One great drawback of the professorial system is certainly the small measure of personal advice that a student may get from the professors. Unless he is known to them personally, or has gained admission to their societies or seminaries, the young student or freshman is quite bewildered by the rich fare in the shape of lectures that is placed before him. Some students, no doubt, particularly in their early terms, solve this difficulty by attending none at all, and there is no force to make them do so, except the examinations looming in the distance. But there are many young men most anxious to learn, only they do not know where to begin. I open my old Collegien-Buch and I find that in the first term or Semester I attended the following lectures, and I may say I attended them regularly, took careful notes, and read such books as were recommended by the professors. I find

1. The first book of Thucydides Gottfried Hermann. 2. On Scenic Antiquities The same. 3. On Propertius P. M. Haupt. 4. History of German Literature The same. 5. The Ranae of Aristophanes Stallbaum. 6. Disputatorium (in Latin) Nobbe. 7. Aesthetics Weisse. 8. Anthropology Lotze. 9. Systems of Harmonic Composition Fink. 10. Hebrew Grammar Fuerst. 11. Demosthenes Westermann. 12. Psychology Heinroth.

This was enough for the summer half-year. Except Greek and Latin, the other subjects were entirely new to me, and what I wanted was to get an idea of what I should like to study. It may be interesting to add the other Semesters as far as I have them in my Collegien-Buch.

13. Aeschyli Persae Hermann. 14. On Criticism The same. 15. German Grammar Haupt. 16. Walther von der Vogelweide The same. 17. Tacitus, Agricola, and De Oratoribus The same. 18. On Hegel Weisse. 19. Disputatorium (Latin) Nobbe. 20. Modern History Wachsmuth. 21. Sanskrit Grammar Brockhaus. 22. Latin Society Haupt.

Then follows the summer term of 1842.

23. Pindar Hermann. 24. Nibelungen Haupt. 25. Nala Brockhaus. 26. History of Oriental Literature The same. 27. Arabic Grammar Fleischer. 28. Latin Society Haupt. 29. Plauti Trinumus Becker.

Winter term, 1842.

30. Prabodha Chandrodaya Brockhaus. 31. History of Indian Literature The same. 32. Aristophanes' Vespae Hermann. 33. Plauti Rudens The same. 34. Greek Syntax The same. 35. Juvenal Becker. 36. Metaphysics and Logic Weisse. 37. Philosophy of History The same. 38. Greek and Latin Seminary Hermann & Klotze. 39. Latin Society Haupt. 40. Philosophical Society Weisse. 41. Philosophical Society Drobisch.

Summer term, 1843.

42. Greek and Latin Seminary Hermann & Klotze. 43. Philosophical Society Drobisch. 44. Philosophical Society Weisse. 45. Soma-deva Brockhaus. 46. Hitopadesa The same. 47. History of Greeks and Romans Wachsmuth. 48. History of Civilization The same. 49. History after the Fifteenth Century Flathe. 50. History of Ancient Philosophy Niedner.

Winter term, 1843-4.

51. Rig-veda Brockhaus. 52. Elementa Persica Fleischer. 53. Greek and Latin Seminary Hermann & Klotze.

Here my Collegien-Buch breaks off, the fact being that I was preparing to go to Berlin to hear the lectures of Bopp and Schelling.

It will be clear from the above list that I certainly attempted too much. I ought either to have devoted all my time to classical studies exclusively, or carried on my philosophical studies more systematically. I confess that, delighted as I was with Gottfried Hermann and Haupt as my guides and teachers in classics, I found little that could rouse my enthusiasm for Greek and Latin literature, and I always required a dose of that to make me work hard. Everything seemed to me to have been done, and there was no virgin soil left to the plough, no ruins on which to try one's own spade. Hermann and Haupt gave me work to do, but it was all in the critical line—the genealogical relation of various MSS., or, again, the peculiarities of certain poets, long before I had fully grasped their general character. What Latin vowels could or could not form elision in Horace, Propertius, or Ovid, was a subject that cost me much labour, and yet left very small results as far as I was personally concerned. One clever conjecture, or one indication to show that one MS. was dependent on the other, was rewarded with a Doctissime or Excellentissime, but a paper on Aeschylus and his view of a divine government of the world received but a nodding approval.

They certainly taught their pupils what accuracy meant; they gave us the new idea that MSS. are not everything, unless their real value has been discovered first by finding the place which they occupy in the pedigree of the MSS. of every author. They also taught us that there are mistakes in MSS. which are inevitable, and may safely be left to conjectural emendation; that MSS. of modern date may be and often are more valuable than more ancient MSS., for the simple reason that they were copied from a still more ancient MS., and that often a badly written and hardly legible MS. proves more helpful than others written by a calligraphist, because it is the work of a scholar who copied for himself and not for the market. All these things we learnt and learnt by practical experience under Hermann and Haupt, but what we failed to acquire was a large knowledge of Greek and Latin literature, of the character of each author and of the spirit which pervaded their works. I ought to have read in Latin, Cicero, Tacitus, and Lucretius; in Greek, Herodotus, Thucydides, Plato, and Aristotle; but as I read only portions of them, my knowledge of the men themselves and their objects in life remained very fragmentary. For instance, my real acquaintance with Plato and Aristotle was confined to a few dialogues of the former and some of the logical works of the latter. The rest I learnt from such works as Ritter and Preller's Historia Philosophiae Graecae et Romanae ex fontium locis contexta, and from the very useful lectures of Niedner on the history of ancient philosophy. However, I thought I had to do what my professors told me, and shaped my reading so that they should approve of my work.

This must not be understood as in any way disparaging my teachers. Such an idea never entered my head at the time. People have no idea in England what kind of worship is paid by German students to their professors. To find fault with them or to doubt their ipse dixit never entered our minds. What they said of other classical scholars from whom they differed, as Hermann did from Otfried Mueller, or Haupt from Orelli, was gospel, and remained engraved on our memory for a long time. Once when attending Hermann's lectures, another student who was sitting at the same table with me made disrespectful remarks about old Hermann. I asked him to be quiet, and when he went on with his foolish remarks, I could only stop him by calling him out. As soon as the challenge was accepted he had of course to be quiet, and a few days after we fought our duel without much damage to either of us. I only mention this because it shows what respect and admiration we felt for our professor, also because it exemplifies the usefulness of duelling in a German university, where after a challenge not another word can be said or violence be threatened even by the rudest undergraduate. A duel for a Greek conjecture may seem very absurd, but in duels of this kind all that is wanted is really a certain knowledge of fencing, care being taken that nothing serious shall happen. And yet, though that is so, the feeling of a possible danger is there, and keeps up a certain etiquette and a certain proper behaviour among men taken from all strata of society. Nor can I quite deny that when I went in the morning to a beautiful wood in the neighbourhood of Leipzig, certain misgivings were difficult to suppress. I saw myself severely wounded, possibly killed, by my antagonist, and carried to a house where my mother and sister were looking for me. This went off when I met the large assembly of students, beautifully attired in their club uniforms, the beer barrels pushed up on one side, the surgeon and his instruments waiting on the other. There were ever so many, thirty or forty couples I think, waiting to fight their duels that morning. Some fenced extremely well, and it was a pleasure to look on; and when one's own turn came, all one thought of was how to stand one's ground boldly, and how to fence well. Some of the combatants came on horseback or in carriages, and there was a small river close by to enable us to escape if the police should have heard of our meeting. For popular as these duels are, they are forbidden and punished, and the severest punishment seemed always to be the loss of our uniforms, our arms, our flags, and our barrels of beer. However, we escaped all interference this time, and enjoyed our breakfast in the forest thoroughly, nothing happening to disturb the hilarity of the morning.

Not being satisfied with what seemed to me a mere chewing of the cud in Greek and Latin, I betook myself to systematic philosophy, and even during the first terms read more of that than of Plato and Aristotle. I belonged to the philosophical societies of Weisse, of Drobisch, and of Lotze, a membership in each of which societies entailed a considerable amount of reading and writing.

At Leipzig, Professor Drobisch represented the school of Herbart, which prided itself on its clearness and logical accuracy, but was naturally less attractive to the young spirits at the University who had heard of Hegel's Idea and looked to the dialectic process as the solution of all difficulties. I wished to know what it all meant, for I was not satisfied with mere words. There is hardly a word that has so many meanings as Idea, and I doubt whether any of the raw recruits, just escaped from school, and unacquainted with the history of philosophy, could have had any idea of what Hegel's Idea was meant for. Yet they talked about it very eloquently and very positively over their glasses of beer; and anybody who came from Berlin and could speak mysteriously or rapturously about the Idea and its evolution by the dialectic process, was listened to with silent wonder by the young Saxons, who had been brought up on Kant and Krug. The Hegelian fever was still very high at that time. It is true Hegel himself was dead (1831), and though he was supposed to have declared on his deathbed that he left only one true disciple, and that that disciple had misunderstood him, to be a Hegelian was considered a sine qua non, not only among philosophers, but quite as much among theologians, men of science, lawyers, artists, in fact, in every branch of human knowledge, at least in Prussia. If Christianity in its Protestant form was the state-religion of the kingdom, Hegelianism was its state-philosophy. Beginning with the Minister of Instruction down to the village schoolmaster, everybody claimed to be a Hegelian, and this was supposed to be the best road to advancement. Though Altenstein, who was then at the head of the Ministry of Instruction, began to waver in his allegiance to Hegel, even he could not resist the rush of public and of official opinion. It was he who, when a new professor of philosophy was recommended to him either by Hegel himself or by some of his followers, is reported to have said: "Gentlemen, I have read some of the young man's books, and I cannot understand a word of them. However, you are the best judges, only allow me to say that you remind me a little of the French officer who told his tailor to make his breeches as tight as possible, and dismissed him with the words: 'Enfin, si je peux y entrer, je ne les prendrai pas.' This seems to me very much what you say of your young philosopher. If I can understand his books, I am not to take him." This Hegelian fever was very much like what we have passed through ourselves at the time of the Darwinian fever; Darwin's natural evolution was looked upon very much like Hegel's dialectic process, as the general solvent of all difficulties. The most egregious nonsense was passed under that name, as it was under the name of evolution. Hegel knew very well what he meant, so did Darwin. But the empty enthusiasm of his followers became so wild that Darwin himself, the most humble of all men, became quite ashamed of it. The master, of course, was not responsible for the folly of his so-called disciples, but the result was inevitable. After the bow had been stretched to the utmost, a reaction followed, and in the case of Hegelianism, a complete collapse. Even at Berlin the popularity of Hegelianism came suddenly to an end, and after a time no truly scientific man liked to be called a Hegelian. These sudden collapses in Germany are very instructive. As long as a German professor is at the head of affairs and can do something for his pupils, his pupils are very loud in their encomiums, both in public and in private. They not only exalt him, but help to belittle all who differ from him. So it was with Hegel, so it was at a later time with Bopp, and Curtius, and other professors, particularly if they had the ear of the Minister of Education. But soon after the death of these men, particularly if another influential star was rising, the change of tone was most sudden and most surprising; even the sale of their books dwindled down, and they were referred to only as landmarks, showing the rapid advance made by living celebrities. Perhaps all this cannot be helped, as long as human nature is what it is, but it is nevertheless painful to observe.

I had the good fortune of becoming acquainted with Hegelianism through Professor Christian Weisse at Leipzig, who, though he was considered a Hegelian, was a very sober Hegelian, a critic quite as much as an admirer of Hegel. He had a very small audience, because his manner of lecturing was certainly most trying and tantalizing. But by being brought into personal contact with him one was able to get help from him wherever he could give it. Though Weisse was convinced of the truth of Hegel's Dialectic Method, he often differed from him in its application. This Dialectic Method consisted in showing how thought is constantly and irresistibly driven from an affirmative to a negative position, then reconciles the two opposites, and from that point starts afresh, repeating once more the same process. Pure being, for instance, from which Hegel's ideal evolution starts, was shown to be the same as empty being, that is to say, nothing, and both were presented as identical, and in their identity giving us the new concept of Becoming (Werden), which is being and not-being at the same time. All this may appear to the lay reader rather obscure, but could not well be passed over.

So far Weisse followed the great thinker, and I possess still, in his own writing, the picture of a ladder on which the intellect is represented as climbing higher and higher from the lowest concept to the highest—a kind of Jacob's ladder on which the categories, like angels of God, ascend and descend from heaven to earth. We must remember that the true Hegelian regarded the Ideas as the thoughts of God. Hegel looked upon this evolution of thought as at the same time the evolution of Being, the Idea being the only thing that could be said to be truly real. In order to understand this, we must remember that the historical key to Hegel's Idea was really the Neo-Platonic or Alexandrian Logos. But of this Logos we ignorant undergraduates, sitting at the feet of Prof. Weisse, knew absolutely nothing, and even if the Idea was sometimes placed before us as the Absolute, the Infinite, or the Divine, it was to us, at least to most of us, myself included, vox et praeterea nihil. We watched the wonderful evolutions and convolutions of the Idea in its Dialectic development, but of the Idea itself or himself we had no idea whatever. It was all darkness, a vast abyss, and we sat patiently and wrote down what we could catch and comprehend of the Professor's explanations, but the Idea itself we never could lay hold of. It would not have been so difficult if the Professor had spoken out more boldly. But whenever he came to the relation of the Idea to what we mean by God, there was always even with him, who was a very honest man, a certain theological hesitation. Hegel himself seems to shrink occasionally from the consequence that the Idea really stands in the place of God, and that it is in the self-conscious spirit of humanity that the ideal God becomes first conscious of himself. Still, that is the last word of Hegel's philosophy, though others maintain that the Idea with Hegel was the thought of God, and that human thought was but a repetition of that divine thought. With Hegel there is first the evolution of the Idea in the pure ether of logic from the simplest to the highest category. Then follows Hegel's Philosophy of Nature, that is, the evolution of the Idea in nature, the Idea having by the usual dialectic process negatived itself and entered into its opposite (Anderssein), passing through a new process of space and time, and ending in the self-conscious human soul. Thus nature and spirit were represented as dominated by the Idea in its logical development. Nature was one manifestation of the Idea, History the other, and it became the task of the philosopher to discover its traces both in the progress of nature and in the historical progress of thought.

And here it was where the strongest protests began to be heard. Physical Science revolted, and Historical Research soon joined the rebellion. Professor Weisse also, in spite of his great admiration for Hegel, protested in his Lectures against this idealization of history, and showed how often Hegel, if he could not find the traces he was looking for in the historical development of the Idea, was misled by his imperfect knowledge of facts, and discovered what was not there, but what he felt convinced ought to have been there. Nowhere has this become so evident as in Hegel's Philosophy of Religion. The conception was grand of seeing in the historical development of religion a repetition of the Dialectic Progress of the Idea. But facts are stubborn things, and do not yield even to the supreme command of the Idea. Besides, if the historical facts of religion were really such as the Dialectic Process of the Idea required, these facts are no longer what they were before 1831, and what would become then of the Idea which, as he wrote in his preface to his Metaphysics, could not possibly be changed to please the new facts? It was this part of Weisse's lectures, it was the protest of the historical conscience against the demands of the Idea, that interested me most. I see as clearly the formal truth as the material untruth of Hegel's philosophy. The thorough excellence of its method and the desperate baldness of its results, strike me with equal force. Though I did not yet know what kind of thing or person the Idea was really meant for, I knew myself enough of ancient Greek philosophy and of Oriental religions to venture to criticize Hegel's representation and disposition of the facts themselves. I could not accept the answer of my more determined Hegelian friends, Tant pis pour les faits, but felt more and more the old antagonism between what ought to be and what is, between the reasonableness of the Idea, and the unreasonableness of facts. I found a strong supporter in a young Privat-Docent who at that time began his brilliant career at Leipzig, Dr. Lotze. He had made a special study of mathematics and physical science, and felt the same disagreement between facts and theories in Hegel's Philosophy of Nature which had struck me so much in reading his Philosophy of Religion. I joined his philosophical society, and I lately found among my old papers several essays which I had written for our meetings. They amused me very much, but I should be sorry to see them published now. It is curious that after many years I, as a Delegate of the University Press at Oxford, was instrumental in getting the first English translation of Lotze's Metaphysics published in England; and it is still more curious that Mark Pattison, the late Rector of Lincoln, should have opposed it with might and main as a useless book which would never pay its expenses. I stood up for my old teacher, and I am glad to say to the honour of English philosophers, that the translation passed through several editions, and helped not a little to establish Lotze's position in England and America. He died in 1881.

It is extraordinary how the young minds in German universities survive the storms and fogs through which they have to pass in their academic career. I confess I myself felt quite bewildered for a time, and began to despair altogether of my reasoning powers. Why should I not be able to understand, I asked myself, what other people seemed to understand without any effort? We speak the same language, why should we not be able to think the same thought? I took refuge for a time in history—the history of language, of religion, and of philosophy. There was a very learned professor at Leipzig, Dr. Niedner, who lectured on the History of Greek Philosophy, and whose Manual for the History of Philosophy has been of use to me through the whole of my life. Socrates said of Heraclitus: "What I have understood of his book is excellent, and I suppose therefore that even what I have not understood is so too; but one must be a Delian swimmer not to be drowned in it." I tried for a long time to follow this advice with regard to Hegel and Weisse, and though disheartened did not despair. I understood some of it, why should not the rest follow in time? Thus, I never gave up the study of philosophy at Leipzig and afterwards at Berlin, and my first contributions to philosophical journals date from that early time, when I was a student in the University of Leipzig. My very earliest, though very unsuccessful, struggles to find an entrance into the mysteries of philosophy date even from my school-days.

I remember some years before, when I was quite young, perhaps no more than fifteen years of age, listening with bated breath to some professors at Leipzig who were talking very excitedly about philosophy in my presence. I had no idea what was meant by philosophy, still less could I follow when they began to discuss Kant's Kritik der reinen Vernunft. One of my friends, whom I looked up to as a great authority, confessed that he had read the book again and again, but could not understand the whole of it. My curiosity was much excited, and once, while he was taking a walk with me, I asked him very timidly what Kant's book was about, and how a man could write a book that other men could not understand. He tried to explain what Kant's book was about, but it was all perfect darkness before my eyes; I was trying to lay hold of a word here and there, but it all floated before my mind like mist, without a single ray of light, without any way out of all that maze of words. But when at last he said he would lend me the book, I fell on it and pored over it hour after hour. The result was the same. My little brain could not take in the simplest ideas of the first chapters—that space and time were nothing by themselves; that we ourselves gave the form of space and time to what was given us by the senses. But though defeated I would not give in; I tried again and again, but of course it was all in vain. The words were here and I could construe them, but there was nothing in my mind which the words could have laid hold on. It was like rain on hard soil, it all ran off, or remained standing in puddles and muddles on my poor brain.

At last I gave it up in despair, but I had fully made up my mind that as soon as I went to the University I would find out what philosophy really was, and what Kant meant by saying that space and time were forms of our sensuous intuition. I see that, accordingly, in the summer of 1841, I attended lectures on Aesthetics by Professor Weisse, on Anthropology by Lotze, and on Psychology by Professor Heinroth, and I slowly learnt to distinguish between what was going on within me, and what I had been led to imagine existed outside me, or at least quite independent of me. But before I had got a firm grasp of Kant, of his forms of intuition, and the categories of the understanding, I was thrown into Hegelianism. This, too, was at first entire darkness, but I was not disheartened. I attended Professor Weisse's lectures on Hegel in the winter of 1841-2, and again in the winter of 1842-3 I attended his lectures on Logic and Metaphysics, and on the Philosophy of History. He took an interest in me, and I felt most strongly attracted by him. Soon after I joined his Philosophical Society, and likewise that of Professor Drobisch. In these societies every member, when his turn came, had to write an essay and defend it against the professor and the other members of the society. All this was very helpful, but it was not till I had heard a course of lectures on the History of Philosophy, by Professor Niedner, that my interest in Philosophy became strong and healthy. While Weisse was a leading Hegelian philosopher, and Drobisch represented the opposite philosophy of Herbart, Niedner was purely historical, and this appealed most to my taste. Still, my philosophical studies remained very disjointed. At last I was admitted to Lotze's Philosophical Society also, and here we chiefly read and discussed Kant's Kritik. Lotze was then quite a young man, undecided as yet himself between physical science and pure philosophy.

Weisse was certainly the most stirring lecturer, but his delivery was fearful. He did not read his lectures, as many professors did, but would deliver them extempore. He had no command of language, and there was a pause after almost every sentence. He was really thinking out the problem while he was lecturing; he was constantly repeating his sentences, and any new thought that crossed his mind would carry him miles away from his subject. It happened sometimes in these rhapsodies that he contradicted himself, but when I walked home with him after his lecture to a village near Leipzig where he lived, he would readily explain how it happened, how he meant something quite different from what he had said, or what I had understood. In fact he would give the whole lecture over again, only much more freely and more intelligibly. I was fully convinced at that time that Hegel's philosophy was the final solution of all problems; I only hesitated about his philosophy of history as applied to the history of religion. I could not bring myself to admit that the history of religion, nor even the history of philosophy as we know it from Thales to Kant, was really running side by side with his Logic, showing how the leading concepts of the human mind, as elaborated in the Logic, had found successive expression in the history and development of the schools of philosophy as known to us. Weisse was strong both in his analysis of concepts and in his knowledge of history, and though he taught Hegel as a faithful interpreter, he always warned us against trusting too much in the parallelism between Logic and History. Study the writings of the good philosophers, he would say, and then see whether they will or will not fit into the Procrustean bed of Hegel's Logic. And this was the best lesson he could have given to young men. How well founded and necessary the warning was I found out myself, the more I studied the religion and philosophies of the East, and then compared what I saw in the original documents with the account given by Hegel in his Philosophy of Religion. It is quite true that Hegel at the time when he wrote, could not have gained a direct or accurate knowledge of the principal religions of the East. But what I could not help seeing was that what Hegel represented as the necessity in the growth of religious thought, was far away from the real growth, as I had watched it in some of the sacred books of these religions. This shook my belief in the correctness of Hegel's fundamental principles more than anything else.

At that time Herbart's philosophy, as taught by Drobisch at Leipzig, came to me as a most useful antidote. The chief object of that philosophy is, as is well known, the analysing and clearing, so to speak, of our concepts. This was exactly what I wanted, only that occupied as I was with the problems of language, I at once translated the object of his philosophy into a definition of words. Henceforth the object of my own philosophical occupations was the accurate definition of every word. All words, such as reason, pure reason, mind, thought, were carefully taken to pieces and traced back, if possible, to their first birth, and then through their further developments. My interest in this analytical process soon took an historical, that is etymological, character in so far as I tried to find out why any words should now mean exactly what, according to our definition, they ought to mean. For instance, in examining such words as Vernunft or Verstand, a little historical retrospect showed that their distinction as reason and understanding was quite modern, and chiefly due to a scientific definition given and maintained by the Kantian school of philosophy. Of course every generation has a right to define its philosophical terms, but from an historical point of view Kant might have used with equal right Vernunft for Verstand, and Verstand for Vernunft. Etymologically or historically both words have much the same meaning. Vernunft, from Vernehmen, meant originally no more than perception, while Verstand meant likewise perception, but soon came to imply a kind of understanding, even a kind of technical knowledge, though from a purely etymological standpoint it had nothing that fitted it more for carrying the meaning, which is now assigned to it in German in distinction to Vernunft, than understanding had as distinguished from reason. It requires, of course, a very minute historical research to trace the steps by which such words as reason and understanding diverge in different directions, in the language of the people and in philosophical parlance. This teaches us a very important distinction, namely that between the popular development of the meaning of a word, and its meaning as defined and asserted by a philosopher or by a poet in the plenitude of his power. Etymological definition is very useful for the first stages in the history of a word. It is useful to know, for instance, that deus, God, meant originally bright, bright whether applied to sky, sun, moon, stars, dawn, morning, dayspring, spring of the year, and many other bright objects in nature, that it thus assumed a meaning common to them all, splendid, or heavenly, beneficent, powerful, so that when in the Veda already we find a number of heavenly bodies, or of terrestrial bodies, or even of periods of time called Devas, this word has assumed a more general, more comprehensive, and more exalted meaning. It did not yet mean what the Greeks called [Greek: theoi] or gods, but it meant something common to all these [Greek: theoi], and thus could naturally rise to express what the Greeks wanted to express by that word. There was as yet no necessity for defining deva or [Greek: theos], when applied to what was meant by gods, but of course the most opposite meanings had clustered round it. While a philosophical Greek would maintain that [Greek: theos] meant what was one and never many, a poetical Greek or an ordinary Greek would hold that it meant what was by nature many. But while in such a case philosophical analysis and historical genealogy would support each other, there are ever so many cases where etymological analysis is as hopeless as logical analysis. Who is to define romantic, in such expressions as romantic literature. Etymologically we know that romantic goes back finally to Rome, but the mass of incongruous meanings that have been thrown at random into the caldron of that word, is so great that no definition could be contrived to comprehend them all. And how should we define Gothic or Romanic architecture, remembering that as no Goths had anything to do with pointed arches, neither were any Romans responsible for the flat roofs of the German churches of the Saxon emperors.

Enough to show what I meant when I said that Professor Drobisch, in his Lectures on Herbart, gave one great encouragement in the special work in which I was already engaged as a mere student, the Science of Language and Etymology. If Herbart declared philosophy to consist in a thorough examination (Bearbeitung) of concepts, or conceptual knowledge, my answer was, Only let it be historical, nay, in the beginning, etymological; I was not so foolish as to imagine that a word as used at present, meant what it meant etymologically. Deus no longer meant brilliant, but it should be the object of the true historian of language to prove how Deus, having meant originally brilliant, came to mean what it means now.

For a time I thought of becoming a philosopher, and that sounded so grand that the idea of preparing for a mere schoolmaster, teaching Greek and Latin, seemed to me more and more too narrow a sphere. Soon, however, while dreaming of a chair of philosophy at a German University, I began to feel that I must know something special, something that no other philosopher knew, and that induced me to learn Sanskrit, Arabic, and Persian. I had only heard what we call in German the chiming, not the striking of the bells of Indian philosophy; I had read Frederick Schlegel's explanatory book Ueber die Sprache und Weisheit der Indier (1808), and looked into Windischmann's Die Philosophie im Fortgange der Weltgeschichte (1827-1834). These books are hardly opened now—they are antiquated, and more than antiquated; they are full of mistakes as to facts, and mistakes as to the conclusions drawn from them. But they had ushered new ideas into the world of thought, and they left on many, as they did on me, that feeling which the digger who prospects for minerals is said to have, that there must be gold beneath the surface, if people would only dig. That feeling was very vague as yet, and might have been entirely deceptive, nor did I see my way to go beyond the point reached by these two dreamers or explorers. The thought remained in the rubbish-chamber of my mind, and though forgotten at the time, broke forth again when there was an opportunity. It was a fortunate coincidence that at that very time, in the winter of 1841, a new professorship was founded at Leipzig and given to Professor Brockhaus. Uncertain as I was about the course I had to follow in my studies, I determined to see what there was to be learnt in Sanskrit. There was a charm in the unknown, and, I must confess, a charm also in studying something which my friends and fellow students did not know. I called on Professor Brockhaus, and found that there were only two other students to attend his lectures, one Spiegel, who already knew the elements of Sanskrit, and who is still alive in Erlangen,[9] as a famous professor of Sanskrit and Zend, though no longer lecturing, and another, Klengel; both several years my seniors, but both extremely amiable to their younger fellow student. Klengel was a scholar, a philosopher, and a musician, and though after a term or two he had to give up his study of Sanskrit, he was very useful to me by his good advice. He encouraged me and praised me for my progress in Sanskrit, which was no doubt more rapid than his own, and he confirmed me in my conviction that something might be made of Sanskrit by the philologist and by the philosopher. It should not be forgotten that at that time there was a strong prejudice against Sanskrit among classical scholars. The number of men who stood up for it, though it included names such as W. von Humboldt, F. and A. W. von Schlegel, was still very small. Even Herder's and Goethe's prophetic words produced little effect. It is said that when the Government had been persuaded, chiefly by the two Humboldts, to found a chair of Sanskrit at the University of Wuerzburg, and had nominated Bopp as its first occupant, the philological faculty of the University protested against such a desecration, and the appointment fell through. It is true, no doubt, that in their first enthusiasm the students of Sanskrit had uttered many exaggerated opinions. Sanskrit was represented as the mother of all languages, instead of being the elder sister of the Aryan family. The beginning of all language, of all thought, of all religion was traced back to India, and when Greek scholars were told that Zeus existed in the Veda under the name of Dyaus, there was a great flutter in the dovecots of classical scholarship. Many of these enthusiastic utterances had afterwards to be toned down. How we did enjoy those enthusiastic days, which even in their exaggerated hopes were not without some use. Problems such as the beginning of language, of thought, of mythology and religion, were started with youthful hope that the Veda would solve them all, as if the Vedic Rishis had been present at the first outburst of roots, of concepts, nay, that like Pelops and other descendants of Zeus, those Vedic poets had enjoyed daily intercourse with the gods, and had been present at the mutilation of Ouranos, or at the over-eating of Kronos. We may be ashamed to-day of some of the dreams of the early spring of man's sojourn on earth, but they were enchanting dreams, and all our thoughts of man's nature and destiny on earth were tinged with the colours of a morning that threw light over the grey darkness which preceded it. It was delightful to see that Dyaus meant originally the bright sky, something actually seen, but something that had to become something unseen. All knowledge, whether individual or possessed by mankind at large, must have begun with what the senses can perceive, before it could rise to signify something unperceived by the senses. Only after the blue aether had been perceived and named, was it possible to conceive and speak of the sky as active, as an agent, as a god. Dyaus or Zeus might thus be called the most sublime, he who resides in the aether, [Greek: aitheri naion hypsizygos], the heavenly one, or [Greek: ouranios hypatos] and [Greek: hypsistos], the highest, and at last Iupiter Optimus Maximus, a name applied even to the true God. When Zeus had once become like the sky, all seeing or omniscient ([Greek: epopsios]), would he not naturally be supposed to see, not only the good, but the evil deeds of men also, nay, their very thoughts, whether pure or criminal? And if so, would he not be the avenger of evil, the watcher of oaths ([Greek: horkios]), the protector of the helpless ([Greek: ikesios])? Yet, if conceived, as for a long time all the gods were conceived and could only be conceived, namely, as human in their shape, should we not necessarily get that strange amalgamation of a human being doing superhuman work—hurling the thunderbolt, shouting in thunder, hidden by dark clouds, and smiling in the serene blue of the sky with its brilliant scintillations? All this and much more became perfectly intelligible, the step from the visible to the invisible, from the perceived to the conceived, from nature to nature's gods, and from nature's god to a more sublime unseen and spiritual power. All this seemed to pass before our very eyes in the Veda, and then to be reflected in Homer and Pindar.

[9] Herr Geheimrath von Spiegel now lives at Munich.

Some details of this restored picture of the world of gods and men in early times, nay, in the very spring of time, may have to be altered, but the picture, the eidyllion remained, and nothing could curb the adventurous spirit and keep it from pushing forward and trying to do what seemed to others almost impossible, namely, to watch the growth of the human mind as reflected in the petrifactions of language. Language itself spoke to us with a different voice, and a formerly unsuspected meaning.

We knew, for instance, that ewig meant eternal, but whence eternal. Nothing eternal was ever seen, and it seemed to the philosopher that eternal could be expressed by a negation only, by a negation of what was temporary. But we now learnt that ewig was derived in word and therefore in thought from the Gothic aiwar, time. Ewigkeit was therefore originally time, and "for all time" came naturally to mean "for all eternity." Eternity also came from aeternus, that is aeviternus, for time, i. e. for all time, and thus for eternity, while aevum meant life, lifetime, age. But now came the question, if aevum shows the growth of this word, and its origin, and how it arrives in the end at the very opposite pole, life and time coming to mean eternity, could we not by the same process discover the origin and growth of such short Greek words as [Greek: aei] and [Greek: aiei]? It seems almost impossible, yet remembering that aevum meant originally life, we find in Vedic Sanskrit eva, course, way, life, the same as aevum, while the Sanskrit ayush, likewise derived from i, to go, forms its locative ayushi. Ayushi, or originally ayasi, would mean "in life, in time," and turned into Greek would regularly become then [Greek: aiei], lifelong, or ever. It was not difficult to find fault with this and other etymologies, and to ask for an explanation of [Greek: aien] and [Greek: aies], as derived from the same word ayus. It is curious that people will not see that etymologies, and particularly the gradual development in the form and meaning of words, can hardly ever be a matter of mathematical certainty.

Historical, nay, even individual, influences come in which prevent the science of language from becoming purely mechanical. Pott, and Curtius, and others stood up against Bopp and Grimm, maintaining that there could be nothing irregular in language, particularly in phonetic changes. If this means no more than that under the same circumstances the same changes will always take place, it would be of course a mere truism. The question is only whether we can ever know all the circumstances, and whether there are not some of these circumstances which cause what we are apt to call irregularities. When Bopp said that Sanskrit d corresponds to a Greek [Greek: d], but often also to a Greek [Greek: th], I doubt whether this is often the case. All I say is, if deva corresponds to [Greek: theos], we must try to find the reason or the circumstances which caused so unusual a correspondence. If no more is meant than that there must be a reason for all that seems irregular, no one would gainsay that, neither Bopp nor Grimm, and no one ever doubted that as a principle. But to establish these reasons is the very difficulty with which the Science of Language has to deal.

There is no word that has not an etymology, only if we consider the distance of time that separates us from the historical facts we are trying to account for, we should sometimes be satisfied with probabilities and not always stipulate for absolute certainty. Many of Bopp's, Grimm's, and Pott's etymologies have had to be surrendered, and yet our suzerainty over that distant country which they conquered, over the Aryan home, remains. If there is an etymology containing something irregular, and for which no reason has as yet been found, we must wait till some better etymology can be suggested, or a reason be found for that apparent irregularity. If the etymological meaning of duhitar, daughter, as milkmaid, is doubted, let us have a better explanation, not a worse; but the general picture of the early family among the Aryans "somewhere in Asia" is not thereby destroyed. The father, Sk. pitar, remains the protector or nourisher, though the i for a in pater and [Greek: pater] is irregular. The mother, matar, remains the bearer of children, though ma is no longer used in that sense in any of the Aryan languages. Pati is the lord, the strong one—therefore the husband; vadhu, the yoke-fellow, or the wife as brought home, possibly as carried off by force. Vis or vesa is the home, [Greek: oikos] or vicus, what was entered for shelter. Svasura, [Greek: hekyros], Socer, the father-in-law, is the old man of the svas, the famuli, or the family, or the clients, though the first s is irregular, and can be defended only on the ground of mistaken analogy. Bhratar, frater, brother, was the supporter; svastar, soror, sister, the comforter, &c.

What do a few objections signify? The whole picture remains, as if we could look into the vesa, the [Greek: oikos] the veih, the home, the village of the ancient Aryans, and watch them, the svas, the people, in their mutual relations. Even compound words, such as vis-pati, lord of a family or a village, have been preserved to the present day in the Lithuanian Veszpats, lord, whether King or God. It is enough for us to see that the relationship between husband and wife, between parents and children, between brothers and sisters, nay, even between children-in-law and parents-in-law, had been recognized and sanctified by names. That there are, and always will be, doubts and slight differences of opinion on these prehistoric thoughts and words, is easily understood. We were pleased for a long time to see in vidua, widow, the Sanskrit vidua, i. e. without a man or a husband. We now derive vi-dhava, widow, from vidh, to be separated, to be without (cf. vido in divido, and Sk. vidh), but the picture of the Aryan family remains much the same.

When these and similar antiquities were for the first time brought to light by Bopp, Grimm, and Pott, what wonder that we young men should have jumped at them, and shouted with delight, more even than the diggers who dug up Babylonian palaces or Egyptian temples! No one did more for these antiquarian finds and restorations than A. Kuhn, a simple schoolmaster, but afterwards a most distinguished member of the Berlin Academy. How often did I sit with him in his study as he worked, surrounded by his Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit books. In later times also, when I had made some discoveries myself as to the mythological names or beings identical in Vedic and Greek writings, how pleasant was it to see him rub his hands or shake his head. Long before I had published my identifications they were submitted to him, and he communicated to me his own guesses as I communicated mine to him. Kuhn would never appropriate what belonged to anybody else, and even in cases where we agreed, he would always make it clear that we had both arrived independently at the same result.

It is in the nature of things that every new generation of scholars should perfect their tools, and with these discover flaws in the work left by their predecessors. Still, what is the refined chiselling of later scholars compared with the rough-hewn stones of men like Bopp or Grimm? If the Cyclopean stones of the Pelasgians are not like the finished works of art by Phidias, what would the Parthenon be without the walls ascribed to the Cyclops? It is the same in all sciences, and we must try to be just, both to the genius of those who created, and to the diligence of those who polished and refined.

For all this, however, I met with but small sympathy and encouragement at Leipzig; nay, I had to be very careful in uttering what were supposed to be heretical or unscholarlike opinions in the seminary of Gottfried Hermann, or in the Latin society of Haupt. The latter particularly, though he knew very well how much light had been spread on the growth of language by the researches of Bopp, Grimm, and Pott, and though Grimm was his intimate friend of whom he always spoke with real veneration, could not bear his own pupils dabbling in this subject. And of course at that time my knowledge of comparative philology was a mere dabbling. If he could discover a false quantity in any etymology, great was his delight, and his sarcasm truly withering, particularly as it was poured out in very classical Latin. Gottfried Hermann was a different character. He saw there was a new light and he would not turn his back to it. He knew how lightly his antagonist, Otfried Mueller, valued Sanskrit in his mythological essays, and he set to work, and in one of his last academical programs actually gave the paradigms of Sanskrit verbs as compared with those of Greek. He saw that the coincidences between the two could not be casual, and if they were so overwhelming in the mere termination of verbs, what might we not expect in words and names, even in mythological names? He by no means discouraged me, nay, he was sorry to lose me, when in my third year I went to Berlin. He showed me great kindness on several occasions, and when the time came to take my degree of M.A. and Ph.D., he, as Dean of the Faculty, invited me to return to Leipzig, offering me an exhibition to cover the expenses of the Degree.



My wish to go to Berlin arose partly from a desire to hear Bopp, but yet more from a desire to make the acquaintance of Schelling. My inclination towards philosophy had become stronger and stronger; I had my own ideas about the mythological as a necessary form of ancient philosophy, and when I saw that the old philosopher had advertised his lectures or lecture on mythology, I could not resist, and went to Berlin in 1844. I must say at once that Professor Bopp, though he was extremely kind to me, was at that time, if not old—he was only fifty-three—very infirm. In his lectures he simply read his Comparative Grammar with a magnifying glass, and added very little that was new. He lent me some manuscripts which he had copied in Latin in his younger days, but I could not get much help from him when I came to really difficult passages. This, I confess, puzzled me at the time, for I looked on every professor as omniscient. The time comes, however, when we learn that even at fifty-three a man may have forgotten certain things, nay, may have let many books and new discoveries even in his own subject pass by, because he has plenty to do with his own particular studies. We remember the old story of the professor who, when charged by a young and rather impertinent student with not knowing this or that, replied: "Sir, I have forgotten more than you ever knew." And so it is indeed. Human nature and human memory are very strong during youth and manhood, but even at fifty there is with many people a certain decline of mental vigour that tells chiefly on the memory. Things are not exactly forgotten, but they do not turn up at the right time. They just leave a certain knowledge of where the missing information can be found; they leave also a kind of feeling that the ground is not quite safe and that we must no longer trust entirely to our memory. In one respect this feeling is very useful, for instead of writing down anything, trusting to our memory as we used to do, we feel it necessary to verify many things which formerly were perfectly clear and certain in our memory without such reference to books.

I remember being struck with the same thing in the case of Professor Wilson, the well-known Oxford Professor of Sanskrit. He was kind enough to read with me, and I certainly was often puzzled, not only by what he knew, but also by what he had forgotten. I feel now that I misjudged him, and that his open declaration, "I don't know, let us look it up," really did him great honour. I still have in my possession a portion of Panini's Vedic grammar translated by him. I put by the side of it my own translation, and he openly acknowledged that mine, with the passages taken from the Veda, was right. There was no humbug about Wilson. He never posed as a scholar; nay, I remember his saying to me more than once, "You see, I am not a scholar, I am a gentleman who likes Sanskrit, and that is all." He certainly did like Sanskrit, and he knew it better than many a professor, but in his own way. He had enjoyed the assistance of really learned Pandits, and he never forgot to record their services. But he had himself cleared the ground—he had really done original work. In fact, he had done nothing but original work, and then he was abused for not having always found at the first trial what others discovered when standing on his shoulders. Again, he was found fault with for not having had a classical education. His education was, I believe, medical, but when once in the Indian Civil Service, he made himself useful in many ways, educational and otherwise. When he left India he was Master of the Mint. Such a man might not know Greek and Latin like F. A. von Schlegel, or any other professor, but he knew his own subject, and it is simply absurd if classical scholars imagine that anybody can carry on his Greek and Latin and at the same time make himself a perfect scholar in Sanskrit. Such a feeling is natural among small schoolmasters, but it is dying out at last among real scholars. I have known very good Sanskrit scholars who knew no Greek at all, and very little Latin. And I have also known Greek scholars who knew no Sanskrit and yet attempted comparisons between the two. When Lepsius was made a Member of the Berlin Academy, Lachmann, who ought to have known better, used to say of him: "He knows many things which nobody knows, but he also is ignorant of many things which everybody knows." Such remarks never speak well for the man who makes them.

Another disadvantage from which the aged scholar suffers is that he is blamed for not having known in his youth what has been discovered in his old age, and is still violently assailed for opinions he may have uttered fifty years ago. When quite a young man I wrote, at Baron Bunsen's request, a long letter on the Turanian Languages. It was published in 1854, but it still continues to be criticized as if it had been published last year. Of course, considering the rapid advance of linguistic studies, a great part of that letter became antiquated long ago; but at the time of its first appearance it contained nearly all that could then be known on these allophylian, that is, non-Aryan and non-Semitic languages; and I may, perhaps, quote the opinion of Professor Pott, no mean authority at that time, who, after severely criticizing my letter, declared that it belonged to the most important publications that had appeared on linguistic subjects for many years. And yet, though I have again and again protested that I could not possibly have known in 1854 what has been discovered since as to a number of these Turanian languages, everybody who writes on any of them seems to be most anxious to show that in 1894 he knows more than I did in 1854. No astronomer is blamed for not having known the planet Neptune before its discovery in 1846, or for having been wrong in accounting for the irregularities of Saturn. But let that pass; I only share the fate of others who have lived too long.

After all, all our knowledge, whatever show we may make of it, is very imperfect, and the more we know the better we learn how little it is that we do know, and how much of unexplored country there is beyond the country which we have explored. We must judge a man by what he has done—by his own original work. There are many scholars, and very useful they are in their own way, but if their books are examined, one easily finds the stores from which they borrowed their materials. They may add some notes of their own and even some corrections, particularly corrections of the authors from whom they have borrowed most; but at the end where is the fresh ore that they have raised; where is the gold they have extracted and coined? There are cases where the original worker is quite forgotten, whereas the retailers flourish. Well, facts are facts, whether known or not known, and the triumphal chariot of truth has to be dragged along by many hands and many shoulders.



CHAPTER V

PARIS

My stay in Paris from March, 1845, to June, 1846, was a very useful intermezzo. It opened my mind and showed me a new world; showed me, in fact, that there was a world besides Germany, though even of Germany and German society I had seen as yet very little. I had been working away at school and university, but with the exception of my short stay in Berlin, I had little experience of men and manners outside the small sphere of Dessau and Leipzig.

I had been at Berlin some nine months when, in December, 1844, my old friend Baron Hagedorn came to see me, and invited me to spend some time with him in Paris. He had his own apartments there, and promised to look after me. At the same time my cousin, Baroness Stolzenberg, whom I have mentioned before as wishing me to enter the Austrian diplomatic service, offered to send me to England at her expense as a teacher. I hesitated for some days between these two offers. I knew that my own patrimony had been nearly spent at Leipzig and Berlin, and the time had come for me to begin to support myself; and how was I to do that in Paris? On the other hand, I had long felt that for continuing my Sanskrit studies a stay in Paris, and later perhaps in London also, was indispensable. I had also to consider the feelings of my mother, whose whole heart was absorbed in her only son. However, Sanskrit, and my love of an independent life won the day, and I decided to accept Hagedorn's proposal. My mind once made up, I wanted to be off at once, but Hagedorn could not fix the exact time when he would be free to leave, and told me to keep myself in readiness to start whenever he found himself free to go. I accordingly went to stay with my mother and my married sister at Chemnitz, and indulged in idleness and the unwonted dissipations of parties, dances, and long skating expeditions. At last, feeling I could not afford to wait any longer, I went off to Dessau to see Hagedorn, and found to my great disappointment that he was detained by important legal business in connection with his property near Munich, and could not yet fix a date for his departure. So it was settled that I was to go on to Paris without him, and instal myself in his apartment, 25, Rue Royale St. Honore.

I got my passport wherein I was carefully described with all my particular marks, and started off on my foreign travels. At first all went well. I stopped a few days at Bonn, and again at Brussels, where I had my first experience of hearing a foreign language spoken round me, and found that my French was sadly deficient. But from Brussels on, my experiences were anything but agreeable. The journey to Paris took twenty-four hours, and we travelled day and night without any stop for meals. Most of the passengers were well provided with food and wine, but had it not been for the kindness of some old ladies, my fellow-travellers, I should really have starved. When we crossed the frontier the luggage of all passengers was carefully examined. But the douanier, in trying to open my portmanteau, broke the lock, and then began a fearful cursing and swearing. I was perfectly helpless. I could hardly understand what the French douaniers said, still less make them understand what I had to say. They had done the damage, but would do nothing to remedy it. The train would not wait, and I should certainly have been left behind if the other travellers had not taken my part, and I was allowed to go on to Paris. I looked a mere boy, very harmless, not at all the clever smuggler the officials took me to be. If they had forced the portmanteau open they would have found nothing but the most essential wearing apparel and a few books and papers all in Sanskrit.

But my miseries were not yet over, on the contrary, they became much worse. On my arrival in Paris I got a fiacre and told the man to drive to 25, Rue St. Honore; Royale I considered of no importance; but, alas! at the right number of the Rue St. Honore, the concierge stared at me, telling me that no Baron Hagedorn lived there. Try Faubourg St. Honore, they said, but here the same thing happened. And all this was on a rainy afternoon, I being tired out with travelling and fasting, and perfectly overwhelmed by the immensity of Paris. I knew nobody at Paris, having trusted for all such things to Baron Hagedorn, in fact I was au desespoir. Then as I was driving along the Boulevard des Italiens, looking out of window, I saw a familiar figure—a little hunchback whom I had known at Dessau, where he studied music under Schneider. It was M. Gathy, a man well known by his musical writings, particularly his Dictionary of Music. I shrieked Gathy! Gathy! and he was as much surprised when he recognized the little boy from Dessau, as I was when in this vast Paris I discovered at last a face which I knew. I jumped out of my carriage, told Gathy all that had happened to me, being all the time between complete despair and perfect delight. He knew Hagedorn and his rooms very well. It was the Rue Royale St. Honore. The concierge was quite prepared for my arrival, and took us both to the rooms which were au cinquieme, but large and extremely well furnished. I was so tired that I lay down on the sofa, and called out in my best French, Donnez-moi quelque chose a manger et a boire. This was not so easily done as said, but at last, after toiling up and down five flights of stairs, he brought me what I wanted; I restored myself in the true sense of the word, and then began to discuss the most necessary matters with M. Gathy. He was the most charming of men, half German, half French, full of esprit, and, what was more important to me, full of real kindness and love. As soon as I saw him I felt I was safe, and so I was, though I had still some battles to fight. First of all, I had taken but little money with me, looking upon Hagedorn as my banker. Fortunately I remembered the name of one of his friends, about whom Hagedorn had often spoken to me and who was in Rothschild's Bank. I went there to find that he was away, but another gentleman there told me that I could have as much as I liked till Hagedorn or his friend came back. So I was lucky, unlucky as I had been before.

The next step I had to consider was what I should do for my breakfast, luncheon, and dinner. Breakfast I could have at home, but for the other meals I had to go out and get what I wanted wherever I could. It was not always what I wanted, for it had to be cheap, and even a dinner a deux francs in the Palais Royal seemed to me extravagant. I became more knowing by-and-by, and discovered smaller and simpler restaurants, where Frenchmen dined and had arranged for a less showy but more wholesome diet.

The impression that my first experience of life in one of the great capitals of the world made on me is still fresh in my memory. My principal amusement at first was to go on voyages of discovery through the town. The beauty of the city itself, and the rush and crowd in the streets delighted me, and I remember specially a few days after my arrival, when I went to watch "le tout Paris" going out to the races at Longchamps, that I was so struck by the difference between these streets full of equipages of all sorts, ladies in resplendent dresses, and well-groomed gentlemen, and the quiet streets that I had been accustomed to in Dessau and Leipzig, that I could hardly keep myself from laughing out loud. However, when the novelty wore off there was another contrast that struck me, and made me more inclined to cry this time than to laugh, and that was, that while at home I knew almost every face I passed, here in these crowds I was a stranger and knew no one, and I suffered cruelly from the solitude at first.

I began my work, however, at once, and on the third day after my arrival I was at the Bibliotheque Royale armed with a letter of introduction from Humboldt, and the very next day was already at work collating the MSS. of the Kathaka Upanishad. I had also to devote some hours daily to the study of French; for, much as I grudged these hours, I fully realized that in order to get full advantage from my stay in Paris, I must first master French.

Next came the great question, how to make the acquaintance of Burnouf. I did not know the world. I did not know whether I should write to him first, in what language, and to what address. I knew Burnouf from his books, and I felt a desperate respect for him. After a time Gathy discovered his address for me, and I summoned up courage to call on him. My French was very poor as yet, but I walked in and found a dear old gentleman in his robe de chambre, surrounded by his books and his children—four little daughters who were evidently helping him in collecting and alphabetically arranging a number of slips on which he had jotted down whatever had struck him as important in his reading during the day. He received me with great civility, such as I had not been accustomed to before. He spoke of some little book which I had published, and inquired warmly after my teachers in Germany, such as Brockhaus, Bopp, and Lassen. He told me I might attend his lectures in the College de France, and he would always be most happy to give me advice and help.

I at once felt perfect trust in the man, and was really aux cieux to have found such an adviser. He was, indeed, a fine specimen of the real French savant. He was small, and his face was decidedly German, with the tete carree which one sees so often in Germany, only lighted up by a constant sparkle, which is distinctively French. I must have seemed very stupid to him when I tried to explain to him what I really wanted to do in Paris. He told me himself afterwards that he could not make me out at first. I wanted to study the Veda, but I had told him at the same time that I thought the Vedic hymns very stupid, and that I cared chiefly for their philosophy, that is, the Upanishads. This was really not true, but it came up first in conversation, and I thought it would show Burnouf that my interest in the Veda was not simply philological, but philosophical also. No doubt at first I chiefly copied the Upanishads and their commentaries, but Burnouf was not pleased. "We know what is in the Upanishads," he used to say, "but we want the hymns and their native comments." I soon came to understand what he meant; I carefully attended his lectures, which were on the hymns of the Rig-veda and opened an entirely new world to my mind. We had the first book of the Rig-veda as published by Rosen, and Burnouf's explanations were certainly delightful. He spoke freely and conversationally in his lectures, and one could almost assist at the elaboration of his thoughts. His audience was certainly small; there was nothing like Renan's eloquence and wit. But Burnouf had ever so many new facts to communicate to us. He explained to us his own researches, he showed us new MSS. which he had received from India, in fact he did all he could to make us fellow workers. Often did he tell us to look up some passage in the Veda, to compare and copy the commentaries, and to let him have the result of our researches at the next lecture. All this was very inspiriting, particularly as Burnouf, upon examining our work, was very generous in his approval, and quite ready, if we had failed, to point out to us new sources that should be examined. He never asserted his own authority, and if ever we had found out something which he had not known before, he was delighted to let us have the full credit for it. After all, it was a new and unknown country, that had to be explored and mapped out, and even a novice might sometimes find a grain of gold.

His select class contained some good men. There were Barthelemy St. Hilaire, the famous translator of Aristotle, and for a time Minister of Foreign Affairs in France, the Abbe Bardelli, R. Roth, Th. Goldstuecker, and a few more.

Barthelemy St. Hilaire was a personal friend of Burnouf, and came to the College de France not so much to learn Sanskrit as to hear Burnouf's lucid exposition of ancient Indian religion and philosophy. Bardelli was a regular Italian Abbe, studying Sanskrit at Paris, but chiefly interested in Coptic. He was, like St. Hilaire, much my senior, but we became great friends, and he once confided to me what had certainly puzzled me—his reasons for becoming an ecclesiastic. He had been deeply in love with a young lady; his love was returned, but he was too poor to marry, and she was persuaded and almost forced to marry a rich man. Dear old Abbe, always taking snuff while he told me his agonies, and then finishing up by saying that he became a priest so as to put an end for ever to his passion. Who would have suspected such a background to his jovial face? I don't know how it was that people, much my seniors, so often confided to me their secret sufferings. I may have to mention some other cases, and I feel that after my friends are gone, and so many years have passed over their graves, there is no indiscretion in speaking of their confidences. It may possibly teach us to remember how much often lies buried under a grave bright with flowers. I saw Bardelli's own grave many years later in the famous cemetery at Pisa. R. Roth and Th. Goldstuecker were both strenuous Sanskrit scholars. Both owed much to Burnouf, Roth even more than Goldstuecker, though the latter has perhaps more frequently spoken of what he owed to Burnouf. Roth was my senior by several years, and engaged in much the same work as myself. But we never got on well together. It is curious from what small things and slight impressions our likes and dislikes are often formed. I have heard men give as a reason for disliking some one, that he had forgotten to pay half a cab-fare. So in Roth's case, I never got over a most ordinary experience. He and two other young students and myself, having to celebrate some festal occasion, had ordered a good luncheon at a restaurant. To me with my limited means this was a great extravagance, but I could not refuse to join. Roth, to my great surprise and, I may add, being very fond of oysters, annoyance, took a very unfair share of that delicacy, and whenever I met him in after life, whether in person or in writing, this incident would always crop up in my mind; and when later on he offered to join me in editing the Rig-veda, I declined, perhaps influenced by that early impression which I could not get rid of. I blame myself for so foolish a prejudice, but it shows what creatures of circumstance we are.

With Goldstuecker I was far more intimate. He was some years older than myself and quite independent as far as money went. He knew how small my means were, and would gladly have lent me money. But through the whole of my life I never borrowed from my friends, or in fact from anybody, though I was forced sometimes when very hard up for ready money, and when I knew that money was due to me but had not arrived when I expected it, to apply to some friend for a temporary advance. I will try and recall the lines in which I once applied to Gathy for such a loan.

Versuch' ich's wohl, mein herzgeliebter Gathy, Mit schmeichelndem Sonnet Sie anzupumpen? Ich bitte nicht um schwere Goldesklumpen, Ich bitte nur um etliche Ducati. Auch zahl' ich wieder ultimo Monati. Auf Wiedersehn bei Morel und Frascati Und Nachsicht fuer den Brief, den allzu plumpen! Zwar reiche Nabobs sind die braven Inder, Doch arme Teufel die Indianisten! Reich sind hienieden schon die Heiden-Kinder, Doch selig werden nur die armen Christen! Reimsucher bin ich, doch kein Reimefinder, Und sans critique sind all die Sanscritisten.

This kind of negotiating a loan I have to confess to, but the idea of borrowing money, without knowing when I could repay it, never entered my mind. Relations who could have helped me I had none, and nothing remained to me but to work for others. Indeed my want of money soon began to cause me very serious anxiety in Paris. Little as I spent, my funds became lower and lower. I did not, like many other scholars, receive help from my Government. I had mapped out my course for myself, and instead of taking to teaching on leaving the University, had settled to come to Paris and continue my Sanskrit studies, and it was in my own hands whether I should swim or sink. It was, indeed, a hard struggle, far harder than those who have known me in later life would believe. All I could do to earn a little money was to copy and collate MSS. for other people. I might indeed have given private lessons, but I have always had a strong objection to that form of drudgery, and would rather sit up a whole night copying than give an hour to my pupils. My plan was as follows: to sit up the whole of one night, to take about three hours' rest the next night, but without undressing, and then to take a good night's rest the third night, and start over again. It was a hard fight, and cannot have been very good for me physically, but I do not regret it now.

Often did I go without my dinner, being quite satisfied with boiled eggs and bread and butter, which I could have at home without toiling down and toiling up five flights of stairs that led to my room. Sometimes I went with some of my young friends hors de la barriere, that is, outside Paris, outside the barrier where the octroi has to be paid on meat, wine, &c. Here the food was certainly better for the price I could afford to pay, but the society was sometimes peculiar. I remember once seeing a strange lady sitting not very far from me, who was the well-known Louve of Eugene Sue's Mysteres de Paris. One of my companions on these expeditions was Karl de Schloezer, who was then studying Arabic in Paris. He was always cheerful and amusing, and a delightful companion. He knew much more of the world than I did, and often surprised me by his diplomatic wisdom. "Let us stand up for each other," he said one day; "you say all the good you can of me, I saying all the good I can of you." I became very fierce at the time, charging him with hypocrisy and I do not know what. He, however, took it all in good part, and we remained friends all the time he was at Paris, and indeed to the day of his death. He was very fond of music, but I was, perhaps, the better performer on the pianoforte. He had invited me, a violin, and violoncello, to play some of Mozart's and Beethoven's Sonatas. Alas! when we found that he murdered his part, I sat down and played the whole evening, leaving him to listen, not, I fear, in the best of moods. He took his revenge, however; and the next time he asked me and the two other musicians to his room, we found indeed everything ready for us to play, but our host was nowhere to be found. He maintained that he had been called away; I am certain, however, that the little trick was played on purpose.

He afterwards entered the Prussian diplomatic service and was the protege of the Princess of Prussia, afterwards the Empress of Germany. That was enough to make Bismarck dislike him, and when Schloezer served as Secretary of Legation under Bismarck as Ambassador at St. Petersburg, he committed the outrage of challenging his chief to a duel. Bismarck declined, nor would it, according to diplomatic etiquette, have been possible for him not to decline. Later on, however, Schloezer was placed en disponibilite, that is to say, he was politely dismissed. He had to pay a kind of farewell visit to Bismarck, who was then omnipotent. Being asked by Bismarck what he intended to do, and whether he could be of any service to him, Schloezer said very quietly, "Yes, your Excellency, I shall take to writing my Memoirs, and you know that I have seen much in my time which many people will be interested to learn." Bismarck was quiet for a time, looking at some papers, and then remarked quite unconcernedly, "You would not care to go to the United States as Minister?" "I am ready to go to-morrow," replied Schloezer, and having carried his point, having in fact outwitted Bismarck, he started at once for Washington. Bismarck knew that Schloezer could wield a sharp pen, and there was a time when he was sensitive to such pen-pricks. They did not see much of each other afterwards, but, owing to the protection of the Empress, Schloezer was later accredited as Prussian envoy to the Pope, and died too soon for his friends in beautiful Italy.

One of my oldest friends at Paris was a Baron d'Eckstein, a kind of diplomatic agent who knew everybody in Paris, and wrote for the newspapers, French and German. He had, I believe, a pension from the French Government, and was, as a Roman Catholic, strongly allied with the Clerical Party. This did not concern me. What concerned me was his love of Sanskrit and the ancient religion of India. He would sit with me for hours, or take me to dine with him at a restaurant, discussing all the time the Vedas and the Upanishad and the Vedanta philosophy. There are several articles of his written at this time in the Journal Asiatique, and I was especially grateful to him, for he gave me plenty of work to do, particularly in the way of copying Sanskrit MSS. for him, and he paid me well and so helped me to keep afloat in Paris. Knowing as he did everybody, he was very anxious to introduce me to his friends, such as George Sand, Lamennais, the Comtesse d'Agoult (Daniel Stern), Lamartine, Victor Hugo, and others; but I much preferred half an hour with him or with Burnouf to paying formal visits. I heard afterwards many unkind things about Baron d'Eckstein's political and clerical opinions, but though in becoming a convert to Roman Catholicism he may have shown weakness, and as a political writer may have been influenced by his near friends and patrons, I never found him otherwise than kind, tolerant, and trustworthy. His life was to have been written by Professor Windischmann, but he too died; and who knows what may have become of the curious memoirs which he left? At the time of the February revolution in 1848, he was in the very midst of it. He knew Lamartine, who was the hero of the day, though of a few days only. He attended meetings with Lamartine, Odilon, Barrot, and others, and he assured me that there would be no revolution, because nobody was prepared for it.

Lamartine who had been asked by his friends, all of them royalists and friends of order, whether he would, in case of necessity, undertake to form a ministry under the Duchesse d'Orleans as regent, scouted such an idea at first, but at last promised to be ready if he were wanted. The time came sooner than he expected, and the Duchesse d'Orleans counted on him when she went to the Chamber and her Regency was proclaimed. Lamartine was then so popular that he might have saved the situation. But the mob broke into the Chamber, shots were fired, and there was no Lamartine. The Duchesse d'Orleans had to fly, and fortunately escaped under the protection of the Duc de Nemours, the only son of Louis Philippe then in Paris, and the dynasty of the Orleans was lost—never to return. Baron d'Eckstein lost many of his influential friends at that time, possibly his pension also, but he had enough to live upon, and he died at last as a very old man in a Roman Catholic monastery, a most interesting and charming man, whose memoirs would certainly have been very valuable.

But to return to Burnouf, I never can adequately express my debt of gratitude to him. He was of the greatest assistance to me in clearing my thoughts and directing them into one channel. "Either one thing or the other," he said. "Either study Indian philosophy and begin with the Upanishads and Sankara's commentary, or study Indian religion and keep to the Rig-veda, and copy the hymns and Sayana's commentary, and then you will be our great benefactor." A great benefactor! that was too much for me, a mere dwarf in the presence of giants. But Burnouf's words confirmed me more and more in my desire to give myself up to the Veda.

Burnouf told me not only what Vedic MSS. there were at the Bibliotheque Royale, he also brought me his own MSS. and lent them to me to copy, with the condition, however, that I should not smoke while working at them. He himself did not smoke, and could not bear the smell of smoke, and he showed me several of his MSS. which had become quite useless to him, because they smelt of stale tobacco smoke. I did all I could to guard these sacred treasures against such profanation.

Another and even more useful warning came to me from Burnouf. "Don't publish extracts from the commentary only," he said; "if you do, you will publish what is easy to read, and leave out what is difficult." I certainly thought that extracts would be sufficient, but I soon found out that here also Burnouf was right, though there was always the fear that I should never find a publisher for so immense a work. This fear I confided to Burnouf, but he always maintained his hopeful view. "The commentary must be published, depend upon it, and it will be," he said.

So I stuck to it and went on copying and collating my Sanskrit MSS., always trusting that a publisher would turn up at the proper time. I had, of course, to do all the drudgery for myself, and I soon found out that it was not in human nature, at least not in my nature, to copy Sanskrit from a MS. even for three or four hours without mistakes. To my great disappointment I found mistakes whenever I collated my copy with the original. I found that like the copyists of classical MSS. my eye had wandered from one line to another where the same word occurred, that I had left out a word when the next word ended with the same termination, nay that I had even left out whole lines. Hence I had either to collate my own copy, which was very tedious, or invent some new process. This new process I discovered by using transparent paper, and thus tracing every letter. I had some excellent papier vegetal made for me, and, instead of copying, traced the whole Sanskrit MS. This had the great advantage that nothing could be left out, and that when the original was smudged and doubtful I could carefully trace whatever was clear and visible through the transparent paper. At first I confess my work was slow, but soon it went as rapidly as copying, and it was even less fatiguing to the eyes than the constant looking from the MS. to the copy, and from the copy to the MS. But the most important advantage was, that I could thus feel quite certain that nothing was left out, so that even now, after more than fifty years, these tracings are as useful to me as the MS. itself. There was room left between the lines or on the margin to note the various readings of other MSS.; in fact, my materials grew both in extent and in value.

Still there remained the question of a publisher. To print the Rig-veda in six volumes quarto of about a thousand pages each, and to provide the editor with a living wage during the many years he would have to devote to his task, required a large capital. I do not know exactly how much, but what I do know is that, when a second edition of the text of the Veda in four volumes was printed at the expense of the Maharajah of Vizianagram, it cost that generous and patriotic prince four thousand pounds, though I then gave my work gratuitously.

While I was working at the Bibliotheque Royale, Humboldt had used his powerful influence with the king of Prussia, Frederick William IV, to help me in publishing my edition of the Rig-veda in Germany. Nothing, however, came of that plan; it proved too costly for any private publisher, even with royal assistance.

Then came a vague offer from St. Petersburg. Boehtlingk, the great Sanskrit scholar, as a member of the Imperial Russian Academy, invited me to come to St. Petersburg and print the Veda there, in collaboration with himself, and at the expense of the Academy. Burnouf and Goldstuecker both warned me against accepting this offer, but, hopeless as I was of getting my Veda published elsewhere, I expressed my willingness to go on condition that some provision should be made for me before I decided to migrate to Russia, as I possessed absolutely nothing but what I was able to earn myself. Boehtlingk, I believe, suggested to the Academy that I should be appointed Assistant Keeper of the Oriental Museum at St. Petersburg, but his colleagues did not apparently consider so young a man, and a mere German scholar, a fit candidate for so responsible a post. Boehtlingk wished me to send him all my materials, and he would get the MSS. of the Rig-veda and of Sayana's commentary from the Library of the East India Company, and Paris. No definite proposition, however, came from the Imperial Academy, but an announcement of Boehtlingk's appeared in the papers in January, 1846, to the effect that he was preparing, in collaboration with Monsieur Max Mueller of Paris, a complete edition of the Rig-veda.