CHAPTER IX. THE FAMILIES OF LANGUAGES.

“Facies non omnibus una,
Nec diversa tamen, quales decet esse sororum.”—Virg.

It has been considered by many that language has passed through four[236] stages. 1. A period in which words succeed each other in the natural order of the thought, with nothing except this order to express their mutual relation, and with few or no inflections, as in Chinese. 2. A period of agglutination in which the smaller words to express relation have assumed an inflectional form, but without losing the trace of their originally distinct existence, as in Mongol and the majority of existing languages. 3. A period of amalgamation, in which the language becomes purely inflectional, as in Latin and Greek. 4. A period of analysis, in which inflections fall off and get displaced by separate words, auxiliaries, prepositions, &c., as in English.[237]

That languages exist in each of these conditions is undeniable, but that they represent an historical sequence is an inference which may well be disputed. The common à priori notion that complexity is a proof of development is, as we have already seen, entirely erroneous; since the languages of American savages and central Africans are surprising in their grammatical richness, and the bald monosyllabic Chinese is yet an adequate organ for a developed civilisation. The logical order is not the same as the historical. It is the opinion of M. Renan that each branch of languages was, from the first, pervaded by one dominant idea, which was due to the genius of the race by which it was produced, and that, from this idea, all further changes directly derive their origin. The entire language existed implicitly in its primitive stage, just as a bud contains entire every essential part of the full-grown flower. Languages once monosyllabic, for instance, have, he maintains, always continued so, and although some languages of the trans-Gangetic peninsula have effected a real progress in the direction of grammatical polysyllabism, yet an abyss still separates them from the languages which are truly grammatical,—an abyss which, he thinks, never has been and never can be bridged over.

But we shall be better able to enter on these most important considerations when we have glanced at the certain results respecting the classification of languages which have been at present established by modern philology.

Two families of languages, embracing a large and widely-separated number of the spoken languages of the globe, have now been distinctly recognised and clearly defined. These are the Indo-European, and the Semitic. The remaining languages, which are non-Semitic and non-Arian, have been recently included under the general name Turanian, and the high authority of Baron Bunsen and Prof. Max Müller has secured for this name a wide acceptation. We shall see hereafter that the semblance of unity in these languages, which is assumed by the adoption of this name, has been disputed by some of the ablest philologists, and at any rate the languages of the so-called Turanian family have far less real claim to the ties of mutual relationship than the members of the Semitic and Indo-European families.

I. Of these families, the noblest and most widely spread is the Indo-European, or as it is now more generally called, the Arian family. Neither of these names is entirely[238] unobjectionable, though either of them is preferable to the term Indo-Germanic, which is now abandoned as wholly inaccurate. The name Indo-European marks the geographical extent of these languages, but it is inconvenient, and not quite wide enough. The name Arian was given them because the ancestors of the people who spoke them are supposed to have called themselves “Arya,”[239] or nobly-born. This name is now generally adopted, and M. Pictet, one of the profoundest of modern comparative philologists, has called his most recent work, “Les Origines Indo-Européennes ou les Aryas Primitifs.” But although this term Arya is of frequent occurrence in the later Sanskrit literature, and was also familiar to the Persians, the traces of it among the other branches of the race are few and dubious; they are but very “faint [240] echoes,” if echoes at all, “of a name which once sounded through the valleys of the Himâlaya.” Still it is not likely that this name will now be superseded, as Rask’s term Japhetic involves an unwarrantable assumption; and the name Pataric (derived from Patar, the Sanskrit “pitar,” a father), which has been recently suggested,[241] is not likely to gain ground.

The Arian family comprises eight divisions, the Hindu, the Persian, Greek, Latin, Lithuanian, Sclavonic, Teutonic, and Celtic; of these it is uncertain whether the Celtic or the Sanskrit represents the oldest phase, but it is known that all of them are the daughters of a primeval form of language which has now ceased to exist, but which was spoken by a yet-undivided race at a period when Sanskrit and Greek had, as yet, only an implicit existence. “It is,” says M. Renan,[242] “the noblest conquest of comparative philology to have enabled us to cast a bold glance over this primitive Arian period, when the whole germ of the world’s civilisation was concentrated in one straight ray. Just as the Romance dialects are all derived from a language which was once spoken by a small tribe on the banks of the Tiber; so the Indo-European languages presuppose a language spoken in a very narrow district. What motive, for instance, could have induced all Indo-European nations to derive the name of ‘father’ from the root ‘pa’ and the suffix ‘tri’ or ‘tar,’ if this word, in its complete shape, had not formed part of the vocabulary of the primitive Arians? What motive, above all, could have induced them, after their departure, to derive the name of ‘daughter’ from a notion so special as that of milking [243] (Sanskrit duhitri, θυγάτηρ, dochter, &c.), if this word had not deduced the reason for its form in the manners of an ancient pastoral family?” It is from considerations such as these that we prove the great fact of the Indo-European unity,—the New World now thrown open to modern scholarship. “That the Sanskrit, the ancient language of India, the very[244] existence of which was unknown to the Greeks and Romans before Alexander, and the sound of which had never reached a European ear till the close of the last century, that this language should be a scion of the same stem, whose branches overshadow the civilised world of Europe, no one would have ventured to affirm before the rise of comparative philology. It was the generally received opinion that if Greek, Latin, and German came from the east, they must be derived from the Hebrew,—an opinion for which, at the present day, not a single advocate could be found,[245] while formerly to disbelieve it would have been tantamount to heresy. No authority could have been strong enough to persuade the Grecian army that their gods and their hero-ancestors were the same as those of King Porus, or to convince the English soldier that the same blood was running in his veins, as in the veins of the dark Bengalese. And yet there is not an English jury now-a-days, which, after examining the hoary documents of language, would reject the claims of a common descent and a legitimate relationship between Hindu, Greek, and Teuton. Many words still live in India and in England that witnessed the first separation of the northern and southern Arians, and these are witnesses not to be shaken by any cross-examination. Though the historian may shake his head, though the physiologist may doubt, and the poet scorn the idea, all must yield before the facts furnished by language. There was a time when the ancestors of the Celts, the Germans, the Danes, the Greeks, the Italians, the Persians, and Hindus, were living beneath the same roof, separate from the ancestors of the Semitic and Turanian races.”

Comparative philology enables us to form a very probable conjecture respecting the cradle of the Arian race, and even to draw in outline a picture of their primitive civilisation. We know that this race was not indigenous in India. M. Lassen has proved that it entered India from[246] the north as an aristocratic and conquering nation, distinguished by its fair complexion from the swarthier aborigines; and a crowd of linguistic inferences converge into a proof that it sprang from the mountain-cradle of Imäus, from which neighbourhood it seems likely that the Shemites also derived their origin.

The traditions of the Arians, as well as the facts of their language, point to Bactriana, as the region in which they first appeared; central in position, temperate in climate, rich in the metals always found in mountainous countries, resembling Europe in its flora and fauna, and equally removed from tropical luxuriance and northern poverty, no other country could be found more perfectly suited for the peaceable development of the noble family which was destined to mould the character of the world.

The Arians did not appear till late in the world’s history. “The Achæmenid empire, which is the first great conquering Arian empire, is contemporary with a period when the descendants of Ham had already lost all excellence, and when China had long arrived at that degree of administrative absorption of which the Tcheou-li affords an astonishing picture, and which has so near a resemblance to absolute decrepitude. Brilliant civilisations, powerful kings, organised empires, already existed in the world at a period when our ancestors were still a race of poor and ignorant peasants. And yet it was these austere patriarchs who, in the midst of their chaste and obedient families, thanks to their pride, their cultivation of right, and their noble self-respect, laid the foundation of the future. Their thoughts, their terms, were destined to become the law of the moral and intellectual world. They created those eternal words, which, with many changing shades of meaning, were destined to become ‘honour,’[247] ‘virtue,’ ‘duty.’”

In speaking thus of the apparition of a race or a language, we only mean the time at which man awoke to reflection and consciousness. The origin of language is not necessarily identical (considered scientifically) with the origin of mankind. The circumstances and conditions under which man first appeared on the face of the world is a subject for the research of the physiologist, rather than the philologist, and it is more than doubtful whether the most earnest inquiries will ever be able to draw aside the thick veil which hides the dawn of human life. In endeavouring to derive from the facts of language some conjecture as to the nucleus around which it grew, and the primitive condition of the races with whose distinctive genius it is indelibly stamped, we are not pretending to throw any light on the original appearance of the fathers of mankind.

II. Second in importance, although earlier in historical development, stands the great SEMITIC family of languages. Formerly they were called by the general name of oriental languages, and Eichhorn was, we believe, the first to give them their present designation. The name is, however, defective, since many people who spoke Semitic languages (as for instance the Phœnicians) were descended, according to Gen. x., from Ham, and several mentioned in that chapter as descendants of Shem (for instance, the Elamites), did not speak a Semitic language. But it is now generally agreed that the sense of this document is geographical, not ethnographical, and that the name of Shem is a general term to describe the central zone of the earth. Were we to name these languages, on the analogy of the word Indo-European, from their extreme terms, we must call them Syro-Arabian. Leibnitz suggested the name Arabic, but this would be to use an objectionable synecdoche, and, on the whole, the term Semitic involves no inconvenient consequences if it be considered as purely conventional.[248]

The Semitic languages have been destined to exercise a stupendous influence over the religious thought of mankind. Almost unconscious of science and philosophy, this theocratic race has devoted itself to the expression of religious instincts and intuitions,—in one word, to the establishment of Monotheism. The three most widely spread and enduring forms of belief originated in the bosom of this family. They were essentially the people of God, and to them belong, par excellence, the psalm, and the proverb, and the prophecy,—the words of the wise, and their dark sayings upon the harp. Clear but narrow in their conceptions, marked by their subjective character, and capable of understanding unity but not multiplicity; they lacked alike the lofty spiritualism of India and Germany, the keen sense of perfect beauty which was the legacy of Greece to the new Latin nations, and the profound yet delicate sensibility which is the dominant mark of the Celtic peoples. And yet neither India nor Greece alone could have taught the world the great lesson which was connected by the Semitic race with their most imperious instincts, that there is but one God, and that religion is something more than a relative conception. Destitute of that restless spirit of inquiry which has led the sister-race to explore every nook of the universe and every secret of the mind, the highest attainment of Semitic research is to declare that the increase of knowledge is the increase of sorrow, and that the praise and service of God is the sole end and aim of life. It was a great lesson which the world could ill have spared, and it more than atoned for the absence of research, of imagination, of art, of military organisation, of public spirit, of political life: it more than atones even for an egotistic poetry and a defective conception of morality and duty.

The Semitic languages partake of the characteristics of that race whose thoughts they embodied. They are simple and rigid, metallic rather than fluid; physical and sensuous in their character, deficient in abstraction, and almost incapable of metaphysical accuracy. The roots are triliteral in form and so few in number that their meanings are generally vague, being in fact a series of metaphorical applications of some sensible perception. They are deficient in style and in perspective; they are, as Ewald observes, lyric and poetic, rather than oratorical and epic; they are the best means of showing us the primitive tendencies of language; they may be compared to the utterances of a fair and intelligent infancy retained in a manhood which has not fulfilled the brilliant promise of its early days.

The Semitic family has three main branches—viz., the Aramaic, divided into two dialects, Syriac and Chaldee; the Hebrew, with which is connected the Carthaginian and Phœnician, and the Arabic. Besides these the Egyptian, the Babylonian, and the Assyrian and the Berber dialects are now considered to have a Semitic character, such at least is the conclusion arrived at by those whose authority is of the highest importance—viz., Champollion and Bunsen in the case of Egyptian, MM. Lassen and Eugène Burnouf, Dr. Hincks and Sir H. Rawlinson in the case of Assyrian, and Prof. F. Newman in the case of the Berber dialects.[249] It is admitted, however, that the people speaking these languages were the cognate rather than the agnate descendants of Shem; and it must not be overlooked, that the conclusion which would rank these languages as indubitably Semitic is rejected by philologists so celebrated as MM. Pott, Ewald, Wenrich, and Renan.[250]

III. All languages which belong to neither of these two great families have been classed together under the name of the Turanian, Nomadic, or Allophylian family,[251] which “comprises all languages spoken in Asia or Europe, not included under the Arian and Semitic families, with the exception perhaps of the Chinese and its dialects.”

The chief labourers in the field of Turanian philology were Rask, Klaproth, Schott, and Castren; but even M. Müller, one of the main authorities for the classification of the various branches of language which occupy this wide range (e.g., the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoiedic, and Finnic), candidly admits that the characteristic marks of union ascertained for this immense variety of languages, “are as yet very vague and general, if compared with the definite ties of relationship which severally unite the Semitic and the Arian.” He argues, however, that this is exactly what we should have expected, à priori, in the case of Nomadic languages spoken over an area so vast; languages which have never been the instruments of political organisation, which have no history in the past and no destiny in the future, and which never had any literature to give fixity to their acknowledged unsettledness. Though the “Turanian” languages occupy by far the largest portion of the earth (viz., all but India, Arabia, Asia-Minor and Europe), there is not a single positive principle, except perhaps agglutination, which can be proved to pervade them all.[252]

It is impossible here to examine the arguments on which the unity of this family has been considered to be approximately established, while it is admitted that this unity does not admit of any proof so strong and decisive as in the case of the Indo-European and Semitic families. Those who seek the evidence will find it stated, at full length, and with great eloquence and ability, by Prof. Max Müller, in his “Survey of Languages,” and also in Baron Bunsen’s “Outlines.” Suffice it here to say, that to many the vast group of Tartaro-Finnic languages still appear to be purely sporadic, and to have no common character except such as is involved in their being neither Arian nor Semitic, i.e., in the purely negative trait of an absence of certain development. Under these circumstances, we think that for the present it would be far better to call these languages by the purely negative name, Allophylian,[253]—a name which involves no hypothesis, and which has the advantage of being the simple assertion of a fact.

But even supposing that we unhesitatingly admit a postulate so large as that required of us, by the supposition that the Nomad languages may be united into one family, which has points of affinity with the dialects of Africa and America, and even with Chinese, the further and more important question still remains; Are there any points of osculation between the languages of these three great distinct families? Is there any evidence in the present state of philology sufficiently strong to induce a scientific belief in the primitive unity of human language, and therefore of the human race? The answer to that question must be found in the next chapter, and I need only premise, that it is here treated as a question of pure science, and is entirely separated from its theological bearings. The question before us is not “must we believe in the unity of the human race?” but “does philology furnish any proofs or presumptions of the unity of the human race?”