they would afford us another sort of logic and critic than that we have hitherto been acquainted with." How clearly the great empiric foresaw, and how distinctly he foretold, the future! Well may we regret that the framing of constitutions, and years of exile, prevented him from pursuing those shrewd guesses at a truth which modern science now begins to expound and

to confirm.

CHAPTER VIII.

LEIBNITZ.

German Philosophers-Universal Language-J. Harris and Horne TookeAdelung-Mithridates-S. de Sacy, Gamba, Pott, &c.-Klaproth, Balbi, Pallas and Schischkow.

THE honor of being called the father of Comparative Philology is due to Leibnitz. The inventor of Fluxions found time to write a fragmentary work on the Basque language, which, for depth of thought and profound erudition, yields nothing to more recent labors in the same field, and gives conclusive evidence of the importance which the renowned philosopher attached to such researches. The author of a Comparative Philosophy of languages and the first successful classifier of such idioms as he knew, Leibnitz paid the most brilliant tribute to the science he had thus established, in his organization of the Academy of Sciences in Berlin. The principal object of the

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new institution, which has since become so illustrious, he intended should be those studies which were "best calculated to insure the progress of a philosophy of language and a classification of idioms." With prophetic speculation, he foretold that thus alone would it be possible for science to trace the genealogy of mankind up to ages where history is silent and even tradition assists us no longer. The great rival of Newton, whose epitaph, "Genio Leibnitii," is one of the most strikingly appropriate that ever graced the monument of a great man, must, however, be said to have neglected, in this branch of his pursuits also, to give to the results of his genius and almost instinctive knowledge, that mature consideration and systematic completeness which was due to their originality, and alone could insure permanent success. It may be this circumstance that has prevented the philosophers of Germany generally from giving the subject such attention as it deserved. We find, at least, neither in Fichte and his contemporaries, nor in the works of the modern school, more than general references to the nature of language, and occasional attempts at a methodical analysis of idioms, such as Kant himself had already tried and partially developed in the preface to his Lithuanian Grammar. Schelling's less sterile inquiries remained, unfortunately, fragments, and degenerated in the hands of younger philosophers, like Kanne and Krause, into an unproductive mysticism.

It is, on the contrary, characteristic of the general tendency of modern researches, that almost all progress made in the science of language during the last hundred years, must be ascribed to practical studies and the labors of men who saw the importance of a better knowledge of the nature of language,

not so much in itself as in its bearing upon other sciences. The politician and the statesman, the physiologist and the ethnologist, the geographer and the historian, have, each in his turn, given their aid and paid their tribute to the new science.

Faint foreshadowings of future discoveries appear already in some more curious than valuable works of the seventeenth century. Dalgarno's Ars Signorum claimed to supply the long-felt want of an "art of universal communication" in writing. His "ideography" requires only five consonants, as many vowels, which the author is, moreover, quite ready to throw overboard as rather superfluous; and last, though by no means least, five senses, to furnish a language for all the perceptions of which man is capable. A similar work of Wilkins, who in 1668 published his "Real Character and Philosophic Language," is justly suspected by the acute French writer, Nodier, of belonging originally to the times immediately after the confusion of tongues.

Nor can the works of John Harris and Horne Tooke be considered as marking an actual progress in the science, to which they, nevertheless, were valuable contributions. The "Hermes" of the former contains the first principles of a philosophy of language, but is purposely limited to grammatical inquiries, and merely revives the views of Greek philosophers on the subject. His acute opponent's "Diversions of Purley" are unfortunately so filled with an animosity, for which his political martyrdom is hardly sufficient excuse, and such fanciful vagaries, that his pregnant views on formative words have seldom obtained that credit for themselves and that honor for their author, which his genius and even his caustic humor certainly deserved.

The gigantic work of J. C. Adelung, that vast storehouse of

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valuable information to which, year after year, every student of philology returns as to an inexhaustible mine of precious lore, has become more or less superannuated, or is superseded by later and better publications. The "Mithridates," as completed by Vater and republished in 1845, will ever remain a monument of careful compilation and admirable industry. But few will be disposed to consider it, with Latham, a classic in philosophy, as Blackstone is in law, or even to pronounce its author a profound philosopher and accurate etymologist. We may give him ample credit for having followed, without knowing it, the plan of Leibnitz in his attempted review of the languages, but we must not forget that his collection of idioms was made upon a purely mechanical arrangement, and necessarily limited by the extent of then available knowledge. Vast discoveries have since been made, and of the most important character, such as have, in fact, not only added material knowledge but virtually altered the nature of the first principles of the science. An accomplished linguist, Adelung was yet as little an etymologist as the celebrated Cardinal Mezzofanti with his empiric knowledge of seventy-odd languages, and the mere arranging, side by side, of even six hundred idioms and dialects does not throw one ray of light on their grammatical construction or the general principles of language.

Far more important were the labors of men who limited their inquiries to a narrower sphere, but amply compensated for this by the philosophic spirit of their researches. Such were, among many, the valuable contributions made by Silvestre De Sacy to our knowledge of Oriental languages. His thorough and extensive acquaintance with Eastern tongues served, at the

same time, to exalt his own fame and to aid his fellow-laborers in their philological or historical researches. Of these latter, some are less known only because they enjoyed not, like Sacy, the advantages of a residence in Paris nor the prestige of high rank and independent fortune. Thus Bartolomeo Gamba, the modest and learned librarian of San Marco, did more for the history of his mother tongue than the much-praised Academy Della Crusca had accomplished for generations; and it suffices to mention the names of men like Dobrowsky for the Slavonic, Pott in Germany, Adry in France and Johnson in England, to recall to our mind works, each in its sphere most valuable and important, though all, except Pott's Indo-Germanic Languages, written without direct reference to general principles. Neither the Elementary Treatise on Universal Grammar by Sacy, nor Bilderdjyk's ingenious and brilliant essay on the origin of the three grammatical genders contain those first requisites of modern science, general views, based upon a comparison of the essential features of distinct languages and their systematic classification.

Of merely lexical interest, on the other hand, was Klaproth's Asia Polyglotta, with its valuable linguistic atlas. It furnishes abundant material for comparison, but the author obtained from it no better results than some support for fanciful systems of his own, which he founded on merely external and apparent resemblances. His efforts to prove an antediluvian unity of language were utterly futile and unproductive; neither he nor Balbi ever thought of looking beyond the surface, or of establishing the individual character of each idiom. The magnificent work of Pallas, which contains two hundred and seventy-three words in two hundred languages, must be regarded as an equally credit