In the barbaric world it is
quite otherwise. Philology does not pronounce in favour of a
common origin for all barbaric culture, such as it is. The
notion of a single primitive language, standing in the same
relation to all existing dialects as the relation of old Aryan
to Latin and English, or that of old Semitic to Hebrew and
Arabic, was a notion suited only to the infancy of linguistic
science. As the case now stands, it is certain that all the
languages actually existing cannot be referred to a common
ancestor, and it is altogether probable that there never was
any such common ancestor. I am not now referring to the
question of the unity of the human race. That question lies
entirely outside the sphere of philology. The science of
language has nothing to do with skulls or complexions, and no
comparison of words can tell us whether the black men are
brethren of the white men, or whether yellow and red men have
a common pedigree: these questions belong to comparative
physiology. But the science of language can and does tell us
that a certain amount of civilization is requisite for the
production of a language sufficiently durable and wide-spread
to give birth to numerous mutually resembling offspring
Barbaric languages are neither widespread nor durable. Among
savages each little group of families has its own dialect, and
coins its own expressions at pleasure; and in the course of
two or three generations a dialect gets so strangely altered
as virtually to lose its identity.
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