The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour — John Shaqi
The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the HourMüller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Religion
The Silesian Horseherd - Questions of the Hour
Müller, F. Max (Friedrich Max)
Christianity; Church history; Logos (Christian theology); Logos (Philosophy); Religion
“DEAR SIR: I am much obliged for your kind note and present of your
lectures. I am extremely glad to have received them from you, and I had
intended ordering them.
“I feel quite sure from what I have read in your work, that you would
never say anything to an honest adversary to which he would have any just
right to object; and as for myself, you have often spoken highly of me,
perhaps more highly than I deserve.
“As far as language is concerned, I am not worthy to be your adversary, as
I know extremely little about it, and that little learnt from very few
books. I should have been glad to have avoided the whole subject, but was
compelled to take it up as well as I could. He who is fully convinced, as
I am, that man is descended from some lower animal, is almost forced to
believe, _a priori_, that articulate language has been developed from
inarticulate cries, and he is therefore hardly a fair judge of the
arguments opposed to this belief.”
With cordial respect I remain, dear sir,
Yours very faithfully,
Charles Darwin.
”
This will at all events show that a man who could look upon a chimpanzee
as his equal, did not entirely ignore, as an uninformed layman, a poor
philologist. Darwin did not in the least disdain the uninformed layman. He
thought and wrote for him, and there is scarcely one of Darwin’s books
that cannot be read by the uninformed layman with profit. And in the
interchange of acquired facts or ideas, mental science has at least as
much right as natural science. We live, it is true, in different worlds.
What some look upon as the real, others regard as phenomenal. What these
in their turn look upon as the real, seems to the first to be
non-existent. It will always be thus until philology has defined the true
meaning of reality.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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