SIXTH CHAPTER.

THE LAST RESULTS OF THE RESEARCHES RESPECTING THE RELATIVE POSITION OF THE SEMITIC LANGUAGES AMONG THEMSELVES, AND TOWARDS THE INDO-GERMANIC FAMILY.

Historical Introduction.

THE ruling critical Iranian school, reducing everything to, and deducing everything from, Sanskrit, turned a deaf ear to all questions, as to further affinities, even after the old Egyptian language had become accessible to every scholar. The heads of the critical Hebrew school, Gesenius and Ewald, had thrown out a hint that, by the reduction of the triliteral Hebrew roots to biliteral ones (proposed already in the seventeenth century), we might find strong reason to suspect a radical affinity between Hebrew and Sanskrit. Klaproth had pronounced, without reserve, that it was so, and attempted a proof in the rarest of all linguistic books (1828).* Ewald, without controverting the assertion, observed, with his usual acuteness, that such etymologies must go back beyond the historical age of Semitic forms; an observation in which Humboldt concurs †, but which evidently does not settle the question. It was only in 1838 and 1840 that two masters of the Hebrew tongue, Fürst of Leipzig (himself a Jew), and more especially Delitzsch of Halle, endeavoured to break down the wall of partition. Delitzsch accepts entirely the rules laid down, and the method observed, by Indo-Germanic scholars: and rejects as

Observations sur les Racines des Langues Sémitiques: quoted by Humboldt. See the following note.

† P. ccccxi. and foll. Compare Ewald, Lehrb. § 4.

strongly as they the former irregular and unscientific method of etymological comparisons; but he maintains and exemplifies the constant and undeniable analogy between Indo-Germanic and Semitic roots, and thus fully establishes the claims to a further investigation upon a more extended plan.

Rödiger, the successor of Gesenius at Halle, arrived at similar conclusions by his own researches concerning the most ancient Arabic forms. Perhaps he or Delitzsch would even have been led to the establishment of a new and higher principle of investigation, if the great facts which Egyptian philology at that period had already revealed, by Champollion's grammar, to those who were willing to learn, had not been so strangely overlooked by all German scholars. Egypt is the connecting link between them; and the method of investigation, which the peculiar nature of the Egyptian language demands in order to be understood, cannot but be intimately connected with that which seems requisite to establish the historical connexion between the Semitic and Japhetic languages, by a new and more profound investigation of their differences as well as of their similarity. The rigid Indo-Germanic school has assumed, but never even attempted to prove, that we must reject all evidences of historical affinity which do not rest upon the identity of inflexions and formative words. Now we agree with that school in maintaining, that analogies in the musical element of language (if we may so call whatever belongs to the peculiarities of intonation, and the greater or less prevalence of one or the other class of sounds) are in themselves as inconclusive reasons for establishing a connexion in kind, as the varieties of colour, the form of leaves, smell, and similar properties are for constituting different species among plants, or as analogies in the colour of hair or of feathers for denying the identity of species among animals. But I can see no ground for the assumption that, where identity or affinity is wanting in the grammatical forms and their expression, there can be no radical affinity of

Ought not, there

languages. For it is on this narrow principle that those isolating systems are designedly or unconsciously founded. Now we ask (anticipating what we hope soon fully to establish), what are (according to their own assumption or admission) the syllables or words of inflexions but remnants of some of the substantial roots or words (nouns and verbs), once taken out of the then common stock of integral words, and by a conventional act stamped to be pronouns, prepositions, or other particles, which gradually dwindled into inflexional forms? We ask further, this being the case, is it not on the contrary probable, that, as some families are allied both by decayed and living roots, others may be allied by living ones only? The formation of roots must certainly precede their decay. fore, an agreement in the roots of nouns and verbs to be as good evidence of a more remote, but still historical connexion and consanguinity, as the agreement in inflexions is allowed to be for the nearest relation between them? Languages related by identity of forms (viz. by roots, once consecrated for grammatical purposes and then decayed) must have in common the living roots, which are anterior to forms. There can be no identity of grammaticized and therefore defunct roots, without a historical connexion between the same languages in verbs and nouns and their derivatives. But a general affinity in the roots proves a common origin and a common history anterior to that point in the development of a language at which the grammatical forms took their origin; therefore, a

more remote one.

We fully accept the principle as demonstrated and incontestable, that a near affinity between languages is impossible without an identity of structure in the inflexions and the formative words or syllables in general. We feel grateful to those who, by a combination of research and philosophical study, have established a method of investigating this nearest affinity of families. But why, I must ask those scholars, why should we

despair of finding also a strictly scientific method for investigating a more remote affinity by a comparison of the roots of their substantial words? You have hitherto studied the natural history of the most grammatical (and therefore, I believe, youngest) languages: you have thus found a method for understanding the latest part in the formation, representing therefore, I suppose, the most recent period in the history of human speech. Of course this method will not carry you further; and that is the reason why you have always signally failed whenever you have attempted to classify languages beyond that narrow family-connexion. Your method proved insufficient when you attempted to establish an affinity between the Iranian stock and a formation anterior to that individual system of forms, as for instance the Basque language. Still we cannot proceed further in comparative philology, and consequently in ethnology, without investigating that problem. We must therefore ask two questions: why should there not be an affinity, where we find living, although not decayed, roots in common? and if there is, why should there not be found a method of establishing it?

The Method.

If there be an incontestable (although more remote) affinity traceable in languages beyond the inflexions and formative words, what then, it may be asked, is the method of such an investigation?

To this question no answer is supplied by the Indo-Germanic school, any more than by the Semitic disciples of the schools of Gesenius and Ewald. The last-mentioned eminent scholar has enunciated a profound principle, already adverted to, by asserting that the investigation of the undeniable affinity of Sanskritic and Hebrew roots cannot be carried on without going beyond these two languages. But ought they not to show traces of their gradual formation ?* Some facts have been elicited by Delitzsch, but these establish no method of investigation.

*I certainly agree with Ewald, that Dr. E. Meyer has not succeeded in solving (in his "Hebräisches Wurzel-Wörterbuch," 1845) the great problem of reducing the triliteral Hebrew roots to biliteral. It is impossible not to do justice to the learning and acuteness of the young but aspiring author, himself of Ewald's school; but the principal part of this work (with which I was not acquainted at the time of delivering my Lecture) stands or falls with the fundamental assumption, that the third person masculine of the triliteral Hebrew perfect becomes triliteral by a reduplication analogous to the Sanskrit and Greek perfect. Dr. Charles Meyer's view of the case seems to me much nearer the truth. It is impossible to carry out Dr. E. Meyer's theory without giving up at once the idea of reduplication. As to his view of the Egyptian and its relation to the Hebrew, I confess my surprise at seeing a philologer of the German school, and a man of undoubted talent and learning, treat the Egyptian as an unorganic aggregate, and maintain that two languages, which are without any original connexion with each other, can have the pronouns in common, as he cannot deny the Egyptian and Hebrew have. I shall make no remark on his etymologies of Egyptian words, and his derivation of the names of the Egyptian gods and goddesses from Semitic divinities. They are far too arbitrary to require a critical examination. Other remarks of his show, that he sees clearly enough that the two languages must be most intimately connected. The grapes hang high, but they are not sour.