let us apply this to the mythological phraseology
of the Aryan nations. If we had to explain only the
names and fables of the Greek gods, an explanation
such as that which derives the name of Zeus from the
verb zen, to live, would be by no means contemptible.
But if we find that Zeus in Greek is the same word as
Dy aus in Sanskrit, Ju in Jupiter, and Tiu in Tuesday,
we perceive that no etymology would be satisfactory
that did not explain all these words together. Hence
it follows, that in order to understand the origin and
meaning of the names of the Greek gods, and to enter
into the original intention of the fables told of each,
we must not confine our view within the Greek hori-
zon, but must take into account the collateral evidence
supplied by Latin, German, Sanskrit, and Zend my-
thology. The key that is to open one must open all ;
otherwise it cannot be the right key.

48 Grimm, Geschischte der Deutschen Spracke, p. 153. Other words
derived from gna, are notus, nobilis, gnarus, ignarus, ignore, narrare
(gnarigare), gnomon, I ken, I know, uncouth, &c.

COMPAKATIVE MYTHOLOGY. 449

Strong objections have been raised against this line
of reasoning by classical scholars ; and even those
who have surrendered Greek etymology as useless
without the aid of Sanskrit, protest against this
desecration of the Greek Pantheon, and against any
attempt at deriving the gods and fables of Homer
and Hesiod from the monstrous idols of the Brah-
mans. I believe this is mainly owing to a misunder-
standing. !N"o sound scholar would ever think of
deriving any Greek or Latin word from Sanskrit.
Sanskrit is not the mother of Greek and Latin, as
Latin is of French and Italian. Sanskrit, Greek,
and Latin are sisters, varieties of one and the same
type. They all point to some earlier stage when
they were less different from each other than they
now are ; but no more. All we can say in favour of
Sanskrit is, that it is the eldest sister ; that it has
retained many words and forms less changed and
corrupted than Greek and Latin. The more primi-
tive character and transparent structure of Sanskrit
have naturally endeared it to the student of language,
but they have not blinded him to the fact, that on
many points Greek and Latin nay, Gothic and
Celtic have preserved primitive features which San-
skrit has lost. Greek is co-ordinate with, not sub-
ordinate to, Sanskrit; and the only distinction which
Sanskrit is entitled to claim is that which Austria
used to claim in the German Confederation to be
the first among equals, primus inter pares.

There is, however, another reason which has made
any comparison of Greek and Hindu gods more par-
ticularly distasteful to classical scholars. At the very
beginning of Sanskrit philology attempts were made

II. G G

450 COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY.

by no less a person than Sir W. Jones 49 at identifying
the deities of the modern Hindn mythology with those
of Homer. This was done in the most arbitrary
manner, and has brought any attempt of the same
kind into deserved disrepute among sober critics.
Sir W. Jones is not responsible, indeed, for such
comparisons as Cupid and Dipuc (dipaka); but to
compare, as he does, modern Hindu gods, such as
Vishnu, Siva,, or Krishna, with the gods of
Homer, was indeed like comparing modern Hindu-
stani with ancient Greek. Trace Hindustani back
to Sanskrit, and it will be possible then to compare
it with Greek and Latin ; but not otherwise. The
same in mythology. Trace the modern system of
Hindu mythology back to its earliest form, and there
will then be some reasonable hope of discovering a
family likeness between the sacred names worshipped
by the Aryans of India and the Aryans of Greece.

This was impossible at the time of Sir William
Jones ; it is even now but partially possible. Though
Sanskrit has now been studied for three generations,
the most ancient work of Sanskrit literature, the
Rigveda, is still a book with seven seals. The wish
expressed by Otfried Miiller in 1825, in his c Prolego-
mena to a Scientific Mythology, e Oh that we had an
intelligible translation of the Veda!' is still unful-

4r) Sir W. Jones, On the Gods of Greece, Italy, and India. (Works,
vol. i. p. 229.) He compares Janus with Gawesa, Saturn with Manu
Stityavrata, nay, with Noah; Ceres with Sri, Jupiter with Divas-
pati and with Siva (Tpt<ty>0aX/*os=triloana), Bacchus with Bagisa,
Juno with Parvati, Mars with Skanda, nay, with the Secander of
Persia, Minerva with Durga and Sarasvati, Osiris and Isis with
Isvara and f si, Dionysos with Rama, Apollo with "Krishna, Vulcan
with Pavaka and Visvakarman, Mercury with Narada, Hekate
with Kali.

THE RIGVEDA. 451

filled ; and though, of late years nearly all Sanskrit
scholars have devoted their energies to the elucida-
tion of Yedic literature, many years are still required
before Otfried Muller's desire can be realised. Now
Sanskrit literature without the Veda is like Greek
literature without Homer, like Jewish literature
without the Bible, like Mohammedan literature
without the Koran ; and you will easily understand
how, if we do not know the most ancient form of
Hindu religion and mythology, it is premature to
attempt any comparison between the gods of India
and the gods of any other country. What was
wanted as the only safe foundation, not cnly of Sans-
krit literature but of Comparative Mythology nay,
of Comparative Philology was an edition of the
most ancient document of Indian literature, Indian
religion, Indian language an edition of the Rig-
veda. Eight of the ten books of the Rigveda have
now been published in the original, together with an
ample Indian commentary, and there is every pro-
spect of the two remaining books passing through
the press within a short time. But, after the text
and commentary of the Rigveda are published, the
great task of translating, or, I should rather say,
deciphering, these ancient hymns still remains.
There are, indeed, two translations ; one by a
Frenchman, the late M. Langlois, the other by the
late Professor Wilson; 50 but the former, though
very ingenious, is mere guess-work, the latter is a
reproduction, and not always a faithful reproduc-

50 I have since published the first volume of my translation of the
Rigveda: Rigveda-Sanhita, 'The Sacred Hymns of the Brahmans/
translated and explained. London: (Triibner & Co.) 1869.
a a 2

452 THE RIGVEDA.

tion, of the commentary of Say aw a, which I have
published. It shows us how the ancient hymns
were misunderstood by later grammarians, and theo-
logians, and philosophers ; but it does not attempt a
critical restoration of the original sense of these
simple and primitive hymns by the only process by
which it can be effected by a comparison of every
passage in which the same words occur. This pro-
cess of deciphering is a slow one ; yet, through the
combined labours of various scholars, some progress
has been made, and some insight been gained, into
the mythological phraseology of the Vedic Rishis.
One thing we can clearly see, that the same position
which Sanskrit, as the most primitive, most transpa-
rent of the Aryan dialects, holds in the Science of Lan-
guage, the Ye da and its most primitive, most trans-
parent system of religion will hold in the Science of
Mythology. In the hymns of the Rigveda we still
have the last chapter of the real Theogony of the
Aryan races : we just catch a glimpse, behind the
scenes, of the agencies which were at work in pro-
ducing that magnificent stage-effect witnessed in the
drama of the Olympian gods. There, in the Veda,
the Sphinx of Mythology still utters a few words to
betray her own secret, and shows us that it is man,
that it is human thought and human language com-
bined, which naturally and inevitably produced that
strange conglomerate of ancient fable which has per-
plexed all rational thinkers, from the days of Xeno-
phanes to our own time.

I shall try to make my meaning clearer. You will
see that a great point is gained in comparative my-
thology if we succeed in discovering the original

THE RIGVEDA. 453

meaning of the names of the gods. If we knew, for
instance, what Athene, or Here, or Apollo meant in
Greek, we should have something firm to stand on or
to start from, and be able to follow more securely the
later development of these names. We know, for
instance, that Selene in Greek means moon, and know-
ing this, we at once understand the myths that she is
the sister of Helios, for helios means sun ; that she is
the sister of Eos, for eos means dawn ; and if an-
other poet calls her the sister of Euryphaessa, we are
not much perplexed, for euryphaessa, meaning wide-
shining, can only be another name for the dawn. If
she is represented with two horns, we at once remem-
ber the two horns of the moon ; and if she is said to
have become the mother of Erse by Zeus, we again
perceive that erse means dew, and that to call Erse
the daughter of Zeus and Selene was no more than if
we, in our more matter-of-fact language, say that
there is dew after a moonlight night.

Now one great advantage in the Ye da is, that
many of the names of the gods are still intelligible ;
are used, in fact, not only as proper names, but like-
wise as appellative nouns. Agni, one of their prin-
cipal gods, means clearly fire ; it is used in that
sense ; it is the same word as the Latin ignis.
Hence we have a right to explain his other names,
and all that is told of him, as originally meant for
fire. Vayu or Vat a means clearly wind, Marut
means storm, Pargranya rain, Savitar the sun,
TJshas, as well as its synonyms, Urvasi, Ahana,
Sarawyu, means dawn; Prithivi, earth; Dyava-
prithivi, heaven and earth. Other divine names in
the Yeda which are no longer used as appellatives,

454 THE El G VEDA.

become easily intelligible, because they are used as
synonyms of more intelligible names (such as urvasi
for us has), or because they receive light from other
languages, such as Yaru^ia, clearly the same word
as the Greek ouranos, and meaning originally the
sky.

Another advantage which the Ye da offers is this,
that in its numerous hymns we can still watch the
gradual growth of the gods, the slow transition of
appellatives into proper names, the first tentative
steps towards personification. The Vedic Pantheon
is held together by the loosest ties of family relation-
ship ; nor is there as yet any settled supremacy like
that of Zeus among the gods of Homer. Every god
is conceived as supreme, or at least as inferior to no
other god, at the time that he is praised or invoked
by the Yedic poets ; and the feeling that the various
deities are but different names, different conceptions
of that Incomprehensible Being which no thought
can reach, and no language express, is not yet quite
extinct in the minds of some of the more thoughtful
among the Yedic bards.

455

LECTURE X.

JUPITEE, THE SUPEEME AEYAN GOD.

are few mistakes so widely spread and so
JL firmly established as that which makes us confound
the religion and the mythology of the ancient nations
of the world. How mythology arises, necessarily and
naturally, I tried to explain in my former Lectures ;
and we saw that, as an affection or disorder of lan-
guage, mythology may infect every part of the intel-
lectual life of man. True it is that no ideas are more
liable to mythological disease than religious ideas,
because they transcend those regions of our experience
within which language has its natural origin, and must
therefore, according to their very nature, be satisfied
with metaphorical expressions. ( Eye hath not seen,
nor ear heard, neither hath it entered into the heart of
man.' 1 Yet even the religions of the ancient nations
are by no means inevitably and altogether mytho-
logical. On the contrary, as a diseased frame pre-
supposes a healthy frame, so a mythological religion
presupposes, I believe, a healthy religion. Before the
Greeks could call the sky, or the sun, or the moon
gods, it was absolutely necessary that they should have
framed to themselves some idea of the godhead. We

1 1 Cor. ii. 9 ; Is. Ixiv. 4.

456 MYTHOLOGY .AND RELIGION.

cannot speak of King Solomon unless we first know
what, in a general way, is meant by King, nor could
a Greek speak of gods in the plural before he had
realised, in some way or other, the general predicate
of the godhead. Idolatry arises naturally when people
say 6 The sun is god,' instead of saying c The sun is
of God ; ' when they use God as a predicate, though,
according to its very nature, it can be used as a sub-
ject only. This may have been inevitable, but it is
all the more interesting to find out what the ancients
meant to predicate when they called the sun or the
moon gods ; and, until we have a clear conception of
this, we shall never enter into the true spirit of their
religion.

It is strange, however, that while we have endless
books on the mythology of the Greeks and Eomans,
we have hardly any on their religion, and most people
have brought themselves to imagine that what we
call religion our trust in an all-wise, all-powerful,
eternal Being, the Ruler of the world, whom we ap-
proach in prayer and meditation, to whom we commit
all our cares, and whose presence we feel not only in
the outward world, but also in the warning voice
within our hearts that all this was unknown to the
heathen world, and that their religion consisted
simply in the fables of Jupiter and Juno, of Apollo
and Minerva, of Yenus and Bacchus. Yet this is not
so. Mythology has encroached on ancient religion ;
it has at some times well-nigh choked its very life ;
yet through the rank and poisonous vegetation of
mythic phraseology we may always catch a glimpse
of that original stem round which it creeps and winds
itself, and without which it could not enjoy even that

GEEEZ RELIGION. 457

parasitical existence which has been mistaken for
independent vitality.

A few quotations will explain what I mean by an-
cient religion as independent of ancient mythology.
Homer who, together with Hesiod, made the theogony
or the history of the gods for the Greeks a saying of
Herodotus which contains more truth than is com-
monly supposed Homer, whose every page teems
with mythology, nevertheless allows us many an in-
sight into the inner religious life of his age. What
did the swineherd Eumaios know of the intricate
Olympian theogony? Had he ever heard the name
of the Charites, or of the Harpyias ? Could he have
told who was the father of Aphrodite, who were her
husbands and her children ? I doubt it : and when
Homer introduces him to us, speaking of this life
and the higher powers that rule it, Eumaios knows
only of just gods, f who hate cruel deeds, but honour
justice and the righteous works of man.' 2

His whole view of life is built up on a complete
trust in the Divine government of the world, with-
out any such artificial supports as the Erinys, the
Nemesis, or Moira.

6 Eat,' says the swineherd to Ulysses, ' and enjoy
what is here, 3 for God will grant one thing, but another
he will refuse, whatever he will in his mind, for he can
do all things.' (Od. xiv. 444 ; x. 306.)

2 Od. xiv. 83.

3 There is nothing to make us translate Oe6s by a god rather than by
God ; but even if we translated it a god, this could here only be meant
for Zeus. (Of. Od. iv. 236.) Of. Welcker, p. 180. How the gods and
Zeus are used almost promiscuously, we see in Od. i. 378-9 : eycb 5^
Beovs eirifi({>tro/.iai ai*v e6i~ras at KC irodi Zeus Sycrt TraAiVrtTO epya

458 GREEK RELIGION.

This surely is religion, and it is religion untainted
by mythology. Again, the prayer of the female slave,
grinding corn in the house of Ulysses, is religion in
the truest sense. c Father Zeus,' she says, ' thou who
rulest over gods and men, surely thou has just thun-
dered from the starry heaven, and there is no cloud
anywhere. Thou showest this as a sign to some one.
Fulfil now, even to me, miserable wretch ! the prayer
which I may utter.' When Telemachos is afraid to
approach Nestor, and declares to Mentor that he does
not know what to say, 4 does not Mentor or Athene
encourage him in words that might easily be trans-
lated into the language of our own religion ? f Tele-
machos,' she says, c some things thou wilt thyself
perceive in thy mind, and others a divine spirit will
prompt ; for I do not believe that thou wast born and
brought up without the will of the gods.'

The omnipresence and omniscience of the Divine
Being is expressed by Hesiod in language slightly,
yet not altogether, mythological :

Trarru it)w> Atof,' 6(f>da\po /cat TTCLVTCL voijaa^^
The eye of Zeus, which sees all and knows all ;

and the conception of Homer, that ' the gods them-
selves come to our cities in the garb of strangers, to
watch 'the wanton and the orderly conduct of men,' 6

4 Od. iii. 26 :

TTjA-ejuctx', &\\a /tei/ aurbs tvl Qpeffl fffjfft vo-fjaett,

"A.\\a 8e /col Satjucoi/ vTrod^fferai ov y&p oi<0

Oti ere Beuv aefcijrt yevtffdcu re rpa^e/xej; re.
Homer uses 6e6s and Sof/twc for Grod.
4 Erga, 267.
Od. xyii. 483:

'ATiW, ov fj.ev Ka\' e/3oAes 5vffTit]vov o

Ov\6fJLv\ el 8-f) irov TIS tirovpdvios Qe6s

GREEK RELIGION. 459

though expressed in the language peculiar to the
childhood of man, might easily be turned into our
own sacred phraseology. Anyhow, we may call this
religion ancient, primitive, natural religion, imper-
fect, no doubt, yet deeply interesting, and not without
a divine afflatus. How different is the undoubting
trust of the ancient poets in the ever-present watch-
fulness of the gods, from the language of later Greek
philosophy, as expressed, for instance, by Protagoras.
6 Of the gods,' he says, ( I am not able to know either
that they are or that they are not ; for many things
prevent us from knowing it, the darkness, and the
shortness of human life.' 7

The gods of Homer, though, in their mythological
aspect, represented as weak, easily deceived, and led
astray by the lowest passions, are nevertheless, in the
more reverent language of religion, endowed with
nearly all the qualities which we claim for a divine
and perfect Being. The phrase which forms the
key-note in many of the speeches of Odysseus, though
thrown in only as it were parenthetically,

deal 2e re iravra 'iaafftv, * the Gods know all things,' 8

gives us more of the real feeling of the untold mil-
lions among whom the idioms of a language grow
up, than all the tales of the tricks played by Juno to
Jupiter, or by Mars to Yulcan. At critical moments,
when the deepest feelings of the human heart are
stirred, the old Greeks of Homer seem suddenly to
drop all learned and mythological metaphor, and to

Ko re 6eol

y A.vdp<i>ircav ft/Spiv re /cat t
1 Welcker, Griechisehe GotterleJire, p. 245. 8 Od. IT. 379, 468.

460 GKEEK RELIGION.

fall back on the universal language of true religion.
Everything they feel is ordered by the immortal gods ;
and though they do not rise to the conception of a
Divine Providence which ordereth all things by
eternal laws, no event, however small, seems to hap-
pen in the Iliad in which the poet does not recognise
the active interference of a divine power. This in-
terference, if clothed in mythological language, as-
sumes, it is true, the actual or bodily presence of one
of the gods, whether Apollo, or Athene, or Aphro-
dite ; yet let us observe that Zeus himself, the god
of gods, never descends to the battlefield of Troy.
He was the true god of the Greeks before he became
enveloped in the clouds of Olympian mythology ; and
in many a passage where the6s is used, we may with-
out irreverence translate it by God. Thus, when
Diomedes exhorts the Greeks to fight till Troy is
taken, he finishes his speech with these words : ' Let
all flee home ; but we two, I and Sthenelos, will fight
till we see the end of Troy : for we came with God.' 9
Even if we translated c for we came with a god,' the
sentiment would still be religious, not mythological ;
though of course it might easily be translated into
mythological phraseology, if we said that Athene, in
the form of a bird, had fluttered round the ships of
the Greeks. Again, what can be more natural and
more truly pious than the tone of resignation with
which Nausikaa addresses the shipwrecked Ulysses ?
'Zeus,' she says, for she knows no better name,
6 Zeus himself, the Olympian, distributes happiness
to the good and the bad, to every one, as he pleases.
And to thee also he probably has sent this, and you.

9 E. ix. 49.

GREEK EELIGION. 461

ought by all means to bear it.' Lastly, let me read
the famous line, placed by Homer in the mouth of
Peisistratos, the son of Nestor, when calling on
Athene, as the companion of Telemachos. and on Tele-
machos himself, to pray to the gods before taking
their meal : c After thou hast offered thy libation
and prayed, as it is meet, give to him also after-
wards the goblet of honey-sweet wine to pour out
his libation, because I believe that he also prays to
the immortals, for all men yearn after the gods. 9 10

It might be objected that no truly religious sen-
timent was possible as long as the human mind was
entangled in the web of polytheism ; that god, in
fact, in its true sense, is a word which admits of no
plural, and changes its meaning as soon as it assumes
the terminations of that number. The Latin cedes
means, in the singular, a sanctuary, but in the plural
it assumes the meaning of a common dwelling-house ;
and thus the6s, too, in the plural, is supposed to be
divested of that sacred and essentially divine charac-
ter which it claims in the singular. When, more-
over, such names as Zeus, Apollo, and Athene are
applied to the Divine Being, religion is considered to
be out of the question, and hard words, such as idol-
atry and devil-worship, are applied to the prayers
and praises of the early believers. There is a great
amount of incontestable truth in all this, but I cannot
help thinking that full justice has never been done
to the ancient religions of the world, not even to
those of the Greeks and Eomans, who, in so many
other respects, are acknowledged by us as our
teachers and models. The first contact between

10 Trdvres e Qzuv XCLTGOVCT' &v6pd}ir<,i. Od. iii. 48.

462 CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK RELIGION.

Christianity and the heathen religions was neces-
sarily one of uncompromising hostility. It was the
duty of the Apostles and the early Christians in
general to stand forth in the name of the only true
God, and to prove to the world that their God had
nothing in common with the idols worshipped at
Athens and at Ephesus. It was the duty of the
early converts to forswear all allegiance to their
former deities, and if they could not at once bring
themselves to believe that the gods whom they had
worshipped had no existence at all, except in the
imagination of their worshippers, they were naturally
led on to ascribe to them a kind of demoniacal nature,
and to curse them as the offspring of that new prin-
ciple of Evil ] ! with which they had become ac-
quainted in the doctrines of the early Church. In
St. Augustine's learned arguments against paganism,
the heathen gods are throughout treated as real
beings, as demons who had the power of doing real
mischief. 12 I was told by a missionary, that among
his converts in South Africa he discovered some who
still prayed to their heathen deities ; that, when re-
monstrated with, they told him that they prayed to
them in order to avert their wrath ; and that, though

11 Thus in the Old Testament strange gods are called devils (Deut.
xxxii. 17), ' They sacrificed unto devils, not to God ; to gods whom they
knew not, to new gods that came newly up, whom your fathers feared
not.' See CornhiU Magazine, 1 869, p. 32.

12 DC Civitate Dei, ii. 25 : ' Maligni isti spiritus, &c. Noxii dsemones
quos illi deos putantes colendos et venerandos arbitrabantur, &c. Ibid.
viii. 22 : (Credendum daemones) esse spiritus nocendi cupidissimos, a
justitia penitus alienos, superbia tumidos, invidentia lividos, fallacia
calliclos, qui in hoc quidem acre habitant, quia de cceli superioris sublimi-
tate dejecti, merito irregressibilis transgression! s in hoc sibi congruo
carcere praedamnati sunt.'

CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK RELIGION. 463

their idols could not hurt so good a man as he was,
they might inflict serious harm on their former
worshippers.

In Mexico we are told, that the statues dug up
among the remains of the great teocalli were buried
in the court of the university, to place them beyond
the reach of the idolatrous rites which the Indians
were inclined to pay to them. At the solicitation of
Mr. Bullock, however, they were again disinterred, to
admit of his obtaining casts ; and he furnishes this in-
teresting account of the sensation excited by the resto-
ration to light of the largest and most celebrated of the
Mexican deities : * During the time it was exposed,
the court of the university was crowded with people,
most of whom expressed the most decided anger and
contempt. Not so, however, all the Indians. I at-
tentively marked their countenances. Not a smile
escaped them, or even a word. All was silence and
attention. In reply to a joke of one of the students,
an old Indian remarked, " It is very true we have
those very good Spanish gods, but we might still
have been allowed to keep a few of those of our an-
cestors." And I was informed that chaplets of
flowers had been placed on the figures by natives
who had stolen thither unseen in the evening.' 13

Only now and then, as in the case of the Fatum y li

13 Bullock, Six Months in Mexico, p. Ill ; Wilson, Prehistoric Man,
p. 269.

14 De Civitate Dei, v. 9 : ' Omnia vero fato fieri non dicimus, imo nulla
fieri fato dicimus, quoniam fati nomen ubi solet a loquentibus poni, id
est in constitutione siderum cum quisque conceptus aut natus est (quoniam
res ipsa inaniter asseritur), nihil valere monstramus. Ordinem autem
causarum, ubi vohmtas Dei plurimum potest, neque negamus, neque fati
vocabulo nuncupamus, nisi forte lit fatum a fando dictum intelligamus,
id est, a loquendo: non enim abnuere possumus esse scriptum in literis

464 CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK RELIGION.

St. Augustine acknowledges that it is a mere name,
and that if it is taken in its etymological sense,
namely, as that which has once been spoken by
God, and is therefore immutable, it might be retained.
Nay, the same thoughtful writer goes even so far as
to admit that the mere multiplicity of divine names
might be tolerated. 15 Speaking of the goddess For-
tuna, who is also called Felicitas, he says : c Why
should two names be used ? But this can be tole-
rated : for one and the same thing is not uncommonly
called by two names. But what,' he adds, ' is the
meaning of having different temples, different altars,
different sacrifices ? ' Yet through the whole of St.
Augustine's work, and through all the works of
earlier Christian divines, as far as I can judge, there
runs the same spirit of hostility blinding them to all
that may be good, and true, and sacred, and magni-
fying all that is bad, false, and corrupt in the ancient
religions of mankind. Only the Apostles and im-
mediate disciples of Our Lord venture to speak in a
different and, no doubt, in a more truly Christian
spirit of the old forms of worships. 16 For even
though we restrict ' the sundry times and divers
manners in which God spake in times past unto
the fathers by the prophets ' to the Jewish race, yet

sanctis, Kernel locutus est Deus, duo h&c audivi ; quoniam potestas est Dei,
et tibi, Domine, misericordia, quia tu reddes unicuique sccundum opera
ejus. Quod enim dictum est, semel locutus est, intelligitur immobiliter,
hoc est, incommutabiliter est locutus, sicut novit incommutabiliter omnia
quse futura sunt, et quse ipse facturus est. Hac itaque ratione possemus
a fando fatum appellare, nisi hoc nomen jam in alia re soleret intelligi,
quo corda hominum nolumus inclinari.'

15 De Civ. Dei, iv. 18.

16 Cf. Stanley's The Bible ; its Form and its Substance. Three Sermons
preached before the University of Oxford, 1863.

CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK RELIGION. 465

there are other passages which clearly show that
the Apostles recognised a divine purpose and super-
vision even in the ( times of ignorance ' at which, as
they express it, ' God winked.' 17 Nay, they go so
far as to say that God in times past suffered (eiase) 18
all nations to walk in their own ways. And what
can be more convincing, more powerful than the lan-
guage of St. Paul at Athens ? 19

For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an
altar with this inscription, To the Unknown God. Whom
therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare 1 unto you.

God that made the world and all things therein, seeing that
he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made
with hands ;

Neither is worshipped with men's hands, as though he
needed any thing, seeing he giveth to all life, and breath, and
all things ;

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to
dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the
times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation ;

That they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel
after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one
of us:

For in him we live, and move, and have our being ; as
certain also of your poets have said, For we are also his
offspring.' 20

These are truly Christian words, this is the truly
Christian spirit in which we ought to study the
ancient religions of the world : not as independent
of God, not as the work of an evil spirit, as mere
idolatry and devil-worship, not even as mere human

17 Acts xvii. 18 Acts xiv. 16. " Acts xvii. 23.

20 Kleanthes says, e TOV yap ytvos cVjuev ; Aratus, irar^p avSpuv . . .
rov yap yevos foptv ( Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, pp. 183, 246).
II. H H

466 CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK RELIGION.

fancy, but as a preparation, as a necessary part in
the education of the human race as a f seeking the
Lord, if haply they might feel after him.' There
was a, fulness of time, both for Jews and for Gentiles,
and we must learn to look upon the ages that pre-
ceded it as necessary, under a divine purpose, for
filling that appointed measure, for good and for evil,
which would make the two great national streams in
the history of mankind, the Jewish and the Gentile,
the Semitic and the Aryan, reach their appointed
measure, and overflow, so that they might mingle
together and both be carried on by a new current,
6 the well of water springing up into everlasting life.'
And if in this spirit we search through the sacred
ruins of the ancient world, we shall be surprised to
find how much more of true religion there is in
what is called Heathen Mythology than we expected.
Only, as St. Augustine said, we must not mind the
names, strange and uncouth as they may sound on
our ears. We are no longer swayed by the just fears
which filled the hearts of early Christian writers;
we can afford to be generous to Jupiter and to his
worshippers. Nay, we ought to learn to treat the
ancient religions with some of the same reverence
and awe with which we approach the study of the
Jewish and of our own. ' The religious instinct,'
as Schelling says, c should be honoured even in dark
and confused mysteries.' We must only guard
against a temptation to which an eminent writer
and statesman of this country has sometimes yielded
in his work on Homer, we must not attempt to find
Christian ideas ideas peculiar to Christianity in
the primitive faith of mankind. But, on the other

CHRISTIANITY AND GREEK RELIGION. 467

hand, we may boldly look for those fundamental reli-
gious conceptions on which Christianity itself is built
up, and without which, as its natural and historical
support, Christianity itself could never have been
what it is. The more we go back, the more we
examine the earliest germs of every religion, the
purer, I believe, we shall find the conceptions of the
Deity, the nobler the purposes of each founder of a
new worship. But the more we go back, the more
helpless also shall we find human language in its
endeavours to express what of all things was most
difficult to express. The history of religion is in
one sense a history of language. Many of the ideas
embodied in the language of the Gospel would have
been incomprehensible and inexpressible alike, if we
imagine that by some miraculous agency they had
been communicated to the primitive inhabitants of
the earth. Even at the present moment missionaries
find that they have first to educate their savage
pupils, that is to say, to raise them to that level of
language and thought which had been reached by
Greeks, Eomans, and Jews at the beginning of our
era, before the words and ideas of Christianity assume
any reality to their minds, and before their own native
language becomes strong enough for the purposes of
translation. Words and thoughts here, as elsewhere,
go together; and from one point of view the true
history of religion would, as I said, be neither more
nor less than an account of the various attempts at
expressing the Inexpressible.

I shall endeavour to make this clear by at least
one instance, and I shall select for it the most im-
portant name in the religion and mythology of the

H H 2

468 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR.

Aryan nations, the name of Zeus, the god of gods
(theos theori), as Plato calls him.

Let us consider, first of all, the fact, which cannot
be doubted, and which, if fully appreciated, will be feH
to be pregnant with the most startling and the most
instructive lessons of antiquity the fact, I mean, that
Zeus, the most sacred name in Greek mythology, is
the same word as Dyaus 21 in Sanskrit, Jowa 22 or Ju
in Jupiter in Latin, Tiw in Anglo-Saxon, preserved in
Tiwsdceg, Tuesday, the day of the Eddie god Tyr; Zio
in Old High-German.

This word was framed once, and once only : it was
not borrowed by the Greeks from the Hindus, nor by
the Romans and Germans from the Greeks. It must
have existed before the ancestors of those primeval
races became separate in language and religion; before
they left their common pastures, to migrate to the
right hand and to the left, till the hurdles of their
sheepfolds grew into the walls of the great cities of
the world.

Here, then, in this venerable word, we may look for
some of the earliest religious thoughts of our race,
expressed and enshrined within the imperishable walls
of a few simple letters. What did Dyu mean in
Sanskrit? How is it used there? What was the
root which could be forced to reach the highest

21 Dyaus in Sanskrit is the nominative singular; Dyu the inflec-
tional base. I use both promiscuously, though it would perhaps be
better always to use Dyu.

22 Jovis in the nom. occurs in the verse of Ennius, giving the names
of the twelve Koman Deities :

Juno, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, Diana, Venus, Mars,
Mercurius, Jovi', Neptunus, Vulcanus, Apollo.

&'vs in Dius Fidius, i. e. Zf i>s Ttlffrios, belongs to the same class of words.

Cf. Hartung, Religion de Homer, ii. 44.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITEE, TYR. 469

aspirations of the human mind ? We should find it
difficult to discover the radical or predicative meaning
of Zeus in Greek; but dyaus in Sanskrit tells its
own tale. It is derived from the root dyu or div,
which in Sanskrit has been supplanted by the deri-
vative root dyut, to beam. A. root of this rich and
expansive meaning would be applicable to many
conceptions : the dawn, the sun, the sky, the day,
the stars, the eyes, the ocean, and the meadow,
might all be spoken of as bright, gleaming, smiling,
blooming, sparkling. But in the actual and settled
language of India, dyu, as a noun, means principally
sky and day. Before the ancient hymns of the Veda
had disclosed to us the earliest forms of Indian thought
and language, the Sanskrit noun dyu was hardly
known as the name of an Indian deity, but only as a
feminine, and as the recognised term for sky. The fact
that dyu remained in common use as a name for sky
was sufficient to explain why dyu in Sanskrit should
never have assumed that firm mythological character
which belongs to Zeus in Greek ; for as long as a word
retains the distinct signs of its original import, and is
applied as an appellative to visible objects, it does not
easily lend itself to the metamorphic processes of earl}
mythology. As dyu in Sanskrit continued to mean
s%, though as a feminine only, it was difficult for the
same word, even as a masculine, to become the germ
of any very important mythological formations. Lan-
guage must die before it can enter into a new stage
of mythological life.

Even in the Ye da, where dyu still occurs as a
masculine, as an active noun, and discloses the same
germs of thought which in Greece and Rome grew

470 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYE.

into the name of the supreme god of the firmament,,
Dyu, the deity, the lord of heaven, the ancient god
of light, never assumes any powerful mythological
vitality, never rises to the rank of a supreme deity.
In the early lists of Yedic deities, Dyu is not included,
and the real representative of Jupiter in the Veda is
not Dyu but Indra, a name of Indian growth, and
unknown in any other independent branch of Aryan
language. Indra was another conception of the
bright blue sky, but partly because its etymological
meaning was obscured, partly through the more active
poetry and worship of certain Rishis, this nam&
gained a complete ascendancy over that of Dyu,
and nearly extinguished the memory in India of one
of the earliest, if not the earliest, name by which the
Aryans endeavoured to express their first conception
of the Deity. Originally, however and this is one
of the most important discoveries which we owe to
the study of the Veda originally Dyu was the
bright heavenly deity in India as well as in Greece.

Let us examine, first, some passages of the Veda
in which dyu is used as an appellative in the sense
of sky. We read (Rigveda, i. 161, 14): 'The
Maruts (storms) go about in the sky, Agni (fire)
on earth, the wind goes in the air; Varuna goes
about in the waters of the sea,' &c. Here dyu means
the sky, as much as prithivi means the earth, and
antariksha the air. The sky is frequently spoken
of together with the earth, and the air is placed be-
tween the two (antariksha). We find expressions
such as ( heaven and earth;' 23 air and heaven; 2 * and

23 Rigveda, i. 39, 4: nahi .... adhi dyavi a bhftmyam..
s * Eigveda, vi. 52, 13: antarikshe .... dyavi.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYR. 471

heaven, air, and earth.' 25 The sky, dyu, is called the
third, as compared with the earth, and we meet in
the Atharva-Veda with expressions such as 'in
the third heaven from hence.' 26 This, again, gave
rise to the idea of three heavens. 27 ' The heavens,'
we read, 'the air, and the earth (all in the plural)
cannot contain the majesty of Indra;' and in one
passage the poet prays that his glory may be ( exalted
as if heaven were piled on heaven.' 28

Another meaning which belongs to dyu in the
Veda is day. 29 So many suns are so many days,
and even in English yestersun was used instead of
yesterday as late as the time of Dryden. Diva, an
instrumental case with the accent on the first syllable,
means by day, and is used together with naktam, 39
by night. Other expressions, such as dive dive,
dyavi dyavi, or anu dyun, are of frequent occur-
rence to signify day by day. 31

But besides these two meanings Dyu clearly con-
veys a different idea as used in some few verses of the
Ye da. There are invocations in which the name of
Dyu stands first, and where he is invoked together

25 Rigveda,viii. 6, 15: na dyavaA indram o^asa na antarik-
shawi va^riwam na vivya&anta bhftmaya^.

26 Ath.-Veda, v. 4, 3: tritiyasyam itaA divi (fern.).

27 See Rigveda-sanhita, translated by M. M., vol. i. p. 36.

28 Rigveda, vii. 24, 5: divi iva dym adhi naA sromatam
dhAA.

29 Eigveda, vi. 24, 7: na yam ^aranti saradaA na msaA
na dyava^ indram avakarsayanti (' Him whom harvests do not
age, nor moons; Indra, whom days do not wither').

Rigveda, vii. 66, 11 : vi y6 dadhuA saradam masam t ahar.

30 Rigveda, i. 139, 5.

81 Rigveda, i. 112,25: dynbhiA aktubhiA pari patam as-
m&n. ('Protect us by day and by night, ye Asvin.') See infra,
p. 290, n.

472 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR.

with other beings who are always treated as gods.
Tor instance (Rigveda, vi. 51, 5):

1 Dyaus (Sky), father, and Prithivi (Earth), kind
mother, Agni (Fire), brother, ye Vasu's (Bright
,mes), have mercy upon us ! ' 32

Here Sky, Earth, and Fire are classed together as
divine powers, but Dyaus, it should be remarked,
occupies the first place. This is the same in other
passages where a long list of gods is given, and
where Dyaus, if his name is mentioned at all, holds
always a prominent place. 33

It should further be remarked that Dyaus is most
frequently called pitar or father, so much so that
Dyaushpitar in the Veda becomes almost as much
one word as Jupiter in Latin. In one passage
(i. 191, 6), we read, 'Dyaus is father, Prithivi, the
earth, your mother, Soma your brother, Aditi your
sister.' In another passage (iv. 1, 10), he is called
Dyaus the father, the creator. 34

We now have to consider some still more impor-
tant passages in which Dyu and Indra are men-
tioned together as father and son, like Kronos and
Zeus, only that in India Dyu is the father, Indra
the son; and Dyu has at last to surrender his su-
premacy which Zeus in Greek retains to the end. In

82 Dyads pitar prithivi matar adhruk.

Agne bhratar vasavaA mri^ata naA.
Ignis frater - be mild nos.

33 Rigveda, i. 136,6: Na^raa^ Dive brihate rodasibhyam;
then follow Mitra, Varurca, Indra, Agni, Aryaman, Bhaga. Cf.
vi. 50, 13. DyaiiA devebhiA prithivi samudraiA. Here, though
Dyaus does not stand first, he is distinguished as being mentioned at
the head of the devas, or bright gods.

84 Dyaiish pit& <?anit Zeus, irar-ftp, yever^p.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYE. 473

a liymn addressed to Indra, and to Indra as the
most powerful god, we read (Rv. iv. 17, 4): 'Dyu,
thy parent, was reputed strong, the maker of Indra
was mighty in his works ; he (who) begat the hea-
venly Indra, armed with the thunderbolt, who is
immoveable, as the earth, from his seat.'

Here, then, Dyu would seem to be above Indra,
just as Zeus is above Apollo. But there are other
passages in this very hymn which clearly place
Indra above Dyu, and thus throw an important
light on the mental process which made the Hindus
look on the son, on Indra, 35 the Jupiter p luvius, the
conquering light of heaven, as more powerful, more
exalted, than the bright sky from whence he arose.
The hymn begins with asserting the greatness of
Indra, which even heaven and earth had to acknow-
ledge ; and, at Indra's birth, both heaven and earth
are said to have trembled. Now heaven and earth,
it must be remembered, are, mythologically speaking,
the father and mother of Indra, and if we read in
the same hymn that Indra ' somewhat excels his
mother and his father who begat him,' 36 this can
only be meant to express the same idea, namely, that

35 Indra, a name peculiar to India, admits of but one etymology
i. e. it must be derived from the same root, whatever that may be, which
in Sanskrit yielded indu, drop, sap. It meant originally the giver of
rain, the Jupiter pluvius, a deity in India more often present to the
mind of the worshipper than any other. Cf. Benfey, Orient und Occi-
dent, vol. i. p. 49.

36 iv. 17, 12 : Kiy^at svit Indra^ adhi eti matiU Kiyat pituA
^anituA yak ga,gina. In a hymn of the last Mawofala, x. 54, 3,
Indra is said to have from his own body produced together his father
and mother. Cf. J. Muir, Transactions of the Royal Society of Edin
burgh, xxiii. part 3, p. 552. Say aft a explains the father and mother
of I ndra as Heaven and Earth, and refers to a Vedic passage in support
of this view.

474 DTAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTE.

the active god who resides in the sky, who rides on
the clouds, and hurls his bolt at the demons of dark-
ness, impresses the mind of man at a later time more
powerfully than the serene expanse of heaven and
the wide earth beneath. Yet Dyu also must for-
merly have been conceived as a more active, I might
say, a more dramatic god, for the poet actually com-
pares Indra, when destroying his enemies, with Dyu
as wielding the thunderbolt. 37

If with this hymn we compare passages of other
hymns, we see even more clearly how the idea of
Indra, the conquering hero of the thunderstorm, led
with the greatest ease to the admission of a father
who, though reputed strong before Indra, was ex-
celled in prowess by his son. If the dawn is called
divigra/i, born in the sky, the very adjective would
become the title-deed to prove her the daughter of
Dyu; and so she is called. The same with Indra.
He rose from the sky ; hence the sky was his father.
He rose from the horizon where the sky seems to em-
brace the earth ; hence the earth must be his mother.
As sky and earth had been invoked before as benefi-
cent powers, they would the more easily assume the
paternity of Indra; though even if they had not be-
fore been worshipped as gods, Indra himself, as born
of heaven and earth, would have raised these parents
to the rank of deities. Thus Kronos in the later Greek
mythology, the father of Zeus, owes his very existence
to his son, namely, to Zeus Kronion, Kronion meaning
originally the son of time, or the ancient of days. 38

37 iv. 17, 13: vibhan^anuA asaniman iva dyauA.

38 Welcker, Grieschische Gotterlehre, p. 144. Zeus is also called
Kronios. Ibid. pp. 150, 155, 158. Chips, vol. ii. p. 155. Zeus only is.

DYAUS, ZETJS, JUPITER, TTE. 475-

JJranos, on the contrary, though suggested by Ura-
nion, the heavenly, had evidently, like Heaven and
Earth, enjoyed an independent existence before he
was made the father of Kronos, and the grandfather
of Zeus ; for we find his prototype in the Yedic god
Yarn n a. But while in India Dyu was raised to be
the father of a new god, Indra, and by being thus
raised became really degraded, or, if we may say so,
shelved, Zeus in Greece always remained the supreme
god, till the dawn of Christianity put an end to the
mythological phraseology of the ancient world.

We read, i. 131, I: 39

' Before Indra the divine Dyu bowed, before
Indra bowed the great Prithivi.'

Again, i. 61, 9 : 40 'The greatness of Indra indeed
exceeded the heavens (i. e. dyaus), the earth and
the air.'

i. 54, 4: 41 'Thou hast caused the top of heaven
(of dyaus) to shake.'

Expressions like these, though no doubt meant to
realise a conception of natural phenomena, were sure
to produce mythological phraseology, and if in India
Dyu did not grow to the same proportions as Zeus
in Greece, the reason is simply that dyu retained
throughout too much of its appellative power, and
that Indra, the new name and the new god, absorbed

called Kpwi'STjs in Homer, not Hades or Poseidon. He is never called
technically the son of Ehea, though Ehea, as the mother of the three
brothers, is mentioned. II. xv. 187.

39 Indraya hi dyauA asuraA anamnata indraya mahi
prithivl varimabhiA.

* Asya it.eva pra riri&e mahitvam divaA prithivy&A
pari antarikshat.

41 Tvam divaA brihataA snu kopaya^.

476 DYAUS, ZEUS, JTJPITEB,, TTR.

all the channels that could have supported the life of
Dyu. 42

Let us see now how the same conception of Dyu,
as the god of light and heaven, grew and spread in
Greece And here let us observe what has been
pointed out by others, but has never been placed in
so clear a light as of late by M. Bertrand in his lucid
work, ' Sur les Dieux Protecteurs ' (1858), that
whereas all other deities in Greece are more or less
local or tribal, Zeus was known in every village and
to every clan. He is at home on Ida, on Olympus, at
Dodona. While Poseidon drew to himself the .ZEoliaii
family, Apollo the Dorian, Athene the Ionian, there
was one more powerful god for all the sons of Hellen,
Dorians, JEolians, lonians, Achseans, the Panhellenic
Zeus. That Zeus meant sky we might have guessed
perhaps, even if no traces of the word had been pre-
served in Sanskrit. The prayer of the Athenians

vaov vaor, oi <pi\ Ztv, Kara TTJQ dpovpag TU>V ' AOrjvaiw KUL

(* Rain, rain, dear Zeus, on the land of the Athenians
and on the fields 1 ')

is clearly addressed to the sky, though the mere
addition of c dear,' in e dear Zeus,' is sufficient to
change the sky into a personal being.

The original meaning of Zeus might equally have
been guessed from such words as Diosemia, portents
in the sky, i.e. thunder, lightning, rain; Diipetes,
swollen by rain, lit. fallen from heaven ; endios, in the
open air, or at midday ; eudios, calm, lit. well-skyed,
and others. In Latin, too, sub Jove frigido, 43 under

42 Cf. Buttmann, Ueber Apollon und Artemis, Mythologus, i. p. 8.

43 Hor. Od. i, 1, 25. Pott, Et. Forsch. ii. 2, p. 953. Jupiter uvidus,
Virg. Georg. i. 418; madidus, Mart. vii. 36, 1.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITEE, TTR. 477

the cold sky, sub diu, sub dio, and sub divo, 4 * under
the open sky, are palpable enough. 45 But then it
was always open to say that the ancient names of
the gods were frequently used to signify either their
abodes or the special gifts that Neptunus, for in-
stance, was used for the sea, Pluto for the lower
regions, Jupiter for the sky, and that this would in
no way prove that these names originally meant sea,
lower world, sky. Thus Nsevius said, Cocus edit Nep-
tunum, Venerem, Cererem, meaning, as Festus tells us,
by Neptune fishes, by Yenus vegetables, by Ceres
bread. 46 Minerva is used both for mind in pingui
Minerva and for threads of wool. 47 When some an-
cient philosophers, as quoted by Aristotle, said that
Zeus rains not in order to increase the corn, but from
necessity, 48 this no doubt shows that these early
positive philosophers looked upon Zeus as the sky,
and not as a free personal divine being ; but again it
would leave it open to suppose that they transferred
the old divine name of Zeus to the sky, just as
Ennius, with the full consciousness of the philoso-
pher, exclaimed, ' Aspice hoc sublime candens quern
invocant omnes Jo vein.' 49 An expression like this is
the result of later reflection, and it would in no way
prove that either Zeus or Jupiter meant originally
sky.

A Greek at the time of Homer would have scouted
the suggestion that he, in saying Zeus, meant no

44 Virg. Georg. iii. 435.

45 Dium fulgur appellabant diurnum quod putabant Jovis, ut noctur-
num Summani.' Festus, p. 57.

48 Festus, p. 45. 47 Arnobius, v. 45.

48 Grote, History of Greece, i. 501, 539.

49 Vahlen, EnniancB Poeais Iteliquia: Leipzig, 1854, p. 142.

478 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYE.

more than sky. By Zeus the Greeks meant more
than the visible sky, more even than the sky per-
sonified. With them the name Zeus was, and re-
mained, in spite of all mythological obscurations, the
name of the Supreme Deity ; and even if they remem-
bered that originally it meant sky, this would have
troubled them as little as if they remembered that
thymos, mind, originally meant blast. Sky was the
nearest approach to that conception which in sub-
limity, brightness, and infinity transcended all others
as much as the bright blue sky transcended all other
things visible on earth. This is of great importance.
Let us bear in mind that the perception of God is
one of those which, like the perceptions of the senses,
is realised even without language. We cannot
realise general conceptions, or, as they are called by
philosophers, nominal essences, such as animal, tree,
man, without names ; we cannot reason, therefore,
without names or without language. But we can see
the sun, we can greet it in the morning and mourn
for it in the evening, without necessarily naming it,
that is to say, comprehending it under some general
notion. It is the same with the perception of the
Divine. It may have been perceived, men may have
welcomed it or yearned after it, long before they
knew how to name it. Yet very soon man would
long for a name, and what we know as the prayer of
Jacob, ' Tell me, I pray thee, thy name,' 60 and as the
question of Moses, ' What shall I say unto them if
they shall say to me, What is his name? ' 51 must at
an early time have been the question and the prayer
of every nation on earth. The name, as such, soon ac-

50 Genesis xxxii. 29. 61 Exodus iii. 13.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYIl. 479

quired a sacred character : the Jews did not think it
right to pronounce it : the Romans wished to keep it
secret that strangers might not know it, and invoke
their tutelary genius by his right name.

We can hardly doubt that the statement of Hero-
dotus (ii. 52) rests on theory rather than fact, yet
even as a theory the tradition that the Pelasgians
for a long time offered prayer and sacrifice to the
gods without having names for any one of them, is
curious. Lord Bacon states the very opposite of the
West Indians, namely, that they had names for each
of their gods, but no word for god.

As soon as man becomes conscious of himself, as
soon as he perceives himself as distinct from all other
things and persons, he at the same moment becomes
conscious of a Higher Self, a higher power, without
which he feels that neither he nor anything else would
have any life or reality. We are so fashioned and it
is no merit of ours that as soon as we awake, we feel
on all sides our dependence on something else, and all
nations join in some way or other in the words of the
Psalmist, s It is He that hath made us, and not we
ourselves.' This is the first sense of the Godhead,
the sensus numinis as it has been well called ; for it
is a sensus an immediate perception, not the result
of reasoning or generalising, but an intuition as
irresistible as the impressions of our senses. In
receiving it we are passive, at least as passive as in
receiving from above the image of the sun, or any
other impressions of the senses ; whereas in all our
reasoning processes we are active rather than passive.
This sensus numinis, or, as we may call it in more
homely language, faith, is the source of all religion ;

480 DTAUS, ZEUS, JTJPITEK, TYK.

it is that without which no religion, whether true or
false, is possible.

Tacitus 52 tells us that the Germans applied the
names of gods to that hidden thing which they per-
ceived by reverence alone. The same in Greece. In
giving to the object of the sensus numinis the name
of Zeus, the fathers of Greek religion were fully
aware that they meant more than sky. The high and
brilliant sky has in many languages and many re-
ligions 53 been regarded as the abode of God, and the
name of the abode might easily be transferred to him
who abides in Heaven. Aristotle ( f De Coelo,' i. 1, 3)
remarks that c all men have a suspicion of gods, and
all assign to them the highest place.' And again
(1. c. i. 2, 1) he says, ' The ancients assigned to the
gods' heaven and the space above, because it was
alone eternal. 5 The Slaves, as Procopius states, 54 wor-
shipped at one time one god only, and he was the
maker of the lightning. PerJcunas, in Lithuanian,
the god of the thunderstorm, is used synonymously
with deivaitis, deity. In Chinese Tien means sky
and day ; and the same word, like the Aryan Dyu, is
recognised in Chinese as the name of God. Even
though, by an edict of the Pope in 1715, Roman
Catholic missionaries were prohibited from using
Tien as the name for God, and ordered to use Tien
chu y Lord of heaven, instead, language has proved
more powerful than the Pope. In the Tataric and
Mongolic dialects, Tengri, possibly derived from the

52 Germania, 9 : ' Deortunqne nominibus appellant secretum illud
quod sola reverentia vident.'

58 See Carriere, Die Kunst im Zusammenhang der CulturentwicJcelung,
p. 49.

5 Welcker, I c. i. 137, 166. Proc. de Bello Gothico, 3, 14.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR. 481

same source as Tien, signifies 1, heaven, 2, the God
of heaven, 3, God in general, or good and evil
spirits. 85 The same meanings are ascribed by
Castreii to the Finnish word Jumala, thunderer. 56
Nay, even in our own language, 'heaven' may still
be used almost synonymously with God. The pro-
digal son, when he returns to his father, says, c I will
arise and go to my father, and will say unto him,
Father, I have sinned against heaven and before
thee.' 57 Whenever we thus find the name of heaven
used for God, we must bear in mind that those who
originally adopted such a name were transferring
that name from one object, visible to their bodily
eyes, to another object grasped by another organ of
knowledge, by the vision of the soul. Those who at
first called God Heaven had something within them
that they wished to call the growing image of God;
those who at a later time called Heaven God, had
forgotten that they were predicating of Heaven
something that was higher than Heaven.

That Zeus was originally to the Greeks the Supreme
God, the true God nay, at some times their only
God can be perceived in spite of the haze which
mythology has raised around his name. 58 But this
is very different from saying that Homer believed in
one supreme, omnipotent, and omniscient being, the

55 Castren, Finnische Mythologie, p. 14. Welcker, Gricchische Gb't-
terlehre, p. 130. Klaproth, Sprache und Schrift der Uiguren p. 9.
Boehtlingk, Die Sprache der Jakuten, Wb'rterbuch, p. 90, s. v. ' tagara/
Kowalewski, Dictionnaire Mongol-Ritsse-Francais, t. iii. p. 1763. See-
Mi. M., Introduction to the Science of Beligion, 1870, p. 40.

56 Castren, I c. p. 24. Luke xv. 18.
58 Of. Welcker, p. 129 seq.

II. I I

482 DTATJS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR.

creator and ruler of the world. Such an assertion
would require considerable qualification. The Homeric
Zeus is full of contradictions. He is the subject of
mythological tales, and the object of religious adora-
tion. He is omniscient, yet he is cheated; he is
omnipotent, and yet defied ; he is eternal, yet he has
a father ; he is just, yet he is guilty of crime. Now
these very contradictions ought to teach us a lesson.
If all the conceptions of Zeus had sprung from one
and the same source, these contradictions could not
have existed. If Zeus had simply meant God, the
Supreme God, he could not have been the son of
Kronos or the father of Minos. If, on the other
hand, Zeus had been a merely mythological person-
age, such as Eos, the dawn, or Helios, the sun, he
could never have been addressed as he is addressed in
the famous prayer of Achilles. 59 In looking through
Homer and other Greek writers, we have no difficulty
in collecting a number of passages in which the Zeus
that is mentioned is clearly conceived as their su-
preme God. For instance, the ancient song of the
Peleise or Peleiades at Dodona, 60 the oldest sanctuary
of Zeus, was : ' Zeus was, Zeus is, Zeus will be, oh
great Zeus. The earth sends forth her fruit, there-
fore call the earth mother ! ' There is little or no
trace of mythology in this. In Homer, 61 Zeus is

59 ' lord Zeus, thou of Dodona, worshipped by the Pelasgians,
dwelling far away, yet caring for the storm- lashed Dodona, and round
there dwell the Selli, thy prophets, with unwashen feet, sleeping on the
earth ! Truly thou hast before heard my voice when I prayed to thee;
and thou hast conferred honour upon me, and hast mightily smitten the
people of the Achaii : oh, fulfil thou now also this my desire.' II. xri.
233-238.

60 Welcker, p. 143. Paus. x. 12, 10. See supra, p. 435.
J Welcker, p. 176.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYR. 483

called * the father, the most glorious, the greatest,
who rules over all, mortals and immortals. He is the
counsellor, whose counsels the other gods cannot
fathom (H. i. 545). His power is the greatest (II.
ix. 25), 62 and it is he who gives strength, wisdom,
and honour to man. The mere expression, ' father of
gods and men,' so frequently applied to Zeus and to
Zeus alone, would be sufficient to show that the re-
ligious conception of Zeus was never quite forgotten,
and that in spite of the various Greek legends on the
creation of the human race, the idea of Zeus as the
father and creator of all things, but more particularly
as the father and creator of man, was never quite
extinct in the Greek mind. It breaks forth in the
unguarded language of Philoatios in the Odyssey,
who charges Zeus 63 that he does not pity men though
it was he who created them; and in the philosophical
view of the universe put forth by Kleanthes or by
Aratos it assumes that very form under which it is
known to us, from the quotation of St. Paul, ' For we
are also his offspring.' Likeness with God (homoiotes
theo) was the goal of Pythagorean ethics, 64 and
according to Aristotle, it was an old saying that
everything exists from God and through God. 65 All
the greatest poets after Homer know of Zeus as the
highest god, as the true god. ' Zeus,' says Pindar, 66

1 Jupiter omnipotens regum rerumque deumque
Progenitor genitrixqtie deum.'
Valerius Soranus, in Aug., De Civ. Dei, vii. 10.
63 Od. xx. 201:

Zeu irdrep, of/ -m tre?o dewv 6\ouiTpos &\\os'
OVK eAecu'pets &v$pas TTT)V 877 yeiveai aur6s.
61 Cic. Leg. i. 8. Welcker, Griechische Gbtterlehre, i. 249.
* 5 De Mundo, 6. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre, vol. i. p. 240.
6 Find. Fraffnt. v. 6. Bunsen, Gott in der Geschichtc, ii. 351. 01. 13, 12.
ii 2

484 DYAUS, ZECJS, JUPITER, TYE.

* obtained something more than what the gods pos-
sessed.' He calls him the eternal father, and he
claims for man a divine descent.

One (he says) is the race of men, 67 one that of the gods. We
both breathe from one mother; but our powers, all sundered, keep
us apart, so that the one is nothing, while the brazen heaven,
the immoveable seat, endureth for ever. Yet even thus we are
still, whether by greatness of mind or by form, like unto the
immortals, though we know not to what goal, either by day or
by night, destiny has destined us to haste on.

For the children of the day, what are we, and what not ?
Man is the dream of a shadow. But if there comes a ray sent
from Zeus, then there is for men bright splendour and a
cheerful life. 68

^Sschylus again leaves no doubt as to his real view
of Zeus. His Zeus is a being different from all
other gods. ' Zeus,' he says, in a fragment, 69 ' is the
earth, Zeus the air, Zeus the sky, Zeus is all and
what is above all.' 'All was done for the gods/ he
says, ' except to be lords, for free is no one but Zeus.' 70

7 Find. Nem. vi. 1 (cf. xi. 43 ; xii. 7) :

"Ev aisSpwv, v deuv yevos' e/c /j.ias 8e irveop-fv
fjLarpbs afj.(f)6Tpoi. Sieipyei 5e ira<ra KKpt/j.fva
8vva.fji.ts, us rb p.ev ovSev, 6 8e xaA/ceoj aff<pa\fs alev e5os
fjLfvet ovpav6s. a\\a n Trpoff^epofj-ev e/jL-nav 3) p.4yav
v6ov tfroi <pvcrii> aOavdrois,

Kaitrep t<f>ap.epia.v OVK el56rS ouSe //.eri VVKTO.S ^f*,ue irfaj/o*.
tila.v riv' fypatye SpafA.f'iv TTOT! ffra.Qp.av.
" Pind. Pyth. viii. 95 :

' E,Trdfj.poi ' rl 5e TLS ; ri Se ov Tts ; ffKias uvay
&vdpa>iros. a\\' OTO.V aty\a
\ap.Trpbv (pfyyos eireffTiv avSpwi'
Kal yuei'AiXos aitiav.

69 Cf. Carrtere, Die Kunst, vol. i. p. 79.
T0 Prom, vinctus, 49 :

airavr eirpaxOr] TT\^V deolffi
e\evdeoos yap OVTLS etrri TT\}]V At6s.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYR. 48i)

He calls him the lord of infinite time ; 71 nay, he knows
that the name Zeus 72 is but indifferent, and that be-
hind that name there is a power greater than all
names. Thus the Chorus in the Agamemnon says :

Zeus, whoever he is, if this be the name by which he loves to
be called by this name I address him. For, if I verily want
to cast off the idle burden of my thought, proving all things,
I cannot find one on whom to cast it, except Zeus only.

For he who before was great, proud in his all- conquering
might, he is not cared for any more ; and he who came after,
he found his victor and is gone. But he who sings wisely
songs of victory for Zeus, he will find all wisdom. For Zeus
leads men in the way of wisdom, he orders that suffering
should be our best school. Nay, even in sleep there flows
from the heart suffering reminding us of suffering, and wisdom
comes to us against our will.

One more passage from Sophocles, 73 to show how
with him too Zeus is, in true moments of anguish
and religious yearning, the same being whom we call
God. In the c Electra, 5 the Chorus says :

Courage, courage, my child ! There is still in heaven the
great Zeus, who watches over all things and rules. Commit
thy exceeding bitter grief to him, and be not too angry against
thy enemies, nor forget them.

71 Supplices, 574 : Zei/.v aliavos Kpewv a.Truv<nov.

72 Kleanthes, in hymn quoted by Welcker, ii. p. 193, addresses Zeus

KtfStoV aQavdrwv, TTOXVWVV/JLG, Tra.yitpa.Tes alel, x"P e ZeC.
* Most glorious among immortals, with many names, almighty always,
hail to thee, Zeus ! '
" Electra, v. 188:

Qdpffei /J.QI, ddpfffi, TfKvov.

en fieyas ovpavy

Zeus, t>s fcpopa Trdvra Kal

oTs e'xflatpeis inrepdxBfo ^TJT' e7rtA<0t/v.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYK.

But while in passages like these the original con-
ception of Zeus as the true god, the god of gods,,
preponderates, there are innumerable passages in
which Zeus is clearly the sky personified, and hardly
differs from other deities, such as the sun-god or the
goddess of the moon. The Greek was not aware that
there were different tributaries which entered from
different points into the central idea of Zeus. To
him the name Zeus conveyed but one idea, and the
contradictions between the divine and the natural
elements in his character were slurred over by all
except the few who thought for themselves, and who
knew, with Pindar, that no legend, no sacred myth,
could be true that reflects discredit on a divine being.
But to us it is clear that the story of Zeus descending
as golden rain into the prison of Danae was meant
for the bright sky delivering the earth from the bonds
of winter, and awakening in her a new life by the
golden showers of spring. Many of the stories that
are told about the love of Zeus for human or half-
human heroines have a similar origin. The idea
which we express by the phrase, ( King by the grace
of God,' was expressed in ancient language by calling
kings the descendants of Zeus. 74 This simple and
natural conception gave rise to innumerable local
legends. Great families and whole tribes claimed
Zeus for their ancestor ; and as it was necessary in
each case to supply him with a wife, the name of the
country was naturally chosen to supply the wanting

71 11. ii. 445, 8ioTpe<p{es. Od. iv. 691, 0e?oi. Callim. Hym.in Jovem,
79, IK Ai&s 0a<nAf}es. Bertrand, Dieiix Protecteurs, p. 157. Kemble,
Saxons in England, i. p. 335. Cox, Tales of Thebes and Argos t 1864,
Introduction, p. i.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR. 487

link in these sacred genealogies. Thus JEacus, the
famous king of JEgina, was fabled to be the offspring
of Zeus. This need not have meant more than that
he was a powerful, wise, and just king. But it soon
came to mean more. .ZEacus was fabled to have been
really the son of Zeus, and Zeus is represented as
carrying off JEgina and making her the mother of
JEacus.

The Arcadians (Ursini) derived their origin from
ArJcas; their national deity was Kallisto, another
name for Artemis. 75 What happens ? ArTcas is made
the son of Zeus and Kallisto; though, in order to save
the good name of Artemis, the chaste goddess, Kallisto
is here represented as one of her companions only.
Soon the myth is spun out still further. Kallisto is
changed into a bear by the jealousy of Here. She is
then, after having been killed by Artemis, identified
with Arktos, the Great Bear, for no better reasons
than the Virgin in later times with the zodiacal sign
of Yirgo. 76 And if it be asked why the constellation
of the Bear never sets, an answer was readily given
the wife of Zeus had asked Okeanos and Thetis not
to allow her rival to contaminate the pure waters of
the sea.

It is said that Zeus, in the form of a bull, carried
off Europa. This means no more, if we translate it
back into Sanskrit, than that the strong rising sun
(vrishan) carries off the wide-shining dawn. This
story is alluded to again and again in the Veda.
Now Minos, the ancient king of Crete, required-
parents ; so Zeus and Europa were assigned to him.

75 Miiller, Dorier, i. 372. Jacobi, s. v. Kallisto.
''* Maury, Ligendes -pieuses, p. 39, n.

488 DTAU8 ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR.

There was nothing that could be told of the sky
that was not in some form or other ascribed to Zeus.
It was Zeus who rained, who thundered, who snowed,
who hailed, who sent the lightning, who gathered the
clouds, who let loose the winds, who held the rain-
bow. It is Zeus who orders the days and nights, the
months, seasons, and years. It is he who watches
over the fields, who sends rich harvests, and who
tends the flocks. 77 Like the sky, Zeus dwells on the
highest mountains ; like the sky, Zeus embraces the
earth ; like the sky, Zeus is eternal, unchanging, the
highest god. 78 For good and for evil, Zeus the sky
and Zeus the god are wedded together in the Greek
mind, language triumphing over thought, tradition
over religion.

And strange as this mixture may appear, in-
credible as it may seem that two ideas like god and
sky should have run into one, and that the atmo-
spheric changes of the air should have been mistaken
for the acts of Him who rules the world, let us not
forget that not in Greece only, but everywhere, where
we can watch the growth of early language and early
religion, the same, or nearty the same, phenomena
may be observed. The Psalmist says (xviii. 6), ' In
niy distress I called upon the Lord, and cried unto
my God : he heard my voice out of his temple, and
my cry came before him, even into his ears.'

7. Then the earth shook and trembled ; the foundations also
of the hills moved and were shaken, because he was wroth.

" Welcker, p. 169.

78 Bunsen, Gott in der Geschickte, ii. 352 : ' Gott vermag aus schwarzer
Nacht zu erwecken fleckenlosen Grlanz, und mit schwarzlockigem Dunkel
zu verhiillen des Tages reinen Strahl.' Pindar, Fragm. 3.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR. 489

8. There went up smoke out of his nostrils, and fire out of
Jbis mouth devoured : coals were kindled by it.

9. He bowed the heavens also, and came down : and dark-
ness was under his feet.

10. And he rode upon a cherub, and did fly : yea, he did
fly upon the wings of the wind.

13. The Lord also thundered in the heavens, and the
Highest gave his voice ; hailstones and coals of fire.

14. Yea, he sent out his arrows, and scattered them ; and
he shot out lightnings, and discomfited them.

15. Then the channels of waters were seen, and the founda-
tions of the world were discovered at thy rebuke, Lord, at
the blast of the breath of thy nostrils.

Even the Psalmist in his inspired utterances must
use our helpless human language, and condescend to
the level of human thought. Well is it for us if we
always remember the difference between what is said
and what is meant, and if, while we pity the heathen
for worshipping stocks and stones, we are not our-
selves kneeling down before the frail images of human
fancy. 79

And now, before we leave the history of Dyu, we
must ask one more question, though one which it is
difficult to answer. Was it by the process of radical
or poetical metaphor that the ancient Aryans, before
they separated, spoke of dyu, the sky, and dyu, the
god ? i. e., was the object of the sensus luminis, the
sky, called dyu, light, and the object of the sensus
numinis, God, called dyu, light, by two independent
acts ; or was the name of the sky, dyu, transferred
ready-made to express the growing idea of God,

79 Dion Chrysostomus, 12, p. 404. Welcker, Griechische Gotterlehre,
L p. 246.

490 DYATJS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTE.

living in the highest heaven? 80 Either is possible.
The latter view could be supported by several ana-
logies, which we examined before, and where we found
that names expressive of sky had clearly been trans-
ferred to the idea of the Godhead, or, as others would
put it, had gradually been purified and sublimised to
express that idea. There is no reason why this
should not be admitted. Each name is in the be-
ginning imperfect, it necessarily expresses but one
side of its object, and in the case of the names of
God the very fact of the insufficiency of one single
name would lead to the creation or adoption of new
names, each expressive of a new quality that was felt
to be essential and useful for recalling new pheno-
mena in which the presence of the Deity had been
discovered. The unseen and incomprehensible Being
that had to be named was perceived in the wind, in
the earthquake, and in the fire, long before it was
recognised in the still small voice within. From
every one of these manifestations the divine secretum
illud quod sold reverentid vident might receive a name,
and as long as each of these names was felt to be but a
name, no harm was done. But names have a ten-
dency to become things, nomina grew into numina,
ideas into idols, and if this happened with the name
Dyu,no wonder that many things which were intended
for Him who is above the sky were mixed up with
sayings relating to the sky.

Much, however, may be said in favour of the other

80 Festus, p. 32: 'Lucetium Jovem appellabant quod eum lucis esse
causam credebant.' Macrob. Sat. i. 15: 'unde et Lucetium Salii in
carmine canunt, et Cretenses AO ryv Tin-fpav vocant, ipsi quoque Eomani i
Diespitrem appellant, ut diei patrem.' G-ell. v. 12, 6. Hartung, Religion
der Ebmer, ii. 9.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR. 491

view. We may explain the synonymousness of sky
and God in the Aryan languages by the process of
radical metaphor. Those who believe that all our
ideas had their first roots in the impressions of the
senses, and that nothing original came from, any other
source, would naturally adopt the former view, though
they would on reflection find it difficult to explain how
the sensuous impressions left by the blue sky, or the
clouds, or the thunder and lightning, should ever have
yielded an essence distinct from all these fleeting
phenomena how the senses by themselves should,
like Juno in her anger, have given birth to a being
such as had never been seen before. It may sound
like mysticism, but it is nevertheless perfectly rational
to suppose that there was in the beginning the per-
ception of what Tacitus calls secretum illud, and that
this secret and sacred thing was at the first burst of
utterance called D y a, the light, without any special
reference to the bright sky. Afterwards, the bright
sky being called for another reason Dyu, the light,,
the mythological process would be equally intelligible
that led to all the contradictions in the fables of Zeus.
The two words dyu, the inward light, and dyu, the
sky, became, like a double star, one in the eyes of
the world, defying the vision even of the most
powerful lenses. When the word was pronounced, all
its meanings, light, god, sky, and day, vibrated to-
gether, and the bright Dyu, the god of light, was
lost in the Dyu of the sky. If Dyu meant originally
the bright Being, the light, the god of light, and was
intended, like as ur a, as a name for the Divine, unlo-
calised as yet in any part of nature, we shall appreciate
all the more easily its applicability to express, in spite

492 . DYATTS, ZEUS, JUP1TEE, TTE.

of ever-shifting circumstances, the highest and the
universal God. Thus, in Greek, Zeus is not only the
lord of heaven, but likewise the ruler of the lower
world, and the master of the sea. 81 But though recog-
nising in the name of Zeus the original conception of
light, we ought not to deceive ourselves and try to find
in the primitive vocabulary of the Aryans those sub-
lime meanings which after many thousands of years
their words have assumed in our languages. The light
which flashed up for the first time before the inmost
vision of their souls was not the pure light of which
St. John speaks. We must not mix the words and
thoughts of different ages. Though the message
which St. John sent to his little children, ( God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all,' 82 may remind
us of something similar in the primitive annals of
human language ; though we may highly value the
coincidence, such as it is, between the first stammer-
ings of religious life and the matured language of
the world's manhood; yet it behoves us, while we
compare, to discriminate likewise, and to remember
always that words and phrases, though outwardly the
same, reflect the intentions of the speaker at ever-
varying angles.

It was not my intention to enter at full length
into the story of Zeus as told by the Greeks, or the
story of Jupiter as told by the Romans. This has
been done, and well done, in books on Greek and
Roman Mythology. All I wished to do was to lay

11 Welcker, Griechische Gotterhhre, i. p. 164. H. ix. 457, Zeus re
Karax66vtos. The Old Norse tyr is likewise used in this general sense.
See Grimm, Deutsche Mytkologie, p. 178.

82 St. John, Ep. I. i. 5 ; ii. 7.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTE. 49S

bare before your eyes the first germs of Zeus and
Jupiter which lie below the surface of classical my-
thology, and to show how those germs cling with their
fibres to roots that stretch in an uninterrupted line to
India nay, to some more distant centre from which
all the Aryan languages proceeded in their world- wide
expansion.

It may be useful, however, to dwell a little longer
on the curious conglomeration of words which have
all been derived from the same root as Zeus. That
root in its simplest form is DYU.

DYU, raised by Guwa to DYO (before vowels

dyav);
raised byYriddhitoDYAU (before vowels

dyav).

DYU, by a change of vowels into semi-vowels, and
of semi- vowels into vowels, assumes the form of
DIY, and this is raised by Guwa to DEY,

by Yriddhi to DAIY.

I shall now examine these roots and their deriva-
tives more in detail, and, in doing so, I shall put
together those words, whether verbal or nominal,
which agree most closely in their form, without refer-
ence to the usual arrangements of declension and
conjugation adopted by practical grammarians.

The root dyu in its simplest form appears as the
Sanskrit verb dyu, to spring or pounce on some-
thing. 83 In some passages of the Eigveda, the
commentator takes dyu in the sense of shining, but
lie likewise admits that the verbal root may be dyut r

83 The French eclater, originally to break forth, afterwards to shine,
shows a similar transition. Cf. Diez, Lex. Comp. s. v. ' schiantare.'

494 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTE.

not dyu. Thus, Rigveda, i. 113, 14: ' The Dawn,
with her jewels shone forth (adyaut) in all the
corners of the sky; she the bright (devi) opened
the dark cloth (the night). She who awakens us
<jomes near, Ushas with her red horses, on her
swift car.'

If dyu is to be used for nominal, instead of verbal
purposes, we have only to add the terminations of
declension. Thus we get with bhis, the termination
of the instrumental plural, corresponding to Latin bus,
dyu-bhis, meaning on all days, toujours; or the ace.
plural dyun, in anu dyun, day after day.

If dyu is to be used as an adverb, we have only
to add the adverbial termination s, and we get the
Sanskrit dyu-s in purvedyus, i.e. on a former
day, yesterday, which has been compared with pro 'izd,
the day before yesterday. The last element, za, cer-
tainly seems to contain the root dyu (cf. %Si-f6s-, i.e.
<X&i-$iosr) ; but za would correspond to Sanskrit dya
(as in adya, to-day), rather than to dyus. This
dyus, however, standing for an original dyut, ap-
pears again in Latin diu, by day, as in noctu diuque,
by night and by day. Afterwards diu 8 * came to
mean a lifelong day, a long while, and then in dius-
cule, a little while, the s reappears. This & stands
for an older t, and this t, too, reappears in diutule, a
little while, and in the comparative diut-ius, longer
(inter dius and inter diu, by day).

In Greek and Latin, words beginning with dy are

84 In dum, this day, then, while; in nondum, not yet (pas encore, i.e.
hanc horam) ; in donicum, dome, now that, lorsque ; and in denique, and
now, lastly, the same radical element dyu, in the sense of day, has been
suspected; likewise in biduum. In Greek 5^ (Alcman uses Sow, i.e.
?ifa/), long, 5^, now, have been referred to the same source.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITEK, TYR. 495

impossible. Where Sanskrit shows an initial dy,
we find in Greek that either dy is changed to z, or
the y is dropped altogether, leaving simply d. S5
Even in Greek we find that dialects vary between
dia and za ; we find .ZEolic 86 zabdllo, instead of dia-
bdllo, and the later Byzantine corruption of didbolus
appears in Latin as zdbulus, instead of didbolus.
Where, in Greek, initial z varies dialeetically with
initial d, we shall find generally that the original
initial consonants were dy. If, therefore, we meet
in Greek with two such forms as Zeus and Boeotian
Deus, we may be certain that both correspond to the
Sanskrit Dyu, raised by Gunato Dyo. This form,
dyo, exists in Sanskrit, not in the nominative sin-
gular, which byVriddhi is raised to Dyaus, nom.
plur. Dyava/i, but in such forms as the locative
dyavi 87 (for dyo-i), &c.

In Latin, initial dy is represented by j; so that
Juin Jupiter corresponds exactly with Sanskrit Dyo.
Jovis, on the contrary, is a secondary form, and
would in the nominative singular represent a San-
skrit form Dyavi/L Traces of the former existence
of an initial dj in Latin have been discovered in
Diovis, according to Varro (L. L. v. 10, 20), an old
Italian name for Jupiter, that has been met with

85 See Schleicher, Zur Vergleichenden Sprachengeschichte, p. 40.

86 Mehlhorn, Griechische Grammatik, 110.

87 The ace. singular dyam, besides divam, is a mere corruption of
dyavam, like gam for gavam. The coincidence of dyam with the Greek
ace. sing. Tftv is curious. Cf. Leo Meyer, in Zuhn's Zeitschrift, v. 373.
Zetfj' also is mentioned as an accusative singular. As to nominatives,
such as 7,-fjs and Zds, gen. Zavr6s, they are too little authenticated to
warrant any conjectures as to their etymological character. See Curtius,
Grundzuge, ii. p. 188.

496 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYR.

under the same form in Oscan inscriptions. Vejovis,
too, an old Italian divinity, is sometimes found spelt
Vediovis, dat. Vediovi, ace. Vediovem.

That the Greek Zen, Zenos, belongs to the same
family of words, has never been doubted ; but there
has been great diversity of opinion as to the etymo-
logical structure of the word. I explain Zen, as well
as Latin Jan, the older form of Janus, as representing
a Sanskrit dyav-axi, formed like Pan, from the root
pu, raised to pav-aii. 88 Now as yuvan, juvenis, is
contracted to jun in junior, so dy a van would in Latin
become Jan, following the third declension, 85 or, under
a secondary form, Jdn-us. Janus-pater, in Latin, was
used as one word, like Jupiter. He was likewise
called Junonius and Quirinus* and was, as far as we
can judge, another personification of Dyu, the sky,
with special reference, however, to morning, the be-
ginning of the day (Janus matutinus), and later to
the spring, the beginning of the year. The month
of January owes its name to him. Now as Ju : Zeu =
Jan : Zen, only that in Greek Zen remained in the
third or consonantal declension, instead of migrating,
as it might have done, under the form Zenos, ou, into
the second. The Latin Jun-6, Jun-on-is, would cor-
respond to a Greek Zenon, as a feminine.

The second form, DIY, appears in Sanskrit in the
oblique cases, gen. divas, dat. dive, inst. diva, ace.
divam, &c. For instance (Rv. i. 50, 11), '0 Sun,
that risest now, and mountest up to the higher sky

88 Tertullian, ApoL c. 10 : 'a Jano vel Jane, ut Salii volunt.' Hartung,
Religioji der Homer, ii. 218. Cf. Kuhn, Zeitsckrift, vii. p. 80.
88 See Chips, ii. 162.
M Gell. v. 12, 5.

DTATJS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTE. 497

(uttaram divam, fern.), destroy the pain of my
heart and my paleness ! '

Rv. i. 54, 3 : ' Sing to the mighty Dyu (dive bri-
hate, masc.) a mighty song.'

Rv. i. 7, 3 : 'Indra made the sun rise to the sky
(divi), that he might see far and wide ; he burst
open the rock for the cows.'

These forms are most accurately represented in the
Greek oblique case, DiFos, DiFi, DiFa.

In Latin the labial semi-vowel, the so-called di-
gamma, is not necessarily dropt, as we saw in Jovis,
Jovem, &c. It is dropped, however, in Diespiter,
and likewise in dium for divum, sky, from which
Diana, instead of Divdna, the heavenly (originally
Deiana), while in dw-mus the final v of the root div
is preserved.

In Sanskrit there are several derivatives of div,
such as diva (neuter), sky, or day; divasa (m. n.),
sky and day; divya, heavenly; dina (m. n.), day,
according to Benfey, from div an a. In Lithuanian
\ve find diena. The Latin duum in biduum and tri-
duum, is the same as Sanskrit divam, while dies
would correspond to a Sanskrit divas, nom. sing,
divas, masc. Nun dinae corresponds to dina.

If, lastly, we raise div by Gu^ia, we get the San-
skrit deva, originally bright, afterwards god. It is
curious that this, the etymological meaning of deva,
is passed over in the Dictionary of Boehtlingk and
Roth. It is clearly passed over intentionally, and
in order to show that in all the passages where d^va
occurs in the Veda it may be translated by gou or
divine. That it may be so translated would be difficult
to disprove ; but that there are many passages where

ii. E- K

498 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYR.

the original meaning of bright is more appropriate,
can easily be established. Rv. i. 50, 8 : ' The seven
Harits (horses) carry thee on thy chariot, brilliant
(deva) Sun, thee with flaming hair, far-seeing!'
No doubt we might translate the divine Sun ; but fche
explanation of the commentator in this and similar
passages seems more natural and more appropriate.
What is most interesting in the V e d a is exactly this
uncertainty of meaning, the half-physical and half-
spiritual intention of words such as deva. In Latin
deus no longer means brilliant, but simply god.
The same applies to theds in Greek, to diewas in
Lithuanian.

In Sanskrit we can still watch the formation of
the general name for deity. The principal objects of
the religious poetry of the Yedic bards were those
bright beings, the Sun, the Sky, the Day, the Dawn,
the Morn, the Spring who might all be called deva,
brilliant. These were soon opposed to the powers of
night and darkness, sometimes called adeva, lite-
rally, not bright, then ungodly, evil, mischievous.
This contrast between the bright, beneficent, divine,
and the dark, mischievous, demoniacal beings, is of
very ancient date. Druh, 91 mischief, is used as a
name of darkness or the night, and the Dawn is said
to drive away the hateful darkness of Druh (vii. 75,
1 ; see also i. 48, 8 ; 48, 15; 92, 5; 113, 12). The
Adityas are praised for preserving man from Druh
(viii. 47, J), and Maghavan or Indra is implored

91 See Kuhn, Zeitschrift, i. 179 and 193, where Oc\yu,
Zend Drukhs, G-erman trugen and lugen, are all, with more or less cer-
tainty, traced back to d r u h. In A. S. we find dreoh-lcecan, magicians ;
dry, magician (derived by some from the Celtic dry is, a Druid, a magi-
cian) ; dolh, a wound.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITEE, TYR. 499

to bestow on his worshippers the light of day, after
having driven away the many ungodly Druhs (iii.
31, 19: druha/z, vi yahi bahula/i adevU).
'May he fall into the snares of Druh,' is used as
a curse (vii. 59, 8) ; and in another passage we read,
'The Druhs follow the sins of men' (vii. 61, 5).
As the ghastly powers of darkness, the Druh or
the Eakshas, are called adeva, so the bright gods
are called adruh (vii. 66, 18, Mitra and Varuwa).
Deva being applied to all the bright and beneficent
:manifestations in which the early Aryans discovered
the presence of something supernatural, undecaying,
immortal, it became in time the general name for
what was shared in common by all the different
gods or names of God. It followed, like a shadow,
the growth of the purer idea of the Godhead, and
when that had reached its highest goal it was al-
most the only word which had retained some vitality
in that pure but exhausting atmosphere of thought.
The Adityas, the Vasus, the Asuras, and other
names, had fallen back in the onward race of the
human mind towards the highest conception of the
Divine; the Devas alone remained to express theos,
'deus, God. Even in the Y e d a , where these glimpses
of the original meaning of deva, brilliant, can still
.be caught, deva is likewise used in the same sense
in which the Greeks used the6s. The poet (x. 121, 8)
speaks of

Him who among the gods was alone god.

YaA deveshu adhi devaA ekaA asit.

A last step brings us in Sanskrit to Daiva, de-
rived from deva, and this is used in the later Sans-
-krit to express fate, destiny.

K K 2 *

500 DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR.

There is but little to be said about the correspond-
ing words in the Teutonic branch, fragments of which
have been collected by that thoughtful scholar, Jacob
Grimm. 92 In name the Eddie god Tyr (gen. Tys,
ace. Ty) answers to the Vedic Dyu, and the Old
Norse name for dies Martis is Tysdagr. Although
in the system of the Edda Odhin is the supreme god,
and Tyr his son, traces remain to show that in former
days Tyr, the god of war, was worshipped as the-
principal deity by the Germans. 93 In Anglo-Saxon
the name of the god does no longer occur indepen-
dently, but traces of it have been discovered in
Tiwesdceg, Tuesday. The same applies to Old High-
German, where we find Ziestac for the modern Dien-
stag. Kemble points out names of places in Eng-
land, such as Tewe-sley, Tewing, Tiwes mere, and Tewes
}>orn, and names of flowers, 94 such as the Old Norse
Tysfiola, Tyrlijalm, Tysvffir, as containing . the name-
of the god.

Besides this proper name, Grimm has likewise
pointed out the Eddie ttvar, nom. plur., the gods.

Lastly, whatever may have been said against it, I
think that Zeuss and Grimm were right in connect-
ing the Tuisco mentioned by Tacitus with the Anglo-
Saxon Tiw, which, in Gothic, would have sounded
Tm. 95 The Germans were considered by Tacitus,
and probably considered themselves, as the abori-
ginal inhabitants of their country. In their poems,
which Tacitus calls their only kind of tradition and

92 Deutsche Mythologie, p. 175.

93 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 179.

94 Kemble, Saxons in England, i. p. 351. These had first beea
pointed out by Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, p. 1 80.

93 See Waitz, Deutsche Verfassungs-Geschichte, 2nd ed. vol. i. 1865.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYE. 501

.annals, they celebrated as the divine ancestors of
their race, Tuisco, sprung from the Earth, and his SOE
Mannus. They looked, therefore, like the Greeks, on
the gods as the ancestors of the human family, and
they believed that in the beginning life sprang from
that inexhaustible soil which gives support and nou-
rishment to man, and for which in their simple lan-
guage they could find no truer name than Mother
Earth. It is easy to see that the Mannus here spoken
of by Tacitus as the son of Tuisco, meant originally
man, and was derived from the same root man, to
measure, to think, which in Sanskrit yielded Manu. 96
Man, or, in Sanskrit, Manu, or Man us, was the
proudest name which man could give to himself, the
Measurer, the Thinker, and from it was derived the
Old High- German mennisc, the Modern German
Mensch. This mennisc, like the Sanskrit manushya,
-was originally an adjective, a patronymic, if you
like : it meant the son of man. As soon as mennisc
and manushya became in common parlance the
recognised words for man, language itself supplied
the myth, that Man us was the ancestor of the
Mauushyas. Now Tuisco seems but a secondary
form of Tiu, followed by the same suffix which we
saw in mennisc, and without any change of meaning.
Then why was Tuisco called the father of Mannu ?
.Simply because it was one of the first articles in the
/primitive faith of mankind, that in one sense or other
they had a father in heaven. Hence Mannu was
called the son of Tuisco, and this Tuisco, as we know,
was, originally, the Aryan god of light. These

96 On Manu and Minos, see Kuhn, Zeitschrift, iv. 92. The name of
^Saryata, the son of Manu, could hardly be compared with Kreta.

50'J 1)1 A US, ZEUS, JUPITEE, TTK.

things formed the burden of German songs to whicli
Tacitus listened. These songs they sang before they
went to battle, to stimulate their courage, and to pre-
pare to die. To an Italian ear it must have been a
wild sound, reverberated from their shields, and hence
called barditus (shield-song, Old Norse bardhi, shield).
Many a Roman would have sneered at such poetry
and such music. Not so Tacitus. The emperor
Julian, when he heard the Germans singing their
popular songs on the borders of the Rhine, could
compare them to nothing but the cries of birds of
prey. Tacitus calls them a shout of valour (con-
centus virtutis). He likewise mentions (Ann. ii. 88)
that the Germans still kept up the memory of Armi-
nius in their songs, and he describes (Ann. ii. 65)
their night revellings, where they sang and shouted
till the morning called them to fresh battles.

The names which Tacitus mentions, such as Man-
nus, Tuisco, &c., he could of course repeat by ear
only; and if one considers the difficulties of such <
task, it is extraordinary that these names, as written
down by him, should lend themselves so easily to
etymological explanation. Thus Tacitus states not
only that Mannus was the ancestor of the German
race, but he likewise mentions the names of his three
sons, or rather the names of the three great tribes,
the Ingcevones, Isccevones, and Herminones, who de-
rived their origin from the three sons of Mannus. It
has been shown that the Ingcevones derive their name
from Tng, Yngo, or Ynguio, who in the Edda and in
the Beowulf is mentioned as living first with the
Eastern Danes and then proceeding on his car east-
ward over the sea. There is a northern race, the-

DY-AUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TYR. 503

Ynglings, and their pedigree begins with Yngvi,
Nior&r, Frayr, Fiolnir (Odin), Svegdir, all names of
divine beings. Another genealogy, given in the
Tnglinga-saga, begins with NiorSr, identifies Frayer
with Yngvi, and derives from him the name of the
race.

The second son ofMannus, Isco, has been identified
by Grimm with AsTcr, another name of the first-born
man. Askr means likewise ash-tree, and it has been
supposed that the name ash thus given to the first
man came from the same conception which led the
Greeks to imagine that one of the races of man
sprang from ash-trees (SK fis\iav). Alcuin still uses
the expression, son of the ash-tree, as synonymous
with man. 97 Grimm supposes that the Isccevones
lived near the Rhine, and that a trace of their name
comes out in Asciburgium or Asciburg, on the Rhine,
where, as Tacitus had been wildly informed, an altar
had been discovered dedicated to Ulysses, and with
the name of his father Laertes. 98

The third son of Mannus, Irmino, has a name de-
cidedly German. Irmin was an old Saxon god, from
whom probably both Arminius and the Herminones
derived their names.

The chief interest of these German fables about
Tuisco, Mannus, and his sons, is their religious cha-
racter. They give utterance to the same sentiment
which we find again and again among the Aryan na-
tions, that man is conscious of his descent from hea-
ven and from earth, that he claims kindred with a
father in heaven, though he recognises with equal

97 Ampere, Histoire litteraire de la France, iii. 79.
88 Germania, c, 3.

504 DYAUS, ZEUS, JTTPITEE, TYR.

clearness that he is made of the dust of the earth.
The Hindus knew it when they called Dyu their
father, and Prithivi their mother ; Plato" knew it
when he said that the Earth, as the mother, brought
forth men, but God was the shaper ; Lucretius knew
it when he wrote (ii. 991-95):

Denique coelesti sumus omnes semine oriundi ;

Omnibus ille idem pater est, unde alma liquentis

Unions guttas mater cum terra recepit,

Feta parit nitidas fruges arbustaque laeta

Et genus humanum, parit omnia ssecla ferarum ; 10

and the Germans knew it, though Tacitus tells us
confusedly, that they sang of Mannus as the son of
Tuisco, and of Tuisco as sprung from the earth. This
is what Grimm says of the religious elements hidden
in German mythology : I01

In our own heathen mythology ideas which the human
heart requires before all others, and in which it finds its chief
support, stand forth in bold and pure relief. The highest god
is there a father, old-father, grandfather, who grants to the
living blessing and victory, to the dying a welcome in his own
mansions. Death is called * going home,' Heimgang, return to
our father. By the side of the god stands the highest goddess
as mother, old-mother, grandmother, a wise and pure ances-
tress of the human race. The god is majestic, the goddess

99 Polit. p. 414 : /cal i) 77} avrovs fJ.rfTi}p olaa. aj/Jj/ce oAA' 6 Oebs
7r\dTTuv. Welcker, Griechische Gbtterlehre, i. p. 182. See also J. Muir,
Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, vol. xxiii. part 3, p.
652, note.

100 See Sellar, The Roman Poets of the Republic, p. 276 : ' In fine, we
are all born of the seed of heaven ; that heaven is the common father
of all, from which our bounteous mother earth receives the liquid drops
of rain, and, conceiving, bears fair fruits and luxuriant groves, and the
race of man, and all the generations of wild beasts.'

101 Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie, xl. 1.

DYAUS, ZEUS, JUPITER, TTR. 505

beaming with beauty. Both hold their circuit on earth and
are seen among men, he teaching war and weapons, she sew-
ing, spinning, and weaving. He inspires the poem, she
cherishes the tale.

Let me conclude with, the eloquent words of a
living poet : 102

Then they looked round upon the earth, those simple-
hearted forefathers of ours, and said within themselves,
* Where is the All-Father, if All- Father there be ? Not in
this earth ; for it will perish. Nor in the sun, moon, or stars ;
for they will perish too. Where is He who abideth for ever ? '
Then they lifted up their eyes, and saw, as they thought,
beyond sun, and moon, and stars, and all which changes and
will change, the clear blue sky, the boundless firmament of
heaven.

That never changed; that was always the same. The
clouds and storms rolled far below it, and all the bustle of this
noisy world ; but there the sky was still, as bright and calm
as ever. The All-Father must be there, unchangeable in the
unchanging heaven ; bright, and pure, and boundless like the
heavens ; and like the heavens, too, silent and far off.

So they named him after the heaven, Tuisco the God who
lives in the clear heaven, the heavenly Father. He was the
Father of gods and men ; and man was the son of Tuisco and
Hertha heaven and earth.

102 C. Kingsley, The Good News of God. 1859, p. 241.

506

LECTURE XI.

MYTHS OP THE DAWN.

AFTER having, in my last Lecture, gathered toge-
ther the fragments of the most ancient and most
exalted deity worshipped once by all the members of
the Aryan stock, I shall, to-day, examine some of the
minor deities, in order to find out whether they too
can be referred to the earliest period of Aryan speech
and Aryan thought whether they too existed before
the Aryans broke up in search of new homes; and
whether their memory was preserved more or less
distinctly in later days in the poems of Homer and
the songs of the Ye da. These researches must ne-
cessarily be of a more minute character, and I have
to ask for your indulgence if I here enter into details
which are of little general interest, but which, never-
theless, are indispensable, in order to establish a safe
basis for speculations very apt to mislead even the
most cautious inquirer.

I begin with the myth of Hermes, whose name has
been traced back to the Yedic Sara in a. My learned
friend Professor Kuhn, 1 who was the first to analyse
the meaning and character of Sara ma, arrived at
the conclusion that Sarama meant storm, and that
the Sanskrit word was identical with the Teutonic

1 In Haupt's Zcitschrift fur Deutsches Alterthum, vi. p. 119 seq.

SARA MA, THE DAWN. 507

worm, and with the Greek Jiorme. No doubt the
root of Sarama is sar, to go, but its derivation is
by no means clear, there being no other word in
Sanskrit formed by a ma, and with gun a of the
radical vowel. 2 But admitting that Sarama meant
originally the runner, how does it follow that the
runner was meant for storm? It is true that
Saranyu, masc., derived from the same root, is said
to take in later Sanskrit the meaning of wind and
cloud, but it has never been proved that Saranyu,
fern., had these meanings. The wind, whether as
vata, vayu, marut, pavana, anila, &c., is always
conceived as a masculine in Sanskrit, and the same
applies generally to the other Aryan languages.
This, however, would be no insurmountable objec-
tion, if there were clear traces in the Ye da of
Sarama being endowed with any of the character-
istic qualities of the wind. But if we compare the
passages in which she is mentioned with others in
which the power of the storm is described, we find
no similarity whatever. It is said of Sarama that
she espied the strong stable of the cows (i. 72, 8),
that she discovered the cleft of the rock, that she
went a long journey, that she was the first to hear
the lowing of the cows, and perhaps that she led the
cows out (iii. 31, 6). She did this at the instance of
Indra and the Angiras (i. 62, 3) ; Brihaspati (i.
62, 3) or Indra (iv. 16, 8) split the rock, and recovered
the cows, which cows are said to give food to the
children of man (i. 62, 3 ; 72, 8) ; perhaps, to the

2 See Uwadl-Sutras, ed. Aufrecht, iv. 48. SarmaA, as a substan-
tive, running, occurs Rv. i. 80, 5. The Greek bpp.ri, corresponds wilh
this word in the feminine, but not with sarama.

508 S A HAM A, THE DAWN.

offspring of Sarama herself (i. 62, 3). Sara ma
appears in time before Indra (iv. 16, 8), and she
walks on the right path (iv. 45, 7 and 8).

This is about all that can be learnt from the E i g-
veda as to the character of Sarama, with the ex-
ception of a hymn in the last book, which contains
& dialogue between her and the Pawis, who had
robbed the cows. The following is a translation ot
that hymn :

The Pa w is said : * With what intention did Sarama reach
this place ! for the way is far, and leads tortuously away.
What was your wish with us? How was the night? 3 Ho-w
did you cross the waters of the Rasa? ' (1.)

Sarama said: 'I come, sent as the messenger of Indra,
desiring, O P a n i s, your great treasures ; this preserved me
from the fear of crossing, and thus I crossed the waters of the
Kasa.' (2.)

The Pawis: 'What kind of man is Indra, O Sarama?
What is his look, he as who se messenger thou earnest from
afar ? Let him come hither, and we will make friends with
him, and then he may be the cowherd of our cows.' (3.)

Sarama: ' I do not know that he is to be subdued, for it
is he himself that subdues, he as whose messenger I came
hither from afar. Deep streams do not overwhelm him ; you,
Panis, will lie prostrate, killed by Indra.' (4.)

The Pan is: l These are the cows, O Sarama, which thou
desiredst, flying about the ends of the sky, O darling. Who
would give them up to thee without fighting ? for our weapons
too are sharp.' (5.)

Sarama. 'Though your words, Pawis, be unconquer-

8 Paritakmyais explained in the Dictionary of Boehtlingk and Roth
in the sense of random travelling. It n^ver has that sense in the Veda,
and as Sara ma comes to the Pawis in the morning, the question, how
was the night, is perfectly natural.

THE DAWN. 509-

able, 4 though your wretched bodies be arrowproof, 5 though
the way to you be hard to go, Brihaspati will not bless you
for either.' 6 (6.)

TheParcis: 'That store, Sarama, is fastened to the
rock; furnished with cows, horses, and treasures. Paw is
watch it who are good watchers ; thou art come in vain to this
bright place.' (7.)

Saram& : 'Let only the Rishis come here fired with
Soma, Ay& sya (Indra 7 ) and the ninefold Angiras; they
will divide this stable 8 of cows; then the Pawis will vomit
out this speech.' 9 (8.)

The Pawis: * Art thou, O Saraml, come hither driven by
the violence of the Gods ? Let us make thee our sister, da
not go away again ; we will give thee part of the cows, O
darling.' (9.)

Sarama: 'I know nothing of brotherhood or sisterhood;
Indra knows it and the awful Angiras. They seemed to me
anxious for their cows when I came ; therefore get away from
here, O Parcis, far away.' 10 (10.)

'Go far away, Paw is, far away; let the cows come out
straight ; the cows which B rihaspati found hid away, Soma,
the stones, and the wise Rishis.' n (11.)

In none of these verses is there the slightest
indication of Sarama as the representative of the
storm, nor do the explanations of Indian commenta-
tors, which have next to be considered, point at all
in that direction.

Sayatia, in his commentary on the Rigveda

as en y a, not hurtful, B. R.
anishavya, not to be destroyed, B. R.
Ubhaya, with the accent on the last syllable, is doubtful.
Of. i. 62, 7, and B. R. s. v.
urva is called driUa, Rv. i. 72, 8.

'Will be sorry for their former speech. 10 variyaA, in das Weite,
11 See Aufrecht in ZHf.se/trift dcr Dcntschen Morgcnlandiscken G-esell~
schaft, xiii. 493; xiv. 583.

510 S ARAM A, THE

(i. 6, 5), tells the story of Sara ma most simply.
The cows, he says, were carried off by the Pan is
from the world of the gods and thrown into dark-
ness; Indra, together with the Maruts, or storms,
conquered them.

In the Anukramanika, the index to the Rig-
veda-sanhita (x. 103), the story is related in fuller
detail. It is there said that the cows were hidden
by the demons, the Panis; that Indra sent the
dog of the gods, Sara ma, to look for the cows ; and
that a parley took place between her and the Panis,
which forms the 108th hymn of the last book of the
Rigveda.

Further additions to the story are to be found in
Sayana's Commentary on iii. 31, 5. The cows are
there called the property of the Angiras, and it was
at their instance that Indra sent the dog, and then,
being apprised of their hiding-place, brought them
back to the Angiras. So, at least, says the com-
mentator, while the text of the hymn represents the
seven sages, the Angiras, as taking themselves a
more active part in effecting the breach in the moun-
tain. Again, in his commentary on Ev. x. 108,
Say a n a adds that the cows belonged to Brihas-
p a t i, the chief-priest of I n d r a, that they were stolen
by the P arc- is, the people of Vala, and that Indra,
at Brihaspati's instance, sent the dog Sarama.
The dog, after crossing a river, came to the town
of Yala, and saw the cows in a secret place ; where-
upon the Pan is tried to coax her to stay with them.

As we read the hymn in the text of the Rigveda,
the parley between Sarama and the Pan is would
seem to have ended with Sarama warning the

THE DAWN. 511

robbers to flee before the wrath, of Indra, Brihas-
pati, and the Angiras. But in the Brihad-
devata a new trait is added. It is there said that
although Sarama declined to divide the booty with
the Partis, she asked them for a drink of milk.
After having drunk the milk, she recrossed the
Rasa, and when she was asked after the cows by
Indra, she denied having seen them. Indra
thereupon kicked her with his foot, and she vomited
the milk, and ran back to the Pan is. Indra then
followed her, killed the demons, and recovered the
cows.

This faithlessness of Sarama is not alluded to
in the hymn ; and in another passage, where it is
said that Sarama found food for her offspring
(Rv. i. 62, 3), Say an, a merely states that Sarama,
before going to look for the cows, made a bargain
with Indra that her young should receive milk and
other food, and then proceeded on her journey.

This being nearly the whole evidence on which we
must form our opinion of the original conception of
Sarama, there can be little doubt that she was
meant for the early dawn, and not for the storm. 12
In the ancient hymns of the Rigveda she is never
spoken of as a dog, nor can we find there the slightest
allusion to her canine nature. This is evidently a
later thought, 13 and it is high time that this much-
talked-of greyhound should be driven out of the
Yedic Pantheon. There are but few epithets of

12 In Banffshire the dog-afore-his-maister is the roll or swell of the
sea that often precedes a storm. The dog-ahin's-maister, the swell after
the storm has ceased. "W. G-regor, The Dialect of Banffshire, 1866.

18 It probably arose from Saramey a being used as a name or epithet
of the dogs of Yama. See page 522.

512 SARAMA, THE

Sara ma from which we might form a guess as to-
her character. She is called supadi, having good
feet, or quick, an adjective which never occurs again
in the Eigveda. The second epithet, however,
which is applied to her, subhaga, fortunate, be-
loved, is one she shares in common with the Dawn ;
nay, which is almost a stereotyped epithet of the
Dawn.

But more than this. Of whom is it so constantly
said, as of Sara ma, that she appears before Indra,
that Indra follows her? It is Ushas, the Dawn,
who wakes first (i. 123, 2) ; who comes first to the
morning prayer (i. 123, 2). The Sun follows be-
hind, as a man follows a woman (Rv. i. 115, 2). 14
Of whom is it said, as of Sarama, that she brings
to light the precious things hidden in darkness ? It
is Ush as, the Dawn, who reveals the bright treasures
that were covered by the gloom (i. 123, 6). She
crosses the water unhurt (vi. 64, 4) ; she lays open
the ends of heaven fi. 92, 11) ; those very ends
where, as the Pa?iis said, the cows were to be found.
She is said to break the strongholds and bring back
the cows (vii. 75, 7 ; 79, 4). It is she who, like Sa-
rama, distributes wealth among the sons of men
(i. 92, 3; 123, 3). She possesses the cows (i. 123,
12, &c.); she is even called the mother of the cows
(iv. 52, 2). She is said to produce the cows and to
bring light (i. 124, 5) ; she is asked to open the doors
of heaven, and to bestow on man wealth of cows
(i. 48, 15). The Angiras, we read, asked her for
the cows (vi. 65, 5), and the doors of the dark stable

14 Comparative Mythology, p. 57. Oxford Essays, 1856. Chips from a
German WorksJiop, vol. ii. p. 94.

SABA MA, THE DAWN. 513

are said to be opened by her (iv. 51, 2). In one
place her splendour is said to be spreading as if she
were driving forth cattle (i. 92, 12) ; in another the
splendours of the Dawn are themselves called a drove
of cows (iv. 51, 8 ; 52, 5). Again, as it was said of
Bar a ma, that she follows the right path, the path
which all the heavenly powers are ordained to fol-
low, so it is particularly said of the Dawn that she
walks in the right way (i. 124, 3 ; 113, 12). Nay,
even the Pawis, to whom Sarama was sent to
claim the cows, are mentioned together with Ushas,
the Dawn. She is asked to wake those who worship
the gods, but not to wake the Pan is (i. 124, 10).
In another passage (iv. 51, 3) it is said that the
Pa n is ought to sleep in the midst of darkness, while
the Dawn rises to bring treasures for man.

It is more than probable, therefore, that Sarama
was but one of the many names of the Dawn ; it is
almost certain that the idea of storm never entered
into the conception of her. The myth of which we
have collected the fragments is clear enough. It is
a reproduction of the old story of the break of day.
The bright cows, the rays of the sun or the rain-
clouds for both go by the same name have been
stolen by the powers of darkness, by the Night and
her manifold progeny. Gods and men are anxious
for their return. But where are they to be found ?
They are hidden in a dark and strong stable, or
scattered along the ends of the sky, and the robbers
will not restore them. At last, in the farthest dis-
tance, the first signs of the Dawn appear ; she peers
about, and runs with lightning quickness, it may be,

II. L L

514 SARAMA, THE DAWN.

like a hound after a scent, 15 across the darkness of
the sky. She is looking for something, and, follow-
ing the right path, she has found it. She has heard
the lowing of the cows, and she returns to her start-
ing-place with more intense splendour. 16 After her
return Indra arises, the god of light, ready to do
battle in good earnest against the gloomy powers,'
to break open the strong stable in which the bright
cows were kept, and to bring light, and strength,
and life back to his pious worshippers. This is the
simple myth of Sarama; composed originally of a
few fragments of ancient speech, such as 'the
Pan is stole the cows,' i. e. the light of day is gone ;
'Sarama looks for the cows/ i. e. the Dawn is
spreading; 'Indra has burst the dark stable,' i. e.
the sun has risen.

All these are sayings or proverbs peculiar to India,
and no trace of Saram& has yet been discovered in
the mythological phraseology of other nations. But
let us suppose that the Greeks said, 'Sarama her-
self has been carried off by Pawi, but the gods will
destroy her hiding-place and bring her back.' This,
too, would originally have meant no more than that
the Dawn who disappears in the morning will come
back in the gloaming, or with the light of the next
day. The idea that Parz/i wished to seduce Sara-
ma from her allegiance to Indra, may be discovered
in the ninth verse of the Vedic dialogue, though in

15 Erigone, the early -born, also called Aletis, the rover, when looking
for the dead body of her father, Ikarius (the father of Penelope is his
namesake), is led by a dog, Maira. See Jacobi's Mythologie, s. v.
' Ikarius.'

16 Eeriboia, or Eriboia, betrays to Hermes the hiding-place where Are
was kept a prisoner. II. v. 385.

HELENA, THE DAWN. 515

India it does not seem to have given rise to any
further myths. But many a myth that only ger-
minates in the Veda may be seen breaking forth in
full bloom in Homer. If, then, we may be allowed
a guess, we should recognise in Helen, the sister of
the Dioskuroi, the Indian Sara ma, their names being
phonetically identical, 17 not only in every consonant
and vowel, but even in their accent. Apart from all
mythological considerations, Sarama in Sanskrit is
the same word as Helena in Greek ; and unless we
are prepared to ascribe such coincidences as Dyaus
and Zeus, Varuwa and Uranos, $arvara and Cer-
berus, to mere accident, we are bound to trace
Sarama and Heiene back to some point from which
both could have started in common. The siege of
Troy is but a repetition of the daily siege of the East
by the solar powers that every evening are robbed of
their brightest treasures in the West. That siege,
in its original form, is the constant theme of the
hymns of the Ye da. Sarama, it is true, does not
yield in the Veda to the temptation of Pa^i, yet
the first indications of her faithlessness are there,
and the equivocal character of the twilight which
she represents would fully account for the further
development of the Greek myth. In the Iliad, Briseis,
the daughter of Brises, is one of the first captives
taken by the advancing army of the West. In the
Veda, before the bright powers reconquer the light
that had been stolen by Paw i, they are said to have
conquered the offspring of Brisaya. That daughter
of Brises is restored to Achilles when his glory begins
to set, just as all the first loves of solar heroes return

17 As to Sk, 7 Greek n, see Curtius, Grundzuge, ii. 121

L L ?

516 HELENA, THE DAWN.

to them in the last moments of their earthly career. 18
And as the Sanskrit name Paw is 19 betrays the former
presence of an r, 20 Paris himself might possibly be
identified with the robber who tempted Sara ma. I
la}' no stress on Helen calling herself a dog (II. vi.
344), but that the beautiful daughter of Zeus, (duhitd
Diva/&), the sister of the DiosJcuroi, was one of the
many personifications of the Dawn, I have never
doubted. Whether she is carried off by Theseus or
by Paris, she is always reconquered for her rightful
husband ; she meets him again at the setting of his
life, and dies with him pardoned and glorified. This
is the burden of many a Dawn myth, and it is the
burden of the story of Helen.

The only objection that might be made is that
'EXfVtt is among those words which, according to the
testimony of Greek and Latin grammarians, had an
initial digamma. 21 Because the so-called digamma
(the F, the old vau, the Latin F) corresponds in most

18 See Cox, Tales of Argos and Thebes, Introduction, p. 90.

19 Cf. Benfey, in Kuhn's Zeitsckrift, viii. 1-20, who traces Paris and
Priamos to the same root.

20 I state this very hesitatingly, because the etymology of Pa ni is as
doubtful as that of Paris, and it is useless almost to compare mytholo-
gical names, without first discovering their etymological intention. Mr.
Cox, in his Introduction to the Tales of Argos and Thebes (p. 90), endea-
vours to show that Paris belongs to the class of bright solar heroes. Yet
if the germ of the Iliad is the battle between the solar and nocturnal
powers, Paris surely belongs to the latter, and he whose destiny it is to
kill Achilles in the Western gates,

rip (Ire Key <re Tldpis ical <J>ot)3os 'A-jr6\\(av

could hardly have been himself of solar or vernal lineage.

21 Cf. Tryph. iraQ. Ae. 11. Priscianus, i. p. 21 ; xiii. p. 574. Ahrens,
De Graces Lingua Dialectis, lib. i. p. 30 and 31. Mehlhorn, Griechischc
Grammatik, 10, note 5: &s FeA^Tj Kal Fdva ical FOIKOS ical Favrjp Ka.1
v6\\a rotavra. Dion. Hal. A.E.

SARAH A, THE DAWN. 517

cases to a Sanskrit and Latin v, it has become the
fashion to use digamma as almost synonymous with
the labial semivowel v in Greek. Benfey, however, in
his article on s/cdrspos (in Kuhn's Zeitschrift fur Ver-
gleichende Sprachforschung, vol. viii. p. 321, and
again vol. ix. p. 99), has pointed out that what is
generally, though not correctly, called digamma in
Greek, represents at least three different letters in
the cognate languages, v, s, y. These three letters
became evanescent in later Greek ; and when either
on the evidence of the Homeric metre, or on the evi-
dence of grammarians, or even on the evidence of
inscriptions, certain Greek words are said to have
had an initial digamma, we must be prepared to find,
corresponding to this so-called digamma, not only
the v, but likewise the s and y in Sanskrit and Latin.
Greek scholars are apt to put F wherever the metre
proves the former presence of some one initial con-
sonant. However, when we find Fg, the F here
represents a lost s, as proved by Latin sex, Sanskrit
shaf. Thus Yvos is svos, and points to Latin senex,
Sanskrit sana. When we find in Homer Ssbs a>$, the
os is lengthened because &s had an initial y, as proved
by Sanskrit yat. In the same manner, the fact that
"Dionysius quotes FEXera, nay, even the occurrence
of F EXeVa in ancient inscriptions, would by no means
prove that Helena was originally Velena, and was de-
rived from the root svar, but only that if the same
word existed in the cognate languages, it might there
begin with v 9 s, or y. The statement of Priscianus,
' Sciendum tamen quod hoc ipsum (digamma) .ZEoles 22

22 Ahrens, De Dial. Acol. p. 22. ' Tale est quod Priscianus (i. p. 22)
et Melampus (Bekker, 777, 15) semper apud 2Eolos asperum in Digamma
mutari tradunt.'

518 S AS AM ETA, THE DAWN-SON.

quidem ubique loco aspirationis ponebant effugientes
spiritus asperitatem,' is more correct than was at
one time supposed even by comparative grammarians ;
for as the asper in Greek frequently represents an
original s or y, the .^Eolic digamma became with
Greek scholars the exponent of v and y, as well as
of the v for which it stood originally. 23

But who was Sarameya? His name certainly
approaches very near to Hermeias, or Hermes, and
though the exact form corresponding to Sarameya
in Greek would be Heremeias, yet in proper names a
slight anomaly like this may pass. Unfortunately,
however, the Rigveda tells us even less of Sara-
meya than of Sara ma. It never calls any special
deity the son of Sarama, but allows us to take the
name in its appellative sense, namely, connected
with Sarama, or the Dawn. If Hermeias is Sara-
meya, it is but another instance of a mythological
germ withering away in one country, and spreading
most luxuriantly in another. D y au s in the Ye d a is
the mere shadow of a deity if compared with the
Greek Zeus; Varu^a, on the contrary, has assumed
much greater proportions in India than Uranos in

23 How little weight critical scholars attach to the statements of early
grammarians as to the presence of a digamma in certain Greek words,
may be seen from the following quotations : Curtius, in his Grundzuge,
p. 276, speaking of arfp, which, according to Dionysius, possessed an
initial digamma, says : ' Dionysius is a thoroughly suspicious witness,
for he imagines that the digamma can be added at random.' And
again in his Studien zur Griech. und Latein GrammatiJc, vol. i. p. 144, he
says: 'At optime Kirchhoffius (Studien, p. 61), earn in suspitionem
vocavit. Grrammaticorum igitur testimoniis.' Tryphon. irad. Ae|. 11.
Mus. crit. Cant. t. i. p. 34 : Trpoa-riOfrai Se icdl rb ^iyap.p.a irapd re "Icaffi
Kal Acapievffi Kal Ad.Kwa'iv, olov &va fava, 'E\4va feA.eVo, cf. Priscian,
i. p. 13 : 'nihil tribuendum esse, vix est quod moneam.'

SABAMEYA, THE DAWN-SON. 519

Greece, and the same applies to Vritra, as com-
pared with the Greek Orthros. But though we know
so little about Sarameya in the Veda, the little we
know of him is certainly compatible with a rudimen-
tary Hermes. As Sarameya would be the son of the
twilight, or, it may be, the first breeze of the dawn,
so Hermes is born early in the morning. (Horn.
'Hym. Merc.' 17.) As the Dawn in the Yeda is
brought by the bright Harits, so Hermes is called
the leader of the Charites (rjyEfjLow Xapmwv). In the
seventh book of the Rigveda (vii. 54, 55) we find
a number of verses strung together as it would seem
at random, to be used as magical formulae for sending
people to sleep. 24 The principal deity invoked is
Vastoshpati, which means lord or guardian of the
house, a kind of Lar. In two of these verses, the
being invoked, whatever it be, is called Sarameya,
and is certainly addressed as a dog, the watch-dog of
the house. In the later Sanskrit also, sarameya is
said to mean dog. Sarameya, if it is here to be
taken as the name of a deity, would seem to have
been a kind of tutelary deity, the peep of day con-
ceived as a person, watching unseen at the doors of
heaven during the night, and giving his first bark in
the morning. The same morning deity would natu-
rally have been supposed to watch over the houses of
man. The verses addressed to him do not tell us
much:

Guardian of the house, destroyer of evil, who assumest all
forms, be to us a helpful friend. (1.)

When thou, bright Sarameya, openest thy teeth, O red

24 In viii. 47, 14, Ushas is asked to carry off sleeplessness.

520 SAEAM^TA, THE DAWN-SON.

one, spears seem to glitter on thy jaws as thou swallowest.
Sleep, sleep. (2.)

Bark at the thief, SOT am 7 a, or at the robber, O restless
one! Now thou barkest at the worshippers of Indra; why
dost thou distress us? Sleep, sleep !' (3.)

It is doubtful whether the guardian of the house
(Vastoshpati), addressed in the first verse, is in-
tended to be addressed in the next verses; it is
equally doubtful whether Sarameya is to be taken
as a proper name at all, or whether it simply means
e<nos, bright, or speckled like the dawn. But if
Sarameya is a proper name, and if he is meant for
the guardian of the house, no doubt it is natural to
compare him with the Hermes propylaeos, prothyraeos,
and pronaos, and with the Hermae in public places and
private houses in Greece. 25 Dr. Kuhn thinks that he

25 M. Michel Bral, who has so ably analysed the myth of Cacus
(Hercule et Cacus ; fitude de Mytliologic comparee, Paris, 1863), and whose
more recent essay, Le Mythe tfCEdipe, constitutes a valuable contribu-
tion to the science of mythology, has sent me the following note on
Hermes as the guardian of houses and public places, which, with his kind
permission, I beg to submit to the consideration of my readers :

' A propos du dieu Hermes, je demande a vous soumettre quelques rap-
prochements. II me semble que V explication d'Hermes comme dieu du
cre'puscule n'epuise pas tous les attributs de cette divinite 1 . II est encore
le protecteur des propriete's, il preside aux trouvailles : les bornes placets
dans les champs, dans les rues et a la porte des temples, ont re$u, au moins
en apparence, son nom. Est-ce bien la le mfeme dieu, ou n'avons-nous
pas encore ici un exemple de ces confusions de mots dont vous avez t
le premier a signaler 1'importance ? Voici comment je m'explique cet
amalgame.

' Nous avons en grec le mot fpua, qui d&signe une pierre, une borne, un
poteau ; fpniv et tpnis, le pied du lit ; cppcucfs, des tas de pierres ; ep/adv,
un bane de sable ; fpnartfa vent dire je charge un vaisseau de son lest,
et fppo'yXvtyck designe d'une maniere generale un tailleur de pierres.
II est clair que tous ces mots n'ont rien de commun avec le dieu
Hermes.

' Mais nous trouvons d'un autre cote le diminutif eppttiiov ou

HERMEIAS, THE DAWN-SON. 521

can discover in Sarameya the god of sleep, but in
our hymn he would rather seem to be a disturber of
sleep. One other coincidence, however, might be
pointed out. The guardian of the house is called a
destroyer of evil, more particularly of illness, and the
same power is sometimes ascribed to Hermes. (Paus.
ix. 22, 2.)

We may admit, then, that Hermes and Sarameya
started from the same point, but their history diverged
very early. Sarameya hardly attained a definite
personality, Hermes grew into one of the principal
gods of Greece. While Sara ma, in India, stands
on the threshold that separates the gods of light
from the gods of darkness, carrying messages from
one to the other, and inclining sometimes to the one,
sometimes to the other, Hermes, the god of the
twilight, betrays his equivocal nature by stealing,
though only in fan, the herds of Apollo, but restoring
them without the violent combat that is waged for
the same herds in India between Indra, the bright
god, and Yala, the robber. In India the Dawn

que les anciens traduisent par " petite statue d'Hermes." Je crois que
c'estce mot qui a servi de transition et qxii nous a valu ces pierres gros-
sierement taille'es, dans lesquelles on a voulu reconnaitre le dieu, devenu
des-lors le patron des proprietaires, malgre sa reputation de voleur.
Quant a epuaiov, qui designe les trouvailles, je ne sais si c'est a 1'id^e
d'Hermes ou a celle de borne (comme marquant la limite de la propriete 1 )
qu'il faut rapporter ce mot.

' II resterait encore a expliquer un autre attribut d'Hermes celui
de 1' eloquence. Mais je ne me rends pas bien compte de la vraie nature
du rapport qui unit le mot Hermes avec les mots comme tpfjLijvetico, ep/j.-rtvffa.

' J'ai oubli6 de vous indiquer d'ou je fais venir les mots comme ep/za,
etc. Je les crois derives du verbe f'lpya, epjw, en sorte que epfj.a serait
pour epyf-ta, et de la meme famille que epicos. L'espritrude est-il primi-
tif ? Cela ne me parait pas certain. Peut-etre ces mots sont-ils de la
memp famille qua le latin arcere, erctum, ercules, etc.' (See Lectures,
vol. i. p. 108.)

522 HERMEIAS, THE DAWN-SON.

brings the light, in Greece the Twilight is itself
supposed to have stolen it, or to hold back the light, 26
and Hermes, the twilight, surrenders the booty when
challenged by the sun-god Apollo. Afterwards the
fancy of Greek poets takes free flight, and out of
common clay gradually models a divine image. But
even in the Hermes of Homer and other poets, we
can frequently discover the original traits of a Sara-
meya, if we take that word in the sense of twilight,
and look on Hermes as a male representative of the
light of the morning. He loves Herse, the dew, and
Aglauros, her sister ; among his sons is Kephalos, the
head of the day. He is the herald of the gods, so is
the twilight, so was Sara ma, the messenger of
I n d r a. He is the spy of the night, vvfCTo? OTTWTT^T^) ;
he sends sleep and dreams ; the bird of the morning,
the cock, stands by his side. Lastly, he is the guide
of travellers, and particularly of the souls who travel
on their last journey ; he is the Psychopompos. And
here he meets again, to some extent, with the Vedic
Sarameya. The Vedic poets have imagined two
dogs belonging to Yam a, the lord of the departed
spirit. They are called the messengers of Yam a,
bloodthirsty, broad-snouted, brown, four-eyed, pale,
and sarameya, the dawn-children. The departed is
told to pass them by on his way to the Fathers, who
are rejoicing with Ya ma; Yam a is asked to pro-
tect the departed from these dogs ; and, finally, the
dogs themselves are implored to grant life to the
living, and to let them see the sun again. These two

26 A similar idea is expressed in the Veda (v. 79, 9), where Us has
is asked to rise quickly, that the sun may not hurt her with his light,
like a thief.

HERMEIAS, THE DAWN-SON. 523

dogs represent one of the lowest of the many concep-
tions of morning and evening, or, as we should say,
of Time, unless we comprehend in the same class of
ideas the 6 two white mice/ which, in the fable, gnaw
the root which a man had laid hold of when, followed
by a furious elephant, he rushed into a well and saw
at the bottom the dragon with open jaws, and the four
serpents in the four corners of the well. The furious
elephant is explained by the Buddhist moralist as
death, the well as the earth, the dragon as hell, the
four serpents as the four elements, the root of the
shrub as the root of human life, the two white mice
as sun and moon, which gradually consume the life
of man. 27 In Greece, Hermes, a child of the Dawn,
with its fresh breezes, was said to carry off the soul
of the departed ; in India, Morning and Evening, 28
like two dogs, were fabled to watch for their prey,
and to lay hold of those who could not reach the
blessed abode of the Father. Greece, though she
recognised Hermes as the guide of the souls of the
departed, did not degrade him to the rank of a
watch- dog of Hades. These watch-dogs, Kerberos
and Orthros, represent, however, like the two dogs
of Yam a, the gloom of the morning and evening,

27 Cf.Benfey, Pantschatantra, vol. i.p. 80; vol. ii.p. 528. Stanislas
Julien, Les Avaddnas, Comtes et Apologues Indiens (Paris, 1859), vol. i.
pp. 132, 190. Dr. Rost, The Chinese and Japanese Repository, No. v
p. 217. History of Barlaam and Josaphat, ascribed to John of Damascus
(about 740 A.D.), chap, xii.; Homayun Ndmek, cap. iv.; Gesta Romanorum
(Swane's translation, vol. ii. No. 88); Grimm, Deutsche Mythologie,
p. 758. See M. M., On the Migration of Fables, in the Contemporary
Review, July, 1870, p. 590.

28 Day and Night are called the outstretched arms of death,
Kaushitaki br. ii. 9: atha mrityor ha va etau vra^abahu,
yad ahoratre.

524 KERBEROS AND ORTHROS.

here conceived as hostile and demoniacal powers.
Orthros is the dark spirit that is to be fought by the
Sun in the morning, the well-known Sanskrit Yritr a;
but Hermes, too, is said to rise 6rthrios, in the gloom
of the morning. Kerberos is the darkness of night,
to be fought by HeraUes, the Night herself being
called $arvari 29 in Sanskrit. Hermes, as well as
Kerberos, is called trikephalos, with three heads,
and so is Trisiras, the brother of Sarafiyw, another
name of the Dawn. 31

There is one point still to be considered, namely,
whether, by the poets of the Veda, the Dawn is ever
conceived as a dog, and whether there is in the hymns
themselves any foundation for the later legends which
speak of Sarama as a dog. Professor Kuhn thinks
that the word sun a, which occurs in the Yeda, is a
secondary form of s van, meaning dog, and that such
passages as 'sunam huvema maghavanam In-
dram' (iii. 31, 22) should be translated, 'Let us in-
voke the dog, the mighty Indra.' If this were so, we
might prove, no doubt, that the Dawn also was spoken
of as a dog. For we read (iv. 3, 11) : e $unarn naraA
pari sadan ushasam,' 'Men surrounded the dog,
the Dawn.' But does sun a ever mean dog? Never,
it would seem, if used by itself. In all the passages

See M. M., '1st Bellcrophon Vritrahan?' in Kuhn's Zeitschrift,
v. 149.

80 Hermes trikephalos ; Gerhard, Gr. Myth. 281, 8.

81 That Kerberos is connected with the Sanskrit sarvari, night, was
pointed out by me in the Transactions of thePhUol. Soc., April 14, 1848.
Cabala, a corruption of sarvara, is vindicated as the name of day-
break, syama, black, as the name of nightfall, by the Kaushitaki-
brahmawa, ii. 9 seq. (Ind. Stud. ii. 295.) This, no doubt, is an
artificial explanation, but it shows a vague recollection of the original
meaning of the two dogs.

SUNASIRAU. 525

where this word sun am occurs, it means for the sake
of happiness, auspiciously. 32 It is particularly used
with verbs meaning to invoke (hve), to worship
(parisad), to pray (id). 33 There is not a single pas-
sage where sun am could be taken for dog. But
there are compounds in which sun a would seem to
have that meaning. In viii. 46, 28, /Sun a- is hi tarn
most likely means carried by dogs, and in $unasirau
we have the name of a couple of deities, the former
of which is said to be 8 u n a, the latter Sir a. Yaska
recognises in this Sun a a name of Y ay u, or the wind,
in Sir a a name of Aditya, or the sun. Another
authority, $aunaka, declares $una to be a name
of Indra, Sira a name of Yayu. Asvalayana
($rauta-sutra, ii. 20) declares that $unasirau
may be meant for Yayu, or for Indra, or for Indra
and Surya together. This shows, at all events, that
the meaning of the two names was doubtful, even
among early native theologians. The fact is that the
$unasirau occur but twice in the Eigveda, in a
harvest hymn. Blessings are pronounced on the
plough, the cattle, the labourers, the furrow, and
among the rest the following words are addressed to
the /Sunasirau:

O Sunasirau, be pleased with this prayer. The milk which
you make in heaven, pour it down upon this earth.' (5.)

And again:

May the ploughshares cut the earth with good luck ! May

32 i. 117, 18 ; iii. 31,22 ; iv. 3, 11; 57, 4; 57, 8;vi. 16, 4; x. 102,8;
126, 7 ; 160, 5.

33 Of svan, we find the nominative sv (vii. 55, 5; x. 86, 4); the
accusative sva"nam (i. 161, 13; ix. 101, 1; 101, 13); the genitive
sunaA(i. 182, 4; iv. 18, 3; viii. 55,3); thenom. dual svna (ii. 39, 4),
and vnau, x. 14, 10 ; 14, 11. Also svpadaA, x. 16, 6.

326 STJNASIRAU.

the ploughers with the oxen follow with good luck ! May
Pargranya (the god of rain) give good luck with fat and honey 1
May the /Sunasirau give us good luck !

Looking at these passages, and at the whole hymn
from which they are taken, I cannot agree with Dr.
Both, who in his notes to the Nirukta thinks that
Sir a may in this compound mean the ploughshare,
and /Sun a some other part of the plough. Sir a
might have that meaning, but there is nothing to
prove that sun a ever meant any part of the plough.
It will appear, if we read the hymn more attentively,
that its author clearly addresses the two $unasirau
differently from the plough, the ploughshare, the
furrow. They are asked to send rain from heaven,
and they are addressed together with Par*/ any a,
himself a deity, the god of rain. There is another
verse quoted by Asvalayana, in which Indra is
called /Sun a sir a. 34 What the exact meaning of the
word is we cannot tell. It may be /Sun a, as Dr.
Kulin would suggest, the dog, whether meant for
Vayu or Indra, and Sira, the sun or the furrow;
or it may be a very old name for the dog-star ; called
the Dog and the Sun, and in that case sir a, or its
derivative s airy a, would give us the etymon of
Seirios. 35 But all this is doubtful, and there is nothing,
at all events, to justify us in ascribing to suna the
meaning of dog in any passage of the Veda.

In the course of our investigations as to the original
meaning of Sara ma, we had occasion to allude to

34 Indram vayam sunasiram asmin ya^ne havdmahe, sa
va^eshu pra no svishat.

15 Curtius, Gfrundzuge, ii. 128, derives Sextos from svar, which, how-
ever, would have given fffyios or crepios, rather than <relpios.

SARAA'YU, THE DAWN. 527

anothei name, derived from the same root sar, and
to which the meaning of cloud and wind is equally
ascribed by Professor Kuhn, namely, Saranyu, fern.

Where saranyu is used as a masculine, its mean-
ing is by no means clear. In the 61st hymn of the
tenth book it is almost impossible to find a con-
tinuous thread of thought. The verse in which
Saratiyu occurs is addressed to the kings Mitra
and Varuna, and it is said there that Saranyu
went to them in search of "the cows. The com-
mentator here explains Sar any u unhesitatingly by
Yama (saranasila). In the next verse Saranyu
is called a horse, just as Saranyu (fern.) is spoken
of as a mare ; but he is called the son of him, i. e.
according to Say an a, of Varuna. 36 In iii. 32, 5,
Indra is said to cause the waters to come forth to-
gether with the Saranyu s, who are here mentioned
very much like the Angiras in other places, as
helpers of Indra in the great battle against Vritra
or V a la. In i. 62, 4, the common epithets of the
Angiras (navagva and dasagva) are applied to
the Sar any us, and there too Indra is said to have
torn Vala assunder with the Sar any us. I believe,
therefore, we must distinguish between the Sara-
nyus in the plural, a name of like import as that of
the Angiras, possibly as that of the Maruts, and
Saranyu in the singular, a name of the son of
Varuna or of Yama.

Of Saranyu, too, as a female deity, we learn but
little from the hymns of the Eigveda, and though

36 He is called there ^arawyu, from a root which in Greek may have
yielded Gorgo. Cf. Kuhn, Zeitschrift, i. 460. Erinys and Grorgons are
almost identical in Greek.

528 SAEA^YTj, THE DAWN,.

we ought always to guard against mixing up the
ideas of the Eishis with those of their com-
mentators, it must be confessed that in the case of
Sarawyu we should hardly understand what is said
of her by the E is his, without the explanations given
by later writers, such as Yaska, $aunaka, and
others. The classical and often-quoted passage
about Sarafiyu is found, Ev. x. 17, 2 :

Tvashtfar makes a wedding for his daughter, thus saying
the whole world comes together; the mother of Yama, being
wedded, the wife of the great Vivas vat has perished.

They hid the immortal from the mortals ; making one like
hef, they have given her to Vivasvat. But she bore the
Asvins when this happened, and Saranyu left two couples 37
behind.

Yaska (xii. 10) explains: 'Sarawyu, the daughter
of Tvashtfar, had twins from Vivasvat, the sun.
She placed another like her in her place, changed
her form into that of a horse, and ran off. Vivasvat,
the sun, likewise assumed the form of a horse, fol-
lowed her and embraced her. Hence the two Asvins
were born, and the substitute (Savarwa) bore
Manu.' Yaska likewise states that the first twins
of Sarawyu are by etymologists supposed to be
Madhyama and Madhyamika Va&, by mytholo-
gists Yama and Yami; and he adds at the end,
in order to explain the disappearance of Sara^yu,
that the night vanishes when the sun rises. This
last remark, however, is explained or corrected by
the commentator, 38 who says that Ushas, the Dawn,

37 One couple, according to Dr. Kuhn, Z&itschrift fur Vergleichende
Sprachforschung, i. p. 441. A

38 Sankshepato Bhashyakaro 'rtham niraha. Adityasya
'Uska ^ayasa, sadityodaye 'ntardhiyate. It is possible, of

SAEA^YU, THE DAWN. 529'

was the wife of Aditya, the sun, and that she, and
not the night, disappears at the time of sunrise.

Before proceeding farther, I shall add a few parti-
culars from $aunaka's Brihaddevata. He says
that Tvashtfar had a couple of children, Sarawyu
and Trisiras (Trikephalos) ; that he gave Saranyii
to Yivasvat, and that she bore him Yama and
Yami : they were twins, but Yama was the elder
of the two. Then Saratiyu made a woman like
herself, gave her the children, and went away.
Yivasvat was deceived, and the substitute (Sa-
vartia) bore him a child, Manu, as bright as his
father. Afterwards Yivasvat discovered his mis-
take, and assuming himself the form of a horse,
rushed after Sarawyu, and she became in a pecu-
liar manner the mother of Nasatya and Dasra,.
who are called the two Asvins, or horsemen.

It is difficult to say how much of these legends is
old and genuine, and how much was invented after-
wards to explain certain mythological phrases occur-
ring in the Rigveda.

Sarawyu, the water- woman, 39 as the daughter of
Tvashtfar (maker), who is also called Savitar
(creator), and Yisvarupa, having all forms (x. 10, 5)
as the wife of Yivasvat (also called Gandharva,
x. 10, 4) as the mother of Yama as hidden by the
immortals from the eyes of mortals as replaced by

course, to speak of the Dawn both as the beginning of the day, and as
the end of the night.

39 In x. 10, 4, I take Gandharva for Vivasvat, Apy a Yoshafor
Sarawyu, in accordance with Say aw a, though differing from Professor
Kuhn. In the next verse ^anita is not father, but creator, and belongs
to Tvashia savitd visvarupa^, the father of Sarawyu, or the
creator in general in his solar character of Savitar.
II. M M

-530 SARA^YU, THE DAWN.

another wife, and again as the mother of the Asvins
all this is ancient, and confirmed by the hymns of
the Rigveda. But the legend of Saranyu and
Vivasvat assuming the form of horses, may be
meant simply as an explanation of the name of their
children, the Asvins (equini or equites). The
legend of Manu being the son of Vivas vat and
Savarwa may be intended as an explanation of the
names Manu Vaivasvata, and Manu Savarwi.
Professor Kuhn has identified Sarawyu with the
Greek Erinys. With this identification I fully agree.
I had arrived independently at the same identifica-
tion, and we have discussed the problem together be-
fore Dr. Kuhn's essay was published. But our agree-
ment ends with the name ; and after having given
a careful, and, I hope, impartial consideration to my
learned friend's analysis, I feel confirmed rather than
skaken in the view which I entertained of SaraTiyu
from the first. Professor Kuhn, adopting in the
main the views of Professor Eoth, explains the myth
as follows :

TV ashlar, the creator, prepares the wedding for his
daughter Sarawyu, i.e. the fleet, impetuous, dark, storm-
cloud (Sturmwolke), which in the beginning of all things
soared in space. He gives to her as husband Vivas vat, the
brilliant, the light of the celestial heights according to later
views, which, for the sake of other analogies, I cannot share,
the sun-god himself. Light and cloudy darkness beget two
couples of twins : first, Yama, i.e. the twin, and Yami, the
twin-sister (a word which suggests itself) ; secondly, the two
Asvins, the horsemen. But after this the mother disappears,
i.e. the chaotic, storm-shaken dimness ; the gods hide her, and
she leaves behind two couples. To Vivasvat there remains,
as his wife, but one like her, an anonymous woman, not

SAEA^YU, THE DAWN. 531

further to be defined. The latest tradition (Vishnu Purana,
p. 266) calls her jMya, shadow, i.e. the myth knows of no
other wife to give to him.'

Was this the original conception of the myth?
Was Saranyu the storm-cloud, which in the begin-
ning of all things was soaring in infinite space ? Is
it possible to form a clear conception of such a being,
as described by Professor Roth and Professor Kuhn ?
And if not, how is the original idea of Saranyu to
be discovered?

There is but one way, I believe, for discovering the
original meaning of Sara^yu, namely, to find out
whether the attributes and acts peculiar to Saratiyu
are ever ascribed to other deities whose nature is less
obscure. The first question, therefore, we have to
ask is this Is there any other deity who is said to
have given birth to twins ? There is, namely, TJshas,
the Dawn. We read (iii. 39, 3) in a hymn which
describes the sunrise under the usual imagery of
Indra conquering darkness and recovering the sun :

The mother of the twins has borne the twins ; the tip of
my tongue falls, for she approaches ; the twins that are born
assume form they, the conquerors of darkness, that have
come at the foot of the sun.

We might have guessed from the text itself, even
without the help of the commentator, that the
* mother of the twins ' here spoken of is the Dawn ;
but it may be stated that the commentator, too,
adopts this view.

The next question is, Is there any other deity who
is spoken of as a horse, or rather, as a mare ? There
is, namely, TJshas, the Dawn. The Sun, no doubt.

M M 2

532 SARA^T^,, THE DAWN.

is the deity most frequently spoken of as a horse. 4(>
But the Dawn also is not only called rich in horses.,
and represented as carried by them, but she is her-
self compared to a horse. Thus, i. 30, 29, and iv.
52, 2, 41 the Dawn is likened to a mare, and n the
latter passage she is called at the same time the
friend ofthe Asyins. In the Mahabharata (Adi-
par v a, 2,599) the mother of the Asvins is said to
have the form of a mare, vaeZava. 42

Here, then, we have a couple, the Sun and the
Dawn, that might well be represented in legendary
language as having assumed the form of a horse and
a mare.

The next question is, ' Who could be called their
children ? and in order to answer this question
satisfactorily, it will be necessary to discuss some-
what fully the character of a whole class of Yedic
deities. It is important to observe that the children
ofSararcyu are spoken of as twins. The idea of twin
powers is one of the most fertile ideas in ancient
mythology. Many of the most striking phenomena
of nature were comprehended by the ancients under
that form, and were spoken of in their mythic phrase-
ology as brother and sister, husband and wife,
father and mother. The Yedic Pantheon particu-
larly is full of deities which are always introduced
in the dual, and they all find their explanation in the
palpable dualism of nature, Day and Night, Dawn
and Gloaming, Morning and Evening, Summer and

40 Comparative Mythology, p. 82. Chips, vol. ii. p. '138; supra,^
p. 408.

41 asve na &itre arushi ; or better, asveva &itre.

42 Kuhn, Zeifschrift, i. 523.

CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 533

Winter, Sun and Moon, Light and Darkness, Heaven
and Earth. All these are dualistic or correlative con-
ceptions. The two are conceived as one, as belonging
to each other ; nay, they sometimes share the same
name. Thus we find Ahoratre 43 (not in Rigveda),
day and night, but also Ahani (i. 123, 7), the two
days, i.e. day and night. We find Ushasanakta
(i. 122, 2), dawn and night, Naktoshiisa (i. 13 7;
142, 7), night and dawn, but also TJshasau (i. 188,
6), the two dawns, i.e. dawn and night. There is
Dyavaprithivf, heaven and earth (i. 143, 2),
Prithividyava, earth and heaven, (iii. 46, 5), but
also Dyava (iii. 6, 4). Instead of Dyavaprithivi,
other compounds such as Dyavakshama (iii. 8, 8),
Dyavabhumi, (iv. 55, 1), are likewise met with in
the text, Dyunisau, day and night, in the com-
mentary (iii. 55, 15). Now as long as we have to
deal with such outspoken names as these, there can

43 A distinction ought to be made between ahoratraA, or ahora-
tram, the time of day and night together, a wx^fj-epov, which is a
masculine or neuter, and ahoratre, the compound dual of ah an,
day, and ratri, night, meaning the day and the night, as they are
frequently addressed together. This compound I take to be a feminine,
though, as it can occur in the dual only, it may also be taken for a
neuter, as is done by the commentary to Pawini, ii. 4, 28, 29 ; but not by
Pawini himself. Thus A.V. vi. 128, 3, Ahoratrabhyam, as used in
the dual, does not mean twice twenty-four hours, but day and night, just
as sftrya&andramasabhyam, immediately after, means sun and
moon. The same applies to A.V., x. 7, 6 ; 8, 23 ; ZMnd. Up. viii. 4, 1 ;
Manu, i. 65 ; and other passages given by Boehtlingk and Both, s. v.
In all of these the meaning ' two nycthemerons,' would be entirely in-
appropriate. That ahoratre was considered a feminine as late as the
time of the Va^asaneyi-sanhita, is shown by a passage xiv. 30,
where ahoratre are called adhipatni, two mistresses. Ahoratre
does not occur in the Eigveda. Ahoratrwi occurs once in the tenth
book. A passage quoted by B. K. from the Eigveda, where ahora-
traA is said to occur as masc. plur., does not belong to the Eigveda at
all. Ait. Br. ii. 4, ahoratre va usbasanakta.

534 COEEELATIVE DEITIES.

be little doubt as to the meaning of the praises be-
stowed on them, or of the acts which they are said
to have performed. If Day and Night, or Heaven
and Earth, are praised as sisters, even as twin-sisters,
we can hardly call this as yet mythological lan-
guage, though no doubt it may be a beginning of
mythology. Thus we read, i. 123, 7 :

' One goes away, the other comes near, the two
Ahans (Day and Night) walk together. One of the
two neighbours created darkness in secret, the Dawn
flashed forth on her shining car.'

i. 185, 1 : ' Which of the two is first, which is last?
How are they born, ye poets? Who knows it?
These two support everything that exists ; the two
Ahans (Day and Night) turn round like wheels.' 44

In iv. 55, 3, Dawn and Night (Ushasanakta)
are spoken of as distinct from the two Ahans (Day
and Night).

In v. 82, 8, Savitar, the sun, is said to walk before
them.

In x. 39, 12, the daughter of the sky, i.e. the
Dawn, and the two Ahans, Day and Night, are said
to be born when the Asvins put their horses to
their car.

In a similar manner the Dyavaprithivi, Heaven
and Earth, are spoken of as sisters, as twins, as
living in the same house (i. 159, 4), &c.

It is clear, however, that instead of addressing
dawn and gloaming, morning and evening, day and
night, heaven and earth by their right names, and as
feminines, it was possible, nay, natural, to speak of
light and darkness as male powers, and to address the

44 Or like things belonging to a wheel, spokes, &c.

COEEELATIVE DEITIES. 535

authors of light and darkness, the bringers of day and
night, as personal beings. And so we find, correspond-
ing to the former couples, a number of correlative
deities, having in common most of the characteristics
of the former, but assuming an independent mytho-
logical existence.

The best known are the Asvins, who are always
spoken of in the dual. Whether asvin means pos-
sessed of horses, horseman, or descendants of Asva, 45
the sun, or Asva, the dawn, certain it is that the
same conception underlies their name and the names
of the sun and the dawn, when addressed as horses.
The sun was looked upon as a racer, so was the dawn,
though in a less degree, and so were, again, the two
powers which seemed incorporated in the coming and
going of each day and each night, and which were
represented as the chief actors in all the events of
the diurnal play. This somewhat vague, but, for
this very reason, I believe, all the more correct
character of the two Asvins did not escape even the
later commentators. Task a, in the twelfth book
of his Nirukta, when explaining the deities of the
sky, begins with the two Asvins. They come first r
he says, of all the celestial gods ; they arrive even
before sunrise. Their name is explained in the usual
fanciful way of Indian commentators. They are called
Asvin, Yaska says, from the root as, to pervade;
because the one pervades everything with moisture,
the other with light. He likewise quotes Aurna-
vabha, who derives Asvin from asva, horse. But
who are these Asvins 9 he asks. 'Some,' he re-
plies, ' say they are heaven and earth, others day and

45 Cf. Kris&svui&h, Paw. iv. 2, 66.

536 CORKELATIVE DEITIES.

night, others sun and moon ; and the legendarians
maintain that they were two virtuous kings.'

Let us consider next the time when the Asvins
appear. Task a places it after midnight, as the light
"begins gradually to withstand the darkness of the
night ; and this agrees perfectly with the indications
to be found in the Rigveda, where the Asvins
appear before the dawn, 'when Night leaves her
sister, the Dawn, when the dark one gives way to
the bright (vii. 71, 1);' or, 'when one black cow
sits among the bright cows' (x. 61, 4, and vi.
64, 7).

Task a seems to assign to the one the overcoming
of light by darkness, to the other the overcoming of
darkness by light. 46 Yaska then quotes sundry
verses to prove that the two Asvins belong together
(though one lives in the sky, the other in the air,
says the commentator), that they are invoked to-
gether, and that they receive the same offerings.
4 You walk along during the night like two black
goats. 47 When, O Asvins, do you come here
towards the gods ? '

In order to prove, however, that the Asvins
are likewise distinct beings, another half-verse is

46 The words of Ya ska are obscure, nor does the commentator throw
much light on them. ' Tatra yat tamo 'nupravisA^am ^yotishi
tadbhago madhyamaA, tan madhyamasya rupam. Ya^
t <7yotis tarnasy anupravishiam tadbhagam tadrupam adi-
tyaA (sic). Tav etau madhyamottamav iti svamatam a-
Aryasya.' Madhyama may be meant for Indra, Uttama for
Aditya; but in that case the early As vin would be Aditya, the sun,
the late Asvin, Indra. Dr. Kuhn (1. c. p. 442) takes madhyama
for Agni.

47 Petvau is explained bymesha, goat, not by megha, cloud, as
stated by Dr. Roth. Cf. Rv. x. 39, 2, ago. iva.

CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 537

added, in which the one is called Yasatya (not
Nasatya), the son of Night, the other the son of
Dawn.

More verses are then quoted from the Rigveda
those before quoted coming from a different source
where the Asvins are called ihehat/atau, born
here and there, i.e. on opposite sides, or in the air
and in the sky. One is gishnu, victorious, he who
bides in the air; the other is subhaga, happy, the
son of Dyu, or the sky, and here identified with
Aditya or the sun. Again: 'Wake the two who
harness their cars in the morning ! Asvins, come
hither, for a draught of this So ma.'

Lastly : ' Sacrifice early, hail the Asvins ! Not in
the dreary evening is the sacrifice of the gods. Nay,
some person different from us sacrifices and draws
them away. The sacrificer who comes first is the
most liked.'

The time of the Asvins is by Yaska supposed to
extend to about sunrise; at that time other gods
appear and require their offerings, and first of all
TJshas, the Dawn. 48 Here, again, a distinction is
made between the dawn of the air (who was enume-
rated in the two preceding books, together with the
other mid-air deities) and the dawn of the sky, a
distinction which it is difficult to understand. For
though in the verse which is particularly said to be
addressed to the dawn of the air, she is said to appear
in the eastern half of the ragras, which ra#as Yaska
takes to mean mid- air, yet this could hardly have con-
stituted a real distinction in the minds of the original

48 Ev. i. 46, 14: yuvoA usha/i iinn sriyam pari^manoA xipa
a&arat.

538 CORRELATIVE DEITIES. '

poets. ' These rays of the Dawn have made a light
in the eastern half of the welkin ; they adorn them-
selves with splendour, like strong men unsheathing-
their weapons : the bright cows approach the mothers '
(of light, bhaso nirmatrya/i).

Next in time is Surya, a female Surya, i.e. the
sun as a feminine, or, according to the commentator,
the Dawn again under a different name. In the
Rigveda, too, the Dawn is called the wife of Surya
(suryasya yosha, vii. 75, 5), and the Asvins are
sometimes called thehusbands of Surya (Eigveda, iv.
43, 6). It is said in a Brahmawa that Saritar gave
Surya (his daughter?) to King Soma or to Pra#a-
pati. The commentator explains that Savitar is
the sun, Soma the moon, and Surya the moonlight,
which comes from the sun. This, however, seems
somewhat fanciful, and savours decidedly of later
mythology.

Next in time follows Vrishakapayi, the wife of
Vrishakapi. Who she is is very doubtful. 49 The
commentary says that she is the wife of Vrishakapi,
and that Vrishakapi is the sun, so called because he
is enveloped in mist (avasyavan, or avasyayavan)-
Most likely 50 Vrishakapayi is again but another
conception or name of the Dawn, as the wife of the
Sun, who draws up or drinks the vapours from the
earth. Her son is said to be Indra, her daughter-
in-law Vafc, here meant for thunder (?), a genealogy
hardly in accordance with the rest of the hymn from

49 According to Dr. Kuhn, the Evening-twilight, 1. c. p. 441, but
without proof.

60 This is the opinion of Durga, who speaks of Ushas, vrisha-
kapAyyavasthayam.

COERELATIVE DEITIES. 539

which our verse is taken, and where Vrishakapayi
is rather the wife than the mother of Indra. Her
oxen are clouds of vapour, which Indra swallows, as
the sun might be said to consume the vapours of the
morning. It is difficult, on seeing the name of
Vrishakapi, not to think of EriJcapaeos, an Orphic
name of Protogonos, and synonymous with Phanes,
Helios, PriapoSy Dionysos; but the original conception
of Vrishakapi (vrishan, bull, irrigator; kapi, ape
or tremulous) is not much clearer than that of Erika-
paeos, and we should only be explaining obscurum per
obscurius.

Next in order of the deities of the morning is our
Sarawyu, explained simply as dawn, and followed by
Savitar, whose time is said to be when the sky is free
from darkness and covered with rays.

We need not follow any further the systematic
catalogue of the gods as given by Yaska. It is
clear that he knew of the right place of the two
Asvins, and that he placed the activity of the one
at the very beginning of day, and hence that of the
other at the very beginning of night. He treats
them as twins, born together in the early twilight.

Yaska, however, is not to be considered as an au-
thority, except if he can be proved to agree with the
hymns of the Rigveda, to which we now return.

The preponderating idea in the conception of the
Asvins in the hymns of the Rigveda is that of cor-
relation, which, as we saw, they share in common
with such twin-deities as heaven and earth, day and
night, &c. That idea, no doubt, is modified according
to circumstances, the Asvins are brothers, Heaven
and Earth are sisters. But if we remove these out*

540 COKEELATIVE DEITIES.

ward masks, we shall find behind them, and behind
some other masks, the same actors, Nature in her
twofold aspect of daily change morning and even-
ing, 51 light and darkness aspects which may expand
into those of spring and winter, life and death ; nay,
even of good and evil.

Before we leave the Asvins in search of other
twins, and ultimately in search of the twin-mother,
Sara?iyu, the following hymn may help to impress
on our minds the dual character of these Indian
Dioskuroi.

Like the two stones 52 you sound for the same object. 53 You
are like two hawks rushing toward a tree with a nest ; 54 like
two priests reciting their prayers at a sacrifice ; like the two
messengers of a clan called for in many places. (1.)

Coming early, like two heroes on their chariots, like twin-
goats, you come to him who has chosen you ; like two women,
beautiful in body ; like husband and wife, wise among their
people. (2.)

Like two horns, come first towards us; like two hoofs,
rushing on quickly ; like two birds, ye bright ones, every day,
come hither, like two charioteers, 58 O ye strong ones ! (3.)

Like two ships, carry us across ; like two yokes, like two
naves of a wheel, like two spokes, like two felloes ; like two

61 Rv. i. 34, 1 : yuv6r hi yantram himyva v&sasaA, 'your
journey is as of the day with the night.'

62 Used at sacrifices for crushing and pressing out the juice of the
So ma plant,

43 Tadidartham is used almost adverbially in the sense of ' for the
game purpose.' Thus, Rv. ix. 1,5,' We come to see every day for the
same purpose.' As to #ar, I take it in the usual sense of sounding,
making a noise, and, more particularly, praising. The stones for press-
ing out the So ma are frequently spoken of as themselves praising, while
they are being handled by the priests (v. 37, 2).

54 Nidhi, originally that where something is placed, afterwards
treasure.

' lUthya. Cf. v. 76, 1.

CORRELATIVE DEITIES. 541

dogs that do not hurt our limbs ; like two armours, protect us
from destruction ! (4.)

Like two winds, like two streams, your motion is eternal ;
like two eyes, come with your sight towards us ! Like two
hands, most useful to the body ; like two feet, lead us towards
wealth. (5.)

Like two lips, speaking sweetly to the mouth ; like two
breasts, feed us that we may live. Like two nostrils, as
guardians of the body ; like two ears, be inclined to listen to
us. (6.).

Like two hands, holding our strength together ; like heaven
and earth, drive together the clouds. O Asvins, sharpen
these songs that long for you, as a sword is sharpened with a
whetstone. (7.)

Like the two Asvins, who are in later times dis-
tinguished by the names of Basra and Nasatya,
\ve find another couple of gods, Indra and Agni,
addressed together in the dual, Indrawn i, but like-
wise as Indra, the two Indras, and Agni, the two
Agnis (vi. 60, l),just as heaven and earth are called
the two Jieavens, and the Asvins the two Dasras,
or the two Nasatyas. Indra is the god of the
bright sky, Agni the god of fire, and they have each
their own distinct personality; but when invoked
together, they become correlative powers and are
conceived as one joint deity. Curiously enough,
they are actually in one passage called as v in a 56
(i. 109, 4), and they share several other attributes in
common with the Asvins. They are called brothers,
they are called twins ; and as the Asvins were

56 Dr. Kuhn, L c. p. 450, quotes this passage and others, from
which, he thinks, it appears that Indra was supposed to have sprung
from a horse (x. 73, 10), and that Agni was actually called the horse
(ii. 35, 6).

542 COBRELAT1VE DEITIES.

called ihehat/ate, born here and there, i.e. on op-
posite sides, in the East and in the West, or in
heaven and in the air, so Indra and Agni, when
invoked together, are called ihehainatara, they
whose mothers are here and there (vi. 59, 2). Attri-
butes which they share in common with the Asvins
are vrishaTia, bulls, or givers of rain; 57 vritra-
hatia, destroyers of Vritra, 58 or of the powers of dark-
ness ; sainbhuva, 59 givers of happiness; supa^i,
with good hands; vUupafu, 60 with strong hands;
grenyavasu, with genuine wealth. 61 But in spite of
these similarities, it must not be supposed that Indra
and Agni together are a inert repetition of the
As v ins. There are certain epithets constantly ap-
plied to the Asvins (subhaspati, vaginivasu,
sudanu, &c.), which, as far as I know, are not applied
to Indra and Agni together ; and vice versa (sadas-
pati, sahuri). Again, there are certain legends
constantly told of the Asvins, particularly in their
character as protectors of the helpless and dying, and
resuscitators of the dead, which are not transferred
to Indra and Agni. Yet, as if to leave no doubt
that Indra, at all events, coincides in some of his
exploits with one of the Asvins or Nasatyas, one
of the Yedic poets uses the compound Indra-Na-
satyau, Indra and Nasatya, which, on account of
the dual that follows, cannot be explained as Indra

57 Indra and Agni, i. 109, 4; the Asvins, i. 112, 8.

58 Indra and Agni, i. 108, 3; the Asvins, viii. 8, 9 (vritrahan-
tama).

59 Indra and Agni, vi. 60, 14; the Asvins, viii. 8, 19; vi. 62, 5.

60 Indra and Agni, supawi, i. 109, 4; the Asvins, vi/upa?u,
vii. 73, 4

61 Indra and Agni, viii. 38, 7 ; the Asvins, vii. 74, 3.

COEEELATIVE DEITIES. 43

find the two Asvins, but simply as Indra and
Nasatya.

Besides the couple of Indragni, we find some
other, though less prominent couples, equally re-
flecting the dualistic idea of the Asvins, namely,
Indra and Yaruwa, Indra and Yistmu, and,
more important than either, Mitra and Yaruwa.
Instead of Indra-Yaruria, we find again Indra, 62
the two Indras, and Yaru^a, the two Yarunas
(iv. 41, 1). They are called sudanu (iv. 41, 8) ;
vrishawa (vii. 82, 2); sambhu (iv. 41, 7); maha-
vasu (vii. 82, 2). Indra-Yishwu are actually called
dasra, the usual name of the Asvins (vi. 69, 7).
Now Mitra and Yaruna are clearly intended for
day and night. They, too, are compared to horses
(vi. 67,4), and they share certain epithets in common
with the twin-gods, sudanu (vi. 67, 2), vrishatiau
(i. 151, 2). But their character assumes much
greater distinctness, and though clearly physical in
their first conception, they rise into moral powers,
far superior in that respect to the Asvins and to
Indragni. Their physical nature is perceived in a
hymn of Yasish^A-a (vii. 63) :

The sun, common to all men, the happy, the all-seeing,
steps forth ; the eye of Mitra and Yaruwa, the bright; he
who rolls up darkness like a skin.

He steps forth, the enlivener of men, the great waving light,
of the sun ; wishing to turn round the same wheel which his
horse Eta s a draws, joined to the team.

Shining forth, he rises from the lap of the Dawn, praised by
singers, he, my god Savitar, stepped 63 forth, who never
misses the same place.

62 As in Latin Ca stores and Polluces, instead of Castor et Pollux.
43 Kha.d as scandere, not as scondere.

44 COKRELATIVE DEITIES.

He steps forth, the splendour of the sky, the wide-seeing,
the far-aiming, the shining wanderer ; surely, enlivened by the
sun, men do go to their tasks and do their work.

Where the immortals made a walk for him, there he follows
the path, soaring like a hawk. We shall worship you, Mitra
and Varu^a, when the sun has risen, with praises and
offerings.

Will Mitra, Varuna, and Aryaman bestow favour on us
and our kin ? May all be smooth and easy to us ! Protect
us always with your blessings !

The ethic and divine character of Mitra and
Varufia breaks forth more clearly in the following
hymn (vii. 65) :

When the sun has risen I call on you with hymns, Mitra
and Varuna, full of holy strength; ye whose imperishable
divinity is the oldest, moving on your way with knowledge of
everything. 64

For these two are the living spirits among the gods ; they
are the lords ; do you make our fields fertile. May we come
to you, Mitra and Varuna, where they nourisli days and
nights.

They are the catchers 65 of the unrighteous, holding many
nooses ; they are hard to be overcome by a hostile mortal.

94 The last sentence is doubtful.

65 Setu means binding. Sayawa never explains it as bridge in the
Rigveda, though in the Tait. Br. ii. 4, 2, 6, it seems to have that
meaning: a tantum agnir divyam tatana; tvam nas tantur
uta setur agne, tvam pantha bhavasi devayanaA.

In Rv. x. 67, 4 setu in the singular means prison, mJceep: 'The
cows which stand hidden in the prison of the unrighteous.' Setu here is
the same as asmanmayani nahana, of the preceding verse. In
viii. 67, 8. setu may be fetter, or he who fetters, viz. the enemy, the
clasyu avrata, the duradhi.

In ix. 73, 4, setu, in the plural, may mean snares, or the catchers
having hooks in their hands, or the fetters of Varuwa.

In vii. 84, 2, yaii setribhi^ ara^ubhi^ sinithaA must be
translated by ' Ye who bind with bonds not made of rope.'

THE RIDDLE OF THE DAWN. 545

Let us pass, Mitra and Varuwa, on your way of righteous-
ness, across sin, as in a ship across the water.

Now if we inquire who could originally be con-
ceived as the father of all these correlative deities, we
can easily understand that it must be some supreme
power that is not itself involved in the diurnal revo-
lutions of the world, such as the sky, for instance,
conceived as the father of all things, or some still
more abstract deity, like Pragrapati, the lord of
creation, or TV ashlar, the fashioner, or Savitar,
the creator. Their mother, on the contrary, must be
the representative of some place in which the twins
meet, and from which they seem to spring together
in their diurnal career. This place may be either the
dawn or the gloaming, the sunrise or the sunset, the
East or the West, only all these conceived not as
mere abstractions, but as mysterious beings, as
mothers, as powers containing within themselves the
whole mystery of life and death brought thus visibly
before the eyes of the thoughtful worshipper. The
dawn, which to us is merely a beautiful' sight, was
to the early gazer and thinker the problem of all
problems. It was the unknown land from whence
rose every day those bright emblems of a divine
power which left in the mind of man the first im-
pression and intimation of another world, of power
above, of order and wisdom. What we simply call
the sunrise, brought before their eyes every day the
riddle of all riddles, the riddle of existence. The days
of their life sprang from that dark abyss which every
morning seemed instinct with light and life. Their
youth, their manhood, their old age, all were to the
Yedic bards the gift of that heavenly mother who ap-

II. N N

546 THE RIDDLE OP THE DAWN,

peared, bright, young, unchanged, immortal every
morning, while everything else seemed to grow old, to
change, and droop, and at last to set, never to return.
It was there, in that bright chamber, that, as their
poets said, mornings and days were spun, or, under
a different image, where mornings and days were
nourished (x. 37, 2 ; vii. 65, 2), where life or time
was drawn out (i. 113, 16). It was there that the
mortal wished to go to meet Mitra and Yaruna.
The whole theogony and philosophy of the ancient
world centred in the Dawn, the mother of the bright
gods, of the sun in his various aspects, of the morn,
the day, the spring ; herself the brilliant image and
visage of immortality.

It is of course impossible to enter fully into all the
thoughts and feelings that passed through the minds
of the early poets when they formed names for that far
far East from whence even the early dawn, the sun,
the day, their own life, seemed to spring. A new life
flashed up every morning before their eyes, and the
fresh breezes of the dawn reached them like greetings
wafted across the golden threshold of the sky from
the distant lands beyond the mountains, beyond the
clouds, beyond the dawn, beyond c the immortal sea
which brought us hither.' The Dawn seemed to
them to open golden gates for the sun to pass in
triumph, and while those gates were open their eyes
and their minds strove in their childish way to pierce
beyond the limits of this finite world. That silent
aspect awakened in the human mind the conception
of the Infinite, the Immortal, the Divine, and the
names of dawn became naturally the names of higher
powers. Sara?iyu, the Dawn, was called the

THE RIDDLE OP THE DAWN. 54 /

mother of Day and Night, the mother of Mitra and
Yaruwa, divine representatives of light and dark-
ness ; the mother of all the bright gods (i. 113, 19) ;
ihe face of Aditi (i. 113, 19). 66 Now, whatever the
etymological meaning of Aditi, 67 it is clear that she
is connected with the Dawn that she represents
that which is beyond the Dawn, and that she was
raised into an emblem of the Divine and the Infinite.
Aditi is called the nabhir amritasya, umbilicus
immortalitatis, the cord that connects the immortal
and the mortal. Thus the poet exclaims (i. 24, 1) :
'* Who will give us back to the great Aditi (to the
Dawn, or rather to her from whom we came), that
I may see father and mother?' Aditya, literally
the son of Aditi, became the name, not only of the
sun, but of a class of seven 68 gods, and of gods in
general. Rv. x. 63, 2: 'You gods who are born of
Aditi, from the water, who are born of the earth,
hear my calling here.' As everything came from
Aditi, she is called not only the mother of Mitra,
Yarutia, Aryaman, and of the Adityas, but like-
wise, in a promiscuous way, the mother of the
Rudras (storms), the daughter of the Yasus, the
sister of the Adityas. 69 c Aditi is the sky, 70 Aditi
the air, Aditi is mother, father, son; all the gods
are Aditi, and the five tribes; Aditi is what is

66 Ev. viii. 25, 3: timata" mahf #a#ana aditi A. Of. viii. 101,
15; vi. 67, 4.

87 Boehtlingk and Eoth derive aditi from a and diti, and diti
-from da or do, to cut; hence literally the Infinite. This is doubtful,
but I know no better etymology. See Eigveda-Sanhita, translated
'by M. M., vol. i. p. 230.

68 Ev. ix. 114,3: Deva/i Aditya"A ye sapta.

69 Ev. viii. 101, 15. ' Of. Ev. x. 63, 3.

N N 2

THE EIDDLE OP THE DAWN.

born, Aditi what will be born.' 71 In later times
she is the mother of all the gods. 72

In an 'Essay on Comparative Mythology,' published
in the ' Oxford Essays' of 1856, I collected a number
of legends 73 which were told originally of the Dawn.
Not one of the interpretations there proposed has
ever, as far as I am aware, been controverted by
facts or arguments. The difficulties pointed out
by scholars such as Curtius and Sonne, I hope I
have removed by a fuller statement of my views.
The difficulty which I myself have most keenly felt is
the monotonous character of the Dawn and Sun
legends. * Is everything the Dawn ? Is everything
the Sun? This question I had asked myself many
times before it was addressed to me by others.
Whether, by the remarks on the prominent position
occupied by the Dawn in the involuntary philosophy
of the ancient world, I have succeeded in partially
removing that objection, I cannot tell, but I am
bound to say that my own researches lead me again
and again to the Dawn and the Sun as the chief
burden of the myths of the Aryan race.

I will add but one more instance to-day, before
I return to the myth of Sara^iyu. We saw how
many names of different deities were taken from one
and the same root, dyu or div. I believe that
the root ah, 74 which yielded in Sanskiit Ahaiia

71 Rv. i. 89, 10. 72 See Boehtlingk and Roth, s. v.

78 Eos and Tithonos; Kephalos, Prokris, and Eos; Daphne and
Apollo; Urvasi and Pururavas; Orpheus and Eurydice; Charis
and Eros.

74 The root ah is connected with root dah, from which Daphne
(cf. a s, from which asm, and das, from which Sdicpv). Curtius men-
tions the Thessalian form, Savxmj for 8d<i>vr). (Griech. Et. ii. 68.) He

ATHENE, THE DAWN. 549

(Aghnya, i.e. Ahnya), the Dawn, alian and altar, 75
day, supplied likewise the germ of Athene. First, as
to letters, it is known that Sanskrit h is frequently
the neutral exponent of guttural, dental, and labial
soft aspirates. H is guttural, as in arh and argh,
ranh and rangh, mah and magh. It is dental,
as in vrih and vridh, nah and naddha, saha and
sadha, hita instead of dhita, hi (imperative) and
dhi. It is labial, as grah and grabh, nah and
nabhi, luh and lubh. Restricting our observation
to the interchange of h and dh, or vice versa, we find,
first, in Greek dialects, variations such as ornichos
and 6rnithos, iclima and ithma. Secondly, the root
ghar or har, which, in Sanskrit, gives us g harm a,
heat, is certainly the Greek ther, which gives us
thermos, warm. 77 If it be objected that this would
only prove the change of Sanskrit h into Greek 3 as
an initial, not as a final, we can appeal to Sanskrit
guh, to hide, Greek Jceuthd; possibly to Sanskrit

admits ray explanation of the myth of Daphne as the dawn, but he says,
' If we could but see why the dawn is changed into a laurel ! ' Is it not
from mere homonymy? The dawn was called SC^JTJ, the burning, so
was the laurel, as wood that burns easily; the two, as usual, were sup-
pose 1 to be one. See Etym. M. p. 250, 20 ; Sou^^*' etiKawrov uAoi/ ;
Hesych. Sauxpdv HVKO.VO'TOV vXov Sdtyvys (1. eftitavffTov v\ov, Sdtyvriv,
Ahrens, Dial. Grcec. ii. 532). Legerlotz, in Kuhn's Zeitsckrift, rii. 292.

75 Is Achilleus the mortal solar hero, Aharyu? The change of r
into 1 begins in the Sanskrit Ahaly a, who is explained by Kumar i la
as the goddess of night, beloved and destroyed by Indra. (See M. M.'s
History of Sanskrit Literature, p. 530.) As Indra is called ahalyayai
<7araA, it is more likely that she was meant for the dawn. LeuJce, the
island of the blessed, the abode of heroes after their death, is called
Achillea. Schol. find. Nem. 4, 49. Jacobi, Mythologie, p. 12. Elysium
in the West (Gerhard, Griech. Mythologie, 581) is the same as LeuJce.
Achaios might be Aha sy a, but Achivus points in another direction.

76 Cf. Mehlhorn, Griech. Grammatik, p. 111.

77 See Curtius, Griechische Etymologie, ii. 79.

550 ATHENE, THE DAWN.

rah, to remove, Greek lath. 78 In the same manner,,
then, the root ah, which in Greek would regularly
appear as ach, might likewise there have assumed the
form ath. As to the termination, it is the same
which we find in Selene, the Sanskrit ana. Athene,
therefore, as far as letters go, would correspond to a
Sanskrit Ah an a, which is but a slightly differing
variety of Ah an a, 79 a recognised name of the dawn
in the Veda.

What, then, does Athene share in common with the
Dawn? The Dawn is the daughter of Dyu, Athene,
the daughter of Zeus. Homer knows of no mother
of Athene, nor does the Ye da mention the name of a
mother of the Dawn, though her parents are spoken of
in the dual (i. 123, 5).

The extraordinary birth of Athene, though post-
Homeric, is no doubt of ancient date, for it seems no
more than the Greek rendering of the Sanskrit phrase
that Us has, 'the Dawn, sprang from the head of
Dyu, the murdha diva/t, the East, the forehead of
the sky. In Eome she was called Capta, i.e. Capita,
head-goddess, in Messene Koryphasia, in Argos
Akria.* One of the principal features of the Dawn
in the Veda is her waking first (i. 123, 2), and her
rousing men from their slumber. In Greece, the
cock, the bird of the morning, is next to the owl, the
bird of Athene. If Athene is the virgin goddess, so is
Ushas, the dawn, yuvatifr, the young maid,

78 Schleicher, Compendium, 125, and p. 711. Kaumer, Gresammdie
Sprachwissenschqftliche Schriften, p. 84.

79 On chanee* like ana and ana, see Kuhn, HerabJcunft des Feuers>.
p. 28.

80 Gerhard, Gnecfiische Mythologie, 253, 3 h. Preller, Eomische
Mythologie, p. 250, n.

ATHENE, THE DAWN. 551

arepasatanva, with spotless body. From another
point of view, however, husbands have been allotted
both to Athene and to Ushas, though more readily
to the Indian than to the Greek goddess. 81 How
Athene, being the dawn, should have become the
goddess of wisdom, we can best learn from the
Ye da. In Sanskrit, budh means to wake and to
know ; 82 hence the goddess who caused people to wake
was involuntarily conceived as the goddess who caused
people to know. Thus it is said that she drives away
darkness, and that through her those who see little
may see far and wide (i. 113, 5). 'We have crossed
the frontier of this darkness,' we read ; c the dawn
shining forth gives light' (i. 92, 6). But light
(v ay tin a) has again a double meaning, and means
knowledge much more frequently and distinctly than
light. In the same hymn (i. 92, 9) we read:

Lighting up all the worlds, the Dawn, the eastern, the seer,
shines far and wide ; waking every mortal to walk about, she
received praise from every thinker.

Here the germs of Athene are visible enough. That
she grew into something very different from the
Indian Ushas, when once worshipped as their tute-
lary deity by the people of the Morning- city of
Attica, needs no remark. But though we ought
carefully to watch any other tributary that enters
into the later growth of the bright heaven-sprung
goddess, we need not look, I believe, for any other
spring-head than the forehead of the sky, or Zeus.

81 Gerhard, Griechiscke MytJwlogie, 267, 3.

82 Kv. i. 29, 4: sasantu tyeU aratayaA b6dhantu sura
ratayaA.

552 MINERVA, THE DAWN.

Curious it is that in* the mythology of Italy,
Minerva, who was identified with Athene, should
from the beginning have assumed a name apparently
expressive of the intellectual rather than the physical
character of the Dawn-goddess. Minerva, or Me-
nerva* 3 is clearly connected with mens, the Greek
menos, the Sanskrit man as, mind ; and as the Sans-
krit sir as, Greek Jceras, horn, appears in Latin
cervus, so Sanskrit man as, Greek menos, in Latin
Menerva. But it should be considered that mdne in
Latin is the morning, Mania, an old name of the
mother of the Lares ; 84 that mdnare is specially used
of the rising sun ; 85 and that Mdtuta, not to mention
other words of the same kin, is the Dawn. 86 From
this it would appear that in Latin the root 'man,
which in the other Aryan languages is best known
in the sense of thinking, was at a very early time
put aside, like the Sanskrit budh, to express the
revived consciousness of the whole of nature at the
approach of the light of the morning ; unless there
was another totally distinct root, peculiar to Latin,
expressive of that idea. The two ideas certainly seem
to hang closely together; the only difficulty being
to find out whether c wide awake ' led on to ' know-
ing,' or vice versa. Anyhow I am inclined to admit
in the name of Minerva some recollection of the idea
expressed in Matuta, and even in promenervare, used

83 Preller, Ebmische Mythologie, p. 258.

84 Varro, L. L. 9, 38, 61, ed. Miiller.

85 f Manat dies ab oriente.' Varro, L. L. 6, 2, 52, 4. ' Manare
solem antiqui dicebant, quum soils orientis radii splendorem jacere ccepis-
sent.' Festus, p. 158, ed. Miiller.

86 In Oscan the Maato-s seem to he matutinal deities. Grassman, in
Kuhn's Zeitsckrift, xvi. 118.

ORTYGIA, THE DAWN. 553

in the Carmen saliare 87 in the sense of to admonish, I
should suspect a relic of the original power of rousing.
The tradition which makes Apollo the son of
Athene, 88 though apparently modern and not widely
spread, is yet by no means irrational, if we take
Apollo as the sun-god rising from the brightness of
the Dawn. Dawn and Night frequently exchange
places, and though the original conception of the
birth of Apollo and Artemis was no doubt that they
were both children of the night, Leto or Latona, yet
even then the place or the island in which they are
fabled to have been born is Ortygia, afterwards called
Delos, or Delos, afterwards called Ortygia, or both
Ortygia and Delos. 89 Now Delos is simply the bright
island; but Ortygia, though localised afterwards in
different places, 90 is the dawn, or the dawn-land.
Ortygia is derived from ortyx, a quail. The quail in
Sanskrit is called vartika, i.e. the returning bird,
one of the first birds that return with the return of
spring. The same name, Vartika, is given in the
Ye da to one of the many beings delivered or revived
by the Asvins, i.e. by day and night; and I believe
Vartika, the returning, is again one of the many
names of the Dawn. The story told of her is very
short. f She was swallowed, but she was delivered
by the Asvins ' (i. 112, 8). ' She was delivered by
them from the mouth of the wolf (i. 117, 6; 116,
14; x. 39, 13). 'She was delivered by the Asvins
from agony ' (i. 118, 8). All these are but legendary

87 Festus, p. 205. Paul. Diac. p. 123: 'Minerva dicta quod bene
moneat.'

88 G-erhard, I. c, 267, 3. Jacobi, p. 574, n.
90 Gerhard, Griechische Mythologie, 335, 2.

554 ORTYGIA, THE DAWN.

repetitions of the old saying, ' the Dawn or the quail
comes,' 'the quail is swallowed by the wolf,' 'the
quail has been delivered from the mouth of the wolf.'
Hence Ortygia, the quail-land, the East, ' the glorious
birth,' where Leto was delivered of her solar twins,
and Ortygia, a name given to Artemis, the daughter
of Leto, as born in the East.

The Dawn, or rather the mother of the Dawn, and
of all the bright visions that follow in her train, took
naturally a far more prominent place in the religious
ideas of the young world than she who was called
her sister, the gloaming, or the evening, the end of
the day, the approach of darkness, of cold, and, it
may be, of death. In the dawn there lay all the
charms of a beginning and of youth, and, from one
point of view, even the night might be looked upon
as the offspring of the dawn, as the twin of the day.
As the bright child waned, the dark child grew ; as
the dark flew away, the bright returned ; both were
born of the same mother both seem to have
emerged together from the brilliant womb of the
East. It was impossible to draw an exact line, and
to say where the day began and where it ended, or
where the night began and where it ended. When
the light enters into the darkness, as the Brahmans
said, then the one twin appears ; when the darkness
enters the light, then the other twin follows. ' The
twins come and go,' this was all the ancient poets
had to say of the racing hours of day and night ; it
was the last word they could find, and, like many a
good word of old, this too followed the fate of all
living speech; it became a formula, a saw, a myth.

We know who was the mother of the twins; it

THE TWINS. 555

was the dawn, who dies in giving birth to morning
and evening ; or, if we adopt the view of Yaska, it
was the night, who disappears when the new couple
is born. She may be called by all the names of the
dawn, and even the names of the night might express
one side of her character. Near her is the stand
from whence the horses of the sun start on their
diurnal journey; 91 near her is the stable which holds
the cows, i.e. the bright days following one after
the other like droves of cattle, driven out by the Sun.
every morning to their pastures, carried off by rob-
bers every night to their gloomy cave, but only to
be surrendered by them again and again, after the
never-doubtful battle of the early twilight.

As the Dawn has many names, so her offspring too
is polyonymous ; and as her most general name is
that of Yamasu/i, 92 or Twin- mother, so the most
general name of her offspring too is Tamau, the
twins. Now we have seen these twins as males, the
Asvins, Indra and Agni, Mitra and Yaruwa.
But we have also seen how the same powers might be
conceived as female, as day and night, and thus we
find them represented not only as sisters, but as
twin sisters. For instance, Ev. iii. 55, 11 :

The two twin sisters 93 have made their bodies to differ;
one of them is brilliant, the other dark : though the dark one

91 Hence, I believe, the myth of Asvattha, originally horse-stand,,
then confounded with asvattha, ficus religiosa. See, however, Kuhn^
Zeitschrift, i. p. 467.

92 Kv.iii. 39, 3: YamasuA yamau yamalau suta iti yamasur-
usho'bhimdnini devata. Sa yama yamalav Asvinav atro-
sha^kale 'suta.

93 Yam yd, a dual in the feminine ; cf. v. 47, 5.

556 TAMA ND YAM!.

and the bright are two sisters, the great divinity of the gods
is one.

By a mere turn of the mythological kaleidoscope,
these two sisters, day and night, instead of being the
twin children of the dawn, appear in another poem
as the two mothers of the sun. Ev. iii. 55, 6 :

This child which went to sleep in the West walks now
alone, having two mothers, but not led by them ; these are the
works of Mitra and Yaruraa, but the great divinity of tha
gods is one.

In another hymn, again, the two, the twins, born
here and there (ihehagrate), who carry the child, are
said to be different from his mother (v. 47, 5), and in
another place one of the two seems to be called the
daughter of the other (iii. 55, 12).

We need not wonder, therefore, that the same two
beings, whatever we like to call them, were sometimes
represented as male and female, as brother and sister,
and again as twin-brother and twin-sister. In that
mythological dialect the day would be the twin-
brother, Yam a, the night, the twin-sister, Yami:
and thus we have arrived at last at a solution of the
myth which we wished to explain. A number of
expressions had sprung up, such as ' the twin-mother, 5
i. e. the Dawn ; ' the twins,' i. e. Day and Night ;
' the horse-children,' or ' horsemen,' i. e. Morning
and Evening; ' Sara^yu is wedded by Yivasvat/
i.e. the Dawn embraces the sky; *Sara?iyu has
left her twins behind,' i.e. the Dawn has disappeared,
it is day ; ' Yivasvat takes his second wife,' i.e. the
the sun sets in the evening twilight ; ' the horse runs
-after the mare,' i. e. the sun has set. Put these

YAM A, THE TWIN. 557

phrases together, and the story, as told in the hymn
of the Rigveda, is finished. The hymn does not
allude to Manu as the son of Savar^a, it only
calls the second wife ofYivasvat by that name,
meaning thereby no more than what the word im-
plies, a wife similar to his first wife, as the gloaming
is similar to the dawn. The fable of Manu is pro-
bably of a later date. For some reason or other,
Manu, the mythic ancestor of the race of man, was
called Savarni, meaning, possibly, the Manu of
all colours, i. e. of all tribes or castes. The name
may have reminded the Brahmans of Savarwa, the
second wife of Vivasvat, and as Manu was called
Yaivasvata, the worshipper, afterwards the son, of
Vivasvat, the Manu Savartii was naturally taken
as the son of Savarwa. This, however, I only give
as a guess till some more plausible explanation of
the name and myth of Manu Savarni can be sug-
gested.

But it will be necessary to follow still further the
history of Yam a, the twin, properly so called. In
the passage examined before, Sarawyu is simplv
called the mother of Yam a, i. e. the mother of the
twin, but his twin-sister, Yaml, is not mentioned.
Yet Yami, too, was well known in the Ye da, and
there is a curious dialogue between her and her
brother, where she (the night) implores her brother
(the day) to make her his wife, and where he de-
clines her offer because, as he says, ' they have called
it sin that a brother should marry his sister ' (x.
10, 12).

The question now arises whether Yam a, meaning
originally twin, could ever be used by itself as the

58 YAM A, THE TWIN.

name of a deity ? We may speak of twins ; and we
saw how, in the hymns of the Ye da, several correla-
tive deities are spoken of as twins ; but can we speak
of a twin, and give that name to an independent
deity, worshipped without any reference to its com-
plementary deity ? The six seasons, each consisting
of two months, are called the six twins (Ev. i. 164,
15) ; but no single month could properly be called
the twin. 94

Nothing can be clearer than such passages as x. 8,4 :

Thou, O Vasu (sun), comest first at every dawn ! thou
wast the divider of the two twins, i.e. of day and night, of
morning and evening, of light and darkness, of Indra and
Agni, &c.

Let us now look to a verse (Ev. i. 66, 4) where
Yam a by itself is supposed to mean the twin, and
more particularly Agni. The whole hymn is ad-
dressed to Agni, fire, or light, in his most general
character. I translate literally:

Like an army let loose, he wields his force, like the flame-
pointed arrow of the shooter. Yama is born, Yama will be
born, the lover of the girls, the husband of the wives.

This verse, as is easily seen, is full of allusions,
intelligible to those who listened to the poets, but to
us perfect riddles, to be solved only by a comparison
of similar passages, if such passages can be found.
Now, first of all, I do not take Yama as a name of
Agni, or as a proper name at all. But recollecting
the twiuship of Agni and Indra, as representatives
of day and night, I translate :

(One) twin is born, (another) twin will be born,' i.e. Agni,
* 4 As to yamau and yamaA, see Rv. x. 117, 9; v. 57, 4; x. 13, 2.

YAM A, THE TWIN. 559

to whom the hymn is addressed, is born, the morning has
appeared ; his twin, or, if you like, his other self, the evening,
will be born.

The next words, ' the lover of the girls/ ' the hus-
band of the wives/ contain, I believe, a mere repeti-
tion of the first hemistich. The light of the morning,
or the rising sun, is called the lover of the girls,
these girls being the dawns, from among whom he
rises. Thus (i. 152, 4) it is said :

We see him coming forth, the lover of the girls, 95 the un-
conquerable.

Ev. i. 163, 8, the sun-horse, or the sun as horse,
is addressed :

After thee there is the chariot ; after thee, Arvan, the man ;
after thee, the cows ; after thee, the host of the girls.

Here the cows and the girls are in reality but two
representations of the same thing the bright days,
the smiling dawns.

Rv. ii. 15, 7, we read of Paravri</, a name which,
like .ETyavana 96 and other names, is but a mask of
the sun returning in the morning after his decline in
the evening :

He (the old sun), knowing the hiding-place of the girls,
rose up manifest, he the escaper ; the lame (sun) walked, the
blind (sun) saw; Indra achieved this when fired with
Soma.

The hiding-place of the girls is the hiding-place of
the cows, the East, the home of the ever-youthful

95 Sayawa rightly explains kaninam by ushasam.

96 In i. 116, 10, it is said that the Asvins restored the old ITyavana
to be again the husband of the girls.

560 YAM A, THE TWIN.

dawns; and to say that the lover of the girls 97 is
there, is only a new expression for c the twin is born.'
Lover (grara^), by itself, too, is used for the rising
sun:

Rigveda, vii. 9, I : The lover woke from the lap of the
Dawn.

Rigveda, i. 92, 11 : The wife (Dawn) shines with the
light of the lover.

What, then, is the meaning of * the husband of the
wives ? ' Though this is more doubtful, I think it
not unlikely that it was meant originally for the
evening sun, as surrounded by the splendours of the
gloaming, as it were by a more serene repetition of
the dawn. The Dawn' herself is likewise called the
wife (iv. 52, 1); but the expression 'husband of the
wives ' is in another passage clearly applied to the
sinking sun. Rv. ix. 86, 32 : ' The husband of the
wives approaches the end.' 98 If this be the right
interpretation, ' the husband of the wives ' would be
the same as ' the twin that is to be born ;' and the
whole verse would thus receive a consistent mean-
ing :

One twin is born (the rising sun, or the morning), another
twin will be born (the setting sun, or the evening) ; the lover
of the girls (the young sun), the husband of the wives ' (the
old sun). 99

T Pus ha n is called the lover of his sister, the husband of his mother
(vi. 55, 4 and 6; x. 3, 3: svasaram gbrbh abhi eti pasHt).

98 Nishkrita, according to B. R., a rendezvous; but in our passage,
the original meaning, to be undone, seems more appropriate.

99 The following translations of this one line, proposed by different
scholars, will give an idea of the difficulty of Vedic interpretation :

Rosen : ' Sociatae utique Agni sunt omnes res natse, sociatae illi sunt
nasciturse, Agnis est pronubus puellarum, maritus uxorum.'

YAM A, THE SETTING SUN. 561

There is, as far as I know, no other passage in the
Rigveda where Yam a, used by itself in the sense
of twin, has been supposed to apply to Agni or the
sun. But there are several passages, particularly in
the last book, in which Yam a occurs as the name of
a single deity. He is called king (x. 14, 1) ; the de-
parted acknowledge him as king (x. 16, 9). He is
together with the Pi tars, the fathers (x. 14,4), with
the Angiras (x. 14, 3), the Atharvans, Bhrigus
(x. 14 6), the Yasishtf/ias (x. 15, 8). He is called
the son of Yivasvat (x. 14, 5), and an immortal son
of Yam a is mentioned (i. 83, 5). Soma is offered
to him at sacrifices (x. 14, 13), and the departed
fathers will see Yam a, together with Varuwa (x.
14, 7), and they will feast with the two kings (x.
14, 10). The king of the departed, Yama, is like-
wise the god of death (x. 165, 4), 100 and two dogs are
mentioned who go about among men as his messen-
gers (x. 14, 12). Yama, however, as well as his
dogs, is likewise asked to bestow life, which origin-
ally could have been no more than to spare life
(x.'l4, 14; 14, 12).

Is it possible to discover in this Yama, the god
of the departed, one of the twins? I confess it
seems a most forced and artificial designation ; and

Langlois: ' Jumeau du pass6, jumeau de 1'avenir, il est le fiance des
filles, et 1'epoux des femmes.'

Wilson: 'Agni, as Yama, is all that is born; as Yam a, all that
will be born : he is the lover of maidens, the husband of wives.'

Kuhn : ' The twin (Agni) is he who is born ; the twin is what is to
be born.

Benfey : ' A born lord, he rules over births ; the suitor of maidens,
the husband of wives.'

100 Rv. i. 38, 5. The expression, 'the path of Yama,' may be used
in an auspicious or inauspicious sense.
II. O

562 YAM A, THE KING OF THE DEPARTED.

I should much, prefer to derive this Yam a from
y am, to control. Yet his father is Y i v a s v at, and the
father of the twins was likewise Yivasvat. Shall we
ascribe to Yivasvat three sons, two called the twins,
Yamau, and another called Yam a, the ruler? It is
possible, yet it is hardly credible ; and I believe it is
better to learn to walk in the strange footsteps of an-
cient speech, however awkward they may seem at first.
Let us imagine, then, as well as we can, that Yarn a,
twin, was used as the name of the evening, or the
setting sun, and we shall be able perhaps to under-
stand how in the end Yam a came to be the king of
the departed and the god of death.

As the East was to the early thinkers the source of
life, the West was to them Nirriti, the exodus, the
land of death. The sun, conceived as setting or dying
every day, was the first who had trodden the path of
life from East to West the first mortal the first to
show us the way when our course is run, and our sun
sets in the far West. Thither the fathers followed
Yam a ; there they sit with him rejoicing, and thither
we too shall go when his messengers (day and night,
see p. 522) have found us out. These are natural
feelings and intelligible thoughts. The question is,
Were they the thoughts and feelings that passed
through the minds of our forefathers when they
changed Yam a, the twin-sun, the setting sun, into
the ruler of the departed and the god of death ?

That Yama's character is solar, might be guessed
from his being called the son of Yivasvat. Yivas-
vat, like Yama, is sometimes considered as sending
death. Eigveda, viii. 67, 20: 'May the shaft of
Vivasvat, Aditya, the poisoned arrow, not strike
us before we are old ! '

YAM A, THE GOD OP DEATH. 563

Yam a is said to have crossed the rapid waters,
to have shown the way to many, to have first known
the path on which our fathers crossed over (x. 14, 1
and 2). In a hymn addressed to the sun-horse, it is
said that ( Yama brought the horse, Trita harnessed
him, Indra first sat on him, the Gandharva took
hold of his rein. And, immediately after, the horse is
said to be Yama, Aditya, and Trita (i. 163, 2 and
3). Again, of the three heavens, two are said to be-
long to Savitar, one to Yama (i. 35, 6). Yama is
spoken of as if admitted to the company of the gods
(x. 135, 1). His own seat is called the house of the
gods (x. 135, 7) ; and these words follow immediately
on a verse in which it is said : < The abyss is stretched
out in the East, the out-going is in the West.' 101

These indications, though fragmentary, are suffi-
cient to show that the character of Yama, such as
we find it in the last book of the Eigveda, might
well have been suggested by the setting sun, per-
sonified as the leader of the human race, as himself
a mortal, yet as a king, as the ruler of the departed,
as worshipped with the fathers, as the first witness
of an immortality to be enjoyed by the fathers, simi-
lar to the immortality enjoyed by the gods themselves.
That the king of the departed should gradually have
assumed the character of the god of death, requires
no explanation. This, however, is the latest phase
of Tarn a, and one that in the early portions of the
Ye da belongs to Varuna, himself, as we saw before,
like Yama, one of the twins.

The mother of all the heavenly powers we have just

101 Other passages to be consulted, Ev. i. 116, 2; vii. 33, 9; ix. 68,
3, 5 ; x. 12, 6 ; 13, 2 ; 13, 4 ; 53, 3 ; 64, 3 ; 123, 6.

o o 2

564 DEMETER, THE DAWN.

examined, is the Dawn with her many names,
ovo^drwv pop<f>r) /u'a, Aditi, the mother of the gods, or
Apya yosha, the water- wife, Sarafiyu, the running
light, Ah an a, the bright, Argruni, the brilliant,
Urvasi, the wide, &c. Beyond the Dawn, however,
another infinite power was suspected, for which
neither the language of the Yedic R is his, nor that
of any other poets or prophets, has yet suggested a
fitting name.

If, then, as I have little doubt, the Greek Ermys is
the same word as the Sanskrit Sarawyu, 102 it is easy
to see how, starting from a common thought, each
deity assumed its peculiar aspect in India and in
Greece. The Night was conceived by Hesiod as the
mother of War, Strife, and Fraud, but she is like-
wise called the mother of Nemesis, or Vengeance. 103
^Eschylus calls the Erinyes the daughters of Night,
and we saw before a passage from the Ye da (vii.
61, 5) where the Druh's, the mischievous powers of
Night, were said to follow the sins of man. e The
Dawn will find you out ' was a saying but slightly
tainted by mythology. ( The Erinyes will haunt you '
was a saying which not even Homer would have un-
derstood in its etymological sense. If the name of
Erinys is sometimes applied to Deraetfer, 104 this is be-
cause Deo' was Dyava, and Dernier, Dyava matar,
the Dawn, the mother, 105 corresponding to Dyaush
pitar, the sky, the father. Erinys Demeter, like

102 The loss of the initial aspirate is exceptional, but, as such, con-
firmed by well-known analogies. See Curtius, G-riecMsche Etymologic,
ii. 253 ; i. 309.

103 M. M.'s Essay on Comparative Mythology, p. 40.

104 Pausanias, viii. 25; Kuhn, /. c. i. 152.

105 See Pott, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vi. p. 118, n.

SOLAR THEORY. 565

Sarawyu, was changed into a niare, she was fol-
lowed by Poseidon, as a horse, and two children
were born, a daughter (Despoina), and Areion.
Poseidon, if he expressed the sun rising from the
sea, would approach to Varuwa, who, in one pas-
sage of the Veda, was called the father of the horse
or of Yama.

And now, after having explained the myth of
Sarawyu, of her father, her husband, and her
children, in what I think its original sense, it re-
mains to state, in a few words, the opinions of other
scholars who have analysed the same myth before,
and have arrived at different conceptions of its
original import. It will not be necessary to enter
upon a detailed refutation of these views, as the
principal difference between these and my own theory
arises from the different points which we have chosen
in order to command a view into the distant regions
of mythological thought. I look upon the sunrise
and sunset, on the daily return of day and night,
on the battle between light and darkness, on the
whole solar drama in all its details that is acted
every day, every month, every year, in heaven and
in earth, as the principal subject of early mythology.
I consider that the very idea of divine powers sprang
from the wonderment with which the forefathers of
the Aryan family stared at the bright (deva) powers
that came and went no one knew whence or whither,
that never failed, never faded, never died, and were
called immortal, i. e. unfading, as compared with the
feeble and decaying race of man. I consider the
regular recurrence of phenomena an almost indis-
pensable condition of their being raised, through the

566 METEOROLOGICAL THEORY.

charms of mythological phraseology, to the rank of
immortals, and I give a proportionately small space
to meteorological phenomena, such as clouds, thunder,
and lightning, which, although causing for a time a
violent commotion in nature and in the heart of man,
would not be ranked together with the immortal
bright beings, but would rather be classed either as
their subjects or as their enemies. It is the sky that
gathers the clouds, it is the sky that thunders, it is
the sky that rains ; and the battle that takes place
between the dark clouds and the bright sun, which
for a time is covered by them, is but an irregular
repetition of that more momentous struggle which
takes place every day between the darkness of the
night and the refreshing light of the morning.

Quite opposed to this, the solar theory, is that pro-
posed by Professor Kuhn, and adopted by the most
eminent mythologians of Germany, which may be
called the meteorological theory. This has been well
sketched by Mr. Kelly in his ( Indo-European Tra-
dition and Folk-lore.'

Clouds (he writes), storms, rains, lightning, und thunder,
were the spectacles that above all others impressed the im-
agination of the early Aryans, and busied it most in finding
terrestrial objects to compare with their ever- vary ing aspect.
The beholders were at home on the earth, and the things of
the earth were comparatively familiar to them; even the
coming and going of the celestial luminaries might often be
regarded by them with the more composure because of their
regularity ; but they could never surcease to feel the liveliest
interest in those wonderful meteoric changes, so lawless and
mysterious in their visitations, which wrought such immediate
and palpable effects, for good or ill, upon the lives and fortunes .
of the beholders. Hence these phenomena were noted and

METEOROLOGICAL THEORY. 567

designated with a watchfulness and wealth of imagery which
made them the principal groundwork of all the Indo-European
mythologies and superstitions.

Professor Schwartz, in his excellent essays on
Mythology, 106 ranges himself determinately on the
same side :

If, in opposition to the principles which I have carried out
in my book, l On the Origin of Mythology,' it has been re-
marked that in the development of the ideas of the Divine in
myths, I gave too much prominence to the phenomena of the
wind and thunderstorms, neglecting the sun, the following re-
searches will confirm what I indicated before, that originally
the sun was conceived implicitly as a mere accident in the
heavenly scenery, and assumed importance only in a more
advanced state in the contemplation of nature and the forma-
tion of myths.

These two views are as diametrically opposed as
two views of the same subject can possibly be. The
one, the solar theory, looks to the regular daily revo-
lutions in heaven and earth as the material out of
which the variegated web of the religious mythology
of the Aryans was woven, admitting only an inter-
spersion here and there of the more violent aspects
of storms, thunder and lightning ; the other, the me-
teoric theory, looks upon clouds and storms and other
convulsive aspects of nature as causing the deepest
and most lasting impression on the minds of those
early observers who had ceased to wonder at the
regular movements of the heavenly bodies, and could
only perceive a divine presence in the great strong
wind, the earthquake, or the fire.

In accordance with this latter view, we saw that

106 Der heutige VolJcsglaube und das (die Heidenthum, 1862 (p. vii.).
Der Ursprung der MytJiologie, 1860.

568 YAM A, YIMA, JEMSHID.

Professor Roth explained Sararz/yu as the dark
storm-cloud soaring in space in the beginning of all
things, and that he took Vivasvat for the light of
heaven. 107 Explaining the second couple of twins
first, he took them, the Asvins, to be the first
bringers of light, preceding the dawn (but who are
they?), while he discovered in the first couple, simply
called Yam a, the twin-brother, and Yami, the
twin-sister, the first created couple, man and woman,
produced by the union of the damp vapour of the
cloud and the heavenly light. After their birth he
imagines that a new order of things began, and that
hence, their mother the chaotic, storm-tossed twi-
light was said to have vanished. Without laying
much stress on the fact that, according to the Rig-
veda, Sarawyu became first the mother of Yama,
then vanished, then bare the As v ins, and finally
left both couples of children, it must be observed that
there is not a single word 108 in the Eigveda pointing
to Yama and Yami as the first couple of mortals
as the Indian Adam and Eve or representing the
first creation of man as taking place by the union of
vapour and light. If Yama had been the first
created of men, surely the old Vedic poets, in speak-
ing of him, could not have passed this over in silence.
Nor is Yima, in the Avesta, represented as the first
man or as the father of mankind. 109 He is one of the

107 Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenldndischen Gesellschqft, iv. p. 425.

108 In the Atharva Veda, 18, 3, 13, an important passage, 'yo ma-
mara prathamo martyanam' was pointed out by Kuhn in Koth's
Nir. p. 138. See also Haug, Essays, p. 234.

109 Spiegel, Eran, p. 245. 'According to one account, the happiness
of Jima's reign came to an end through his pride and untruthfulness.
According to the earlier traditions of the Avesta, Jima does not die, but,
when evil and misery begin to prevail on earth, retires to a smaller space,

BUENOUP'S DISCOVERY. 569

first kings, and his reign represents the ideal of
human happiness, when there was as yet neither
illness nor death, neither heat nor cold ; but no more.
The tracing of the further development of Tim a in
Persia was one of the last and one of the most
brilliant discoveries of Eugene Burnouf. In his
article, c Sur le Dieu Homa, 5 published in the 'Jour-
nal asiatique,' he opened this entirely new mine for
researches into the ancient state of religion and tra-
dition, common to the Aryans before their schism.
He showed that three of the most famous names in
the epic poetry of the later Persians, Jemshid, Feri-
dun, and Garshasp, can be traced back to three
heroes mentioned in the Zend-Avesta as the repre-
sentatives of three of the earliest generations of man-
kind, Yima-Kshaeia y Thraetana, and Keresaspa, and
that the prototypes of these Zoroastrian heroes could
be found again in the Yama, Trita, and Krisasva
of the Ye da. He went even beyond this. He
showed that, as in Sanskrit, the father of Yama is
Yivasvat, the father of Yima in the Avesta is
Vivanghvat. He showed that as Thraetana, in
Persia, is the son of Athwya, the patronymic of
Trita in the Veda is Aptya. He explained the
transition of Thraetana into Feridun by pointing to
the Pehlevi form of the name, as given by Neriosengh,
Phredun. Burnouf, again, it was who identified
Zohdk, the tyrant of Persia, slain by Feridun, whom
even Firdusi still knows by the name of Ash dahdk,
with the Aji dahdJca, the biting serpent, as he trans-
lates ifc, destroyed by Thraetana in the Avesta. No-

a kind of garden or Eden, where he continues his happy life with those
who remained true to him.'

570 THEORIES OP BOTH AND KUHN.

where has the transition of physical mythology into
epic poetry nay, history been so luculently shown
as here. I may quote the words of Burnouf, one of
the greatest scholars that France, so rich in philo-
logical genius, has ever produced :

II est sans contredit fort curieux de voir une des divinit^s
indiennes lea plus ve'nere'es, dormer son nom au premier
souverain de la dynastie ario-persanne ; c'est tin des faits qui
attestent le plus 6 videmment 1'intime union des deux branches
de la grande famille qui s'est e"tenclue, bien des siecles avant
notre ere, depuis le Gange jusqu'a 1'Euphrate. 110

Professor Roth has pointed out some more minute
coincidences in the story of Jemshid, but his attempt
at changing Yam a and Yima into an Indian and
Persian Adam was, I believe, a mistake.

Professor Kuhn was right, therefore, in rejecting
this portion of Professor Roth's analysis. But, like
Professor Roth, he takes Saranyu as the storm-
cloud, and though declining to recognise inVivasvat
the heavenly light in general, he takes Vivasvat as
one of the many names of the sun, and considers
their first-born child, Yam a, to mean Agni, the
fire, or rather the lightning, followed by his twin-
sister, the thunder. He then explains the second
couple, the Asvins, to be Agni and Indra, the
god of the fire and the god of the bright sky,
and thus arrives at the following solution of the
myth :

After the storm is over, and the darkness which hid the single
cloud has vanished, Savitar (the sun) embraces once more
the goddess, the cloud, who had assumed the shape of a horse
tunning away. He shines, still hidden, fiery and with golden

UQ On the Veda and Zmdavesta. W M. M. p. 31.

THEORIES OP BOTH AND EtfHN. 571

arm, and thus begets Agni, fire ; he lastly tears the wedding
veil, and Indra, the blue sky, is born.

The birth of Mann, or man, he explains as a
repetition of that of Agni; and he looks upon Manu,
or Agni, as the Indian Adam, and not, as Professor
Roth, on Yama, the lightning.

It is impossible, of course, to do full justice to the
speculations of these eminent men on the myth of
Saratiyu by giving this meagre outline of their
views. Those who take an interest in the subject
must consult their treatises, and compare them with
the interpretations which I have proposed. I con-
fess that, though placing myself in their point of
view, I cannot grasp any clear or connected train of
thoughts in the mythological process which they
describe. I cannot imagine that men, standing on a
level with our shepherds, should have conversed
among themselves of a dark storm-cloud soaring in
space, and producing by a marriage with light, or
with the sun, the first human beings, or should have
called the blue sky the son of the cloud because the
sky appears when the storm-cloud has been either
embraced or destroyed by the sun. However, it is
not for me to pronounce an opinion, and I must
leave it to others, less wedded to particular theories,
to find out which interpretation is more natural,
more in accordance with the scattered indications of
the ancient hymns of the Veda, and more consonant
with what we know of the spirit of the most primi-
tive ages of man.

572

LECTURE XII.

MODERN MYTHOLOGY.

WHAT I mean by Modern Mythology is a subject
so vast and so important, that in this, my last
Lecture, all I can do is to indicate its character, and
the wide limits within which its working may be
discerned. After the definition which on several
occasions I have given of Mythology, I need only
repeat here that I include under that name every
case in which language assumes an independent
power, and reacts on the mind, instead of being, as
it was intended to be, the mere realisation and out-
ward embodiment of the mind.

In the early days of language the play of mytho-
logy was 110 doubt more lively and more widely
extended, and its effects were more deeply felt, than
in these days of mature speculation, when words are
no longer taken on trust, but are constantly tested
by means of logical definition. When language
sobers down, when metaphors become less bold and
more explicit, there is less danger of speaking of the
sun as a horse, because a poet had called him the
heavenly racer, or of speaking of Selene as enamoured
of Endymion, because a proverb had expressed the
approach of night by the longing looks of the moon

ABUSE OF WORDS. 573

after the setting sun. Yet under a different form
Language retains her silent charm ; and if it no
longer creates gods and heroes, it creates many a
name that receives a similar worship. He who would
examine the influence which words, mere words, have
exercised on the minds of men, might write a history
of the world that would teach us more than any
which we yet possess. Words without definite mean-
ings are at the bottom of nearly all our philosophical
and religious controversies, and even the so-called
exact sciences have frequently been led astray by the
same Siren voice.

I do not speak here of that downright abuse of
language when writers, without maturing their
thoughts and arranging them in proper order, pour
out a stream of hard and misapplied terms which are
mistaken by themselves, if not by others, for deep
learning and height of speculation. This sanctuary
of ignorance and vanity has been well-nigh de-
stroyed; and scholars or thinkers who cannot say
what they wish to say consecutively and intelligibly
have little chance in these days, or at least in this
country, of being considered as depositaries of mys-
terious wisdom. Si non vis intelligi debes negligi. I
rather think of words which everybody uses, and
which seem to be so clear that it looks like imper-
tinence to challenge them. Yet, if we except the
language of mathematics, it is extraordinary to
observe how variable is the meaning of words, how
it changes from century to century, nay, how it
varies slightly in the mouth of almost every speaker.
Such terms as Nature, Law, Freedom, Necessity, Body,
Substance, Matter, Church, State, Revelation, Inspira-

574 HOLLOW WORDS.

tion, Knowledge, Belief, are tossed about in the wars
of words as if everybody knew what they meant, and.
as if everybody used them exactly in the same sense ;
whereas most people, and particularly those who
represent public opinion, pick up these complicated
terms as children, beginning with the vaguest con-
ceptions, adding to them from time to time, perhaps
correcting likewise at haphazard some of their in-
voluntary errors, but never taking stock, never either
inquiring into the history of the terms which they
handle so freely, or realising the fulness of their
meaning according to the strict rules of logical defi-
nition. It has been frequently said that most con-
troversies are about words. This is true; but it
implies much more than it seems to imply. Verbal
differences are not what they are sometimes sup-
posed to be merely formal, outward, slight, acci-
dental differences, that might be removed by a
simple explanation, or by a reference to 'Johnson's
Dictionary.' 1 They are differences arising from the
more or less perfect, from the more or less full and
correct conception attached to words : it is the mind
that is at fault, not the tongue merely.

If a child, after being taught to attach the name of
gold to anything that is yellow and glitters, were to
maintain against all comers that the sun is gold, the
child no doubt would be right, because in his mind
the name ( gold ' means something that is yellow and
glitters. We do not hesitate to say that a flower is
edged with gold meaning the colour only, not the

. ' ' Half the perplexities of men are traceable to obscurity of thought,
hiding and breeding under obscurity of Language.' Edinb. Seview, Oct.
1862, p. 378.

VAGUE WORDS. 575

substance. The child afterwards learns that there
are other qualities, besides its colour, which are
peculiar to real gold, and which distinguish gold
from similar substances. He learns to stow away
every one of these qualities into the name gold, so
that at last gold with him means no longer anything
that glitters, but something that is heavy, malleable,
fusible, and soluble in aqua regia ; 2 and he adds to
these any other quality which the continued re-
searches of each generation bring out. Yet in spite
of all these precautions, the name gold, so carefully
defined by the philosophers, will slip away into the
crowd of words, and we may hear a banker discus-
sing the market value of gold in such a manner that
we can hardly believe he is speaking of the same
thing which we last saw in the crucible of the
chemist. You remember how the expression c golden-
handed,' as applied to the sun, led to the formation
of a story which explained the sun's losing his hand,
and having it replaced by an artificial hand made of
gold. That is Ancient Mythology. Now if we were
to say that of late years the supply of gold has been
very much increased, and if from this we were to
conclude that the increase of taxable property in this
country was due to the discovery of gold in California,
this would be Modern Mythology. We should use the
name gold in two different senses. We should use
gold in the one case as synonymous with realised
wealth, in the other as the name of the circulating
medium. We should commit the same mistake as
the people of old, using the same word in two slightly
varying senses, and then confounding one meaning
with the other.

2 Cf. Locke, iii. 9, 17.

576 POPULAR ETYMOLOGY.

For let it not be supposed that even in its more
naked form mythology is restricted to the earliest
ages of the world.

Though one source of mythology, that which
arises from radical and poetical metaphor, is less
prolific in modern than in ancient dialects, there is
another agency at work in modern dialects which,
though in a different manner, produces nearly the
same results, namely, phonetic decay, followed by
popular etymology. By means of phonetic decay
many words have lost their etymological transpa-
rency ; nay, words, originally quite distinct in form
and meaning, assume occasionally the same form.
Now, as there is in the human mind a craving after
etymology, a wish to find out, by fair means or foul,
why such a thing should be called by such a name,
it happens constantly that words are still further
changed in order to make them intelligible once
more; or, when two originally distinct words have
actually run into one, some explanation is required,
and readily furnished, in order to remove the diffi-
culty. 3

' La Tour sans venin ' is a case in point, but it is
by no means the only case.

From Anglo-Saxon bl6t, sacrifice, blotan, to kill for
sacrifice, was derived blessian, to consecrate, to bless.
In modern English, to bless seems connected with
bliss, the Anglo-Saxon blis, joy, with which it had
originally nothing in common.

Sorrow is the Anglo-Saxon sorh, the German
Sorge; its supposed connection with sorry is merely

8 Cf. Chips from a German Workshop, VQ\.\\\. p. 300, sey.; and supra,
p. 404.

POPULAR ETTMOLOaT. 677

imaginary, for the Anglo-Saxon for sorry is sdrig,
from sdr, a wound, a sore.

In German, most people imagine that Sundfluih,
the deluge, means the sin-flood ; but Sundfluth is but
a popular etymological adaptation of sinfluot, the
great flood.

Many of the old signs of taverns contain what
we may call hieroglyphic mythology. There was a
house on Stoken Church Hill, near Oxford, exhibiting
on its sign-board, ' Feathers and a Plum.' The house
itself was vulgarly called the Plum and Feathers:" 1
it was originally the Plume of Feathers, from the crest
of the Prince of Wales.

A Cat with a Wheel is the corrupt emblem of St.
Catherine's Wheel ; the Bull and Gate was originally
intended as a trophy of the taking of Boulogne by
Henry VIII., it was the Boulogne Gate ; and the
Goat and Compasses have taken the place of the fine
old Puritan sign-board, ' God encompasseth us.' 5

There is much of this kind of popular mythology
floating about in the language of the people, arising
from a very natural and very general tendency,
namely, from a conviction that every name must
have a meaning. If the real and original meaning has
once been lost, chiefly owing to the ravages of phone-
tic decay, a new meaning is at first tentatively, but very
soon dogmatically, assigned to the changed name.

4 Brady, Clavis Calendaria, vol. ii. p. 13.

5 Chips from a German Workshop, vol. iii. p. 304. Trench, English
Past and Present, p. 223 :

' The George and Cannon = the George Canning.
The Billy Kuffian = the Bellerophon (ship).
The Iron Devil = the Hirondelle.

Rose of the Quarter Sessions = la rose des quatre saisona.
II. P P

578 POPULAR ETYMOLOGY.

At Lincoln, immediately below the High Bridge,
there is an inn bearing now the sign of the Black
Goats. It formerly had the sign of the Three Goats,
a, name derived from the three gowts or drains by
which the water from the Swan Pool, a large lake
which formerly existed to the west of the city, was
conducted into the bed of the Witham below. A
public-house having arisen on the bank of the princi-
pal of these three gowts, in honour, probably, of the
work when it was made, the name became corrupted
into the Three Goats a corruption easily accom-
plished in the Lincolnshire dialect. 6

In the same town, a flight of steps by which the
ascent is gained from about midway of what is called
the New Road to a small ancient gateway, leading to-
wards the Minster Yard, is called the Grecian Stairs.
These stairs were originally called the Greesen, the
early English plural of a gree or step. When Greesen
ceased to be understood, Stairs was added by way
of explanation, and the Greesen Stairs were, by the
instinct of popular etymology, changed into Grecian
Stairs. 7

8 See the Rev. Francis C. Massingberd, in the Proceedings of the
Archceological Institute-: Lincoln, 1848, p. 58. Gowt, sometimes pro-
nounced gyte, is the same word as the German Gosse, gutter.

7 See the Rev. Francis C. Massingberd, in the Proceedings of the
Archaological Institute: Lincoln, 1848, p. 59. The learned antiquary
quotes several passages in support of the plural greesen. Thus Acts
xxi. 40, instead of ' And when he had given him license, Paul stood on
the stairs' Wickliffe has : ' Poul stood on the grcezen! Shakespeare
paraphrases grize (as he writes) by steps :

Let me speak like yourself; and lay a sentence
Which, as a grize or step, may help these lovers
Into your favour. Othello, Act 1, Sc. iii.

In Hackluyts Voyages, vol. ii. p. 57, we read : ' The king of the said
land of Java hath a most brave and sumptuous palace, the most loftily

POPULAR ETYMOLOGY. 579

One of our Colleges at Oxford is now called and
spelt Brasenose. Over the gate of the College there
is a Brazen Nose, and the arms of the College display
the same shield, and have done so for several cen-
turies. I have not heard of any legend to account for
the startling presence of that emblem over the gate
of the College, but this is simply owing to the want of
poetic imagination on the part of the Oxford Ciceroni.
In Greece, Pausanias would have told us ever so
many traditions commemorated by such a monument.
At Oxford, we are simply told that the College was
originally a brewhouse, and that its original name,
brasen-huis (braserie), was gradually changed to
brazenose.

Brasenose was founded in the commencement of
the reign of Henry VIII., by the joint liberality of
William Smyth, Bishop of Lincoln, and Sir Eichard
Sutton. The foundation-stone was laid on June 1,
1509, and the charter entitling it 'The King's Hall
and College of Brasenose,' is dated January 15, 1512.
This college stands upon the site of no less than four
ancient halls, viz. Little University Hall, described
by some antiquaries as one of those built by Alfred,
and which occupied the north-east angle near the
lane; Brasenose Hall, whence the name of the col-
lege, situated where the present gateway now stands ;

built that I ever saw, and it hath most high ffreeses, or stayers, to ascend
up to the rooms therein contained.'

' In expensis Stephani Austeswell, equitantis ad Thomam Ayleward,
ad loquendum cum ipso apud Havant, et inde ad Hertynge, ad loquendum
<ium Domina ibidem, de evidenciis scrutandis de Pe de Gre progenitorum
hseredum de Husey, cum vino dato eodem tempore, xx. d.'ob.' From the
Bolls of Winchester College, temp. Hen. IV., communicated by Bev. W.
{runner, in Proceedings of Archceolog. Inst. 1848, p. 04.

580 POPULAR ETYMOLOGY.

Salisbury Hall, the site of a part of the present
library ; and Little St. Edmund Hall, which was still
more to the southward, about where is now the
chapel. The name of Brasenose is supposed, with
the greater probability, to have been derived from a
Brasinium, Brasen-huis, or brewhouse, attached to
the hall built by Alfred ; more vulgarly, from some
students removed to it from the temporary University
of Stamford, where the iron ring of the knocker was
fixed in a nose of brass. 8

The following local legend was sent me from
Dorset :

The Vale of Blackmore in Dorset was till a late period a
vast forest, chiefly of oaks, the river Stour running through it.
Hence there were many oak-fords, fords by the oaks, which
name is retained in several villages called Ockford. Three
of these lie close together, Ockford Shilling usually called
Shillingston, Ockford Fitzpaine, usually called Fippen Ock-
ford, and Child Ockford.

The popular etymology is that, many years ago, a child still
living was found in or on the banks of the Stour, where the
three parishes join, and a dispute arose which was bound to
keep the foundling. After a while Child Ockford took the
main cost of it, Shilling Ockford paying a shilling, and Fippen
Ockford five pence a week towards its maintenance.

In fact, Shilling Ockford was the estate of the Eschellings,
an old Dorset family, whose last representative Margaret
Eschelling was a nun, and died at Shaftesbury some years
after the suppression of the monasteries ; Fippen Ockford
belonged to the Fitz Paines, and Childe Ockford may have
been the manor occupied in the father's lifeiime by the
Childe, eldest son of one of these families.

Names or legends which have ceased to be intelli-

8 -Parker, Handbook of Oxford, p. 79-

POPULAR ETYMOLOGY. 581

gible, are frequently transferred from earlier to later
times, and applied again and again to better known
historical characters. Thus stories, told originally of
some of their ancient deities, were repeated by the
Germans, after their conversion to Christianity, by
merely substituting the names of Christ or the
Apostles for the beneficent, that of the Devil for the
mischievous, characters of their pagan mythology.
Popular heroes or illustrious sovereigns, such as
Theodoric, Charlemagne, Frederick Barbarossa, nay,
even Frederick the Great, served as attractive centres
of popular traditions, the same story being grafted
repeatedly on different stems, and slightly varying in
its growth according to the varied circumstances
under which it was revived.

There is a legend that Charles the Fifth of France,
and his men, who fell all in a great battle, were con-
demned for their crimes to wander over the world on
horseback, constantly employed in fighting battles.
This troop of riders was called Maisnie Hellequin, in
Latin familia Harleqmni, a name preserved in the
English Hurlewayne's meyne, or Hurlewaynis Kynne.
Instead of Hellequin, Henequin, Herlequin, and other
varieties are mentioned; and Hellequin is, through
Herlequin, traced back to Charlequin, or Charles
Quint*

Instances of the same kind of popular etymology
which occasionally leads to popular mythology are
to be found in proverbs. There is an English pro-

9 Thomas Wright, Alliterative Poem on the Deposition of King Richard
II., notes, p. 53 ; who quotes Grimm's Mythologie, p. 527 ; Le Koux de
Lincy, Livredes Legendes, pp. 148-150; Michel Benoit, vol. ii. p. 336;
Paulin Paris, Catalogue of French MSS.of the Bibliotheque du Eoi, vol. i,
p. 322-325.

682 POPULAR ETYMOLOGY.

verb, ' to know a hawk from a handsaw,' which wa
originally ' to know a hawk from a hernshaw,' a kind
of heron. 10

The French buffetier, a man who waits at the buffet,
which was a table near the door of the dining-hall
for poor people, travellers, and pilgrims, to help
themselves to what was not wanted at the high
table, has been changed in English into a beef-
eater; !1 and it is no doubt a vulgar error that these
tall stalwart fellows are chiefly fed on beef.

Court Cards were originally Coat Cards. Arch-
deacon Nares, in his Glossary, says :

The figured cards, now corruptly called ' Court Cards '
knaves we trust, are not confined to courts, though kings
and queens belong to them. The proofs of it are abundant.
One says :

* I am a Coat Card indeed.'
He is answered :

1 Then thou must needs be a knave, for thou art neither king
nor queen.' Rowley, When you see me, fyc.

1 We called him a Coat Card of the last order.'

B. Johnson, Staple of News.

1 She had in her hand the Ace of Hearts, and a Coat Card. 7
Chapman's May Day.

1 Here is a trick of discarded cards of us,
We were ranked with coats as long as my old master
lived. 1 Massinger's Old Law, Act III. Sc. 1.

The change of name from coat to court cards probably
dates about 1681, as Robertson's Phrase Book, published in
that year, gives both words.

Wilson, Pre-historic Man, p. 68. Cf. Pott, Dappelung, p. 81,
Forstemann, Deutsche Volksetymologic, in Kuhn's Zeitschrift, vol. i..
Latham, History of the English Language.

" Cf. Trench, English Past and Present, p. 221.

BARNACLES. 583

One of the most curious instances of the power
of popular etymology and mythology is seen in
the English Barnacle. It is not often that we can
trace a myth from century to century through the
different stages of its growth, and it may be worth
while to analyse this fable of the Barnacle more in
detail.

Barnacles, in the sense of spectacles, seem to be
connected with the German word for spectacles,
namely, Brille. }2 This German word is a corruption
of beryllus. In a vocabulary of 1482 we find brill,
parill, a masculine, a precious stone, shaped like
glass or ice (eise), berillus item or bernlein. 13 Sebas-
tian Frank, in the beginning of the sixteenth century,
still uses barill for eye-glass. The word afterwards
became a feminine, and, as such, the recognised name
for spectacles.

In the place of beryllus, in the sense of precious
stone, we find in Prove^al berille; 14 and in the sense
of spectacles, we find the Old French beride. 15 Beride
was afterwards changed to beside, 16 commonly, but
wrongly, derived from bis-cyclus.

In the dialect of Berri 17 we find, instead of bericle
or beside, the dialectic form berniques, which reminds

12 Of. Grimm, D. W. s. v. ' Brill.' Mr. Wedgwood derives barnacles, in
the sense of spectacles, from Limousin bourgna, to squinny ; Wall.
boirgni, to look through one eye in aiming ; Lang, borni, blind ; bomikel,.
one who ses with difficulty ; berniques, spectacles. Vocab. du Berri.

13 'Berillus (gemma, speculum presbiterorum aut veterum, d. i.
brill).' Diefenbach, Glossarium Latino- Germanicum. 'Eise 'may be
meant for crystal.

14 Kaynouard, Lexique roman.

15 Diet, du vieux Frangais: Paris, 1766, s. v.

16 Diet. Prov.-Fran$ais, par Avril, 1839, s. v.

17 Voc. du Berri, a. v.

584 BARNACLES.

us of the German form Bern-lein. 18 An analogous
form is the English barnacle, originally spectacles
fixed on the nose, and afterwards used in the sense
of irons put on the nosas of horses to confine them
for shoeing, bleeding, or dressing. 19 Brille in German
is used in a similar sense of a piece of leather with
spikes, put on the noses of young animals that are to
be weaned. The formation of bernicula seems to have
been beryllicula, and, to avoid the repetition of l y
berynicula. As to the change of I into n see melan-
conico, filomena, &c. Diez, ' Grammatik,' p. 190.

Barnacle, in the sense of cirrhopode, can hardly be
anything but the diminutive of the Latin pernaj
pernacula being changed into bemacula. Pliny 21
speaks of a kind of shells called pemce,, so called from
their similarity with a leg of pork.

The bodies of these animals are soft, and enclosed
in a case composed of several calcareous plates ; their
limbs are converted into a tuft of jointed cirrhi or
fringes, which can be protruded through an opening
in the sort of a mantle which lines the interior of the

18 In the Diet, du vieux Franfais : Paris, 1766, bernicles occurs in the
sense of rien, nihil.

19 Skinner derives barnacle, 'frsenum quod equino rictui injicitur,
from bear and neck.

20 Cf. Diez, Grammatik, p. 256. Bolso (pulsus), brugna and prugna
(prunum), &c. Berna, instead of Perna, is actually mentioned in the
Glossarium Latino- Germanicum media et infima; cstatis, ed. Diefen-
bach ; also in Du Cange, berna, suuinbache. Skinner derives barnacle
from beam, filius, and A. S. aac, oak. Wedgwood proposes the Manx
bayrn, a cap, as the etymon of barnacle ; also barnagh, a limpet, and the
Gaelic bairneach, barnacle ; the Welsh brenig, limpet.

21 Plin. H. Nat. 32, 55 : ' Appellantur et pernse concharum generis,
circa Pontias insulas frequentissimse. Stant velut suillo crure longo in
arena defixse, hiantesque, qua limpitudo est, pedali non minus spatio
cibum venantur.'

BARNACLES. 585

shell. With thes,e they fish for food, very much like
a man with a casting-net ; and as soon as they are
immersed in sea- water by the return of the flood, their
action is incessant. They are generally found fixed
on rocks, wooden planks, stones, or even on living
shells ; and after once being fixed, they never leave
their place of abode. Before they take to this settled
life, however, they move about freely, and, as it would
seem, enjoy a much more highly organised state of
life. They are then furnished with eyes, antennae,
and limbs, and are as active as any of the minute
denizens of the sea.

There are two families of Cirrhopodes. The first,
the Lepadidce, are attached to their resting-place by
a flexible stalk, which possesses great contractile
power. The shell is usually composed of two trian-
gular pieces on each side, and is closed by another
elongated piece at the back, so that the whole con-
sists of five pieces.

The second family, the Balanidce, or sea-acorn, has
a shell usually composed of six segments, the lower
part being firmly fixed to the stone or wood on which
the creature lives.

These creatures were known in England at all
times, and they went by the name of Barnacles, i.e.
Bernaculce, or small muscles. Their name, though
nearly identical in sound with Barnacles, in the sense
of spectacles, had originally no connection whatever
with that term, which was derived, as we found,
from beryllus.

But now comes a third claimant to this name of
Barnacle, namely, the famous Barnacle Goose. There
is a goose called Bernicla ; and though that goose has

586 BARNACLES.

sometimes been confounded with a duck (the Anas
niger minor, the Scoter, the French Macreuse), yet
there is no doubt that the Barnacle goose is a real
bird, and may be seen drawn and described in any
good Book on Birds. 22 But though the bird is a real
bird, the accounts given of it, not only in popular,
but in scientific works, form one of the most extraor-
dinary chapters in the history of Modern Mytho-
logy.

I shall begin with one of the latest accounts, taken
from the ( Philosophical Transactions/ No. 137,
January and February 1677-8. Here, in c A Kela-
tion concerning Barnacles, by Sr. Robert Moray,
lately one of His Majesties Council for the Kingdom
of Scotland,' we read (p. 925) :

In the Western Islands of Scotland much of the Timber,
wherewith the Common people build their Houses, is such as
the West-Ocean throws upon their Shores. The most ordi-
sary Trees are Firr and Ash. They are usually very large,.
and without branches ; which seem rather to have been broken
or worn off than cut; and are so Weather-beaten, that
there is no Bark left upon them, especially the Firr& Being
in the Island of East, I saw lying upon the shore a cut of a
large Firr-tree of about 2-^ foot diameter, and 9 or 10 foot
long ; which had lain so long out of the water that it was
very dry : And most of the Shells, that had formerly cover'd
it, were worn or rubb'd off. Only on the parts that lay next

22 Linnaeus describes it, sub 'Aves, Anseres,' as 'No. 11, Bernicla,
A. fusca, capite collo pectoreque nigris, collari albo. Branta s. Bernicla..
Habitat in Europa boreali, migrat super Sueciam.'

Willoughby, in his Ornithology, book iii., says : ' I am of opinion that
the Brant-Goose differs specificalty from the Bernacle, however writers
of the History of Birds confound them, and make these words synony-
mous.' Mr. Gould, in his 'Birds of Europe,' vol. v., gives a drawing:
of the Anser leucopsis, Bernacle Goose, 1'oie bernache, sub No. 350 ;
and another of the Anser Brenta, Brent Goose, 1'oie cravant, sub No. 352..

BARNACLES. 587

the ground, there still hung multitudes of little Shells ; having
within them little Birds, perfectly shap'd, supposed to be
Barnacles.

The Shells hung very thick and close one by another, and
were of different sizes. Of the colour and consistence of
Muscle-Shells, and the sides or joynts of them joyned with such
a kind of film as Muscle-Shells are ; which serves them for a
Hing to move upon, when they open and shut

The Shells hang at the Tree by a Neck longer than the
Shell. Of a kind of Filmy substance, round, and hollow,
and creassed, not unlike the Wind-pipe of a Chicken ; spread-
ing out broadest where it is fastened to the Tree, from which
it seems to draw and convey the matter which serves for
the growth and vegetation of the Shell and the little Bird
within it.

This Bird in every Shell that 1 opened, as well the least as
the biggest, I found so curiously and compleatly formed, that
there appeared nothing wanting, as to the internal parts, for
making up a perfect Seafowl : every little part appearing so
distinctly, that the whole looked like a large Bird seen through
a concave or diminishing Glass, colour and feature being every
where so clear and neat. The little Bill like that of a Goose,
the Eyes marked, the Head, Neck, Breast, Wings, Tail, and
Feet formed, the Feathers every where perfectly shap'd, and
blackish coloured ; and the Feet like those of other Water-
fowl, to my best remembrance. All being dead and dry, I

did not look after the Internal parts of them Nor did

I ever see any of the little Birds alive, nor met with any body
that did. Only some credible persons have assured me they
have seen some as big as their fist.

Here, then, we have, only 200 years ago, a witness
who, though he does not vouch to having seen the
actual metamorphosis of the Barnacle shell into the
Barnacle goose, yet affirms before a scientific public
that he saw within the shell the bill, the eyes, head.

588 BARNACLES.

neck, breast, wings, tail, feet, and feathers of the
embryo bird.

We have not, however, to go far back before we
find a witness to the actual transformation, namely,
John Gerarde, of London, Master in Chirurgerie.
At the end of his 'Herball,' published in 1597, we
have not only a lively picture of the tree, w