LINGUISTIC CHARACTERS.

I. THE EVOLUTIONARY HISTORY OF HUMAN LANGUAGE.

IF speech be but the means of communicating emotions or intentions to other beings, even invertebrate animals possess faculties of the same nature. We see insects, such as ants, which live in so-called communities, carrying out elaborately preconcerted warlike undertakings, and attacks. A beetle which, in rolling the ball of dung enclosing its egg, has allowed it to slip into a hole, from which it is unable to extricate it, flies away, to return in a short time with a number of assistants sufficient to push the ball up the sides of the declivity by co-operation of labour. creatures must, therefore, unquestionably possess some means of communicating with each other concerning this combination. requires no long observation of our song-birds to distinguish the different tones by which they warn their young of danger, or call them to feed, or by which they attract each other to pair. These animals, therefore, have at their control a certain number of signals, which are quite adequate to procure for them some few of the wants of their life, and these signals, as far as we can at present guess, have been acquired and inherited in the same manner as were their instincts. The need of communication is almost more various and urgent in the dog than in any other animal. We fully understand his bark, whether it signifies pleasure, dissatisfaction, a warning of danger, a definite wish, or a declaration of hostility. The dog does not use his voice only, but snarls and gnashes his teeth. With some justice the bark of the dog has been described

as an animal's first attempt to speak. But this talent was acquired by intercourse with talkative man, for European dogs, deposited on solitary islands, lost the habit of barking, and produced a dumb posterity, which reacquired the use of the vocal apparatus only after renewed association with mankind.

Human speech, however, is distinguished from the sounds of intelligence used by animals, not only by a greater range of communications, but also by the power of proclaiming not only perceptions, but cognitions which lie beyond the mental faculties of animals. If the bark of the dog be the first attempt at speech, we may add that the attempt is as yet a failure. The animal has not even got so far as to appropriate a call to any particular person. As soon as the child is so far matured as consciously to call its father or mother, its first attempt to speak has been completely successful. An animal can never communicate such simple cognitions as are implied in the words light, warm, sweet, hard, sharp, blue, red.

As history and experience daily teach us that languages alter, and at the same time increase in compass; that their formation, therefore, never stands still, and that these transformations and additions are certainly derived from ourselves, it ought never to have been disputed that man was the creator of his own language. Yet an endeavour has been made to ascribe the first beginning to a supernatural process. But if human speech be regarded as the only difference which, as it were, at once divides us from our fellow-beings in the animal world, our mental faculties are degraded, and this chasm is narrowed by those who maintain that man did not evolve his noblest distinction by his own resources. If this denial is due to morbid bigotry, we need but call to mind that the Scriptures themselves emphatically describe speech as man's own creation (Gen. ii. 19, 20).

Whoever wishes to obtain a clear conception of the first beginnings of human language, must first take warning that all comparisons of existing vocabularies mislead him. If we only trace back for a few centuries the names of towns and countries, we shall see how, in the course of time, they have been

1 C. Geiger, Ursprung der Sprache, p. 190.

Mutability of Language.

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deceptively metamorphosed beyond recognition. A. Bacmeister tells us that Wildenschwerdt was originally Wilhelmswerd; Waldsee (Würtemberg) is corrupted from Walchsee, Oehringen from Oringau, Welzheim from Walinzin, Holzbach from Heroldsbach. Only 300 years ago Martin Luther could still write that "Gott thue nichts als schlechtes, und das Evangelium sei eine kindische Lehre "-God does nothing but what is bad, and the Gospel is a childish doctrine. But at that time schlecht (bad) meant something schlichtes (smooth, honest, upright), as in the idiom "recht und schlecht" (upright and downright), and kindisch (childish) something kindliches (child-like). It is with no malicious significance that in the south of Germany every male child is termed a Bube, while in the north this expression now signifies only a reprobate; just as in English the word knave, corresponding to Knabe (boy), has acquired an unfavourable interpretation. We thus learn the important lesson that the meaning by no means adheres firmly to a phonetic combination, but that even in allied languages it is imperceptibly withdrawn, and even transferred to other phonetic groups.

The fact that the idea is thus independent of its phonetic expression, refutes the assertion so often made, that we think only in inwardly spoken language. On the contrary, thought without the aid of language accompanies nearly all our every-day acts. The musician also constructs his creations with a rhythmical succession of sounds; the painter selects colour to express his thoughts or his frame of mind, the sculptor selects the human form, the architect lines and surfaces, the geometrician limitations of space, the mathematician expressions of quantity. Were language, on the contrary, the strict and necessary phonetic embodiment of thought, thought would everywhere be expressed in the sounds.

We must, therefore, regard the connection of a certain meaning with certain phonetic combinations as something merely transitory. Philologists who have traced back the development of the IndoEuropean languages as far as records make it possible, were ultimately able to collect a number of roots which we must con

2 L. Geiger, pp. 64, 72.

sider as the oldest philological material obtainable.3 Yet we have no positive evidence that these roots were the primordial elements; we may rather assume that they also had undergone phonetic transformation before they reached us. Some nations, it is true, have the power of preserving phonetic combinations longer and more accurately, while others deal less steadily with the apparatus for the expression of ideas; still it may be asserted generally, that the stability of a language increases with the number of speakers, and at the same time with the more perfect organization of society. The extraordinary number of languages in North America is closely connected with the restless habits of the wandering hunting tribes. Where, on the contrary, well-organized societies existed, as in ancient Peru, the predominant Ketshua language prevailed over more than twenty degrees of latitude.

It has been explained by earlier writers that the belief in an existence after death accelerated the metamorphosis of language. The names of the departed were not mentioned for fear of summoning the ghost of the person mentioned. Many nations do not even dare to utter the real name of their deity, and something of the sort is enjoined in the third Sinaitic commandment. When the black small-pox broke out among the Dyaks of Borneo, every one fled in terror to the solitudes of the forest. No one ventured to call the disease by its name, but it was spoken of as the "jungle leaves," or "Datu" (chieftain), or people simply said, “is he gone?”4 But as, amongst most half-developed nations, proper names are compounded of words in daily use, new expressions must be invented to replace them.

When King Pomare died at Tahiti, the word po (night) vanished from the language. The same custom is, or was, observed by the Papuans of New Guinea, the Australians, and Tasmanians, the Masai of Eastern Africa, the Samoyeds, and the Fuegians. The influence of this habit on the metamorphosis of language must not, however, to be over-estimated, for when a new generation has

3 Steinthal, Psychologie und Sprachwissenschaft, vol. i. pp. 54, 361. Berlin, 1871. Whitney, Language and the Study of Language, pp. 413-420. London, 1867.

4 Spenser St. John, Far East, vol. i. pp. 61, 62. London, 1862.