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METHODIST

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26

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

1877.

VOLUME LIX.-FOURTH SERIES, VOLUME XXIX.

D. D. WHEDON, LL.D., EDITOR.

NEW YORK:

NELSON & PHILLIPS.
CINCINNATI: HITCHCOCK & WALDEN.

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WITHDRAWER EL

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v.59

METHODIST

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

JANUARY, 1877.

ART. I.--LANGUAGE AND HISTORY.

THE new science of Linguistics has been, like every other, forcibly impressed into the service of skepticism. Its parents and best friends declare that this is not a voluntary enlistment, and they demand its release from an enforced service. The moment is a favorable one for setting forth some of the reasons why language is not a lantern to search obscure regions of history, or a witness to an immeasurable length of human development, or even a safe instructor in the growth of human ideas. The moment is favorable, because the philosophy of human progress is once more in the foreground, after having been for some years overshadowed by physical science. We once more definitely recognize the necessity of reasoning together. A few bald physical facts no longer assume to set aside logic and render philosophy contemptible. Many who were recently bewildered by the unexpected phosphorescence of bogs that had long lain in darkness, perceive once more that the sun is still the light of the earth and lord of our skies. The facts of development, whatever they may be, must be lightened upon out of the understanding, and their value estimated by the processes of human logic. The significance of a fact is to be gathered by a painfully minute attention to all its surroundings, and by a more laborious study of its relations to the whole world of knowledge and the entire government of the reason. We cannot declare that evolution lies in the vast abyss opened under FOURTH SERIES, VOL. XXIX.-1

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