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result. Thus, in some portions of the English version of the Gospels, ninety-six, ninety-three, ninety-two per cent. are Saxon words. In Milton's Poetical Works, from eighty to ninety per cent. are Saxon. In Webster's great speech, his Reply to Hayne, seventy-five per cent. are Saxon.

The Latin element of our language is the next in importance. This furnishes a large number of abstract and general terms in theology, and in moral and political philosophy. Most of the terms of law, and words referring to judicial proceedings, as judge, advocate, are from the Latin. But in many instances they have come to us through the French, and are so disguised that we hardly recognize them.

The Latin element was introduced into the language at different periods. The Roman invasion left a few words, mostly proper names: Lincoln, the termination being the Latin colonia; Worcester, the termination cester, from castra. Many ecclesiastical terms were introduced under the Saxon kings after they became Christian. Between the Norman Conquest and the reign of Henry VIII. a large number of Latin words were added. During this period the Church was so connected with Rome, and English scholars had so much intercourse with those of the Continent that very naturally many Latin terms came into common use. In the reign of Elizabeth and James the pedantry of scholars overloaded the language with Latin derivatives.

There is a large number of Greek derivatives in our language, but they can all be reduced to a few roots. The Greek seems almost a necessity for the coining of new scientific terms, and our language is constantly enriched from this

source.

We are not disposed to undervalue the classical element in our language. These derivatives add to its expressiveness by enlarging its vocabulary. These languages furnish us with many synonyms, and thus give variety and beauty to expression.

There can be no question that the English tongue has been greatly enriched by what it has taken from the classical languages; but the relative value of the two elements can be inferred from the fact the English could be spoken without the classical element, but not without the Teutonic. Long ago,

Camden said, "Great verily was the glory of our tongue before the Norman Conquest in this, that the old English could express most aptly all the conceptions of the mind in their own tongue, without borrowing from any."

We might naturally expect that in our own country the language would receive many additional terms, and in other respects be much modified. True, we have a number of words in use that have been demanded from our peculiar institutions, and yet it is wonderful with what uniformity the English language is spoken throughout our extensive territory. The constant interchange between the different parts of our land, the general diffusion of education, the fact that we are to such an extent a reading people, all tend to keep us from peculiarities of dialect.

It is gratifying to observe the increased interest that has been taken of late years in the study of our language. The works we have placed at the head of this article show the results of this. Professor Fowler, in the preface to his larger work, acknowledges his indebtedness to Latham; and many of its valuable sections were contributed by Professor Gibbs of Yale College, one of the most indefatigable laborers in philology we know. This work, which has for its comprehensive title, The English Language, is not only designed, but especially adapted for our higher seminaries of learning. Before its publication our colleges had no work that could be well used as a text-book in this department.

The peculiar excellences of this work are very apparent. It consists not in a mere dry synopsis of forms and rules, but we have given us the history of the formation of the language, its growth, as well as its present appearance.

There are several prominent features in Professor Fowler's works which ought to commend them to the scholar and secure their general adoption. The historical development is as fully treated as necessary in works designed for text-books. Much interest has been taken of late years in this department of our language, and with marked results. Professor Fowler shows his intimate acquaintance with the investigations both of English and German scholars, as Kemble, Latham, Bosworth, and Rurk, and Grim, and Bopp, for he furnishes in succinct form many of the results of their labors.

We have been especially pleased with the development of the phonetic elements of our language. Very few teachers even seem to be aware of the importance of a knowledge of these elements. If the subject were more heeded there would be less occasion for the sneer of the witty Frenchman, that “the Englishman gains two hours a day over the Frenchman, because he swallows half his words." We have a great deal of vicious pronunciation and unimpressive elocution that might be saved by a careful study of the force of the sounds of our language.

The great attention given to the derivation of words will be considered by many a great excellence of these volumes. Nearly a hundred pages of the larger work are devoted to this, and we know of no other treatise where, in so small a compass, the same amount of information can be found.

Professor Fowler has all through his works introduced the prominent features of the new philology. Becker's classifi cation, and his analysis of the sentence, which have produced such an entire change in the later grammars of Latin and Greek, are introduced as fully as practicable in elementary works.

After a careful examination of these volumes, we are prepared to say that there is no series of English Grammars so well adapted for instruction. Professor Fowler has placed us all under great obligation, for we have found much interest in reading his larger work. We often hear the regret expressed that so little attention is given to the study of our own tongue in our colleges and higher seminaries. Surely it cannot be said that it is for want of a suitable text-book. We trust the time will soon come when the thorough and systematic study of our language will be pursued all through the schools, and it will no longer be to the reproach of our colleges that they graduate students who have no conception of the value and resources of their own tongue.

ART. VII.-M'COSH ON THE INTUITIONS.

A Review of the Intuitions Inductively Investigated. By the Rev. JAMES M'Cosн, LL.D. New York: Robert Carter & Brothers. 1860.

THE importance and difficulty of a thorough and sifting discussion of our primary intuitions can be doubted by no philosophic mind. The looseness of expressions and the crudeness of the views of these germs of systems have contributed to bewilder the deepest thinkers, and to deprive the brightest ages of a complete psychology. Never did the interests of mental science utter a louder demand than at this hour for the proof of the reality of these intuitions, for the analyzation of their characteristics, and for the demonstration of the validity of their objective affirmations. Should this demand be promptly heeded the threatened mischief may be averted; but otherwise, the highest interests of the science will be imperiled. Before the close of the present century the sensationalism of France, or the idealism of Germany, may become the grave of all that is ennobling in psychology. In vain has Christian philosophy looked to the great mind of Hamilton, and to the thorough scholarship of Mansel* for that scientific indemnity against this fatal relapse which it had a right to expect from so high a

* The pantheistic assertion of Schelling, that "God contains in himself all that is actual, evil included," is indorsed by Mansel, who says: "This conclusion we may repudiate with indignation, but the reasoning is unassailable." That this mind of so high an order should yield assent to the validity of this reasoning, which rests entirely on the most arbitrary definition of God, is amazing! The absurdities that lie on the face of this pantheistic transformation of the adorable Jehovah are glaring. As specimens let us observe the following, namely: that a mind which is infinite and perfect must consist in part of what is finite and imperfect; that Omnipotence cannot give being to what was not from eternity in himself; that the recency of our own being, though a fact of universal consciousness, involves an impossibility; that a being who is infinite must be so in all his conceivable forms and relations, in power and weakness, goodness and malignity, in bliss and anguish, in abject dependence, and in supreme independence. Certainly a sifting analysis would have convinced Mr. M. that all these palpable solecisms arise not from the nature of the subject, but from the gratuitous assumptions of his definitions.

The vicious elements which, after the Germans, Mr. Mansel has admitted into his premises, are the germs of all those startling contradictions to which his otherwise logical reasoning has conducted him.

source. Indeed, these are the minds which have most contributed to accelerate the dreaded result.

Our century has been honored with no metaphysical mind so erudite as Sir William's-with none on which the impress of original greatness was more profound. Still this literary giant was misguided by the doctrine of Kant on the "conditioned." Instead of refuting the error of that Teutonic master, he modified it and embraced it. Nor was Kant completely original. He did not originate the idea, but found it in the skeptical theory of Hume, and powerfully developed and applied it. Indeed, in regard to this idea Hume himself claimed no originality, but found it in the philosophy of Locke, who taught that the mind perceives not the relations of objects, but merely the relations of ideas. Like Hume, Kant maintained that we know nothing directly, excepting our own mental states, thus making all relations primarily subjective.

Nor did that singularly acute German mind differ from the skeptical historian in resolving efficient cause into a mental law. Indeed, he developed that doctrine into a far-reaching principle, alleging that whatever appears necessary to us must be given a priori, by the mind itself; must be a law of thought, and not a law of things. It was easy to give this principle a broader application, and thus make time and space mere forms of thought, denying to them the least shadow of external reality. This principle excluded all contents from our intuitions excepting mere relations. Substance and cause were regarded as forms in which the understanding produces conceptions. This substitution of the laws of conception for the laws of nature shut out from universal mind all objective reality; it left no room for our own personality, for the universe, or for God.

When against this conclusion objective reality was asserted, the series of judgments were found to involve contradictory results. Hence Kant's antinomies, or four contradictions. The first regards the beginning of the world, the second the simplicity of its parts, the third causal efficiency, the fourth the first INFINITE CAUSE. That he should find all these sustained by evidence equally demonstrative to that which proves their opposites, is indeed startling. Mind is not constructed to repose in these fiercely conflict propositions which regard the most

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