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his views by an examination of his mother-tongue, chiefly, if not entirely, unaided by a comparison of other languages. Of his fundamental error with regard to the parts of speech we have spoken in another place. His object is to establish nominalism in its lowest and worst form, as an instrument in the hands of materialism; he endeavours to show that, in the English language at least, all words, however abstract or general their present use may be, are ultimately traceable to a meaning derived from sensible impressions, and from this he concludes that these words must still be understood, not in their present metaphorical, but in their primitive literal sense, and consequently, that as words are the signs of ideas, and all words refer only to sensations, we have no knowledge but through our sensations. But, as Sir James Mackintosh somewhere asks, would it be just to conclude that, because all words seem to represent, originally, visible objects, there are no impressions of touch, smell, sound, or taste in the human mind? This author, however, has no deductions more unwarrantable in logic, or more truly conceived in the spirit of the old Sophists, than those in which he attempts, by twisting and materializing the meaning of some of our most abstract terms, to subvert the principles of our inner subjective morality. For instance, when he says, that “truth is nothing but what every man troweth; that there is no such thing as eternal, immutable, everlasting truth, unless mankind, such as they are at present, be also eternal, immutable, and everlasting; that two persons may contradict each other, and yet both speak truth, for the truth of one person may be opposite to the truth of another" (Vol. II. pp. 402, 3)— what is this but to reassert the old dogma of Protagoras, that the individual man is the standard of all truth (πάντων μέτρον ἄνθρωπος)? what is it but to leave us to the dreary conclusion, which the follower of the Sophists must needs be contented with, that he has no community either with men or with God, but remains, like another Prometheus, bound to the isolated and comfortless rock of his own personal consciousness, with all his social longings and irresistible first convictions preying like a vulture on his soul*?

*See Schleiermacher's remarks in the Introduction to his translation of the Theætetus (p. 172 ad fin.).

62 The Diversions of Purley still maintains its ground, censured by few*, and admired by many. To oppose the extravagant nominalism and false philology of that work, and others of a similar stamp, and to find the mean between an excess of philological speculation and the superstitious realism, which shrinks from all contact with philology,-this is the more general object of the following pages. We bring forward against vulgar materialism, a truer and more congenial philosophy; we oppose to a narrow induction drawn from a mixed, wavering, and still spoken language, the carefully collected results of the labours of three generations of scholars, applied to a language copious, fixed, and comparatively pure, aided by the lights of comparative grammar, of a new era of the history of philology; in a word, we oppose to chimerical conjectures the results of a science founded on facts. On the other hand, our careful dissection of the whole body of inflected speech will make it plain that, while words are merely outward symbols, designating certain notions of the mind, those notions do not stand related, in all cases, just as the words or inflexions which express them, and that we cannot by means of mere words convert into physical truth all that is logically and metaphysically true. It is time that some attempt should be made to show that the philosophy of language refuses its ministering aid both to gross materialism and to superstitious fancy, and that it stands forth as the chief confirmation of those systems, by which human reason contributes to the support of religion and morality. The word is destined to teach; let it cease to be the instrument of deception.

A Dutchman, who seems to have anticipated Horne Tooke, was less fortunate in the result of his experiment: "Un certain Hollandais, peu affectionné à la religion, avoit abusé de cette vérité (que les termes de Théologie, de Morale, et de Métaphysique sont pris originairement des choses grossières) pour tourner en ridicule la Théologie et la foi Chrétienne dans un petit dictionnaire flamand, où il donnoit aux termes des définitions ou explications non pas telles que l'usage demande, mais telles que sembloit porter la force originaire des mots, et les tournoit malignement; et comme d'ailleurs il avoit donné des marques d'impiété, on dit qu'il en fut puni dans le Raspel-huyss" (Leibnitz, Nouveaux Essais sur l'Entendement Humain, p. 235). One might almost fancy that this was a description of our English etymologist, if the date and the punishment were more suitable.

CHAPTER IV.

THE ETHNOGRAPHIC AFFINITIES OF THE

ANCIENT GREEKS.

63 Ancient Greece must not be isolated. 64 Origin of the human race in Armenia. 65 Primeval civilization. 66 Mankind first spread into Asia Minor, and then into Mesopotamia. 67 Widely-dispersed emigrations from the plain of Babylon. 68 Separation of the Aramæan and Iranian families in the vicinity of the original settlements. 69 True classification of the human race presumes an opposition between the central and sporadic branches only. 70 Old division according to the descendants of Noah's three sons-how to be explained. 71 Spread of the Japhetic or Indo-Germanic race. 72 Order in which this family entered Europe; (1) Celts, (2) Sclavonians, 3 (a) Low Germans, 3 (6) High Germans. We trace them back to Asia in the reversed order. 73 I. Germans. (a) Low Germans. 74 Saxons derived from the Sacæ. 75 (b) High Germans. 76 Origin of the name German. 77 II. Selavonians. Their extensive diffusion. How connected with the Low Germans. Lithuanians and Scandinavians. Getæ and Daci. 78 Relations of the Sclavonic and Teutonic tribes in general. 79 III. Celtic tribes. The two great dialects of the Celtic. Causes of the insignificant ethnical position of the Celts. 80IV. Eastern members of the Indo-Germanic family. Irân defined. High and Low Iranians. 81 Median origin of the Hindus shown by their ancient name. 82 The Low German tribes also derived from Media. 83 Meaning of the term Sanscrit. 84 Antiquity of the Sanscrit language and literature. 85 The High German tribes connected with the Persians or High Iranians. 86 The Zend language a genuine remnant of old Persian. 87 V. The Latin and Greek languages. 88 The Pelasgian or common element in Greek and Latin was allied to the Sclavonian. 89 The additional or distinctive elements were Lithuanian or Gothic in the Latin, and High German in the Greek language. 90 Ancient proofs of resemblances between the Greek and Persian. 91 The Greeks and Germans had many features in common. 92 Their characteristic designation may be traced in its course through Asia Minor and Eastern Europe. 93 Proper classification of the Scythians. 94 Influence of the Phoenicians on the early culture of the inhabitants of Southern Greece. 95 The name "Pelasgus" was not of Phoenician origin; but other names connected with the arts of ancient Greece may be traced to the Phoenicians. 96 Characteristics of Hellenism. 97 Differences of dialect due to the preponderance of Hellenic or Pelasgian elements respectively.

63 BEFORE

we commence our researches in the Greek language, it will be as well to mention, for the information

of those readers to whom comparative philology is a new subject, in what relation this language is supposed to stand in respect to the other languages which we are about to compare with it. The time is long past when we could surround Greece with a

Chinese wall*, and content ourselves with surveying only as much of its language, religion, and history as could be discovered within these arbitrary limits. We cannot now content ourselves with meagre disquisitions about Eolian or Dorian dialects, or vague stories of Pelasgian serfs and Egyptian invaders; we must look forth upon the great stage of universal history, and consider whether these Greeks may not have had some near relationship with those barbarians of Europe whom they enlightened by their genius, and with those barbarians of Asia whom they conquered by their valour; whether, in fact, this very distinction of barbarian, or other-tongued, be not after all the mere offspring of ignorance, which always perceives the different before it can recognise the similar. It is now incontrovertibly established that most of the inhabitants of Europe, and a great number of the most ancient and civilized tribes of Asia, speak, with greater or smaller modifications, the same language; and the time may perhaps come when it will appear as probable philologically, as it is certain historically, that every language in the world has sprung from one original speach.

64 If we collect into one focus all the scattered information respecting the birth-place of the human race, which we can gather from tradition, from physiological considerations, and from the exhaustion of contradictory hypotheses, we must feel convinced that man originated in the temperate and fertile regions which lie between the Southern extremities of the Euxine and Caspian seas. Independently of all special inductions, we should be inclined à priori to conclude, in accordance with the general and systematic arrangements which we notice in the procedure of creation so far as we are able to trace its successive stages, that the human race would not be planted upon the surface of the globe until life had become both possible and easy to a creature so endowed, until the earth had assumed its present, and, as we may conclude, its permanent form, until the conditions of soil, atmosphere, vegetable production, and animal life, to which our existence is still liable, had been established on their present footing. And it is

*Kruse's Hellas, Th. 1. p. 395.

I

reasonable to think that man would be first cradled on some plateau, which, while it was raised above the lacustrine impurities of the alluvial plains-was likewise free from an overgrowth of wood, and well adapted for the cultivation of those fruits and grasses, which furnish the necessary food of man. There is no region in the world, which combines all these recommendations so fully as the Armenian table-land lying to the South and East of Mount Ararat. All tradition points to this district. On the supposition that mankind originated there, we may harmonize every linguistic phenomenon, and explain every ethnographical fact. And the farther we depart in any direction, the greater are the difficulties in which we find ourselves entangled. As for those on the other hand, who, recognising Armenia as one birth-place of the human family, contend that man was created independently in different parts of the globe as they became favourable to his continued existence, we hold it sufficient to say that such an hypothesis is unnecessary, since the spread of population can be accounted for in a very satisfactory manner without the assumption of more than one starting point; and the differences of race, which we observe in different parts of the globe, are not differences of species inconsistent with one common origin. Besides, the hypothesis, that man was created at different times and in different parts of the world, would leave unexplained and inexplicable those proofs of an original identity of language to which philology is daily making additions of the greatest weight and importance. Nothing short of necessity should induce us to seek for an autochthony in different parts of the globe, which would break the ties of blood-relationship that bind all men together; and so far are we from being able to point out any such necessity in this case, that all the attainable evidence clearly points in the opposite direction.

65 We conclude then that the first family of men lived in the high but fertile country of Armenia, bounded to the North by the true temperate zone, which there coincides with the fortieth parallel of latitude. Little or no advantage is to be derived from fanciful speculations respecting the so-called "ages of the world," whether, with the old mythology we speak of a golden,

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