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NUMBERS OF THE LIVING AGE Wanted. The publishers are in want of Nos. 1179 and 1180 (dated respectively Jan. 5th and Jan. 12th, 1867) of THE LIVING AGE. To subscribers, or others, who will do us the favor to send us either or both of those numbers, we will return an equivalent, either in our publications or in cash, until our wants are supplied.

JUST PUBLISHED AT THIS OFFICE :

CONTENTS:

THE PORTRAIT IN MY UNCLE'S DINING-ROOM, AND OTHER TALES.
The Portrait in my Uncle's Dining-Room; Olivia's Favour, A Tale of Hallowe'en; Mrs.
Merridew's Fortune; Little Miss Deane; Late for the Train. 1 vol. Price 38 cents.

PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

LITTELL & GAY, BOSTON.

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FOR EIGHT DOLLARS, remitted directly to the Publishers, the LIVING AGE will be punctually for, warded for a year, free of postage. But we do not prepay postage on less than a year, nor where we have to pay commission for forwarding the money.

Price of the First Series, in Cloth, 36 volumes, 90 dollars.

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The Complete Work,

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Any Volume Bound, 3 dollars; Unbound, 2 dollars. The sets, or volumes, will be sent at the expense of the publishers.

PREMIUMS FOR CLUBS.

For 5 new subscribers ($40.), a sixth copy; or a set of HORNE'S INTRODUCTION TO THE BIBLE, unabridged, in 4 large volumes, cloth, price $10; or any 5 of the back volumes of the LIVING AGE, in num bers, price $10.

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From Fraser's Magazine.

guage. A career so auspiciously begun, in LECTURES ON THE SCIENCE OF RELIGION. spite of strong prejudices that had to be encountered, will lead on from year to year to greater triumphs. Our best public

BY PROFESSOR MAX MULLER.

FIRST LECTURE,

Delivered at the Royal Institution, February 19, schools, if they have not done so already,

1870.

WHEN I undertook for the first time to deliver a course of lectures in this Institution, I chose for my subject the Science of Language. What I then had at heart was to show to you, and to the world at large, that the comparative study of the principal languages of mankind was based on principles sound and scientific, and that it had brought to light results which deserved a larger share of public interest than they had as yet received. I tried to convince, not only scholars by profession, but historians, theologians, and philosophers, nay everybody who had once felt the charm of gazing inwardly upon the secret workings of his own mind, veiled and revealed as they are in the flowing forms of language, that the discoveries made by comparative philologists could no longer be ignored with impunity; and I submitted that after the progress achieved in a scientific study of the principal branches of the vast realm of human speech, our new science, the Science of Language, might claim by right its seat at the round-table of the intellectual chivalry

will soon have to follow the example set by the universities. It is but fair that schoolboys who are made to devote so many hours every day to the laborious acquisition of languages, should now and then be taken by a safe guide to enjoy from a higher point of view that living panorama of human speech which has been surveyed and carefully mapped out by patient explorers and bold discoverers: nor is there any longer an excuse why, even in the most elementary lessons, nay I should say, why more particularly in these elementary lessons, the dark and dreary passages of Greek and Latin, of French and German grammar, should not be lighted up by the electric light of Comparative Philology. When last year I travelled in Germany I found that lectures on Comparative Philology are now attended in the universities by all who study Greek and Latin. At Leipzig alone the lectures of the professor of Sanskrit were attended by more than fifty undergraduates, who first acquire that amount of knowledge of Sanskrit which is absolutely necesssary before entering upon a study of Comparative Grammar. The introduction of Greek into Such was the goodness of the cause I had the universities of Europe in the fifteenth then to defend, that, however imperfect my century could hardly have caused a greater own pleading, the verdict of the public has revolution than the discovery of Sanskrit been immediate and almost unanimous. and the study of Comparative Philology in During the years that have elapsed since the nineteenth century. Very few indeed the delivery of my first course of lectures, now take their degree of Master of Arts in the science of language has had its full Germany or would be allowed to teach at a share of public recognition. Whether we public school, without having been examlook at the number of books that have been ined in the principles of Comparative Phipublished for the advancement and elucida- lology, nay in the elements of Sanskrit tion of our science, or at the excellent ar- grammar. Why should it be different in ticles in the daily, weekly, fortnightly, England? The intellectual fibre, I know, monthly, or quarterly reviews, or at the is not different in the youth of England frequent notices of its results scattered and in the youth of Germany, and if there about in works on philosophy, theology, is but a fair field and no favour, Comparaand ancient history, we may well rest satis- tive Philology, I feel convinced, will soon fied. The example set by France and Ger- hold in England, too, that place which it many, in founding chairs of Sanskrit and ought to hold at every public school, in Comparative Philology, has been followed every university, and in every classical exof late in nearly all the universities of Eng- amination. land, Ireland, and Scotland. We need not fear for the future of the Science of Lan

of our age.

In beginning to-day a course of lectures on the Science of Religion, or I should

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rather say on some preliminary points that | a yearning and groping after the true scihave to be settled before we can enter upon ence of astronomy.

a truly scientific study of the religions of the world, I feel as I felt when first pleading in this very place for the Science of Language.

I know that I shall have to meet determined antagonists who will deny the possibility of a scientific treatment of religions as they denied the possibility of a scientific treatment of languages. I foresee even a far more serious conflict with familiar prejudices and deep-rooted convictions; but I feel at the same time that I am prepared to meet my antagonists; and I have such faith in their honesty of purpose, that I doubt not of a patient and impartial hearing on their part, and of a verdict influenced by nothing but by the evidence that I shall have to place before them.

But although I shall be most careful to avoid giving offence, I know perfectly well that many a statement I shall have to make, and many an opinion I shall have to express, will sound strange and startling to some of my hearers. The very title of the Science of Religion jars on the ears of many per sons, and a comparison of all the religions of the world, in which none can ciam a privileged position, must seem to many reprehensible in itself, because ignoring that peculiar reverence which everybody, down to the mere fetish worshipper, feels for his own religion and for his own God. Let me say then at once that I myself have shared these misgivings, but that I have tried to overcome them, because I would not and could not allow myself to surrender either what I hold to be the truth, or what I boid still dearer than the truth, the right tests of truth. Nor do I regret it. I do not say that the Science of Religion is all gain. No, it entails losses, and losses of many things which we hold dear. But this I will say, that, as far as my humble judgment goes, it does not entail the loss of anything that is essential to true religion, and that if we strike the balance honestly, the gain is immeasurably greater than the loss.

One of the first questions that was asked by classical scholars when invited to consider the value of the Science of Language, was

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In these our days it is almost impossible to speak of religion without giving offence either on the right or on the left. With some, religion seems too sacred a subject for scientific treatment: with others it stands on a level with alchemy and astrology, a mere tissue of errors or hallucinations, far beneath the notice of the man of science. In a certain sense, I accept both these views. Religion is a sacred subject, and whether in its most perfect or in its most imperfect form, it has a right to our highest reverence. No one- - this I can promise who attends these lectures, be he Christian or Jew, Hindu or Mohammedan, shall hear his own What shall we gain by a comparative way of serving God spoken of irreverently. study of languages P" Languages, it was But true reverence does not consist in de- said, are wanted for practical purposes, claring a subject, because it is dear to us, to speaking and reading; and by studying too be unfit for free and honest inquiry; far many languages at once, we run the risk of from it! True reverence is shown in treat-losing the firm grasp which we ought to have ing every subject, however sacred, however on the few that are really important. Our dear to us, with perfect confidence; without knowledge, by becoming wider, must needs, fear and without favour; with tenderness it was thought, become shallower, and the and love, by all means, but, before all, with gain, if there is any, in knowing the struc an unflinching and uncompromising loyalty ture of dialects which have never produced to truth. I also admit that religion has any literature at all, would certainly be outstood in former ages, and stands even in our weighed by the loss in accurate and practiown age, if we look abroad, ay, even if we cal scholarship. look into some dark places at home, on a If this could be said of a comparative level with alchemy and astrology; but for study of languages, with how much greater the discovery of truth there is nothing so force will it be urged against a comparative useful as the study of errors, and we know study of religions! Though I do not exthat in alchemy there lay the seed of chem-pect that those who study the religious books istry, and that astrology was more or less of Brahmans and Buddhists, of Confucius

and Laotse, of Mohammed and Nanak, will origin and their relationship. Of all this be accused of cherishing in their secret philological somnambulism we hardly find heart the doctrines of those ancient masters, a trace in works published since the days or of having lost the firm hold on their own of Humboldt, Bopp, and Grimm. Has religious convictions, yet I doubt whether there been any loss here? Has it not the practical utility of wider studies in the been pure gain? Does language excite vast field of the religions of the world will admiration less, because we know that, be admitted with greater readiness by pro- though the faculty of speaking is the work fessed theologians than the value of a knowl- of Him who has so framed our nature, edge of Sanskrit, Zend, Gothic, or Celtic the invention of words for naming each for a thorough mastery of Greek and Latin, object was left to man, and was achieved and for a real appreciation of the nature, through the working of the human mind? the purpose, the laws, the growth and decay Is Hebrew less carefully studied, because of language was admitted, or is even now it is no longer believed to be a revealed admitted, by some of our most eminent language sent down from heaven, but a professors and teachers,

People ask, What is gained by comparison? Why, all higher knowledge is gained by comparison, and rests on comparison. If it is said that the character of scientific research in our age is pre-eminently comparative; this really means that our researches are now based on the widest evidence that can be obtained, on the broadest inductions that can be grasped by the human mind. What can be gained by comparison? Why, look at the study of languages. If you go back but a hundred years and examine the folios of the most learned writers on questions connected with language, and then open a book written by the merest tiro in Comparative Philology, you will see what can be gained, what has been gained, by the comparative method. A few hundred years ago, the idea that Hebrew was the original language of mankind was accepted as a matter of course, even as a matter of faith, the only problem being to find out by what process Greek, or Latin, or any other language could have been developed out of Hebrew. The idea, too, that language was revealed, in the scholastic sense of that word, was generally accepted, although, as early as the fourth century, St. Gregory, the learned bishop of Nyssa, had strongly protested against it. The grammatical framework of a language was either considered as the result of a conventional agreement, or the termination of nouns and verbs were supposed to have sprouted forth like buds from the roots and stems of language; and the vaguest similarity in the sound and meaning of words was taken to be a sufficient criterion for testing their

language closely allied to Arabic, Syriac and ancient Babylonian, and receiving light from these cognate, and in some respects more primitive, languages, for the explanation of many of its grammatical forms, and for the exact interpretation of many of its obscure and difficult words? Is the grammatical articulation of Greek and Latin less instructive because instead of seeing in the termination of nouns and verbs merely arbitrary signs to distinguish the singular from the plural, or the present from the future, we can now perceive an intelligible principle in the gradual production of formal out of the material elements of language? And are our etymologies less important, because, instead of being suggested by superficial similarities, they are now based on honest, historical and physiological research? Lastly, has our own language ceased to hold its own peculiar place? Is our love for our own native tongue at all impaired? Do men speak less boldly or pray less fervently in their own mother tongue, because they know its true origin and its unadorned history; or because they have discovered that in all languages, even in the jargons of the lowest savages, there is order and wisdom; there is in them something that makes the world akin?

Why then, should we hesitate to apply the comparative method, which has produced such great results in other spheres of knowledge, to a study of religion? That it will change many of the views commonly held about the origin, the character, the growth, and decay of the religions of the world, I do not deny; but unless we hold that fearless

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