Darwin and Modern Science [354]
with the inhabitants of the countries where they sojourned, or because of some point which interested them personally. Plato and others noticed the similarity of some Phrygian words to Greek, but no systematic comparison seems ever to have been instituted.
In the Middle Ages the treatment of language was in a sense more historical. The Middle Ages started with the hypothesis, derived from the book of Genesis, that in the early world all men were of one language and of one speech. Though on the same authority they believed that the plain of Shinar has seen that confusion of tongues whence sprang all the languages upon earth, they seem to have considered that the words of each separate language were nevertheless derived from this original tongue. And as Hebrew was the language of the Chosen People, it was naturally assumed that this original tongue was Hebrew. Hence we find Dante declaring in his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue (Dante "de Vulgari Eloquio", I. 4.) that the first word man uttered in Paradise must have been "El," the Hebrew name of his Maker, while as a result of the fall of Adam, the first utterance of every child now born into this world of sin and misery is "heu," Alas! After the splendidly engraved bronze plates containing, as we now know, ritual regulations for certain cults, were discovered in 1444 at the town of Gubbio, in Umbria, they were declared, by some authorities, to be written in excellent Hebrew. The study of them has been the fascination and the despair of many a philologist. Thanks to the devoted labours of numerous scholars, mainly in the last sixty years, the general drift of these inscriptions is now known. They are the only important records of the ancient Umbrian language, which was related closely to that of the Samnites and, though not so closely, to that of the Romans on the other side of the Apennines. Yet less than twenty years ago a book was published in Germany, which boasts itself the home of Comparative Philology, wherein the German origin of the Umbrian language was no less solemnly demonstrated than had been its Celtic origin by Sir William Betham in 1842.
It is good that the study of language should be historical, but the first requisite is that the history should be sound. How little had been learnt of the true history of language a century ago may be seen from a little book by Stephen Weston first published in 1802 and several times reprinted, where accidental assonance is considered sufficient to establish connection. Is there not a word "bad" in English and a word "bad" in Persian which mean the same thing? Clearly therefore Persian and English must be connected. The conclusion is true, but it is drawn from erroneous premises. As stated, this identity has no more value than the similar assonance between the English "cover" and the Hebrew "kophar", where the history of "cover" as coming through French from a Latin "co-operire" was even in 1802 well-known to many. To this day, in spite of recent elaborate attempts (Most recently in H. Moller's "Semitisch und Indogermanisch", Erster Teil, Kopenhagen, 1907.) to establish connection between the Indo- Germanic and the Semitic families of languages, there is no satisfactory evidence of such relation between these families. This is not to deny the possibility of such a connection at a very early period; it is merely to say that through the lapse of long ages all trustworthy record of such relationship, if it ever existed, has been, so far as present knowledge extends, obliterated.
But while Stephen Weston was publishing, with much public approval, his collection of amusing similarities between languages--similarities which proved nothing--the key to the historical study of at least one family of languages had already been found by a learned Englishman in a distant land. In 1783 Sir William Jones had been sent out as a judge in the supreme court of judicature in Bengal. While still a young man at Oxford he was noted as a linguist; his reputation as a Persian scholar had preceded him to the East. In the
In the Middle Ages the treatment of language was in a sense more historical. The Middle Ages started with the hypothesis, derived from the book of Genesis, that in the early world all men were of one language and of one speech. Though on the same authority they believed that the plain of Shinar has seen that confusion of tongues whence sprang all the languages upon earth, they seem to have considered that the words of each separate language were nevertheless derived from this original tongue. And as Hebrew was the language of the Chosen People, it was naturally assumed that this original tongue was Hebrew. Hence we find Dante declaring in his treatise on the Vulgar Tongue (Dante "de Vulgari Eloquio", I. 4.) that the first word man uttered in Paradise must have been "El," the Hebrew name of his Maker, while as a result of the fall of Adam, the first utterance of every child now born into this world of sin and misery is "heu," Alas! After the splendidly engraved bronze plates containing, as we now know, ritual regulations for certain cults, were discovered in 1444 at the town of Gubbio, in Umbria, they were declared, by some authorities, to be written in excellent Hebrew. The study of them has been the fascination and the despair of many a philologist. Thanks to the devoted labours of numerous scholars, mainly in the last sixty years, the general drift of these inscriptions is now known. They are the only important records of the ancient Umbrian language, which was related closely to that of the Samnites and, though not so closely, to that of the Romans on the other side of the Apennines. Yet less than twenty years ago a book was published in Germany, which boasts itself the home of Comparative Philology, wherein the German origin of the Umbrian language was no less solemnly demonstrated than had been its Celtic origin by Sir William Betham in 1842.
It is good that the study of language should be historical, but the first requisite is that the history should be sound. How little had been learnt of the true history of language a century ago may be seen from a little book by Stephen Weston first published in 1802 and several times reprinted, where accidental assonance is considered sufficient to establish connection. Is there not a word "bad" in English and a word "bad" in Persian which mean the same thing? Clearly therefore Persian and English must be connected. The conclusion is true, but it is drawn from erroneous premises. As stated, this identity has no more value than the similar assonance between the English "cover" and the Hebrew "kophar", where the history of "cover" as coming through French from a Latin "co-operire" was even in 1802 well-known to many. To this day, in spite of recent elaborate attempts (Most recently in H. Moller's "Semitisch und Indogermanisch", Erster Teil, Kopenhagen, 1907.) to establish connection between the Indo- Germanic and the Semitic families of languages, there is no satisfactory evidence of such relation between these families. This is not to deny the possibility of such a connection at a very early period; it is merely to say that through the lapse of long ages all trustworthy record of such relationship, if it ever existed, has been, so far as present knowledge extends, obliterated.
But while Stephen Weston was publishing, with much public approval, his collection of amusing similarities between languages--similarities which proved nothing--the key to the historical study of at least one family of languages had already been found by a learned Englishman in a distant land. In 1783 Sir William Jones had been sent out as a judge in the supreme court of judicature in Bengal. While still a young man at Oxford he was noted as a linguist; his reputation as a Persian scholar had preceded him to the East. In the