CONTENTS

[75]

       5/ Max Müller and the Doctrine of Development.

        The principles of development as applied to language have found no more determined advocate than Max Müller in his letter to Chevalier Bunsen 'On the Turanian Languages,' published in 1853, and in several chapters of his lectures on the science of language. But, as already intimated, I distinguish expressly between Darwinism and the monistic theory of development.
        In his otherwise admirably luminous and profound 'Lectures on Darwin' there is one vulnerable point, namely, when he lays down the alternative: 'Either Kant is in the right or Darwin; one excludes the other’ It is true that Kant regards reason as what is given immediately, as the necessary, indisputable base of all knowledge, so that it might naturally be inferred that he admitted it to be an irreducible, special gift vouchsafed to man by the divine influence. But in many passages of his writings he lets it be clearly seen that human reason has not existed from eternity, and therefore must be conceived as having arisen from natural causes through the co-operation of natural forces. When he lays down the distinction between 'receptive sensation' and 'spontaneous thought,' according to
[76]    
which animal life and human reason appear to occupy two distinct camps, on the one hand, as Schopenhauer has pointed out, he took the matter too easily; while, on the other, he expressly conceded that both sensation and thought, by the co-operation of which all knowledge is effected, might after all prove to be derived from a common root.
        Still, the reference to Kant may be justified, especially in England, where the great discoveries made by the author of the 'Kritik der reinen Vernunff continue for the most part a terra incognita. The same, indeed, may be said of many, if not of most of the German representatives of Darwinism, who seem to know about Kant only just what serves their own purpose; e.g. the theory of the origin of the solar system, which under the name of the La Place-Kantian cosmogony is taught even in secondary schools. The important fact is overlooked or ignored, that materialism, as long as Kant was alive or the influence of his spirit active among the teachers of philosophy, did not so much as dare to open its mouth.
        Reason, the peculiar gift of man, which marks him off from every other being, is the source and starting-point of all knowledge. So Kant affirms, and Max Müller coincides, only adding that reason and the gift of speech are accorded to man at the same moment. Ratio et oratio are one, they are related to each other like body and mind, the outer and the inner; they are distinguishable but not separable. Without speech there can be no thought, as the Greeks felt when they used the same word ὁ λόγος for both. Speech is therefore the most faithful mirror of the human mind; it contains a wealth of wisdom in itself, and throws much
[77]    
valuable light both upon the intellectual life of the primitive world and upon the degrees of external culture reached by the race in a hoary antiquity of which every other remaining trace has been obliterated. The treasure chest is there, and the key to open it is comparative philology. No praises, no glorification of this science can exaggerate its real importance.

'I make bold to say that during the last hundred, and still more during the last fifty years, Oriental studies have contributed more than any other branch of scientific research to change, to purify, to clear, and intensify the intellectual atmosphere of Europe, and to widen our horizon in all that pertains to the science of man, in history, philology, theology, and philosophy. We have not only conquered and annexed new worlds to the ancient empire of learning, but we have leavened the old world with ideas that are already fermenting even in the daily bread of our schools and universities.'[1]

'But let us look at what has been achieved by the masters of comparative philology, and many others, who followed their banners. The East, formerly a land of dreams, of fables, and fairies, has become to us a land of unmistakable reality: the curtain between the West and the East has been lifted, and our old forgotten home stands before us again in bright colours and definite outlines. Two worlds, separated for thousands of years, have been reunited as by a magic spell, and we feel rich in a past that may well be the pride of our noble Aryan family. We say no longer vaguely and poetically Ex Oriente Lux, but we know that all the most vital elements of our knowledge and civilisation — our languages, our alphabets, our figures, our weights and measures, our art, our religion, our traditions, our very nursery stories—come to us from the East; and we must confess that but for the rays of Eastern light, whether Aryan or Semitic or Hamitic, that called forth the hidden germs of the dark and dreary West, Europe, now the very light of the world, might have
[78]    
remained for ever a barren and forgotten promontory of the primeval Asiatic continent. We live, indeed, in a new world; the barrier between the West and the East, that seemed insurmountable, has vanished. The East is ours; we are its heirs, and claim by right our share in its inheritance. We know what it was for the Northern nations, the old barbarians of Europe, to be brought into spiritual contact with Rome and Greece, and to learn that beyond the small poor world in which they had moved, there was an older, richer, brighter world, the ancient world of Rome and Athens, with its arts and laws, its poetry and philosophy, all of which they might call their own, and make their own by claiming the heritage of the past. We know how, from that time, the classical and Teutonic spirits mingled together, and formed that stream of modern thought on whose shores we ourselves live and move. A new stream is now being brought into the same bed, the stream of Oriental thought, and already the colours of the old stream show very clearly the influence of that new tributary. Look at any of the important works published during the last twenty years, not only on language, but on literature, mythology, law, religion, and philosophy, and you will see on every page the working of a new spirit. I do not say that the East can ever teach us new things, but it can place before us old things, and leave us to draw from them lessons more strange and startling than anything dreamt of in our philosophy.

'Before all, a study of the East has taught us the same lesson which the Northern nations once learnt in Rome and Athens, tnat there are other worlds beside our own; that there are other religions, other mythologies, other laws, and that the history of philosophy from Thales to Hegel is not the whole history of human thought. In all these subjects the East has supplied us with parallels, and with all that is implied in parallels; viz., the possibility of comparing, measuring, and understanding. The comparative spirit is the truly scientific spirit of our age, nay, of all ages. An empirical acquaintance with single facts does not constitute knowledge in the true sense of the word. All human knowledge begins with the Two or the Dyad, the comprehension of two single
[79]    
things as one. If in these days we may still quote Aristotle, we may boldly say that "there is no science of that which is unique." A single event may be purely accidental; it comes and goes, it is inexplicable, it does not call for an explanation. But as soon as the same fact is repeated, the work of comparison begins, and the first step is made in that wonderful process which we call generalisation, and which is at the root of all intellectual knowledge and of all intellectual language. This primitive process of comparison is repeated again and again, and when we now give the title of Comparative to the highest kind of knowledge in every branch of science, we have only replaced the old world intelligent (i. e. interligent), or inter-twining, by a new and more expressive term, comparative’.[2]

        As Greek was the language of humanity in the fifteenth century and onwards till the eighteenth, till the age of Lessing, Goethe and Schiller, so Sanskrit is the language of the world for the nineteenth century and its immediate successors.

'The fact is, the time has not yet come when the full importance of Sanskrit philology can be appreciated by the public at large. It was the same with Greek philology. When "Greek began to be studied by some of the leading spirits of Europe, the subject seemed at first one of purely literary curiosity. When its claims were pressed on the public, they were met by opposition, and even ridicule; and those who knew least of Greek were most eloquent in their denunciations. Even when its study had become more general, and been introduced at universities and schools, it remained in the eyes of many a mere accomplishment—its true value for higher than scholastic purposes being scarcely suspected. At present we know that the revival of Greek scholarship affected the deepest interests of humanity, that it was in reality a revival of that consciousness which links large portions of mankind together, connects the living with the dead, and thus
[80]    
secures to each generation the full intellectual inheritance of our race. Without that historical consciousness, the life of man would be ephemeral and vain. The more we can see backward, and place ourselves in real sympathy with the past, the more truly do we make the life of former generations our own, and are able to fulfil our own appointed duty in carrying on the work which was begun centuries ago in Athens and at Rome. But while the unbroken traditions of the Roman world, and the revival of Greek culture among us, restored to us the intellectual patrimony of Greece and Rome only, and made the Teutonic race in a certain sense Greek and Roman, the discovery of Sanskrit will have a much larger influence. Like a new intellectual spring, it is meant to revive the broken fibres that once united the South-eastern with the North-western branches of the Aryan family; and thus to re-establish the spiritual brotherhood, not only of the Teutonic, Greek, and Roman, but likewise of the Slavonic, Celtic, Indian, and Persian branches. It is to make the mind of man wider, his heart larger, his sympathies world-embracing; it is to make us truly humaniores, richer and prouder in the full perception of what it is meant to be. This is the real object of the more comprehensive studies of the nineteenth century; and though the full appreciation of.this their true import may be reserved to the future, no one who follows the intellectual progress of mankind attentively can fail to see that, even now, the comparative study of languages, mythologies, and religions has widened our horizon; that much which was lost has been regained; and that a new world, if it has not yet been occupied, is certainly in sight.'[3]

        And what is it after all that thus suddenly stirs the heart of the grave student, the diligent labourer in the toilsome quarries of philology, so that with poetic enthusiasm, like Moses looking down upon the Land of Promise, he proclaims to children and children's children the advent of a new, glorious, unimagined era of intellectual light ? How comes he to this rôle of new
[81]    
inspired prophet ? It is because he knows that through these newly disclosed treasures, which his own labours have done so much to bring to light, men will be enabled 'to reconstruct the lost beginnings of our race,' and to draw up into the light of day, link by link and century by century, the chain which unites our life to-day with the long-forgotten generations of the past, and to free at least a portion of it from the obscuring debris of ages; in fact, to cast new light upon the great riddle of the world, the human mind, the human race and its unique and marvellous destiny upon earth.
        Max Müller's services with regard to the publication of the Vedas are too well known for me to dwell on them here. On September 14, 1874, he laid the last sheets of the 'Rig-Veda with the Commentary of Sayanakarya¹ before the Congress of Orientalists, then, sitting in London, only alluding briefly to the labors of which this gigantic work was the fruit. He himself said of this oldest book of the Aryan World:

'Its publication would have been simply impossible without the enlightened liberality of the Indian Goverment. For twenty-five years I find, that taking the large and small editions of the Rig-Veda together, I have printed every year what would make a volume of about six hundred pages octavo. Such a publication would have ruined any bookseller; for it must be confessed that there is little that is attractive in the Veda, nothing that could excite general interest. From an aesthetic point of view no one would care for the hymns of the Rig-Veda. . . . Nothing shows the change from the' purely aesthetic to the purely scientific interest in the language and literature of India more clearly than the fact that for the last twenty-five years the work of nearly all Sanskrit scholars has been concentrated on the Veda. But I say again, there is little that is beautiful, in our sense of the word, to be found in the hymns of the Rig-Veda, and what little there is has
[82]    
been so often dwelt on, that quite an erroneous impression as to the real nature of Vedic poetry has been produced in the mind of public. . . . When some years ago I had to publish the first volume of my translation, I intentionally selected a class of hymns which should in no way encourage such erroneous opinions.
        'It was interesting to watch the disappointment. What, it was said, are these strange, savage, grotesque invocations of the Storm-gods, the inspired strains of the ancient sages of India? Is this the wisdom of the East? Is this the primaeval revelation? Even scholars of high reputation joined in the outcry, and my friends hinted to me that they would not have wasted their life on such a book.
        'Now, suppose a geologist had brought to light the hones of a fossil animal, dating from a period anterior to any in which traces of animal life had been discovered before, would any young lady venture to say, by way of criticism, "Yes, these bones are very curious, but they are not pretty?" Or suppose a new Egyptian statue had been discovered, belonging to a dynasty hitherto unrepresented by any statues, would even a schoolboy dare to say, "Yes, it is very nice, but the Venus of Milo is nicer?" Or suppose an old MS. is brought to Europe, do we find fault with it because it is not neatly printed? If a chemist discovers a new element, is he pitied because it is not gold? If a botanist writes on germs, has he to defend himself because he does not write on flowers? Why, it is simply because the Veda is so different from what it was expected to be, because it is not like the Psalms, not like Pindar, not like the Bhagavadgita, it is because it stands alone by itself, and reveals to us the earliest germs of religious thought, such as they really were, it is because it places before us a language, more primitive than any we knew before, it is because its poetry is what you may call savage, uncouth, rude, horrible, it is for that very reason that it was worth while to dig and dig till the old buried city was recovered, showing us what man was, what we were before we had reached the level of David, the level of Homer, the level of Zoroaster, showing us the very candle of our thoughts, our words and our deeds.'[4]

[83]
        No comment is needed to show that the writer of these words has found in the history of human development, from its first tottering steps to its self-conscious maturity, a task to stimulate and an aim to employ the utmost energy and the richest gifts. His keen sight was able to detect traces of humanity in the recesses of an impenetrable past, where feebler eyes could see nothing but indistinguishable mist, and for that very reason thought the boundary between man and beast had disappeared.
        The importance of the subject warrants me in adding yet a few more quotations from another writer, intellectually akin to Miiller, in which, after having reached by an independent path substantially similar conclusions, he expresses his admiration for the newly breaking light in almost identical terms. I refer to Lazarus Geiger.

'The study of languages,' says this distinguished thinker,[5] 'has attained in our days to incomparable philosophical importance, since it provides a key to a side of the world and of life which natural science could not have reached, and casts light both upon what we are and what we have been, upon human reason and human history… The eye ranges in imagination, through unfathomable distances, towards the moment of creation, and the great secret, the secret of human development, begins to stir in our minds with a dim promise of revelation.
        We ask how the imagination of a people can be constituted, by what motives it can be governed, when we find the Persians tending dogs with such anxious care, and the Egyptians building sepulchres for the embalmed corpses of the sacred Apis, of which sixty-four generations were preserved at Memphis; and this question occupies us so much that the wiser doctrines of the same periods, which are
[84]    
not wanting either if we cared to hear them, meet with comparative neglect. This reminds us of an anecdote told by Max Miiller about that, in our eyes, most important portion of Sanskrit literature, the Vedic writings. When the gifted Rosen, who died while in the prime of youth, was occupied in the British Museum in copying the Vedic poems, which he began to publish in the year 1838, the Brahmin Ram Mohun Roy, who was in London at the time, could not contain his astonishment at such an undertaking. The Upanishads were the most important part of the Veda to him, and seemed much more worthy of publication; for the latest portions of the Vedas contain a kind of mystical philosophy, in which it is possible to discover an approach to monotheism or pantheism, which seemed to the Hindoo reformer, as to so many others, to be the ne plus ultra of religious wisdom. But the primitive Vedic hymns, altogether heathenish, sometimes naive and often simply quaint, in which the youth of mankind breathes with such delightful freshness, these are to us the true treasure of Indian literature, notwithstanding the secret feeling of shame with which the modern civilised Hindoo might be tempted to regard them. They contain no religious system that can be of value to us, but they are themselves a text book for the religious history of mankind.'
        'Especial attention should be paid to the germs of speculation contained in the primitive collection of sacred poems, known as Rig-Veda Sanhita, the existence of which until the present day must be regarded as a piece of rare good fortune, if the human race is right in regarding the knowledge of its own origin and of the laws of its growth as an object of longing and desire. Unlike all other known literatures, in which we find everywhere new forms either rising from the ruins of an expiring past, or resulting from intercourse and the intermixture of ideas proper to distinct nations, in the Vedic hymns we seem to have to do with an original independent growth, not a secondary formation built up by the destruction of what went before, but a manifestation of fresh young human life, springing in full bloom directly from the bosom of nature, a spiritual form with words and deeds not yet petrified, and allowing us to watch in the act of becoming
[85]    
what elsewhere is only to be met with as finished and completed. Hence it is that these hymns contain the key, not only to the subsequent development of India, nor even only to that of the kindred nations who started to a certain extent from the same root, but also in virtue of the natural unity which characterises the common course of development throughout its species, to all the creations of speculative energy which the world has seen, or, in other words, to the whole domain of reason, to all the lasting conquests won by it since the first moment when man began to form convictions out of retained perceptions, and manifold thought, belief and knowledge became a possibility.'[6]
        'The rise of philology as an independent science, apart from any outer or practical aim, as a science of the prehistoric condition of mankind, which dates from the beginning of the present century, is an event of incredible importance to the history of humanity. Comparative philology overturned the former confused ideas relating to the earliest civilisation and migration of primitive populations. Related and non-related nations were distinguished from each other, and a more delicate and unerring instrument was provided for the classification of races than that afforded by the indication of natural history or anthropology. Even the remotest distances of the past seemed by the light of hope to promise precise knowledge of the circumstances of periods of primitive antiquity, the very existence of which had hitherto been unrevealed by history.'[7]

        This complete agreement between two of the most distinguished intellects of the century, this unanimous tone Of enthusiasm in referring to the new and abundant spring of knowledge which has broken out in our days from undreamt-of depths, is a sufficient testimony to the importance of the subject with which we are concerned. This is nothing less than the history of
[86]    
human development, the solution, that is to say, of the most ancient and most sacred problem, a solution which for the first time seemed to come within the range of possibility when the discoveries of comparative philology revealed the st6res of information preserved in the genealogies of words and notions, respecting the primitive ages of human thought, and the origin, growth and maturity of the supreme distinguishing mark of humanity, that which explains and makes possible all the rest—reason and speech (λόγος).
        Whoever wishes to explain humanity must understand what is human; he must know the points upon which everything else turns, and from which everything else must be derived. Language contains the key to the problem, and whoever seeks it elsewhere will seek in vain.

                   Max Müller's aim and object, then, is to elucidate the doctrine of human development; only he has sought this doctrine where alone it was to be found, in the mind, in thought, that is to say, in language. The question as to the origin, the germ, the first beginning of this wonderful gift, he was content for the present to leave open or unanswered. As a philologist he was only concerned to use the materials provided by linguistic research to pave the way back to that past which had been hitherto lost in impenetrable night, and from this point of view he might consider that it would be time enough, when the primitive state of mankind had assumed a clearer outline in the light of philology, to begin to think of exploring the other side of the mountain range where the due of philology begins to fail.
        It might have been supposed that the modest caution
[87]    
of such a plan would have received the approval of every intelligent thinker; to begin by understanding the problem in its relation to the human mind, to certify every step by a reference to the real body of thought, and to pursue this back to its ultimate root—what could be simpler or more scientific? But temperate reasoning fails to make itself heard above the storm of passionate controversy; and thus it came to pass that the violent Darwinians, who, after the manner of disciples, went far beyond the boundaries set by their master's judgment, began a campaign against Max Müller, in which first one philologist and then another was exalted at his expense, till compelled to retire before the successful defence of one who, in self-defence, was defending truth rather than himself.
        The dignified candor of the words with which Max Muller begins his protest against the premature and inverted reasoning of the hyper-Darwinists shows to the more advantage by contrast with those violent attacks. He lays down, as the only test and standard, the one interest by which all scientific laborers alike should be inspired:

'The question is not, whether the belief that animals so distant as man, a monkey, an elephant, and a humming bird, a snake, a frog, and a fish, could all have sprung from the same parents is monstrous, but simply and solely whether it is true. If it is true, we shall soon learn to digest it. Appeals to the pride or humility of man, to scientific courage, or religious piety, are all equally out of place.'[8]

        I believe that in what precedes I have indicated with sufficient clearness, though but in general outline, what is the attitude assumed by Max Müller in relation
[88]    
to the theory of Development, and to Darwinism in particular. He severs himself from the followers of Darwin, and indeed begins a critical attack, when, overlooking or dismissing offhand man's real characteristic,—reason and speech,—they treat external causes and structural transitions as a sufficient scientific explanation of the greatest marvel and mystery of creation. The narrowness of this view has been emphatically characterised by Lazarus Geiger also:

'We may obtain some idea of the skeleton and even of the external appearance of a lost animal species by the help of geological fragments; we can draw general inferences respecting an imperfectly developed race of men from primitive cranial remains, but it would be hard to form any idea, from the appearance of the fragments which we find in the Neanderthal, in what way the head, of which they formed part, carried on the business of thinking when it was alive.'[9]
        'Fortunately (continues this gifted writer), the history of the mind also has its primaeval remains, its deposits and petrefactions of another kind. They offer more instructive information than will perhaps be anticipated; if carefully pursued, they lead to unexpected, but, as I am persuaded, none the less assured results.'

        To cast light upon the vast background of our past, the past of the human mind, as it is developed in language, and may be disclosed and interpreted by science, this has been the lifelong task, the supreme goal of all the labours of Max Müller. He himself has spoken plainly enough to this effect:

'Every man forms his own scheme of life, and every student must belong to some army and carry the plan of the campaign in his head to determine, and direct the choice of his own march. I belong to those who say with Pope, "The
[89]    
proper study of mankind is man;" and when I set before myself the question, which was the right, or at least the most fruitful method for the study of mankind, the conviction soon formed itself in my mind that in order to know what man is now, we must first of all observe and establish what man has been and how he became what he is.'