Max Müller and the Philosophy of Language

Abstract

THE substance of this work has already appeared in the German periodical Nord und Süd, and the author here tells us that he has reproduced it in an enlarged form and in an English dress in order to do full justice to Max Müller's great merits in clearing the way “for future investigators.” He considers that eminent services have been rendered to the cause of linguistic studies by the writings of the illustrious Oxford professor, and four out of the five chapters comprising this treatise are mainly occupied in putting this somewhat obvious fact in the clearest light. But he holds, in common probably with Max Müller himself, that the problem of the ultimate origin of articulate speech has not been solved in the brilliant and deservedly popular “Lectures on the Science of Language.” Many difficulties are there removed, much light is thrown upon a great number of obscure points, several abstruse questions are treated with an amazing wealth of illustration, bringing them home to the meanest capacity, and sundry popular views, notably those stigmatised as the “Pooh-pooh” and “Bow-wow” theories, are either exploded, or reduced to their proper value. But the mystery of origin, the inexplicable ultimate residuum of roots, forming the constituent elements of all speech, remains almost unassailed, though distinct service has undoubtedly been done by narrowing down the question to this one issue. A still greater service is done when the gifted writer emphatically declares that these roots “are not, as is commonly maintained, merely scientific abstractions, but they were used originally as real words.” This gave the death-blow to the Platonic “types,” ideas, metaphysical entities and concepts which had still continued to obscure the subject, and block the way like so much mediæval rubbish. Herr Noiré aptly compares them to the ova, whence all animal and vegetable life. “By their development and uninterrupted growth all the known languages of the world have reached their marvellous structure, and become the body of reason and the instrument of mind ”(p. 55).

Max Müller and the Philosophy of Language.

By Ludwig Noiré. (London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1879.)