The Science of Thought.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 206, 4 June 1887, Page 7

The Science of Thought.

In the Royal Institution, London, lately, Professor Max Muller began a series of three lectures on tho Science of Thought. The science of language- was regarded as one of the physical sciences ; and its differences from comparative philology were defined. •Mythology was treated as the reaction of language on thought. The complexity and the simplicity of languages woro contrasted ; the former being due to the centrifugal extension of the original roots by their prefixes, suffixes, and infixes, by which. they were adapted to signify more numerous and moro delicate expressions of thought, But by tracing back in languages the identities cf roots, the simplicity of their primitive natures was made out. The evidences of the languages of savages bore strongly on this point. The comprehensiveness of language was indicated by the two millions of words which are recognised in the English language. But Shakespeare has expressed all the effects and the results of his numerous plays and characters by the use of fifteen thousand. All these words being traced back to their original sources, they are reduced to eight hundred roots ; and these again in turn are reducible to one hundred and twenty concepts. The science of thought was imposed upon the science of language ; and the origin of roots from imitative sounds, such as the bellowing of bulls and the barking of dogs, was deemed Insufficient for the general expression of thoughts by languages, and the effect and results following upon action were prefer* ably regarded as giving rise to the conceptions by which language and thought haVa been linked together.