Even numerals and personal
pronouns, which the Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries,
get lost every few years in Polynesia. Since the time of
Captain Cook the Tahitian language has thrown away five out of
its ten simple numerals, and replaced them by brand-new ones;
and on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent command of some
Indian dialect, and then, coming back after twenty years, find
yourself worse off than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all
antiquated and useless. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that
primeval savages originated a language which has held its own
like the old Aryan and become the prolific mother of the three
or four thousand dialects now in existence! Before a durable
language can arise, there must be an aggregation of numerous
tribes into a people, so that there may be need of
communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may be
strengthened. Wherever mankind have associated in nations,
permanent languages have arisen, and their derivative dialects
bear the conspicuous marks of kinship; but where mankind have
remained in their primitive savage isolation, their languages
have remained sporadic and transitory, incapable of organic
development, and showing no traces of a kinship which never
existed.
The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and
diffusion of barbaric myths is obvious.
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