Part 14 (1/2)

Secondly, the problees has no connection with the state the creation of ies of the patriarchs If our researches led us to the ades ofin the Old Testah the Jews believed that for a tie and of one speech, it has long been pointed out by eminent divines, with particular reference to the dialects of Aht have arisen at later times If, on the contrary, we arrive at the conviction that all languages can be traced back to one coies of the Old Testaenealogies of the Old Testae, and as we know that people, without changing their nae, it is clearly iies of the Old Testaical classification of languages In order to avoid a confusion of ideas, it would be preferable to abstain altogether froe which in the Bible are used to express relationshi+p of blood It was usual foruages The first name has now been replaced by _Aryan_, the second by _African_; and though the third is still retained, it has received a scientific definition quite different fro which it would have in the Bible It is well to bear this in mind, in order to prevent not only those who are forever attacking the Bible with arrows that cannot reach it, but likewise those who defend it eapons they know not hoield, froress of the science of language

Let us now look dispassionately at our problein of all languages naturally divides itself into two parts, the _formal_ and the _material_ We are to-day concerned with the foruage can assume, and we have now to ask, can we reconcile with these three distinct forms, the radical, the terminational, and the inflectional, the adin of huuin of language is this, that no lutinative or terlutinative or tere Chinese, it is said, is still what it has been frolutinative or inflectional foriven up the distinctive feature of the territy of its roots

In answer to this it should be pointed out that though each language, as soon as it once becoical character which it had when it first assumed its individual or national existence, it does not lose altogether the power of producing grae In Chinese, and particularly in Chinese dialects, we find rudilutination The _li_ which I n of the locative, has dwindled down to a mere postposition, and a inally interior, than the Turanian is of the origin of his case-terlutinative forhai dialect, _wo_ is to speak, as a verb; _woda_, a word Of _woda_ a genitive is for woda_(309) In agglutinative languages again, we meet with rudiu_, to sleep, has not retained its full integrity in the derivative _tukkareatlys in general to that stage of grammar which it had attained at the time of its first settlement If a family, or a tribe, or a nation, has once accustoraer with each generation But, while Chinese was arrested and becae the radical, other dialects passed on through that stage, retaining their pliancy They were not arrested, and did not become traditional or national, before those who spoke thelutination That advantage being once perceived, a few single forlutination first showed itself would soon, by that sense of analogy which is inherent in language, extend their influence irresistibly Languages arrested in that stage would cling with equal tenacity to the systeuage is possible, unless every syllable is significative; a Turanian despises every idiom in which each word does not display distinctly its radical and significative element; whereas, ho are accustoes, are proud of the very grammar which a Chinese and Turanian would treat with contees, if once settled, do not change their graainst our theory, that every inflectional language was once agglutinative, and every agglutinative language was once monosyllabic I call it a theory, but it is more than a theory, for it is the only possible way in which the realities of Sanskrit or any other inflectional language can be explained As far as the fore is concerned, we cannot resist the conclusion that what is now _inflectional_ was forlutinative_ was at first _radical_ The great streaed its grah new deposits of thought The different channels which left the nant, or, if you like, literary and traditional, retained forever that coloring which the e of their separation If we call the radical stage _white_, the agglutinative _red_, and the inflectional _blue_, then we may well understand why the white channels should show hardly a drop of red or blue, or why the red channels should hardly betray a shadow of blue; and we shall be prepared to find e do find, namely, white tints in the red, and white and red tints in the blue channels of speech

You will have perceived that in what I have said I only argue for the possibility, not for the necessity, of a coe

I look upon the problee, which I have shown to be quite independent of the probleht to be kept open as long as possible It is not, I believe, a problem quite as hopeless as that of the plurality of worlds, on which so much has been written of late, but it should be treated very much in the same manner As it is impossible to demonstrate by the evidence of the senses that the planets are inhabited, the only way to prove that they are, is to prove that it is impossible that they should not be Thus on the other hand, in order to prove that the planets are not inhabited, you must prove that it is impossible that they should be As soon as the one or the other has been proved, the question will be set at rest: till then it must remain an open question, whatever our own predilections on the subjecta view of the problee, but I insist on this, that we ought not to allow this probleed Now it has been the tendency of the y to take it alranted, that after the discovery of the two fae, the Aryan and Semitic, and after the establishment of the close ties of relationshi+p which unite the er a coe It was natural, after the criteria by which the unity of the Aryan as well as the Semitic dialects can be proved had been so successfully defined, that the absence of sie, or between these and any other branch of speech, should have led to a belief that no connection was admissible between them A Linnaean botanist, who has his definite nize an Anemone, would reject with equal confidence any connection between the species Anemone and other flohich have since been classed under the sah deficient in the Linnaean rees of affinity in languages as well as in all other productions of nature, and the different fans of relationshi+p by which their ether, need not of necessity have been perfect strangers to each other frouer to speak of a coy had proved that there existed various fae, I felt that this was not true, that at all events it was an exaggeration

The proble aspect:-”_If you wish to assert that language had various beginnings, you e could have had a coin_”

No such iard to a coin of the Aryan and Serammatical forms in either family has reible hoith materials identical or very similar, two individuals, or two families, or two nations, could in the course of ties so different in forht was thrown on the fore by the study of other dialects unconnected with Sanskrit or Hebrew, and exhibiting before our eyes the growth of those grarammatical in the widest sense of the word) which in the Aryan and Se; as decaying, not as living; as traditional, not as understood and intentional: I es attest their original relationshi+p are much fainter than in the Semitic and Aryan families, but they are so of necessity In the Aryan and Serammatical forms can be obtained, has been arrested at soious or political influences By the sa civilization absorbs the manifold dialects in which every spoken idioious centralization lutinative speech Out of many possible forms one becaraion, a literary or political language was produced to which thenceforth nothing had to be added; which in a short tiible in its formal elements, was liable to phonetic corruption only, but incapable of internal resuscitation It is necessary to admit a primitive concentration of this kind for the Aryan and Semitic families, for it is thus only that we can account for coincidences between Sanskrit and Greek terminations, which were formed neither from Greek nor from Sanskrit materials, but which are still identically the saes political or state languages, and it has been truly said that languages belonging to these fa in coible, but what is anoible, and dead

If no such concentration takes place, languages, though forinally identical, e in e may call dialects, but in a very different sense from the dialects such as we find in the later periods of political languages The process of agglutination will continue in each clan, and forible will be easily replaced by new and ible compounds If the cases are formed by postpositions, new postpositions can be used as soon as the old ones becoation is formed by pronouns, new pronouns can be used if the old ones are no longer sufficiently distinct

Let us ask then, what coincidences we are likely to find in agglutinative dialects which have becoradually approach to a more settled state? It seems to me that we can only expect to find in them such coincidences as Castren and Schott have succeeded in discovering in the Finnic, Turkic, Mongolic, Tungusic, and Saan, and etic, Lohitic, Tac, and Malac languages They e, or to those parts of speech which it is most difficult to reproduce, I uages will hardly ever agree in what is anoanisible It is astonishi+ng rather, that any words of a conventionalshould have been discovered as the coes, than that most of their words and forms should be peculiar to each These coincidences must, however, be accounted for by those who deny the coes; they must be accounted for, either as the result of accident, or of an imitative instinct which led the human mind everywhere to the same onomatopoetic forreat efforts to achieve it

Toparticularly because it offered an opportunity of learning how far languages, supposed to be of a coe and becoeneration

In a letter which I addressed to my friend, the late Baron Bunsen, and which was published by him in his ”Outlines of the Philosophy of Universal History”(310) (vol i pp 263-521), it had been my object to trace, as far as I was able, the principles which guided the fores ranate dialects In answer to the assertion that it was impossible, I tried, in the fourth, fifth, and sixth sections of that Essay, to sho_ it was possible, that, starting froes as different as Mandshu and Finnish, Malay and Siaht still be treated as cognate tongues And as I look upon this process of agglutination as the only intelligible anization, and clear the barrier which has arrested the growth of the Chinese idio the principles derived froes to the Aryan and Selutinative stage, and it is during that period alone that we can account for the gradual divergence and individualization of e afterwards call the Aryan and Semitic forms of speech If we can account for the different appearance of Mandshu and Finnish, we can also account for the distance between Hebrew and Sanskrit It is true that we do not know the Aryan speech during its agglutinative period, but we can infer what it e see languages like Finnish and Turkish approaching more and more to an Aryan type Such has been the advance which Turkish has made towards inflectional forms, that Professor Ewald claie, a title which he gives to the Aryan and See, and entered into a process of phonetic corruption and dissolution

”Many of its coinally, as in every language, independent words, have been reduced to ether, so that we es which they have wrought in the body of the word _Goz_ or_, to see; _ish_, deed, and _ir_, to do; _itsh_, the interior, _gir_, to enter”(311) Nay, he goes so far as to admit some formal elements which Turkish shares in common with the Aryan family, and which therefore could only date frolutinative infancy For instance, _di_, as exponent of a past action; _ta_, as the sign of the past participle of the passive; _lu_, as a suffix to form adjectives, &c(312) This isthis view of the gradual forlutination, as opposed to intussusception, it is hardly necessary to say that, if I speak of a Turanian family of speech, I use the word faard to the Aryan and Sees, which has been the subject of such fierce attacks froe and mankind, I had explained this repeatedly, and I had preferred the teres, in order to express as clearly as possible that the relation between Turkish and Mandshu, between Taree only, but in kind, froes,” I said (p 216), ”cannot be considered as standing to each other in the same relation as Hebrew and Arabic, Sanskrit and Greek” ”They are radii diverging from a common centre, not children of a common parent” And still they are not so widely distant as Hebrew and Sanskrit, because none of therowth or decay (p 218) through which the Sees passed after they had been settled, individualized, and nationalized

The real object of my Essay was therefore a defensive one It was to sho rash it was to speak of different independent beginnings in the history of huht forward to establish the necessity of such an ade has never been proved, but, in order to re the theory of a coin, I felt it my duty to show practically, and by the very history of the Turanian languages, how such a theory was possible, or as I say in one instance only, probable I endeavored to sho even the most distant members of the Turanian family, the one spoken in the north, the other in the south of Asia, the _Finnic_ and the _Taanization traces of a former unity; and, if my opponents admit that I have proved the ante-Brah to the Turanian family, they can hardly have been aware that if this, theelse is involved, and must follow by necessity

Yet I did not call the last chapter of e,” but ”On the Possibility;” and, in answer to the opinions advanced by the opposite party, I suraphs:-

I

”Nothing necessitates the ads for the _material_ elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech;-nay, it is possible even now to point out radicals which, under various changes and disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their first separation”

II

”Nothing necessitates the ads for the formal elements of the Turanian, Seh it is irammar from the Semitic, or the Semitic froh individual influences, or by the wear and tear of speech in its own continuous working, the different systerammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced”

It will be seen, froraphs, that s, and to assert the possibility of a co been biassed in in of mankind I do not deny that I hold this belief, and, if it wanted confirmation, that confirin of Species”(313) But I defy e where I have uments Only if I am told that no ”quiet observer would ever have conceived the idea of deriving all ht it,” I must be allowed to say in reply, that this idea on the contrary is so natural, so consistent with all hu, that, as far as I know, there has been no nation on earth which, if it possessed any traditions on the origin of mankind, did not derive the human race from one pair, if not from one person The author of the Mosaic records, therefore, though stripped, before the tribunal of Physical Science, of his claims as an inspired writer, may at least claim the modest title of a quiet observer, and if his conception of the physical unity of the human race can be proved to be an error, it is an error which he shares in common with other quiet observers, such as Humboldt, Bunsen, Prichard, and Owen(314)