Philology

“ But I was reassured on this point by learning that Philology, as the subject of this Section, was intended to be taken in that larger and undoubtedly fitter sense of the word which it bears in other countries, and to which the usage of scholars ought certainly to fix it in our own—that is to say, the study of language and of literature without distinction between ancient and modern, and without exclusion of anything which is needed for the full comprehension and illustration of either. ”

“ I think I have recognised in my examination of the question that all our philology—that is, all its present existence and power—is based on the same foundation as that on which our view of antiquity as the most important of all means of training is based. Philology as a means of instruction is the clear expression of a predominating conception regarding the value of antiquity, and the best methods of education. ”

“ Now literature is one of the arts, and philology is a science. Though men of letters have to use words as the tools of their trade, orthography is none the less a branch of philology, and philology does not come by nature. ”

“ The fact is, we must carry our demands further than the representatives of classical philology. We must ask of every educated man a fair scientific conception of the nature and value of language, of the formation of language, of the alteration of the meaning of roots, of the degeneration of fixed forms of speech to grammatical forms, in brief, of all the main results of modern comparative philology. ”

“ The task which he has set himself is a very delicate one—it demands an equal knowledge of philology, literature, and popular usage, and a keen faculty for discerning things that under apparent resemblances really differ, and things that under various and unlike forms, have common root ideas. The philologist has to deal with only one root word. The compiler of a book of synonyms must be, so to speak, a compound philologist, and must have in hand, for comparative purposes, several root words. Nor, again, is philology a sufficient guide, for the significance of words changes in popular usage ”

“ I will only say that I believe that it is precisely the change which the progress of modern philology is bringing about; that it is fitting modern languages, and preeminently our own, to become the instrument of a true mental discipline, so far as language-study can serve as such an instrument. ”

“ Most of them are ridiculously bad, and yet among them are found, as if by accident, principles of philology which are unsurpassed in any ancient writer, and even in advance of any philologer of the last century. ”

“ It may be said, with truth, that modern philology has a method far more scientific and patient than the random practice of old etymology. Granted, but a glance at the various philological interpretations, for example, of Greek mythical names, will shew that philologists still differ on most mythical points where difference is possible. When applied to the interpretation of the past of human thought and human history, philology is a most uncertain guide. ”

“ It is especially philology which is the most efficient instrument demonstrating the existence and the superiority of a distinct race. Just as anatomy reveals to us the structure of the cranium, so philology reveals to us the structure of the mind. ”

“ I do not presume to represent myself as an original investigator, nor do I aspire to a greater distinction than that of representing clearly and intelligently the views of those distinguished writers who have made the study of philology the chief pursuit of their lives. ”

“ A Word for Philologists.—It is thought that there are books so valuable and royal that whole generations of scholars are well employed when through their efforts these books are kept genuine and intelligible,—to confirm this belief again and again is the purpose of philology. ”

“ In matters touching the character, history, and relationship of languages, there are not a few remarks which savor of uncritical popular philology, some merely naïve in expression, some positively erroneous. ”

“ And if it should further have the effect of inducing any thoughtful teacher to inquire into a curious branch of philology which he may have hitherto overlooked, and to question the soundness of the established routine of classical inculcation in some points, whatever disagreeable labour I may have gone through in clearing the learned rubbish from so perplexed a path will not have been without its reward. ”

“ It is not a question of absolute propriety or correctness, since the word philology is in its nature wide enough to imply all language-study of whatever kind; it is one, rather, of the convenient distinction of methods that have grown too independent and important to be any longer well included under a common name.
I —The Science of Language in general.
Philology, in all its departments, began and grew up as classical; the history of our civilization made the study of Greek and Latin long the exclusive, still longer the predominant and regulating, occupation of secular scholarship. ”

“ The mistake made by philologists, however, has been in assuming that philology is the principal means of understanding the phenomena of linguistics; whereas in truth it is only one means of studying them. ”

“ When philological science in our own century came to maturity, in philology, as of old in physics and later in symbols, was sought the key of myths. While physical allegory, religious and esoteric symbolism, verbal confusion, historical legend, and an original divine tradition, perverted in ages of darkness, have been the most popular keys in other ages, the scientific nineteenth century has had a philological key of its own. ”

“ An able writer in the Saturday Review truly describes the science of comparative philology as "the great discovery of modern scholarship, the discovery which more than any other unites distant ages and countries in one tie of brotherhood." ”

“ Since the middle of the 19th century the word has been used in a more restricted sense. Whereas philology formerly meant the study of literature, it is now limited to the study of languages, apart from the literature embodied in them. ”

“ Moreover, if what some call the philosophy of language, were to supersede, altogether, the province of philology as it applies to the present, progressive and refined state of English literature, the great object contemplated by the learned, in all ages, namely, the approximation of language, in common with every thing else, to that point of perfection at which it is the object of correct philology to arrive, would be frustrated. ”

“ A young man just entering the domain of classical philology, and getting his first ranges over the fields of classical literature, is sure to have a distorted idea of the relative superiority of those literatures, from comparative ignorance both of other ancient and of modern literatures. ”

“ Of all sciences philology at present is the most favoured · its progress having been furthered for centuries by the greatest number of scholars in every nation who have had charge of the noblest pupils. Philology has thus had one of the best of all opportunities to be propagated from generation to generation, and to make itself respected. ”

“ The first great achievement of comparative philology has been that of demonstrating, beyond all possibility of question, that language as it now exists did not appear ready-made, or by way of any specially created intuition. ”

“ In academic teaching the study of philology, of grammar, of construction, of literary history, has often been mistaken or substituted for the study of literature; and in private study the peculiar enrichment which comes from art simply as art is often needlessly sacrificed by exclusive attention to books as documents of spiritual history. ”

“ Philology and grammar thus grew into sciences, and their professors held the keys of human erudition. Deep ought to be our gratitude for the contingent of classical literature rescued from a rapid destruction by such arduous and self-denying labours; and a history of these discoveries, and of the zeal and enterprise volunteered by the early commentators and publishers of the ancient authors, would form an interesting monument of undaunted and generally successful diligence. ”

“ When we observe how few philologists there actually are, except those that have taken up philology as a means of livelihood, we can easily decide for ourselves what is the matter with this impulse for antiquity: it hardly exists at all, for there are no disinterested philologists. ”

“ In now turning to this important branch of my subject, I may remark in limine that, like all the sciences, philology can be cultivated only by those who devote themselves specially to the purpose. My function, therefore, will here be that of merely putting together the main results of philological research, so far as this has hitherto proceeded, and so far as these results appear to me to have any bearing upon the “origin of human faculty.” ”

“ The discovery of the comparative method in philology, in mythology—let me add in politics and history and the whole range of human thought—marks a stage in the progress of the human mind at least as great and memorable as the revival of Greek and Latin learning.—Freeman, Historical Essays, iv. ”

“ Philology is composed of history just as much as of natural science or aesthetics: history, in so far as it endeavours to comprehend the manifestations of the individualities of peoples in ever new images, and the prevailing law in the disappearance of phenomena; natural science, in so far as it strives to fathom the deepest instinct of man, that of speech ”

“ There is doubtless a secondary sense in which purely philological science may be fairly called physical, just as there is a secondary sense in which pure ethnology may be called historical. That is to say, philology has to deal with physical phenomena, so far as it has to deal with the physical aspect of the sounds of which human language is made up. ”

“ To any who may allege that some primitive fiction was devised by some primitive priesthood, before yet mankind had diverged from a common centre, a reply is furnished by philology; for philology proves the dispersion of mankind to have commenced before there existed a language sufficiently organized to express religious ideas. Moreover, were it otherwise tenable, the hypothesis of artificial origin fails to account for the facts. ”

“ DURING the reign of parties for about forty years past, it is a melancholy consideration to observe how philology has been neglected, which was before the darling employment of the greatest authors, from the restoration of learning in Europe. ”

“ In the region of history, as he shews, the best philologists contradict each other and themselves, as to the metals possessed by the early Aryans. Yet philology is the science which claims possession of "the only method that can lead to scientific results," results which differ with the views of each individual scholar. ”

“ On the contrary, he considers that in them the life and growth of language is seen more clearly than in dead literary languages, on whose study the science of comparative philology was at first exclusively built up. ”

“ It must be freely admitted that philology is to some extent borrowed from several other sciences, and is mixed together like a magic potion from the most outlandish liquors, ores, and bones. It may even be added that it likewise conceals within itself an artistic element, one which, on æsthetic and ethical grounds, may be called imperatival—an element that acts in opposition to its purely scientific behaviour. ”

“ Philology demands the labour of a life. I often wonder what the teacher, student, and school history of England will be at the end of another thousand years. Perhaps, however, in another thousand years books will no longer be written except on physics. ”

“ Philology might be made fascinating; the history of a word, and of the processes by which its different forms, in different senses, were developed, might be made as interesting as any other story of events. ”

“ Wherever ethic and metaphysic are left, the merest philology seems to have been the only alternative—the few phrases attributed to any writers of this period that bear a different complexion being very few, uncertainly authentic, and in almost every case extremely vague. ”

“ It has already been remarked, that the Arts are themselves their own best interpreters, and that little faith is to be placed in the remote analogies of philology, which have too frequently been admitted in evidence beyond their value ”

“ The first school is that of the philologists, and the second that of the anthropologists, or comparative mythologists.
Philology relates to the study of language, especially when treated in a philosophical manner. ”

“ They, however, who possess the greatest knowledge of antiquity should likewise possess the greatest amount of culture, viz., our philologists; but what is classical about them?
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Classical philology is the basis of the most shallow rationalism always having been dishonestly applied, it has gradually become quite ineffective. Its effect is one more illusion of the modern man. Philologists are nothing but a guild of sky-pilots who are [Pg 146] not known as such · this is why the State takes an interest in them. ”

“ There is, besides, a new charm in such intellectual works as, passing through long time, have had a multitude of authors and improvers. We admire that poetry which no man wrote,—no poet less than the genius of humanity itself,—which is to be read in a mythology, in the effect of a fixed or national style of pictures, of sculptures, or drama, or cities, or sciences, on us. Such a poem also is language. Every word in the language has once been used happily. ”

“ Waving therefore all claim to the invention of the new poetic art, I merely take to myself the credit of collecting and methodizing the principles and maxims, which lie scattered here and there throughout the numerous successful poems of the present remarkable æra.
As in the schools of our universities every sentiment is uttered in a learned language, so, it is well known, that, in the school of the ancient poets, it was customary to use only the language of verse, even upon prosaic subjects. ”