Part 4

Upon the whole, you may be satisfied with the reflex action of your professional on your general education--that is, if you take a practical and not an ideal standard. It will do for you, in this way, as much as legal studies do for the barrister, and as much as theological reading does for the clergyman; and perhaps in those points not common to the three professions medicine has the advantage. Its chemistry, which I would willingly see more mixed with physics, carries you to the threshold of the exact sciences. Its botany is pre-eminently disciplinal to the faculty of classification; indeed, for the natural-history sciences altogether, a medical education is almost necessary. Clear ideas in physiology are got at only through an exercised power of abstraction and generalization. The phenomena of insanity can be appreciated only when the general phenomena of healthy mental function are understood, and when the normal actions of the mind are logically analyzed. Such is medical education as an instrument of self-culture: and as education stands at present, a man who has made the most of them may walk among the learned men of the world with a bold and confiding front.

I insist upon thus much justice being done to the intellectual character of my profession--viz. that it be measured by a practical, and not an ideal, standard. Too much of the spirit of exaggeration is abroad--of that sort of exaggeration which makes men see in the requisites for their own profession the requisites for half-a-dozen others--of that sort of exaggeration which made Vitruvius, himself an architect, prove elaborately that before a man could take a trowel in his hand he must have a knowledge of all the sciences and a habit of all the virtues. Undoubtedly it would elevate medicine for every member in the profession to know much more than is required of him--yet this is no reason for our requiring much more than we do. Such a notion can be entertained only through a confusion of duty on the part of those who direct medicine. Their business is the public safety; and the position of their profession is their business _only_ so far as it affects this. Trusts are intended for the benefit of any one rather than the trustee.

Two objections lie against the recommendation of extraneous branches of learning in medicine: in the first place, by insisting upon them as elements of a special course of instruction, they are, by implication, excluded from a general one; in the second place, they are no part of a three years' training.

Concentrate your attention on the essentials. I am quite satisfied that as far as the merits or demerits of an education contribute to the position of a profession, we may take ours as we find it, and yet hold our own. Nevertheless, lest the position given to medicine by its pre-eminent prominence, in conjunction with the church and bar, as one of the so-called learned professions, should encourage the idea that a multiplicity of accomplishments should be the character of a full and perfect medical practitioner, one or two important realities in respect to our position should be indicated. We are at a disadvantage as compared with both the church and the bar. We have nothing to set against such great political prizes as chancellorships and archbishoprics. We are at this disadvantage; and, in a country like England, it is a great one: so that what we gain by the connection, in the eyes of the public, is more than what we give; and the connection is itself artificial, and, as such, dissoluble. It is best to look the truth in the face--we must stand or fall by our own utility.

Proud to be useful--scorning to be more

--must be the motto of him whose integrity should be on a level with his skill, who should win a double confidence, and who, if he do his duty well, is as sure of his proper influence in society, and on society--and that influence a noble one--as if he were the member of a profession ensured to respectability by all the favours that influence can extort, and all the prerogatives that time can accumulate. As compared with that of the church and bar, our hold upon the public is by a thread--but it is the thread of life.

Such are the responsibilities, the opportunities, and the prospects, of those who are now about to prepare themselves for their future career. We who teach have our responsibilities also; we know them; we are teaching where Bell taught before us; we are teaching where ground has been lost; yet we are also teaching with good hopes, founded upon improved auguries.

ON THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AS A BRANCH OF EDUCATION.

A LECTURE DELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITUTION OF GREAT BRITAIN.

MAY 13, 1854.

The subject I have the honour of illustrating is The Importance of the Study of Language as a means of Education for all Classes.

I open it by drawing a distinction.

A little consideration will show that that difference between the study of a given subject in its general and abstract, and the study of one in its applied or concrete, form, which finds place in so many departments of human knowledge, finds place in respect to Language and Languages. It finds place in the subject before us as truly as it does in that science, which one of my able successors will have the honour of illustrating,--the science of the laws of Life--Physiology or Biology. Just as there is, therein, a certain series of laws relating to life and organization, which would command our attention, if the whole animal and vegetable world consisted of but a single species, so the study of Speech would find place in a well-devised system of education, even if the tongues of the whole wide world were reduced to a single language, and that language to a single dialect. This is because the science of life is one thing, the science of the forms under which the phenomena of life are manifested, another. And just as Physiology, or Biology, is, more or less, anterior to and independent of such departments of study as Botany and Zoology, so, in the subject under notice, there is the double division of the study of _Language_ in respect to structure and development, and the study of _Languages_ as instances of the variety of form in which the phenomenon of human speech exhibits, or has exhibited, itself. Thus--

When (as I believe once to have been the case) there was but a single language on the face of the earth, the former of these divisions had its subject-matter. And--

When (as is by no means improbable) one paramount and exclusive tongue, developed, at first, rapidly and at the expense of the smaller languages of the world, and, subsequently, slowly and at that of the more widely-diffused ones, shall have replaced the still numerous tongues of the nineteenth century; and when all the dialects of the world shall be merged into one Universal Language, the same subject-matter for the study of the structure of Language, its growth and changes, will still exist.

So that the study of Language is one thing, the study of Languages, another.

They are different; and the intellectual powers that they require and exercise are different also. The greatest comparative philologists have, generally, been but moderate linguists.

A certain familiarity with different languages they have, of course, had; and as compared with that of the special scholar--the Classic or the Orientalist, for instance--their range of language (so to say) has been a wide one; but it has rarely been of that vast compass which is found in men after the fashion of Mezzofanti, &c.--men who have spoken languages by the dozen, or the score;--but who have left comparative philology as little advanced as if their learning had been bounded by the limits of their own mother tongue.

Now this difference, always of more or less importance in itself, increases when we consider Language as an object of education; and it is for the sake of illustrating it that the foregoing preliminaries have been introduced. No opinion is given as to the comparative rank or dignity of the two studies; no decision upon the nobility or ignobility of the faculties involved in the attainment of excellence in either. The illustration of a difference is all that has been aimed at. There is a difference between the two classes of subjects, and a difference between the two kinds of mental faculties. Let us make this difference clear. Let us also give it prominence and importance.

One main distinction between the study of Language and the study of Languages lies in the fact of the value of the former being _constant_, that of the latter, _fluctuating_. The relative importance of any two languages, as objects of special attention, scarcely ever remains steady. The value, for instance, of the German--to look amongst the cotemporary forms of speech--has notably risen within the present century. And why? Because the literature in which it is embodied has improved. Because the scientific knowledge which, to all who want the key, is (so to say) locked up in it, has increased some hundred per cent.

But it may go down again. Suppose, for instance, that new writers of pre-eminent merit, ennoble some of the minor languages of Europe--the Danish, Swedish, Dutch, &c. Such a fact would divide the attention of _savans_--attention which can only be bestowed upon some second, at the expense of some first, object. In such a case, the extent to which the German language got studied would be affected much in the same way as that of the French has been by the development of the literature of Germany.

Or the area over which a language is spoken may increase; as it may, also, diminish.

Or the number of individuals that speak it may multiply--the area being the same.

Or the special application of the language, whether for the purposes of commerce, literature, science, or politics, may become changed. In this way, as well as in others, the English is becoming, day by day, more important.

There are other influences.

High as is the value of the great classical languages of Greece and Rome, we can easily conceive how that value might be enhanced. Let a manuscript containing the works of some of the lost, or imperfectly preserved, writers of antiquity be discovered. Let, for instance, Gibbon's _desiderata_--the lost _Decads of Livy_, the _Orations of Hyperides_, or the _Dramas of Menander_--be made good. The per-centage of classical scholars would increase; little or much.

Some years back it was announced that the Armenian language contained translations, made during the earlier centuries of our era, of certain classical writings, of which the originals had been lost--lost in the interval. This did not exactly make the Armenian, with its alphabet of six-and-thirty letters, a popular tongue; but it made it, by a fraction, more popular than it was in the days of Whiston and La Croze, when those two alone, of all the learned men of Europe, could read it.

Translations tell in another way. Whatever is worth reading in the Danish and Swedish is forthwith translated into German. _E. g._ Professor Retzius of Stockholm wrote a good Manual of Anatomy. He had the satisfaction of seeing it translated into German. He had the further satisfaction of hearing that the translation ran through five editions in less time than the original did through one.

Now, if the Germans were to leave off translating the value of the language in which Professor Retzius wrote his Anatomy would rise.

Upon the whole, the French is, perhaps, the most important language of the nineteenth century; yet it is only where we take into consideration the whole of its elements of value. To certain special _savans_, the German is worth more; to the artist, the Italian; to the American, the Spanish. It fell, too, in value when nations like our own insisted upon the use of their native tongues in diplomacy. It fell in value because it became less indispensable; and another cause, now in operation, affects the same element of indispensability. The French are beginning to learn the languages of other nations. Their own literature will certainly be none the worse for their so doing. But it by no means follows that that literature will be any the more studied. On the contrary, Frenchmen will learn English more, and, _pro tanto_, Englishmen learn French less.

If all this have illustrated a difference, it may also have done something more. It may have given a rough sketch, in the way of classification, of the kind of facts that regulate the value of special languages as special objects of study. At any rate (and this is the main point), the subject-matter of the present Address is narrowed. It is narrowed (in the first instance at least) to the consideration of that branch of study whereof the value is constant; for assuredly it is this which will command more than a moiety of our consideration.

This may be said to imply a preference to the study of Language as opposed to that of Languages--a _singular_ preference, as a grammarian may, perhaps, be allowed to call it. It cannot be denied that, to a certain extent, such is the case; but it is only so to a certain extent. The one is not magnified at the expense of the other. When all has been said that logic or mental philosophy can say about the high value of comparative philology, general grammar, and the like, the lowest value of the least important language will still stand high, and pre-eminently high that of what may be called the _noble_ Languages. No variations in the philological barometer, no fluctuations in the Exchange of Language, will ever bring down the advantage of studying one, two, or even more foreign languages to so low a level as to expel such tongues as the Latin, the Greek, the French, or the German, one and all, from an English _curriculum_--and _vice versâ_, English from a foreign one.

Now, if this be the case, one of the elements in the value of the _study of Language in general_ will be the extent to which it facilitates the acquirement of any one language in particular, and this element of value will be an important--though not the most important--one.

The structure of the human body is worth knowing, even if the investigator of it be neither a practitioner in medicine nor a teacher of anatomy; and, in like manner, the structure of the human language is an important study irrespective of the particular forms of speech whereof it may facilitate the acquirement.

The words on the diagram-board will now be explained. They are meant to illustrate the class of facts that comparative philology supplies.

The first runs--

_Klein_ : _Clean_ :: _Petit_ : _Petitus_.

It shows the extent to which certain ideas are associated. It shows, too, something more; it shows that such an association is capable of being demonstrated from the phenomena of language instead of being a mere _à priori_ speculation on the part of the mental philosopher.

_Klein_ is the German for _little_; _clean_ is our own English adjective, the English of the Latin word _mundus_. In German the word is _rein_.

Now, notwithstanding the difference of meaning in the two tongues, _clean_ and _klein_ are one and the same word. Yet, how are the ideas of _cleanliness_ and _littleness_ connected? The Greek language has the word _hypocorisma_, meaning a _term of endearment_, and the adjective _hypocoristic_. Now, _clean-ness_, or _neat-ness_, is one of the elements that make _hypocoristic_ terms (or terms of endearment) applicable. And so is _smallness_. We talk of _pretty little dears_, a thousand times, where we talk of _pretty big dears_ once. This, then, explains the connexion; this tells us that _clean_ in English is _klein_ in German, word for word.

You doubt it, perhaps. You shake your head, and say, that the connexion seems somewhat indefinite; that it is just one of those points which can neither be proved nor disproved. Be it so. The evidence can be amended. Observe the words _petit_ and _petitus_. _Petit_ (in French) is exactly what _klein_ is in German, _i. e._, _little_. _Petitus_ (in Latin) is very nearly what _clean_ is in English, _i. e._, _desired_, or _desirable_. That _petit_ comes from _petitus_ is undeniable.

Hence, where the German mode of thought connects the ideas of _smallness_ and _cleanness_, the Latin connects those of _smallness_ and _desirability_; so that as _petit_ is to _petitus_, so is _klein_ to _clean_. In the diagram this is given in the formula of a sum in the Rule of Three.

The words just noticed explain the connexion of ideas in the case of separate words. The forthcoming help us in a much more difficult investigation. What is the import of such sounds as that of the letter _s_ in the word father-_s_? It is the sign of the plural number.

Such is the question--such the answer; question and answer connected in the word _fathers_ solely for the sake of illustration. Any other word, and any other sign of case, number, person, or tense, would have done as well.

But _is_ the answer a real one? Is it an answer at all? How come such things as plural numbers, and signs of plural numbers, into language? How the particular plural before us came into being, I cannot say; but I can show how some plurals have. Let us explain the following--

_Ngi_ = _I_. _Ngi-n-de_ = _we_. _Ngo_ = _thou_. _Ngo-n-da_ = _ye_. _Ngu_ = _he_. _Nge-n-da_ = _they_. _Da_ = _with_. _Me-cum_ = _me_.

The _da_ (or _de_) in the second column, is the sign of the plural number in a language which shall at present be nameless. It is also the preposition _with_. Now _with_ denotes _association_, association _plurality_. Hence

_Ngi-n-de_ = _I_ + = _we_. _Ngo-n-da_ = _thou_ + = _ye_. _Nge-n-da_ = _he_ + = _they_.

This is just as if the Latins, instead of _nos_ and _vos_, said _me-cum_ and _te-cum_.

Such is the history of one mode of expressing the idea of plurality; we can scarcely say of a _plural number_. The words _plural number_ suggest the idea of a single word, like _fathers_, where the _s_ is inseparably connected with the root; at least so far inseparably connected as to have no independent existence of its own. _Ngi-n-de_, however, is no single word at all, but a pair of words in juxta-position, each with a separate existence of its own. But what if this juxta-position grow into _amalgamation_; What if the form in _da_ change? What if it become _t_ or _z_, or _th_, or _s_? What if, meanwhile, the separate preposition _da_ change in form also; in form or meaning, or, perhaps, in both? In such a case a true plural form is evolved, the history of its evolution being a mystery.

So much for one of the inflections of a _noun_. The remaining words illustrate one of a _verb_.

Hundreds of grammarians have suggested that the signs of the _persons_ in the verb might be neither more nor less than the personal pronouns _appended_; in the first instance, to the verb, but, afterwards amalgamated or incorporated with it. If so, the _-m_ in _inqua-m_, is the _m_ in _me_, &c. The late Mr. Garnett, a comparative philologist whose reputation is far below his merits, saw that this was not exactly the case. He observed that the appended pronoun was not so much the _Personal_ as the _Possessive_ one: that the analysis of a word like _inqua-m_ was not so much, _say_+_I_, as _saying_+_my_; in short, that the verb was a noun, and the pronoun either an adjective (like _meus_) or an oblique case (like _mei_), agreeing with, or governed by, it.

It is _certainly_ so in the words before you. In a language, which, at present, shall be nameless, instead of saying _my apple_, _thy apple_, they say what is equivalent to _apple-m_, _apple-th_, &c.; _i. e._, they append the possessive pronoun to the substantive, and by modifying its form, partially incorporate or amalgamate it. They do more than this. They do (as the diagram shows us) precisely the same with the verbs in their _personal_, as they do with the nouns in their _possessive_, relations. Hence, _olvas-om_, &c., is less _I read_ than _my-reading_; less _read_+_I_, than _reading_+_my_.

1.

_Olvas_--_om_ = _I read_. = _reading-my_. ---- _od_ = _thou readest_. = _reading-thy_. ---- _uk_ = _we read_. = _reading-our_. ---- _atok_ = _ye read_. = _reading-your_.

2.

_Almá_--_m_ = _my apple_. = _apple-my_. ---- _d_ = _thy apple_. = _apple-thy_. ---- _nk_ = _our apple_. = _apple-our_. ---- _tok_ = _your apple_. = _apple-your_.

I submit, that facts of this kind are of some value, great or small. But the facts themselves are not all. How were they got at? They were got at by dealing with the phenomena of language as we found them, by an induction of no ordinary width and compass; for many forms of speech had to be investigated before the facts came out in their best and most satisfactory form.

The illustration of the verb (_olvasom_, and _almám_, &c.) is from the Hungarian; that of the plural number (_nginde_, &c.), from the Tumali--the Tumali being a language no nearer than the negro districts to the south of Kordovan, between Sennaar and Darfur, and (as such) not exactly in the highway of literature and philology.

Now I ask whether there be, or whether there be not, certain branches of inquiry which are, at one and the same time, recognised to be of the highest importance, and yet not very remarkable for either unanimity of opinion, precision of language, or distinctness of idea on the part of their professors. I ask whether what is called, with average clearness, Mental Philosophy, and, with somewhat less clearness, Metaphysics, be not in this predicament? I ask whether, in this branch of investigation, the subject-matter do not eminently desiderate something definite, palpable, and objective, and whether these same desiderated tangibilities be not found in the wide field of Language to an extent which no other field supplies? Let this field be a training-ground. The facts it gives are of value. The method it requires is of value.

As the languages of the world, as the forms of speech mutually unintelligible, are counted by the hundred, and the dialects by the thousand, the field is a large one--one supplying much exercise, work, and labour. But the applications of the results obtained are wide also; for, as long as any form of mental philosophy remains susceptible of improvement, as long as its improved form remains undiffused, so long will a knowledge of the structure of language in general, a knowledge of comparative philology, a knowledge of general grammar (for we may choose our term), have its use and application. And, assuredly, this will be for some time.

As to its special value in the particular department of the ethnologist, high as it is, I say nothing, or next to nothing, about it; concerning myself only with its more general applications.

Let it be said, then, that the study of language is eminently disciplinal to those faculties that are tasked in the investigation of the phenomena of the human mind; the value of a knowledge of these being a matter foreign to the present dissertation, but being by no means low. High or low, however, it measures that of the studies under notice.

But how is this general philology to be taught? Are youths to seek for roots and processes in such languages as the Hungarian and the Tumali? No. The teaching must be by means of well-selected suggestive examples, whereby the student may rise from particulars to generals, and be taught to infer the uncertain from the certain. I do not say that the _s_ in _fathers_ arose exactly after the fashion of the Tumali plural; but, assuredly, its development was the same in kind, if not in detail. At all events, language must be dealt with as a _growth_.