Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/75

II.] action is the varying and capricious will of man. The considerations adduced above, it is hoped, will remove this apprehension. Nor was it ever otherwise than needless, as the tendency which called it forth is mistaken and unjustifiable. The name "science" admits no such limitation. The vastness of a field of study, the unity in variety of the facts it includes, their connection by such ties that they allow of strict classification and offer fruitful ground for deduction, and the value of the results attained, the truth deduced—these things make a science. And, in all these respects, the study of language need fear a comparison with no one of the physical sciences. Its field is the speech of all mankind, cultivated or savage; the thousands of existing dialects, with all their recorded predecessors; the countless multitudes of details furnished by these, each significant of a fact in human history, external or internal. The wealth of languages is like the wealth of species in the whole animal kingdom. Their tie of connection is the unity of human nature in its wants and capacities, the unity of human knowledge, of existing things and their relations, to be apprehended by the mind and reflected in speech—a bond as infinite in its ramifications among all the varieties of human language, and as powerful in its binding force, as is the unity of plan in vegetable or animal life. The results, finally, for human history, the history of mind, of civilization, of connection of races, for the comprehension of man, in his high endowments and in his use of them, are of surpassing interest. To compare their worth with that of the results derivable from other sciences were to no good purpose: all truth is valuable, and that which pertains to the nature and history of man himself is, to say the least, not inferior in interest to that which concerns his surroundings. Linguistic science, then, has in itself enough of dignity and true scientific character not to need to borrow aught of either from association with other branches of inquiry, which differ from it in subject and scope, while yet they seek by corresponding methods the same ultimate object, the increase of knowledge, and the advancement of man in comprehension of himself and of the universe.