Search:
1 Item
Page: 1
To F. W. Farrar 2 November [1865]
Summary
Has enjoyed FWF’s volume [Chapters on language]. Had found Max Müller’s theory obscure and weak.
Believes FWF would come to agree with him on species if he studied general questions in natural history. To argue for immutability of species on the basis of geology resembles a wise savage in a nation with no books saying his language has never changed.
| Author: | Charles Robert Darwin |
| Addressee: | Frederic William Farrar |
| Date: | 2 Nov [1865] |
| Classmark: | University of Virginia Library, Special Collections (3314 1: 80) |
| Letter no: | DCP-LETT-4929 |
Matches: 1 hit
- … 1864). Max Müller argued that all human languages descended from a common set of ‘ phonetic types’ or ‘roots’, which originated in the faculty of giving ‘articulate expression to the rational conceptions’ of the mind (see Max Müller 1861 , pp. 342, 369–72). CD read the first volume of Max Müller’s lectures in 1862; he expressed dissatisfaction with Max Müller’s account of the origin of language, and thought the work contained ‘covert sneers’ at himself (see Correspondence vol. 10, letter to J. D. Hooker, …
