Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 4: Essays Chiefly on the Science of LanguageMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
Chips from a German Workshop, Volume 4: Essays Chiefly on the Science of Language
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Comparative linguistics; Folklore; Literature -- History and criticism; Mythology; Religions
The results of the Science of Language are enormous. There is no sphere
of intellectual activity which has not felt more or less the influence
of this new science. Nor is this to be wondered at. Language is the
organ of all knowledge, and though we flatter ourselves that we are the
lords of language, that we use it as a useful tool, and no more, believe
me there are but few who can maintain their complete independence with
respect to language, few who can say of her, Ἔχω Λαΐδα, οὐκ ἔχομαι.
To know language historically and genetically, to be able more
particularly to follow up the growth of our technical terms to their
very roots, this is in every science the best means to keep up a living
connection between the past and the present, the only way to make us
feel the ground on which we stand.
Let us begin with what is nearest to us, _Philology_. Its whole
character has been changed as if by magic. The two classical languages,
Greek and Latin, which looked as if they had fallen from the sky or been
found behind the hedge, have now recovered their title-deeds, and have
taken their legitimate place in that old and noble family which we call
the Indo-European, the Indo-Germanic, or by a shorter, if not a better
name, the Aryan. In this way not only have their antecedents been
cleared up, but their mutual relationship, too, has for the first time
been placed in its proper light. The idea that Latin was derived from
Greek, an idea excusable in scholars of the Scipionic period, or that
Latin was a language made up of Italic, Greek, and Pelasgic elements,
a view that had maintained itself to the time of Niebuhr, all this has
now been shown to be a physical impossibility. Greek and Latin stand
together on terms of perfect equality; they are sisters, like French and
Italian:--
“Facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen qualem decet esse sororum.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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