Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/74

52 as concerns the purposes for which he examines them, and the results he would derive from them, they are almost as little the work of man as is the form of his skull, the outlines of his face, the construction of his arm and hand. They are fairly to be regarded as reflections of the facts of human nature and human history, in a mirror imperfect, indeed, but faithful and wholly trustworthy; not as pictures drawn by men's hands for our information. Hence the close analogies which may be drawn between the study of language and some of the physical sciences. Hence, above all, the fundamental and pervading correspondence between its whole method and theirs. Not less than they, it founds itself upon the widest observation and examination of particular facts, and proceeds toward its results by strict induction, comparing, arranging, and classifying, tracing out relations, exhibiting an inherent system, deducing laws of general or universal application, discovering beneath all the variety and diversity of particulars an ever-present unity, in origin and development, in plan and purpose. Beyond all question, it is this coincidence of method which has confused some of the votaries of linguistic science, and blinded their eyes to the true nature of the ultimate facts upon which their study is founded, leading them to deny the agency of man in the production and change of language, and to pronounce it an organic growth, governed by organic forces.

Another motive—a less important one, and in great part, doubtless, unconscious in its action—impelling certain students of language to claim for their favourite branch of investigation a place in the sisterhood of physical sciences, has been, as I cannot but think, an apprehension lest otherwise they should be unable to prove it entitled to the rank of a science at all. There is a growing disposition on the part of the devotees of physical studies—a class greatly and rapidly increasing in importance, and influence—to restrict the honourable title of science to those departments of knowledge which are founded on the unvarying laws of material nature, and to deny the possibility of scientific method and scientific results where the main element of