Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 7.djvu/165

Rh begins his work upon the signs, their office, and their history. Between him and the students of the other branches named there is a relation of mutual helpfulness. The history of words and the history of things cast constant and valued light upon one another. The sounds of language illustrate the articulate capacity of the organs of utterance, and their changes require for explanation a knowledge of phonetic science, as a special department of physiology and acoustics combined. And the contributions of language to psychology greatly outweigh in value those of psychology to the science of language, since the latter is the key to the historical development of human thought; and since words are not the immediate product of processes of cognition, or abstraction, or induction, but only the result of voluntary attempts to communicate those products. Most students of language, probably, believe all this, and act in their studies upon the belief; only they are too uncertain of their ground not to be often driven from it by the imposing claims of outsiders.

About eight years ago (in the autumn of 1867), I put forth a connected and carefully-reasoned exhibition of my linguistic views, in a volume entitled "Language, and the Study of Language;" in it I dealt only sparingly in controversial discussions of others' opinions, but left my own to recommend themselves by their concinnity, their accordance with familiar facts, and their power to solve the various problems which the science presents. Of the reception accorded to that volume I have no right to complain, and certainly I never have complained. But I have, at about that time and since, repeatedly taken occasion to examine narrowly and criticise freely the opposing views of others, and the arguments by which these were supported. And I have done it especially in the case of men of eminence and celebrity, men to whom the public are accustomed to look for guidance on this class of subjects. This, surely, was neither unnatural nor improper. What Smith, Brown, and Robinson, may say about language before ears that heed them not, is of the smallest consequence; but if Schleicher and Steinthal, Renan and Müller, are teaching what appears to me to be error, and sustaining it by untenable arguments, I am not only authorized, but called upon, to refute them, if I can. The last of the gentlemen just named, however, in his paper in the Contemporary Review for January last (p. 312, et seq.), even while very flatteringly intimating that my habit of criticising only the most worthy of notice is appreciated, and hence that those criticised feel in a certain way complimented by it, appears to think that their greatness ought to shield them from such attacks. I have very little fear that the general opinion of scholars will sustain him in this position. Each controversy is to be judged, rather, on its own intrinsic merits. If I have failed to make out a tolerable case against those whom I have criticised, then, be they great men or small, I have been guilty of presumption, and deserve reproof; if, on the contrary,