rology was not
such mere imposition as it is generally supposed to have been. It is
counted as a science by so sound and sober a scholar as Melancthon, and
even Bacon allows it a place among the sciences, though admitting that "it
had better intelligence and confederacy with the imagination of man than
with his reason." In spite of the strong condemnation which Luther
pronounced against astrology, astrology continued to sway the destinies of
Europe; and a hundred years after Luther, the astrologer was the
counsellor of princes and generals, while the founder of modern astronomy
died in poverty and despair. In our time the very rudiments of astrology
are lost and forgotten.(8) Even real and useful arts, as soon as they
cease to be useful, die away, and their secrets are sometimes lost beyond
the hope of recovery. When after the Reformation our churches and chapels
were divested of their artistic ornaments, in order to restore, in outward
appearance also, the simplicity and purity of the Christian church, the
colors of the painted windows began to fade away, and have never regained
their former depth and harmony. The invention of printing gave the
death-blow to the art of ornamental writing and of miniature-painting
employed in the illumination of manuscripts; and the best artists of the
present day despair of rivalling the minuteness, softness, and brilliancy
combined by the humble manufacturer of the mediaeval missal.

I speak somewhat feelingly on the necessity that every science should
answer some practical purpose, because I am aware that the science of
language has but little to offer to the utilitarian spirit of our age. It
does not profess to help us in learning languages more expeditiously, nor
does it hold out any hope of ever realizing the dream of one universal
language. It simply professes to teach what language is, and this would
hardly seem sufficient to secure for a new science the sympathy and
support of the public at large. There are problems, however, which, though
apparently of an abstruse and merely speculative character, have exercised
a powerful influence for good or evil in the history of mankind. Men
before now have fought for an idea, and have laid down their lives for a
word; and many of these problems which have agitated the world from the
earliest to our own times, belong properly to the science of language.

Mythology, which was the bane of the ancient world, is in truth a disease
of language