The origin and growth of language evidently afford a great field for study, in not only tracing the development of civilization, but also in confirming the testimony of the ancients and the conclusions of the geologists. If the unity of language could not be established, there would still be left a field so great as would not lessen the interest or the importance of the subject. But a new language cannot be formed. For the sake of convenience the many varieties of language have been grouped into three great divisions, i. e., the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Turanian. "The English, together with all the Teutonic languages of the Continent, Celtic, Slavonic, Greek, Latin with its modern offshoots, such as French and Italian, Persian, and Sanskrit, are so many varieties of one common type of speech: that Sanskrit, the ancient language of the Veda, is no more distinct from the Greek of Homer, ... or from the Anglo-Saxon of Alfred, than French is from Italian. All these languages together form one family, one whole, in which every member shares certain features in common with all the rest, and is at the same time distinguished from the rest by certain features peculiarly its own. The same applies to the Semitic family which comprises, as its most important members, the Hebrew of the Old Testament, the Arabic of the Koran, and the ancient languages on the monuments of Phoenicia and Carthage, of Babylon and Assyria. These languages, again, form a compact family, and differ entirely from the other family, which we called Aryan or Indo-European. The third group of languages, for we can hardly call it a family, comprises most of the remaining languages of Asia, and counts among its principal members the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic, Samoyedic, and Finnic, together with the languages of Siam, the Malay Islands, Thibet, and Southern India. Lastly, the Chinese language stands by itself as monosyllabic, the only remnant of the earliest formation of human speech."[103]

Anterior to these three families there was still another from which these were derived. It contained the germs of all the Turanian, as well as the Aryan and Semitic forms of speech. It belongs to that period in the history of man when ideas were first clothed in language, and has been called the Rhematic Period.[104]

As regards the origin of language, three theories have been proposed: the Interjectional, the Imitation, and the Root. The first supposes that the beginnings of human speech were the cries and sounds which are uttered when a human being is affected by fear, pain, or joy. The second supposes "that man, being as yet mute, heard the voices of birds, and dogs, and cows, the thunder of the clouds, the roaring of the sea, the rustling of the forest, the murmurs of the brook, and the whisper of the breeze. He tried to imitate these sounds, and finding his mimicking cries useful as signs of the objects from which they proceeded, he followed up the idea and elaborated language." The third theory, advanced by Max MÜller, is that language followed as the outward sign and realization of that inward faculty which is called the faculty of abstraction, and the roots, to which language may be reduced, express a general, not an individual idea.[105]

There is more or less truth in all these theories. At the very earliest period man must have possessed some method of communicating his wants or ideas. The casual observer has noticed that animals have methods of communicating with one another. It is not improbable that at the very earliest period man's only mode was that of cries and signs. This may have lasted for a very long time. Then the mimicking commenced. Next, comparison was resorted to when he had so far advanced as to describe his thoughts and, finally, from these various beginnings, from necessary or forced improvement, his ideas were expressed in root words.[106]

Instead of new languages originating, old languages change. They are mutable, and from them new dialects are produced. In the history of man there never has been a new language, and the languages now spoken are but the modifications of old ones. The words now used by all people, however broken up, crushed, or put together, are the same materials as were used in the beginnings of speech. New words are but old words; old in their material elements, though they may be renewed and dressed in various forms. "The modifiability of the language and its tendency to vary never cease, so that it would readily run into new dialects and modes of pronunciation if there were no communication with the mother country direct or indirect. In this respect its mutability will resemble that of species, and it can no more spring up independently in separate districts than species can, assuming that these last are all of derivative origin."[107]There are from four thousand to six thousand living languages. The number of unspoken languages is not known. Their growth has required ages, and during their development many a parent stalk has ceased to exist. The changes in a language are slowly produced. It requires centuries to so far leave a language as to need an interpreter in order to understand it. Some idea of this slow change may be gained by comparing the writings in the English language of different periods. In the year 1362 appeared a poem called "Piers Ploughman's Creed," which begins as follows:

"In a summer season,
When soft was the sun,
I shoop me into shrowds[108]
As I a sheep[109] were;
In habit as an hermit
Unholy of werkes,
Went wide in this world
Wonders to hear;
Ac[110] on a May morwening
On Malvern hills
Me befel a ferly,[111]
Of fairy me thought." Etc.