R. G. Latham

“ To the public at large—to the vast mass of your fellow-creatures around you—to the multitudinous body of human beings that sink under illness, or suffer from pain—to the whole of that infinite family which has bodily, not unmixed with mental affliction, for its heritage upon earth—to all who live, and breathe, and feel, and share with yourselves the common lot of suffering—here, in their whole height and depth, and length and breadth, are your responsibilities of one kind. ”

“ In ethnological philology, as in natural history, descent is the paramount fact; and without asking how far the value thus given to it is liable to be refined on, we leave it, in each science, as we find it, until some future investigator shall have shewn that either for a pair of animals not descended from a common stock, or for a pair of languages not originating from the same mother-tongue, a greater number of general propositions can be predicated than is the case with the two most dissimilar instances of either an animal or a language derived from a common origin. ”

“ Inferences fare worse. They are hardly allowed at all. It is all "theory and hypothesis" if we resort to them in cases from west to east; but it is no "theory" and no "hypothesis" when we follow the sun and move westwards.
Let the two lines be put on a level, and let ethnographical philology cease to be so one-sided as it is. Let the possibility of a Western origin of the Sanskrit language take its natural place as the member of an alternative hitherto ignored. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ It is more probable that an habitually conquering nation should have displaced an habitually conquered one, than that a bad writer should be wrong. It is more likely that a good writer should be wrong than that an habitually conquered nation should have displaced an habitually conquering one.
The application of criticism of this sort materially alters the relations of the Celtic, Gothic, Roman and Slavonic populations, giving to the latter a prominence in the ancient world much more proportionate to their present preponderance as a European population than is usually admitted. ”

“ We draw too much upon the Philologists of Germany; and where men draw indefinitely they trust implicitly. I believe that the foundations of Etymology are to be laid upon the study of existing processes; and I grow sanguine when I remember that by no one so well as by an Englishman can these processes be collected. With the exception of the Russian (a doubtful exception) we come in contact with more Languages than any nation under the Sun. Here then we have an advantage in externals. The details of Etymology I can willingly give up to the scholars of the Continent ”

“ There are no such things as Peculiar Processes: since Languages differ from each other, not in the nature of their Processes, but in the degrees of their development. These are bold, perhaps novel, assertions, but they are not hasty ones. [1]
Simply considered as an Instrument of Etymology I imagine that the study of Cotemporary Languages is, in its importance, of the very first degree; while next in value to this (considered also, as an Instrument of Etymology,) is the study of Languages during what may be called their breakings-up, or their transitions.
There are two stages in Language. ”

“ Now it is assumed that the accuracy sufficient for English Latin is all the accuracy required. Ask for more, and you get into complex and difficult questions respecting the pronunciation of a dead language. Do what we will, we cannot, on one side, pronounce the Latin like the ancient Romans. Do what we will, so long as we keep our accents right, we cannot (speaking Latin after the fashion of Englishmen) err in the way of quantity—at least, not to the ear. A short vowel still gives a long syllable; for the consonant which follows it is supposed to be doubled. ”

“ But let us not (as we often are) be told that it is necessary to study the Latin or the Greek Accidence for the sake of learning grammar in general. The self-deception that in taking up Latin and Greek we are studying a Grammar, instead of beginning a Literature, is too often the excuse for concluding our studies just where they might advantageously begin, and for looking with complacency upon limited acquirements just where limited acquirements are pre-eminently of little use. ”

“ Let us imagine an American or British ethnologist speculating [Pg 414] on the origin and unity of the European populations and arriving, in the course of his investigations, at Finmark, or any of those northern parts of Scandinavia where the Norwegian and Laplander come in immediate geographical contact. What would be first? Even this—close geographical contact accompanied by a remarkable contrast in the way of the ethnology: difference in habits, difference in aptitudes, difference in civilisation, difference of creed, difference of physical form, difference of language. ”

“ Grammar, as a art, is, undoubtedly, the art of speaking and writing correctly—but then, as an art, it is only required for foreign languages. For our own we have the necessary practice and familiarity.
The true claim of English grammar to form part and parcel of an English education stands or falls with the value of the philological knowledge to which grammatical studies may serve as an introduction, and with the value of scientific grammar as a disciplinal study. ”

“ You come to learn medicine, as you would go—if instead of physic your profession were the law—to the chambers of a special pleader, a common lawyer, or an equity draughtsman. In this strict sense does your presence here imply study—study exclusive, and study without any loss of time, and without any division of attention. You do not come here as a clergyman goes to the University; but as artists go to Rome—not to keep terms, but to do work. ”

“ The evidence upon which I rest my belief of the fundamental unity of the three philological groups of the Malay, Papua, and Australian languages, is, of the sort called cumulative; and it is the only evidence that our present data will afford us.
Believing, however, in such a fundamental unity, the problem to be solved by further researches on the vocabularies from either Torres Strait or the South of New Guinea, is the problem as to the particular quarter from which New Holland was peopled—whether from New Guinea, or from Timor. Such a problem is not beyond the reach of future philologists. ”

“ To carry such as hear me through a series of Authors, or through a course of Languages, in full detail, is evidently, even if it were desirable, an impossibility; but it is no impossibility to direct their attention to the prominent features of a particular subject, and to instil into them the imperious necessity of putting forth their own natural powers in an independent manner, so as to read for themselves, and to judge for themselves. ”

“ We can, of our own Language, and in our own Times, see, with a certainty, what change our Language more especially affects; we can observe its tendencies. And we can do this because we can find towards what particular laxities (be they of meaning or be they of pronunciation) ourselves and our neighbours more especially have a bias. We can, as it were, prophesy. We [Pg 6] cannot do this with the Latin of Augustus; we cannot do it with the Greek of Pericles.
Hence it is that what we will know, to a certainty, of Etymological processes, must be collected from Cotemporary Languages. ”

“ The facts, that language is more or less regular; that there is such a thing [Pg 37] as grammar; that certain expressions should be avoided, are all matters worth knowing. And they are all taught even by the worst method of teaching. But are these the proper objects of systematic teaching? Is the importance of their acquisition equivalent to the time, the trouble, and the displacement of more valuable subjects, which are involved in their explanation? I think not. Gross vulgarity of language is a fault to be prevented; but the proper prevention is to be got from habit—not rules. ”

“ It has long been known that the ancient, sacred, and literary language of Northern India has its closest grammatical affinities in Europe. With none of the tongues of the neighbouring countries, with no form of the Tibetan of the Himalayas or the Burmese dialects of the north-east, with no Tamul dialect of the southern part of the Peninsula itself has it half such close resemblances as it has with the distant and disconnected Lithuanian. ”

“ Now this Mythology was common to all the Gothic Tribes. The Saxon and the Norse Literatures dealt (each in their degree) with the same materials; they breathed the same spirit; and they clothed it in an allied Language. But the Saxon Mythology is fragmentary; while the Norse Mythology is a whole. For this reason Scandinavian (or Norse) Literature is not extraneous to my subject.
These, the primeval and Pagan times of our ancestors, must claim and arrest our attention; since it is from these that our characteristic modes of Thought (call them Gothic, or call them Romantic) are derived. ”

“ The very palpable reason for this is that, before we can advantageously study the System of a Language, we must have acquired a certain quantity of the detail of it. Now, in the attempt to collect ideas of General Grammar from the study of a Foreign Language, we shall find that the Theory will be swamped by the Practice; in other words, that, by attempting to do two things at once, we shall do one of them badly. ”

“ 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 [Pg 35] kind, if not in detail. At all events, language must be dealt with as a growth. ”

“ What you are taught in the schools is taught to you, not because it [Pg 24] is worth knowing—for Latin, and Greek, and Mathematics are worth knowing—but because, before patients can be cured, they are necessary to be learned.
And, in order to be taught at all, they must be taught systematically. It is an easy matter to ask for a certain amount of these two collateral sciences—to pick and choose just the parts wanted for use, to require just that modicum of botany which illustrates the Pharmacopœia, and just those fragments of chemistry that make prescriptions safe, and urine intelligible. ”

“ In the ordinary teaching of what is called the grammar of the English language there are two elements. There is something professed to be taught which is not taught, but which, if taught, would be worth learning; and there is something which, from being already learned better than any man can teach it, requires no lessons. The one (the latter) is the use and practice of the English tongue. This the Englishman has already. The other is the principles of grammar. ”

“ Indeed, in assuming that it is very great, I also assume that wherever grammar is studied as grammar, the language which the grammar so studied should represent, must be the mother-tongue of the student; whatever that mother-tongue may be—English for Englishmen, Welsh for Welshmen, French for Frenchmen, German for Germans, &c. The study is the study of a theory; and for this reason it should be complicated as little as possible by points of practice. ”

“ The greatest men, the most original thinkers, the most creative spirits stand less alone than the world is inclined to imagine. Styles of composition, that in one generation are rife and common, always exist in the age that went before. They were not indeed its leading characteristics, but still they were existent within it. ”

“ The discovery that learning is unpleasant is the discovery of a mistake in the choice of your profession; and the sooner you remedy such a mistake the better—the better for yourselves, the better for your friends, the better for the public, and the better for the profession itself. ”