ent use, it is defined as a "historical science, whose cnd is the knowledge of the intellectual condition, labors, and products of a nation, or of cognate nations, at particular epochs of general chronology, with reference to the historical development of such nations." There are, then, not one, namely, a Greek and Roman, but many philologies, as many, indeed, as there are distinct peoples, or families of peoples, whose intellectual characters and action may be known through their languages. In philology thus considered, the study of languages is a means to the end specified in the definition just given. In linguistics, on the other hand, language itself, as one of the great characteristics of humanity, is the end, and the means are the study of general and comparative grammar. Every philology is the physiology of a species in language; linguistics, the comparative anatomy of all the several systems of articulate communication between man and man. Linguistics, as a noun, has hardly become an English word. Philology, as used by most English and American writers, embraces the signification of the two words by which, in Continental literature, the study of language is characterized, according to the methods by which, and the objects for which, it is pursued. The adjectives, philological and linguistic, are employed, sometimes interchangeably in the same sense as philology, and sometimes as adjectives conjugate in meaning to the noun language. I shall not attempt, in this course, a strict conformity to Continental usage in the employment of these words, nor, indeed, would it be practicable to do so, until a new adjective shall be coined to relieve one of them of its double meaning; but I shall endeavor so to use them

* Heyse: Sprachwissenschaft, ff. 17.

all, that the context or the subject matter will determine the sense which they are intended to bear for the occasion.*

From the distinction here pointed out, it results that philology concerns itself chiefly with that which is peculiar to a given speech and its literature, linguistics with those laws and properties which are common to all languages. Philology is conversant with distinctions; linguistics with analogies. The course of lectures I am commencing is intended to be strictly philological, and I shall introduce illustrations from the field of linguistics only when they are necessary for etymological reasons, or to make the distinguishing traits of English more palpable by the force of contrast.

* Our English grammatical and philological vocabulary is poor. We have no adjective strictly conjugate to speech, tongue, language, verb, noun, and many other terms of art in this department. Linguistic is a barbarous hybrid, and, in our use, equivocal, as are also the adjectives verbal, nominal, and the like. A native equivalent to the sprachlich of some German writers, corresponding nearly to our old use of philological, as in the phrase, sprachliche Forschungen, where the adjective embraces the meaning both of philologi cal and linguistic, is much wanted.

LECTURE III.

PRACTICAL USES OF ETYMOLOGY.

IN the last lecture, the distinction made in recent grammatical nomenclature between philology and linguistics was illustrated by comparing the former to the physiology of a single species, the latter to the comparative anatomy of dif ferent species. Etymology, or the study of the primitive, derivative, and figurative forms and meanings of words, must of course have different uses, according to the object for which it is pursued. If the aims of the etymological inquirer be philological, and he seek only a more thorough comprehension and mastery of the vocabulary of his own tongue, the uses in question, though not excluding other collateral advantages, may be said to be of a strictly practical character; or, in other words, etymology, so studied, tends directly to aid us in the clear understanding and just and forcible employment of the words which compose our own language. If, on the other hand, the scholar's objects be ethnological or linguistic, and he investigate the history of words for the purpose of tracing the relations between different races or different languages, and of arriving at those gen

Detto.

eral principles of universal grammar which determine the
form and structure of all human speech, his studies are in-
deed more highly scientific in their scope and method, but
they aid him little in the comprehension, and, as experience
abundantly shows, scarcely at all in the use, of his maternal
tongue. But though I admit that philology is of a less rig-"
orously scientific character than linguistics, I by no means Terr
concede to the latter any pre-eminence as a philosophic study,
or as requiring higher intellectual endowments for its success-
ful cultivation; and it cannot be disputed that, as a means
of ethical culture, philology, connecting itself, as it does, with
the whole mental and physical life of man, illustrating as
well the inward thought and feeling as the outward action of
a nation, has almost as great a superiority over linguistics as
history over pure mathematics. Philological studies, when
philology, as explained in the last lecture, was restricted to
the cultivation of the languages, literature, history, and arch-
æology of Greece and Rome, were very commonly called
literæ humaniores, or, in English, the humanities; and
it is the conviction of their value as a moral and intellectual
discipline, which has led scholars almost universally to as-
cribe the origin of this appellation to a sense of their refining,
elevating, and humanizing influence. This, however, I think,
is an erroneous etymology. They were called literæ hu-
maniores, the humanities, by way of opposition to the
literæ divinæ, or divinity, the two studies, philology
and theology, then completing the circle of scholastic knowl-
edge, which, at the period of the introduction of the phrase,
scarcely included any branch of physical science. But though
the etymology is mistaken, its general reception is an evi-
dence of the opinion of the learned as to the worth and im-
portance of the study, and, now that so many modern litera-

tures have attained to an excellence scarcely inferior to that of classic models, their special philologies have even stronger claims upon us than those of ancient lore, because they are not only almost equally valuable as instruments of mental culture, but are more directly connected with the clear intelligence, and fit discharge of our highest moral, social, and religious duties.

Etymology is a fundamental branch of all philological and all linguistic study. The word is used in two senses, or rather, the science of etymology has two offices. The one concerns itself with the primitive and derivative forms and significations of words, the other with their grammatical inflections and modifications; the one considers words independently and absolutely, the other in their syntactical relations. In discussing the uses of etymology, I shall confine myself to the first of these offices, or that which consists in investigating the earliest recognizable shape and meaning of words, and tracing the history of their subsquent changes in form and signification. A knowledge of etymology, to such an extent as is required for all the general purposes of literature and of life, is attainable by aids within the reach of every man of moderate scholastic training. Our commonest dictionaries give, with tolerable accuracy, the etymologies of most of our vocabulary, and where these fail, every library will furnish the means of further investigation. It must be confessed, however, that no English dictionary at all fulfils the requisites either of a truly scientific or of a popular etymologicon. They all attempt too much and too little-too much of comparative, too little of positive etymology. Of course, in a complete thesaurus of any language, the etymology of every word should exhibit both its philology and its linguistics, its domestic history, and its foreign relations, but