The Life and Growth of Language

M., M.

doi:10.1038/012225a0

Books Received
Published: 22 July 1875

The Life and Growth of Language

M. M.

Nature volume 12, pages 225–228 (1875)Cite this article

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Abstract

THIS is certainly a disappointing volume. When the editors of the International Scientific Series offered us a treatise on Language by the side of such works as Tyndall's “Forms of Water in Clouds and Rivers,” Bagehot's “Physics and Politics,” Bain's “Mind and Body,” Spencer's “Study of Sociology,” we had a right to expect something substantial, if not original. Instead of this, Prof. Whitney presents us with what is to all intents and purposes an abstract of his “Lectures on the Study of Language,” delivered in 1864 in Washington and other places, lectures which in themselves contained hardly more than a popular summary of some of the results obtained by the researches of German, French, and English scholars on the origin, the development, and the classification of languages. “The old story,” to let Prof. Whitney speak for himself, “is told in a new way, under changed aspects and with, changed proportions, and with considerably less fullness of exposition and illustration.” But why simply tell us the old story over again? Has the science of language made no progress since 1864? Has Prof. Whitney himself worked up no new materials? Has he no discovery of his own to record in his own special fields of labour? Has he brought none of the problems which, as he told us in 1864, still perplexed the students of the science of language, nearer to a solution? Or, at all events, has he not. found some more felicitous illustrations than those with which he entertained his hearers ten years ago? If any one who knows the Professor's lectures, should read his new treatise on what he strangely calls the “Life and Growth of Language,” we doubt not which of the two volumes he will keep on the shelves of his library, and which he will assign to the corner of ephemeral literature. Prof. Whitney has set forth his good wine at the beginning, and gives us now that which is worse. To judge from other numbers of the International Series, the rules imposed on the contributors do not seem to have prevented them from treating their subjects in a thorough, if not in an exhaustive way. Besides, there are in this volume several lengthy discussions as to whether the science of language should be called a physical or an historical science, whether it deserves the name of a science at all, whether a knowledge of psychology is essential to the student of language or not; discussions which, as far as we are able to judge, contain an “infinite deal of nothing,” and add very little to what had already been written on these subjects.

The Life and Growth of Language.

By William Dwight Whitney, Professor of Sanskrit and Comparative Philology in Yale College, The “International Scientific Series,” vol, xvi. (London: King and Co., 1875.)