Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/811

PHILOLOGY 775 not exhibit some items of "inflective" structure; the Aryan is only the one among them that has most to show. Out side the Semitic, at any rate, one should not speak of inflective and non- inflective languages, but only of lan guages more inflective and less inflective. Value of To account for the great and striking differences of struc- structure among human languages is beyond the power of tlirc - the linguistic student, and will doubtless always continue so. We are not likely to be able even to demonstrate a correlation of capacities, saying that a race which has done this and that in other departments of human activity might have been expected to form such and such a language. Every tongue represents the general outcome of the capa city of a race as exerted in this particular direction, under the influence of historical circumstances which we can have no hope of tracing. There are striking apparent anomalies to be noted. The Chinese and the Egyptians have shown themselves to be among the most gifted races the earth has known ; but the Chinese tongue is of unsur passed jejuneness, and the Egyptian, in point of structure, little better, while among the wild tribes of Africa and America we find tongues of every grade, up to a high one, or to the highest. This shows clearly enough that mental power is not measured by language-structure. But any other linguistic test would prove equally insufficient. On the whole, the value and rank of a language are determined by what its users have made it do. The reflex action of its speech on the mind and culture of a people is a theme of high interest, but of extreme difficulty, and apt to lead its investigators away into empty declamation ; taking everything together, its amount, as is shown by the in stances already referred to, is but small. The question is simply one of the facilitation of work by the use of one set of tools rather than another ; and a poor tool in skilful hands can do vastly better work than the best tool in unskilful hands even as the ancient Egyptians, without steel or steam, turned out products which, both for colossal grandeur and for exquisite finish, are the despair of modern engineers and artists. In such a history of development as that of human speech a fortunate turn may lead to results of unforeseen value ; the earlier steps determine the later in a degree quite beyond their own intrinsic importance. Everything in language depends upon habit and analogy ; and the formation of habit is a slow process, while the habit once formed exercises a constraining as well as a guiding influence. Hence the persistency of language-structure : when a certain sum and kind of ex pression is produced, and made to answer the purposes of expression, it remains the same by inertia ; a shift of direction becomes of extreme difficulty. No other reason can at present be given why in historical time there has been no marked development out of one grade of structure into another ; but the fact no more shakes the linguistic scholar s belief in the growth of structure than the absence of new animal species worked out under his eyes shakes the confidence of the believer in animal development. The modifying causes and their modes of action are clearly seen, and there is no limit to the results of their action except what is imposed by circumstances. It is in vain to attempt to use dates in language-history, to say when this or that step in development was taken, and how long a period it cost, especially now that the changed views as to the antiquity of man are making it probable that only a small part of the whole history is brought within the reach even of our deductions from the Unity of most ancient recorded dialects. At any rate, for aught origin of that we know or have reason to believe, all existing dialects are equally old ; every one alike has the whole immeasur able past of language-life behind it, has reached its present condition by advance along its own line of growth and change from the first beginnings of human expression. Many of these separate lines we clearly see to converge and unite, as AVC follow them back into the past ; but whether they all ultimately converge to one point is a question quite beyond our power to answer. If in this immensity of time many languages have won so little, if everywhere language-growth has been so slow, then we can only differ as to whether it is reasonably certain, or probable, or only possible, that there should have been a considerable first period of human existence without tra ditional speech, and a yet more considerable one before the fixation of so much as should leave abiding traces in its descendants, and that meanwhile the race should have multiplied and scattered into independent communities. And the mere possibility is enough to exclude all dogmatic assertion of the unity of origin of human speech, even assuming unity of origin of the human race. For to prove that identity by the still existing facts of language is utterly out of the question ; the metamorphosing effect of constant change has been too great to allow it. In point of fact, taking languages as they now exist, only those have been shown related which possess a common structure, or have together grown out of the more primitive radical stage, since structure proves itself a more constant and reliable evidence than material. And this is likely ever to be the case ; at any rate, to trace all the world s languages so far back toward their beginnings as to find in them evidences of identity is beyond the wildest hope. We must be con tent with demonstrating for those beginnings a unity of kind as alike a body of formless roots. But, on the other hand, since this unity is really demonstrated, since all structure is the result of growth, and no degree of difference of structure, any more than of difference of material, refuses explanation as the result of discordant growth from identical beginnings, it is equally inadmissible to claim that the diversities of language prove it to have had different beginnings. That is to say, the question of the unity of speech, and yet more that of the unity of the race, is beyond the reach of the student of language ; the best view he can attain is the hypothetical one, that, if the race is one, the beginnings of speech were perhaps one but probably not, even then. This negative conclusion is so clearly established as to leave no excuse for the still oft -repeated attempts to press language into service on either side of the controversy respecting human unity of race. That all making and changing of language is by the Uncon- act of its speakers is too obvious to call for discussion. No scious other force capable of acting and of producing effects is f^A either demonstrable or conceivable as concerned in the i nc ij v id- work. The doctrine that language is an organism, growing uals. by its own inherent powers, exempt from the interference of those who use it, is simply an indefensible paradox. Every word that is uttered is so by an act of human will, at first in imitation of others, then more and more by a formed and controlling habit ; it is accessible to no change except by influences working in the speaker s mind, and leading him to make it otherwise. Not that he is aware of this, or directs his action knoAvingly to that end. The whole process is unconscious. If any implication of re flective or intended action can be shown to inhere in any doctrine of linguistic science, it vitiates that doctrine. The attitude of the ordinary speaker towards his language is that of unreasoning acceptance ; it seems to him that his names for things are their real names, and all others unintelligent nicknames ; he thinks himself to possess his speech by the same tenure as his sight or hearing ; it is " natural " to him (or, if he reasons about it, he attributes it to a divine origin, as races beginning to philosophize are wont to ascribe their various social institutions to their