of other writers in the recollection of a reader. If they recur, it is with his signature distinctly impressed on them. As these volumes are calculated to add considerably to his influence on an order of minds likely to influence others, we could have desired the omission of two or three of his hastily expressed sentiments, which, we believe, he himself would have been ready to qualify or recall. But these blemishes are comparatively slight; and unless we know the extent of the supervision which the biographer has exercised, it would be rash to pronounce him censurable for the small degree in which he may appear to have failed. Especially, too, as he may have executed his task with the fact present to his mind, that the public not unfrequently exercise the somewhat incompatible privileges of blaming a biographer, both for not enabling them to form their own judgment of his subject by withholding nothing, as well as for not exercising his own judgment in casting certain things into the shade. Mr. Ryland has evidently discharged his part with a feeling of deep reverence for his subject, and a determination to let the essayist speak for himself. And long and powerfully will he continue to speak from these volumes, as from the invisible world. V. THE INFLUENCE OF OPINIONS ON LANGUAGE, BY JOHN DAVID MICHAELIS. [The Essay, of which we now present our readers with the first part, is one of the most valuable of the minor productions of the renowned biblical scholar whose name it bears. The question which forms its theme was proposed by the Royal Academy of Prussia, who awarded their prize to this paper. The translation which we have before us is anonymous, but it professes to have had the careful revision of Michaelis himself. It bears the date of 1769, and we are not aware that it has ever been reprinted. We have found it, as might have been expected, to need a further revision, which we have bestowed on it, as well as we could in the absence of the original. Some few matters in it are rather out of date in consequence of the great advance of philological science since the time of Michaelis; and some opinions are expressed in it which are at least questionable, as must be the case, where a single mind attempts the illustration of its views on any subject by examples drawn from several different sciences: but the great principles, with which the Essay is chiefly occupied, are of universal application, and deserve the thoughtful attention of the unlearned as well as of the learned.] I. The Influence of a People's Opinions on their Language.—All objects present themselves to our mind under a certain appearance, and by this appearance it is that the names we give them and our descriptions of them are ever regulated. Nothing is more evident suppose that every people had from its origin been accus tomed to a particular system of botany; undoubtedly, the vegetables comprehended, among these different people, under the same generical appellation would not be the same. Though there be not, between languages, a distinction so learned and so systematical; still this fiction represents to us at large and more manifestly, what must happen in various particulars, among nations of a different way of thinking. There is no language, the origin of which is not, by many centuries, prior to that of the systems of botany which we are now acquainted with; likewise there are none in which may not be observed traces of the infancy of botany, of that rude and uncultivated knowledge of vegetables, which was the utmost attainment of the early ages: besides those of a visible resemblance, they often comprehended under the same denomination those which were employed for the like uses, whatever might be their other differences. This method was likewise that of the most ancient professed botanists; they divided the classes of plants according to the respective benefits reaped from them. All this was no more than natural. The first motive for human attention fixing itself on the products of nature is their use; this is the character which, as it most concerns us, strikes us previously and beyond all others. All opinions are not received into the language; in that, neither the scholar's authority nor his demonstrations are regarded, however intimately he himself may be convinced of the truth of his doctrines. He may make a clamour about the justness of expressions, he may protest against vulgar errors; nobody minds him. In short, language is a democracy where use or custom is decided by the majority; and Horace has pronounced that in languages custom is the supreme law. For instance, should a stickler for Copernicus and the true system of the world carry his zeal so far as to say the city of Berlin sets at such and such an hour, instead of making use of the common expression, the sun sets at Berlin at such an hour, he speaks the truth to be sure; but his manner of speaking it is pedantry. There is only one particular wherein the empire of language seems to differ from democracy; that often the commonalty take their rule of speech from persons of education; but is not the like seen in all democratical states ? Is it not a frequent case for a citizen conscious of his ignorance gladly to defer to the opinion of one whom he conceives to have more knowledge and understanding? We need not, therefore, depart from a comparison which so well represents what it is intended to represent. It is from the opinions of the people and the point of view in which objects appear to them, that language receives its form. As literature and politeness gain ground in a nation and according to the duration of their reign, they extend their influences in the language, the commonalty in such times acquiring the knowledge of several expressions invented by the learned, as, on the other hand, the latter not seldom adopt popular expressions. If it be considered that Greece, and especially the city of Athens, was eminently possessed of this advantage, the great prerogatives of the Greek language will no longer be wondered at. To this influence philosophy and the several branches of literature principally contribute, especially when from the dust of the study they pass into the mouths both of the secular and the sacred orator, or those pretty mouths, which the graces seem to animate, and whose every word meets with echos, delighting to repeat it. How many new words has not the Wolfian philosophy introduced into our language, and how many words has it not stripped of their former import! But all this is nothing in comparison of the consequences, when poets of celebrity carry philosophy to the summit of Parnassus, and embellish it with the charms of the muses. Being esteemed classical authors, everybody is eager to read them; all their innovations are acquiesced in; their very faults, in company with so many beauties, are admired and have their imitators. Now, only let a knot of persons of wit make use of these new expressions as approving them, this alone brings them into repute; the very commonalty affect them; they spread into universal vogue. Not that I pretend to deny, but that one single man, and one who, far from being a classical author, is only a private individual in the empire of language, may happen to strike out an expression which, with the ideas relative to it, shall be admitted into a language. For instance, a witty saying comes from one, it pleases the hearers, it is thought just and pretty, or fine, or strong, many repeat it, it even meets with plagiarists who father it, thus it runs from mouth to mouth, till it grows into a kind of proverb. Thus it is that thousands of men become contributors to that immense heap of truths and errors, of which the languages of nations are the repositories; but what every particular individual furnishes is little or nothing: most hazarded expressions do not take; they are like blossoms of which the greater part drop from the trees and come to nothing: and even if a new term does take, it does not necessarily follow that it annihilates the former: the language, possibly, retains both. The right of creating, as we have said before, properly belongs only to classic authors, the fair sex, and the people, who are indeed the supreme legislators. These are the propositions, which I am now to prove by instances. The Greek name of the Deity* is derived from a verb which signifies to run, to move one's self; and many hold that this name was originally appropriated to the stars, as the deities which were worshipped at the time of the formation of the language, and from thence their name came to be that of the Deity. * Θεός. Reason, in explaining the origin of the world, requires only one God, but superstition has strangely multiplied the number, and this has affected the languages in the Latin particularly it has left very strongly marked traces. The Latin word for God may be said to be only plural; as for Deus in the singular number, its meaning does not correspond with the word Dieu in French, or Gott in German. Whenever we hear these words, we immediately think of the one only God, and we make use of them as a proper name, without any article; whereas the Deus of the Latins denotes one god amongst several, and should be rendered in French le dieu, the god, when this god is characterised by what goes before; and when not, un des dieux, one of the gods, or simply, un dieu, a god. This admits of some exceptions, but I speak of what is most usual. It may be even said that the Greeks, no less than the Latins, are without a term to express the idea which we form to ourselves of God; I mean that of a supreme, independent, infinitely perfect Being, who has created the world. The gods of the Romans, and the demons of the Greeks, were only spirits superior to man by their power and the excellence of their nature; they were nothing more than those whom the church has styled angels; their origin was quite as contingent, and their essence not less limited; like them they were only ministers and vicars of the true God. Of this God some philosophers seemed to have had a remote view, and to have discerned him as it were through a veil; their most laboured definitions of him were extremely vague, inadequate, and imperfect. What if they sometimes give him the epithets of Sovereign, of Master of the gods, of supreme God, what if they call him the thunder hurling God, the God who drives his thundering car along the clouds, &c.? These descriptions were very far from being in their language so determinate, as the word denoting the Deity is in ours they might indeed imply the notion of an intelligence of the first order, but finite and dependent. So that these languages had, in reality, the fault attributed to the Chinese, and it is with less reason that the latter is said to have no name for the Deity, as having no other than that of Sky. It is to the Christian religion that we are beholden for a word which expresses, without any confusion or ambiguity, the philosophical idea of an infinite substance, Creator of the Universe, and which distinguishes that substance from all the intermediate spirits and angels, even in churches, where those spirits have a worship of adoration paid to them. The opinions of the Jews produced in the Greek language, which was spoken at Alexandria, and elsewhere among that nation, a quite contrary effect. The Greeks often gave to their gods the names of demon and demonion, and these gods the Jews took to be angels; but, imagining the pagan deities to be sensitive and taking delight in the worship paid to them, they necessarily could take them only for rebel angels, and such as were fallen from their exalted origin. And that this was the real idea they entertained of such spirits is well known, and farther that they had transmitted it not only to the Christians but even the Arabs in a word, the most manifest impress of it appears in their language: in the Greek of the Jews, I mean the Greek Bible, the word demonion signifies a devil. Every language, before it has gone through philosophic hands, must of necessity be wanting in proper terms for denoting such objects as do not come within the verge of the senses, and especially metaphysical ideas. Thus Ludolph informs us, that the Ethiopians, having but one word for nature and person, could not distinguish those two things in the controversy concerning Christ's two natures. On the other hand, when a language has followed philosophy through its several revolutions, there will be some change in the meaning and import of its philosophic terms. To most Germans the word essence or being carries with it an idea agreeable to the Wolfian definition, an idea, however, very different from that which divines annexed to it, long before Leibnitz was so much as born, when they said that the essence of God is one. I make no doubt that they may still give a modern sense to that proposition, as couched in our old language; and then they certainly will find nothing mysterious in the doctrine of the Trinity. They will conceive the Divine essence common to three persons just as easily as they conceive the human essence common to millions of persons. Formerly essence signified what at present is meant by existence or reality; and Luther, without the least ambiguity, might render the eleventh verse of the fourth chapter of the Revelations, Durch deinen Willen haben sie das Wesen, i. e., of thy will they hold their essence; but philosophy having introduced some change into the language, this passage became obscure, so that a commentary was wanting to it; and one of our divines, Mr. Reinbeek, who had the courage to explain Luther in a rational manner, met with an adversary, who denied the eternity of philosophic essences, maintaining that those very essences were produced by God and depended on his will. The name by which the Germans call the leprosy is taken from the external figure as it appears to our eyes. All over the east, where this distemper is almost incurable, it was looked on as a punishment of God's own immediate inflicting. From holy Scripture we know that this was the opinion of the Jews; and according * Wesen. The German name for the leprosy is aussatz, or excrescence, which may signify the formation of scales on the skin. |