Beruflich Dokumente
Kultur Dokumente
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
University of Northern Iowa is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The North
American Review.
http://www.jstor.org
here, if the author in his last Preface (Vol. I. p. xi, had not seen
note)
fit to refer to and quote, with decided condemnation, our former criticism
on his second series of lectures this Review, Vol. C. pp. 565-581;
(see
number for April, us of unfairness or even We
1865), accusing stolidity.
cannot well help, therefore, accepting his and ventur
implied challenge,
a few words in our own defence.
be very We
too, if should
ing glad,
we can find it, to confess
occasion that we have misunderstood
for him
and done him injustice, and to apologize for our unintended error.
"
Professor Muller speaks of our review as a
specimen of over-con
fident and unsuspecting criticism." Precisely what he may intend
" "
the is not clear to us. If collateral evi
by epithet unsuspecting
dence did not indicate that he hardly meant it as we
complimentary,
should that it showed his of our desire not to sus
imagine appreciation
evil in the author we had under treatment, but to him the
pect give
benefit of the most favorable
interpretation that the case admitted.
This was, in fact, ourtoward him, and any over-confidence
disposition
which we may have was doubtless in the main a result of our
displayed
simple-minded consciousness of rectitude. But the question of over
confidence is one to be settled results: if Professor Muller can
by
we certain
refute the objections brought against parts of his work, and
can prove that we were flagrantly wrong in bringing them, then what
ever confidence we may have shown, be it more or less, was in excess,
and we now to feel humbled. He has undertaken
ought correspondingly
such refutation in one particular instance, but, somehow or other, we
There are threein this reply. In the first place, Muller claims
points
that he has run
a tilt, somewhere, full against hard and soft (for this is
"
what he meant to say; full tilt" is only an adverbial
beyond question
the violence with which we come in mid career
expression, indicating
upon some unforeseen ; he does not inform us upon what
obstacle)
field; we should to read the record of
encounter, the if we
rejoice only
knew where to look for it. But the question was not what he might
have done in some unknown lists, and at some moment of
peculiarly
If we are not greatly mistaken, the state of the case is this: Profes
sor Muller, like some other students of philology, finds himself unable
to resist and
longer the force of the arguments against hard soft, and is
convinced that surd and sonant are the proper terms to use; but,
instead of frankly the one and the other in their
abandoning accepting
place, he would fain make his readers believe that he has held
always
and as he now wishes he had done. It is a case either of dis
taught
or of remarkable there appears to be no
ingenuousness self-deception:
third alternative.
(II. 158), not having understood, apparently, the meaning of this quo
on his own "
tation, Muller says behalf: Some persons have been so
deceived the term sonant, that all the so
entirely by they imagined
called sonant letters to be with tonic vibrations of
actually pronounced
the chordae vocales. This is physically impossible; for if we
really
tried to intone b, we or should or b, or be
either the p suffocat
p destroy
ed in our attemptat producing voice."
But we are too much time upon this subject. We could
spending
use up our whole if there were call to do so, in out the
space, pointing
weaknesses and errors of this lecture on It is from
phonetics. begin
ning to end The author has consulted excellent author
unsatisfactory.
context, an of his own views should come in; and the want
explanation
of it, and the incongruousness of introducing one more view which he
does not hold and cannot recommend to his readers, are and
distinctly
seriously felt. We do not envy the feelings of those who have been,
these few years past, defending this theory as Muller's, and denouncing
all who would not accept it from him, when learn that he himself
they
never had the least faith in it. Sure, never were devoted sec
blindly
taries more cruelly left in the lurch !
The only other point in our criticism which the author ventures to
controvert is ourobjection to his definition of wh as a surd or
whispered
w, instead of a w with h prefixed. To this he retorts : " Now on a ques
tion concerning the correct pronunciation of English, it might seem
in me were I not at once to bow to the of the
impertinence authority
*
North American Review.' Still, the writer have that
might suspected
on such a a not would write
if he at and
point
foreigner random,
had consulted the
authorities on in England,
highest phonetics and,
I believe, in America too, he would have found that they agree
with my own of the two sounds of w and wh"
description Then,
at the point in the lecture where the matter comes up (II. 148),
he quotes against us, in a marginal note, Ellis and Bell. This is
a fair and if we had laid any stress
perfectly reply; particular
a "
upon the or taken and over-confident" tone
point, dogmatic
with regard to it, we should have to feel confuted. But
thoroughly
such is not the case ; the objection is simply one item out of
several
contained within the limits
sentence; of a
and we added a " we
single
"
think to it, for the very purpose of giving it more the aspect of an
nificance. Because
such combinations of sounds as and
experiment
character do not
lie around, or of themselves, for an
fly about, waiting
idea to which can be fitted, can never have been devised and
they they
to ideas. Because was non-existent until the art of
applied photograph
the sunlight draw was invented, it cannot have been
making pictures
gotten hold of to designate the conception of something drawn by the
: "
But there is a further consequence From which it would
sunlight.
follow that our which are now clothed in the
again conceptions, always
garment of language, could never have existed in a naked state. This
would be perfectly correct if to anything else; nor
reasoning, applied
do I see that it can be objected to as bearing on and
thought language."
Here is more phraseology, of garments and nakedness, with
figurative
which our author hides from his own eyes the emptiness of his thought.
It would follow that, as our of a is now
equally conception photograph
that
name, the could never have been con
always signified by thing
ceived without the name.
maintain
We instead, that, as such reasoning
is incorrect when
applied
to
anything else, it cannot be valid as bearing
on There are many human also, whom we never see
language. beings,
otherwise than clad, but we do not infer that never can have ex
they
isted in a naked state. It is and has alwrays been men's custom to give
names to or when are found, or made, or won
things conceptions they
by abstraction, not to make names for things not yet known. And by
this means every new-found idea gets its designation, and the increase
of knowledge and the growth of language go on together. If Muller's
were correct, there could be no further increase of either.
reasonings
There are in the
English language, for example, just so many existent
words and no more; and each word is appropriated to some
expressing
" more or or
less idea," some more or less limited number of
general
such: no more ideas can come into because are unable to
being, they
exist in a naked state, and all the clothes are sold and in wearing; and
there is no provision for more clothes, since the material of such is even
more non-existent than inarticulate ? and that is the end
noises, of the
matter, But, to our author's there is yet
unfortunately. apprehension,
another logical in his reasoning, which might have our
fallacy escaped
notice, if he had not himself been kind enough to point it out by an
"
added illustration. If we never find skins except as the teguments
of animals, we may conclude that animals cannot exist without
safely
skins "! We have heard an eminent of
teacher logic say that he was
accustomed to quote this to his class as a of a false
striking example
Of course, what is true of skins is true of other of
syllogism. parts
? "
the animal economy, say horns or tails. If we never find tails
as the appendages of animals, we may conclude that
except safely
you hear a man talking, and no one of his out what hearers can make
?
he is saying, and he does n't know himself, that is
metaphysics."
Let no one accuse us of at unnecessary the
dwelling length upon
examination and refutation of this singular There are, as
paragraph.
Professor Muller himself says, somewhere in one of his criticisms, mis
takes and mistakes ; some that are oversights, results of haste and heed
ting it in the most interesting light; but profound he is not. The further
down below the surface of things, the less is he to be trusted; we have
at any rate, the latter kind of influence tends more and more to pre
over the other. If we did not feel this, and feel it strongly,
ponderate
we should be very slow to write of him as we have done here, and
elsewhere in this Review. Certainly, there is no man living who is
more over-estimated and than he; to a con
excessively over-praised
siderable part of the English-speaking and unrea
community, implicit
faith in him is almost an element of their and a false
soning religion,
element, which, in the interest of truth, cannot be too soon
destroyed.