Page:Mind (Old Series) Volume 9.djvu/157

 H. STEINTHAI/S ABRISS DER SPRACfffTISSgNSCffAFT, I. 145 turned to such good account. At the same time it is interesting to note that Steinthal's coadjutor, Prof. Lazarus, neither uses mathematical formulae nor those of chemistry, that, in fact, though he admits the possibility, he altogether denies the neces- sity of applying mathematics to psychology. At the outset we must notice Steinthal's definition of philology. In the philosophico-philological treatise De Pronomfne Rrfntiro, which was written in 1847, he had said : " Itaque una viri doc- tissimi atque clarissimi Bockhii definitio mihi videtur recta : pliilo- loijium '>" cwjniti cogiritionem " . Since then he has been led to modify his acceptance of the formula " Erkenntniss des Erkann- ten," because it fails to adequately mark off philology either on the side of philosophy or on that of natural science. Nor does it accurately define philology in itself. Setting aside the false antitheses in Bockh's Encyklop'ldie und Methodologie der Philologie, Science, he says, is I. Formal and a priori, Philosophy : (1) How am I to think ?,.... Logic and Metaphysics. (2) How am I to act ? Ethics. (3) How am I to create artistically ? . ./Esthetics. II. Material ; the object is : (1) Nature, .... Natural Science and Mathematics. (2) Mind, History (or Philology) and Psychology. From this it is plain that philology is defined as history. Kant defines as different but related concepts, polyhistory, poly- mathy, pansophia, philology, hurnaniora, and the ldle.-?-lettres. But we must not suppose that he meant to designate real sciences by these names. Steinthal makes the distinction between the philological and scientific view of language partly from abstract or logical considerations, and partly because it accords with the di vision of labour among linguistic students. Logic teaches us that every concept has a content and a scope. The definition of a concept has only to give the content and not the scope. Not that the scope of a concept is immaterial, only it must be the outcome of the content. Now, is this definition of philology as history one containing a scientific content from which its scope may be deduced ? We venture to think it is, though it is not likely to find favour with English students, who have been accus- tomed to look upon philology either as a systematic study of the classical authors or as identical with the science of language. " To the eye of the student of language what have Turkish, Persian and Arabic in common ? Nothing. But those three literatures are comprehended by Muhainmadan philology. And in Buddhistic philology quite heterogeneous elements are united. In a word, history unites what nature may have separated." Mental life goes back further than historical, although to have 10