planets; and we propose in explanation the hypothesis of tractive forces which bind all bodies into a system. We are the more confident of our hypothesis this time as it seems, when once stated, a most innocent transcript of the facts themselves, a beautiful empirical generalization, but it appears that we are still in the gall of bitterness and the bonds of iniquity, for to affirm all this of bodies and tractions is to affirm the possibility of action at a distance which is absurd. Here our consternation at the astonishing force of Mr. Lewes's play can only be likened to that of Truthful James when the Heathen Chinee "laid down a right bower" which had just been dealt unto James. Why! we exclaim, that is our card for that is an intuition! Oh no, Mr. Lewes replies, that is not an intuition, that's an-identical proposition! But, we go on, the moon surely does go round the earth and the earth round the sun and the sun no doubt round something else, and so on indefinitely; body is held to body and system to system throughout the universe; if there are no forces to hold them, how then are they held? Whereupon Mr. Lewes tranquilly takes the last trick with his Infinite Plenum. It appears then that we are rigorously held to the consequences of our explanations and come to grief accordingly, while the Empiricist escapes by not being held to the consequences of his; or returning to the figure, our cards are to be left on the table or in the pack subject to scrutiny and the vicissitudes of the game, while our adversary's having been played with fatal effect are slipped back up his "long sleeve" until wanted again. With due deference to every body we submit that if this is the law of the game then the real intent of the scientific hypothesis is the "intent to deceive."

We have remarked a curious thing in our reading to which we call attention, as it seems to offer a way out of this complication. When an Empirical thinker describes hypotheses as ideal artifices which commit nobody, it almost always happens that it is other peoples' hypotheses he is thinking of and not his own. To Comte and Mill the doctrine of a luminiferous æther seemed an artifice of a very objectionable kind, but Prof. Tyndall claims to have no more doubt of the real existence of the æther than he has, for example, of the intelligence and integrity of

the President of the British Association. How do we know the President of the British Association is a knowing and honorable man? Because he acts as if he were. Similarly we know that light and heat are undulations of an æther because they act as if they were. So the Theory of Evolution is only an unverified artifice for Mr. Lewes, but for its author it is necessarily true; any other genesis of the universe is inconceivable and therefore impossible. And so to the Infinite Plenum which is explicitly discarded by Mr. Spencer and of whose difficulties Mr. Lewes himself is not unaware* is yet for its author "the unavoidable conclusion from the conception of Existence as continuous" and the continuity of Existence is "necessarily postulated." Therefore Prof. Tyndall at least may be held to all the consequences of his hypothesis; and Mr. Spencer to those of his; and Mr. Lewes to those of his. We have seen that the necessary postulate of an Infinite Plenum is saturated with metempirical implications of the most vicious character, and is helpless to account for any single phenomenon of concrete existence from the atom to the organism. The very disqualifications which were fatal to the hypothesis of a First Cause (that it is inconceivable and explains nothing) attach to the Plenum; and so anybody is entitled to call on Mr. Lewes to get rid of them; or to say frankly that he can't.

*ii, p. 331.

ARTICLE IV.—ON THE TERMINOLOGY OF THE PERIODS OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

It

No one who has paid any attention whatever to the study of our earlier tongue can have failed to notice the controversy that has been for some time going on in regard to the use of the word English. It is hardly necessary to observe that the subject having been elevated to a dignity much beyond its real importance has had imported into it all the virulence, not to say vituperation, with which matters of little moment are usually discussed; and it is not impossible that this particular essay may turn out to be a fair illustration of the truth of this very remark. In the sixteenth century a revival of the study of our early language began, and was carried forward with considerable activity in the seventeenth. After wavering for a time. between Saxon, English-Saxon, and Anglo-Saxon, scholars generally adopted the last named term as the one best suited to designate the oldest form of our speech. It recommended itself on the score both of fitness and of convenience. recognized the claims of the two leading Teutonic tribes, the Angles and the Saxons, which had subjugated Britain. It was a convenient designation for a period in the history of the language distinct from any that has since existed; distinct not simply in the form of the words, but in the large majority of the words themselves; distinct still more in having the full inflections and complicated syntax of a synthetic language, as opposed to the simple structure of an analytic tongue like Modern English. No one who knew anything about the subject at all— and it was hardly worth while to take into account the opinions of those who did not know anything about it-ever thought of claiming that the two tribes which conquered England ever spoke of their speech as the Anglo-Saxon. The received belief was that the Saxons called their dialect the Saxon; the Angles called theirs the Anglisc, or English; and that in process of time the designation of the latter tribe as being the far more numerous one and being also the first to

develop a literature, came naturally to be applied to all; so that though the kings of the West-Saxons gained the rule over all the Teutonic tribes that settled in Britain, yet the tribes themselves and the tongue they spoke received in general the name of English. And this has been the term that has come down to our day.

But the main reason which led men to call the oldest form of our language Anglo-Saxon was the fact that there was between it and modern English a difference not simply of degree but of kind; a difference, indeed, as great and as clearly marked as that which divides Latin from Italian or French. That there is at least a very wide distinction, no student of our speech will venture to deny, whatever may be his views as to the nomenclature that should be employed. That it is also a distinction of a different character from that which exists in the history of other modern European tongues, can not well be disputed. Old French, for instance, in its passage into modern French follows certain laws which are clearly defined. It is not simply that there is nowhere any absolute break; there is not the slightest loosening of continuity. Just the same statement is true of the transition of the English of the fourteenth century into the English of our day. With very little study Chaucer can be read as easily as Shakspeare; he can be understood with far less. But between our language as spoken in the eighth century and as spoken in the fourteenth, there is a difference, due not simply to the modifying influ ences to which all languages are more or less subject, but to an actual disruption caused by the intrusion of foreign elements and foreign ideas. Chaucer could have read Cädmon with no greater ease than we, even had he had the same helps in the shape of grammars and dictionaries. We, likewise, with regard to it are under the same need of special study that we labor under in the case of any foreign tongue; and it is certainly much harder for us to master than any of the leading Romance languages.

But of late a new school of writers has arisen in England which has attacked with great bitterness the use of the words Saxon and Anglo-Saxon. The employment of these terms has, according to them, been productive of the most

deplorable consequences. This nomenclature has, indeed, been the stumbling block in the way of the successful study of the original forms of our language. It confuses the mind of the student and prevents him from paying any attention to the early history of his own tongue. But as soon as he discovers that what we in the nineteenth century have called Anglo-Saxon was in the ninth century called English, all difficulties of whatever nature at once vanish. He immediately applies himself with assiduity to that to which he had before been indifferent. Declensions and conjugations at once receive a new charm. His mind can never rest till by a thorough knowledge of the earliest forms he is able to give a satisfactory account of the peculiarities and anomalies of modern English. Let it not be supposed that these are exaggerated expressions. They are really nothing more than what are constantly put forth in books and periodicals of various kinds. Dr. Morris, in the preface to his "Historical Outlines of English Accidence," insists very strongly on this view. "By not regarding the earlier stages of our language as English," he says, "all the necessary helps to a rational treatment of its grammatical forms and idioms have been cast aside." And he goes on to attribute the attention paid of late to the study of our tongue directly to the revolt against these obnoxious "This outcry," he adds, "against an absurd nomenclature has been productive of good results, as is seen in the growing tendency that manifests itself nowadays to study the older stages of English, for the sake of the light they throw upon its later and more modern periods."

terms.

To us, on the contrary, the most noticeable effect of this outcry is the fact that many of the new text-books published in England are remarkable for nothing so much as for the faithfulness with which they seek to substitute a new and more satisfactory terminology and the felicity with which they fail. Whatever success they have had in this direction has been only in the way of confusing the mind of the student. The "Historical Outlines of English Accidence,” already referred to, have in this respect a somewhat happy preeminence. Under the general term of Old English, Dr. Morris frequently includes the language before the Norman conquest and that spoken several centuries later, joining under one name things essentially dis