The first objection which was sure to be raised on the part of such sciences as botany, geology, or physiology is this:—Language is the work of man; it was invented by man as a means of communicating his thoughts, when mere looks and gestures proved inefficient; and it was gradually, by the combined efforts of succeeding generations, brought to that perfection which we admire in the idiom of the Bible, the Vedas, the Koran, and in the poetry of Homer, Virgil, Dante, and Shakespeare. Now it is perfectly true that if language be the work of man, in the same sense in which a statue, or a temple, or a poem, or a law are properly called the works of man, the science of language would have to be classed as an historical science. We should have a history of language as we have a history of art, of poetry, and of jurisprudence, but we could not claim for it a place side by side with the various branches of Natural History. It is true, also, that if you consult the works of the most distinguished modern philosophers you will find that whenever they speak of language, they take it for granted that language is a human invention, that words are artificial signs, and that the varieties of human speech arose from different nations agreeing on different sounds as the most appropriate signs of their different ideas. This view of the origin of language was so powerfully advocated by the leading philosophers of the last century, that it has retained an undisputed currency even among those who, on almost every other point, are strongly opposed to the teaching of that school. A few voices, indeed, have been raised to protest against the theory of language being originally invented by man. But they, in their zeal to vindicate [pg 040] the divine origin of language, seem to have been carried away so far as to run counter to the express statements of the Bible. For in the Bible it is not the Creator who gives names to all things, but Adam. “Out of the ground,” we read, “the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof.”14 But with the exception of this small class of philosophers, more orthodox even than the Bible,15 the generally received opinion on the origin of language is that which was held by Locke, which was powerfully advocated by Adam Smith in his Essay on the Origin of Language, appended to his Treatise on Moral Sentiments, and which was adopted with slight modifications by Dugald Stewart. According to them, man must have lived for a time in a state of mutism, his only means of communication consisting in gestures of the body, and in the changes of countenance, till at last, when ideas multiplied that could no longer be pointed at with the fingers, “they found it necessary to invent artificial signs of which the meaning was [pg 041] fixed by mutual agreement.” We need not dwell on minor differences of opinion as to the exact process by which this artificial language is supposed to have been formed. Adam Smith would wish us to believe that the first artificial words were verbs. Nouns, he thinks, were of less urgent necessity because things could be pointed at or imitated, whereas mere actions, such as are expressed by verbs, could not. He therefore supposes that when people saw a wolf coming, they pointed at him, and simply cried out, “He comes.” Dugald Stewart, on the contrary, thinks that the first artificial words were nouns, and that the verbs were supplied by gesture; that, therefore, when people saw a wolf coming, they did not cry “He comes,” but “Wolf, Wolf,” leaving the rest to be imagined.16

But whether the verb or the noun was the first to be invented is of little importance; nor is it possible for us, at the very beginning of our inquiry into the nature of language, to enter upon a minute examination of a theory which represents language as a work of human art, and as established by mutual agreement as a medium of communication. While fully admitting that if this theory were true, the science of language would not come within the pale of the physical sciences, I must content myself for the present with pointing out that no one has yet explained how, without language, a discussion on the merits of each word, such as must necessarily have preceded a mutual agreement, could have been carried on. But as it is the object of these lectures to prove that language is not a work of human art, in the same sense [pg 042] as painting, or building, or writing, or printing, I must ask to be allowed, in this preliminary stage, simply to enter my protest against a theory, which, though still taught in the schools, is, nevertheless, I believe, without a single fact to support its truth.

But there are other objections besides this which would seem to bar the admission of the science of language to the circle of the physical sciences. Whatever the origin of language may have been, it has been remarked with a strong appearance of truth, that language has a history of its own, like art, like law, like religion; and that, therefore, the science of language belongs to the circle of the historical, or, as they used to be called, the moral, in contradistinction to the physical sciences. It is a well-known fact, which recent researches have not shaken, that nature is incapable of progress or improvement. The flower which the botanist observes to-day was as perfect from the beginning. Animals, which are endowed with what is called an artistic instinct, have never brought that instinct to a higher degree of perfection. The hexagonal cells of the bee are not more regular in the nineteenth century than at any earlier period, and the gift of song has never, as far as we know, been brought to a higher perfection by our nightingale than by the Philomelo of the Greeks. “Natural History,” to quote Dr. Whewell's words,17 “when systematically treated, excludes all that is historical, for it classes objects by their permanent and universal properties, and has nothing to do with the narration of particular or casual facts.” Now, if we consider the large number of tongues spoken in different parts of [pg 043] the world with all their dialectic and provincial varieties, if we observe the great changes which each of these tongues has undergone in the course of centuries, how Latin was changed into Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, ProvenÇal, French, Wallachian, and Roumansch; how Latin again, together with Greek, and the Celtic, the Teutonic, and Slavonic languages, together likewise with the ancient dialects of India and Persia, must have sprung from an earlier language, the mother of the whole Indo-European or Aryan family of speech; if we see how Hebrew, Arabic, and Syriac, with several minor dialects, are but different impressions of one and the same common type, and must all have flowed from the same source, the original language of the Semitic race; and if we add to these two, the Aryan and Semitic, at least one more well-established class of languages, the Turanian, comprising the dialects of the nomad races scattered over Central and Northern Asia, the Tungusic, Mongolic, Turkic,18 Samoyedic, and Finnic, all radii from one common centre of speech:—if we watch this stream of language rolling on through centuries in these three mighty arms, which, before they disappear from our sight in the far distance, clearly show a convergence towards one common source: it would seem, indeed, as if there were an historical life inherent in language, and as if both the will of man and the power of time could tell, if not on its substance, at least on its form. And even if the mere local varieties of speech were not considered sufficient ground for excluding language from the domain of natural science, there would still remain the greater [pg 044] difficulty of reconciling with the recognized principles of physical science the historical changes affecting every one of these varieties. Every part of nature, whether mineral, plant, or animal, is the same in kind from the beginning to the end of its existence, whereas few languages could be recognized as the same after the lapse of but a thousand years. The language of Alfred is so different from the English of the present day that we have to study it in the same manner as we study Greek and Latin. We can read Milton and Bacon, Shakespeare and Hooker; we can make out Wycliffe and Chaucer; but, when we come to the English of the thirteenth century, we can but guess its meaning, and we fail even in this with works previous to the Ormulum and Layamon. The historical changes of language may be more or less rapid, but they take place at all times and in all countries. They have reduced the rich and powerful idiom of the poets of the Veda to the meagre and impure jargon of the modern Sepoy. They have transformed the language of the Zend-Avesta and of the mountain records of BehistÚn into that of Firdusi and the modern Persians; the language of Virgil into that of Dante, the language of Ulfilas into that of Charlemagne, the language of Charlemagne into that of Goethe. We have reason to believe that the same changes take place with even greater violence and rapidity in the dialects of savage tribes, although, in the absence of a written literature, it is extremely difficult to obtain trustworthy information. But in the few instances where careful observations have been made on this interesting subject, it has been found that among the wild and illiterate tribes of Siberia, Africa, and Siam, two or three generations are [pg 045] sufficient to change the whole aspect of their dialects. The languages of highly civilized nations, on the contrary, become more and more stationary, and seem sometimes almost to lose their power of change. Where there is a classical literature, and where its language is spread to every town and village, it seems almost impossible that any further changes should take place. Nevertheless, the language of Rome, for so many centuries the queen of the whole civilized world, was deposed by the modern Romance dialects, and the ancient Greek was supplanted in the end by the modern Romaic. And though the art of printing and the wide diffusion of Bibles, and Prayer-books, and newspapers have acted as still more powerful barriers to arrest the constant flow of human speech, we may see that the language of the authorized version of the Bible, though perfectly intelligible, is no longer the spoken language of England. In Booker's Scripture and Prayer-book Glossary19 the number of words or senses of words which have become obsolete since 1611, amount to 388, or nearly one fifteenth part of the whole number of words used in the Bible. Smaller changes, changes of accent and meaning, the reception of new, and the dropping of old words, we may watch as taking place under our own eyes. Rogers20 said that “cÓntemplate is bad enough, but bÁlcony makes me sick,” whereas at present no one is startled by cÓntemplate instead of contÉmplate, and bÁlcony has become more usual than balcÓny. Thus Roome and chaney, layloc and goold, have but lately been driven from the stage by Rome, china, [pg 046] lilac, and gold, and some courteous gentlemen of the old school still continue to be obleeged instead of being obliged. Force,21 in the sense of a waterfall, and gill, in the sense of a rocky ravine, were not used in classical English before Wordsworth. Handbook,22 though an old Anglo-Saxon word, has but lately taken the place of manual, and a number of words such as cab for cabriolet, buss for omnibus, and even a verb such as to shunt tremble still on the boundary line between the vulgar and the literary idioms. Though the grammatical changes that have taken place since the publication of the authorized version are yet fewer in number, still we may point out some. The termination of the third person singular in th is now entirely replaced by s. No one now says he liveth, but only he lives. Several of the irregular imperfects and participles have assumed a new form. No one now uses he spake, and he drave, instead of he spoke, and he drove; holpen is replaced by helped; holden by held; shapen by shaped. The distinction between ye and you, the former being reserved for the nominative, the latter for all the other cases, is given up in modern English; and what is apparently a new grammatical form, the possessive pronoun its, has sprung into life since the beginning of the seventeenth century. It never occurs in the Bible; and though it is used three or four times by Shakespeare, Ben Jonson does not recognize it as yet in his English Grammar.23

It is argued, therefore, that as language, differing thereby from all other productions of nature, is liable to historical alterations, it is not fit to be treated in the [pg 047] same manner as the subject-matter of all the other physical sciences.

There is something very plausible in this objection, but if we examine it more carefully, we shall find that it rests entirely on a confusion of terms. We must distinguish between historical change and natural growth. Art, science, philosophy, and religion all have a history; language, or any other production of nature, admits only of growth.

Let us consider, first, that although there is a continuous change in language, it is not in the power of man either to produce or to prevent it. We might think as well of changing the laws which control the circulation of our blood, or of adding an inch to our height, as of altering the laws of speech, or inventing new words according to our own pleasure. As man is the lord of nature only if he knows her laws and submits to them, the poet and the philosopher become the lords of language only if they know its laws and obey them.

When the Emperor Tiberius had made a mistake, and was reproved for it by Marcellus, another grammarian of the name of Capito, who happened to be present, remarked that what the emperor said was good Latin, or, if it were not, it would soon be so. Marcellus, more of a grammarian than a courtier, replied, “Capito is a liar; for, CÆsar, thou canst give the Roman citizenship to men, but not to words.” A similar anecdote is told of the German Emperor Sigismund. When presiding at the Council of Costnitz, he addressed the assembly in a Latin speech, exhorting them to eradicate the schism of the Hussites. “Videte Patres,” he said, “ut eradicetis schismam Hussitarum.” He was very unceremoniously called [pg 048] to order by a monk, who called out, “Serenissime Rex, schisma est generis neutri.”24 The emperor, however, without losing his presence of mind, asked the impertinent monk, “How do you know it?” The old Bohemian school-master replied, “Alexander Gallus says so.” “And who is Alexander Gallus?” the emperor rejoined. The monk replied, “He was a monk.” “Well,” said the emperor, “and I am Emperor of Rome; and my word, I trust, will be as good as the word of any monk.” No doubt the laughers were with the emperor; but for all that, schisma remained a neuter, and not even an emperor could change its gender or termination.

The idea that language can be changed and improved by man is by no means a new one. We know that Protagoras, an ancient Greek philosopher, after laying down some laws on gender, actually began to find fault with the text of Homer, because it did not agree with his rules. But here, as in every other instance, the attempt proved unavailing. Try to alter the smallest rule of English, and you will find that it is physically impossible. There is apparently a very small difference between much and very, but you can hardly ever put one in the place of the other. You can say, “I am very happy,” but not “I am much happy,” though you may say “I am most happy.” On the contrary, you can say “I am much misunderstood,” but not “I am very misunderstood.” Thus the western Romance dialects, Spanish and Portuguese, together [pg 049] with Wallachian, can only employ the Latin word magis for forming comparatives:—Sp. mas dulce; Port. mais doce; Wall, mai dulce; while French, ProvenÇal, and Italian only allow of plus for the same purpose: Ital. piÙ dolce; Prov. plus dous; Fr. plus doux. It is by no means impossible, however, that this distinction between very, which is now used with adjectives only, and much, which precedes participles, should disappear in time. In fact, “very pleased” and “very delighted” are Americanisms which may be heard even in this country. But if that change take place, it will not be by the will of any individual, nor by the mutual agreement of any large number of men, but rather in spite of the exertions of grammarians and academies. And here you perceive the first difference between history and growth. An emperor may change the laws of society, the forms of religion, the rules of art: it is in the power of one generation, or even of one individual, to raise an art to the highest pitch of perfection, while the next may allow it to lapse, till a new genius takes it up again with renewed ardor. In all this we have to deal with the conscious acts of individuals, and we therefore move on historical ground. If we compare the creations of Michael Angelo or Raphael with the statues and frescoes of ancient Rome, we can speak of a history of art. We can connect two periods separated by thousands of years through the works of those who handed on the traditions of art from century to century; but we shall never meet with that continuous and unconscious growth which connects the language of Plautus with that of Dante. The process through which language is settled and unsettled combines in one the two opposite [pg 050] elements of necessity and free will. Though the individual seems to be the prime agent in producing new words and new grammatical forms, he is so only after his individuality has been merged in the common action of the family, tribe, or nation to which he belongs. He can do nothing by himself, and the first impulse to a new formation in language, though given by an individual, is mostly, if not always, given without premeditation, nay, unconsciously. The individual, as such, is powerless, and the results apparently produced by him depend on laws beyond his control, and on the co-operation of all those who form together with him one class, one body, or one organic whole.

But, though it is easy to show, as we have just done, that language cannot be changed or moulded by the taste, the fancy, or genius of man, it is very difficult to explain what causes the growth of language. Ever since Horace it has been usual to compare the growth of languages with the growth of trees. But comparisons are treacherous things. What do we know of the real causes of the growth of a tree, and what can we gain by comparing things which we do not quite understand with things which we understand even less? Many people speak, for instance, of the terminations of the verb, as if they sprouted out from the root as from their parent stock.25 But what ideas can they connect with such expressions? If we must compare language with a tree, there is one point which may be illustrated by this comparison, and this is that neither language nor the tree can exist or grow by itself. Without the soil, without air and light, the tree could not live; it could not even be conceived to live. It is the same [pg 051] with language. Language cannot exist by itself; it requires a soil on which to grow, and that soil is the human soul. To speak of language as a thing by itself, as living a life of its own, as growing to maturity, producing offspring, and dying away, is sheer mythology; and though we cannot help using metaphorical expressions, we should always be on our guard, when engaged in inquiries like the present, against being carried away by the very words which we are using.

Now, what we call the growth of language comprises two processes which should be carefully distinguished, though they may be at work simultaneously. These two processes I call,

1. Dialectical Regeneration.

2. Phonetic Decay.

I begin with the second, as the more obvious, though in reality its operations are mostly subsequent to the operations of dialectical regeneration. I must ask you at present to take it for granted that everything in language had originally a meaning. As language can have no other object but to express our meaning, it might seem to follow almost by necessity that language should contain neither more nor less than what is required for that purpose. It would also seem to follow that if language contains no more than what is necessary for conveying a certain meaning, it would be impossible to modify any part of it without defeating its very purpose. This is really the case in some languages. In Chinese, for instance, ten is expressed by shĭ. It would be impossible to change shĭ in the slightest way without making it unfit to express ten. If instead of shĭ we pronounced t'sĭ, this would mean seven, but not ten. But now, suppose we wished to [pg 052] express double the quantity of ten, twice ten, or twenty. We should in Chinese take eÚl, which is two, put it before shĭ, and say eÚl-shĭ, twenty. The same caution which applied to shĭ, applies again to eÚl-shĭ. As soon as you change it, by adding or dropping a single letter, it is no longer twenty, but either something else or nothing. We find exactly the same in other languages which, like Chinese, are called monosyllabic. In Tibetan, chu is ten, nyi two; nyi-chu, twenty. In Burmese she is ten, nhit two; nhit-she, twenty.

But how is it in English, or in Gothic, or in Greek and Latin, or in Sanskrit? We do not say two-ten in English, nor duo-decem in Latin, nor dvi-da'sa in Sanskrit.

Now here we see, first, that the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, are only local modifications of one and the same original word; whereas the English twenty is a new compound, the Gothic tvai tigjus (two decads), the Anglo-Saxon tuÊntig, framed from Teutonic materials; a product, as we shall see, of Dialectical Regeneration.

We next observe that the first part of the Latin viginti and of the Sanskrit vin'sati contains the same number, which from dvi has been reduced to vi. This is not very extraordinary; for the Latin bis, twice, which you still hear at our concerts, likewise stands for an original dvis, the English twice, the Greek dis. This dis appears again as a Latin preposition, meaning a-two; so that, for instance, discussion means, originally, [pg 053] striking a-two, different from percussion, which means striking through and through. Discussion is, in fact, the cracking of a nut in order to get at its kernel. Well, the same word, dvi or vi, we have in the Latin word for twenty, which is vi-ginti, the Sanskrit vin-'sati.

It can likewise be proved that the second part of viginti is a corruption of the old word for ten. Ten, in Sanskrit, is da'san; from it is derived da'sati, a decad; and this da'sati was again reduced to 'sati; thus giving us with vi for dvi, two, the Sanskrit vi'sati or vin'sati, twenty. The Latin viginti, the Greek eikati, owe their origin to the same process.

Now consider the immense difference—I do not mean in sound, but in character—between two such words as the Chinese eÚl-shĭ, two-ten, or twenty, and those mere cripples of words which we meet with in Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin. In Chinese there is neither too much, nor too little. The word speaks for itself, and requires no commentary. In Sanskrit, on the contrary, the most essential parts of the two component elements are gone, and what remains is a kind of metamorphic agglomerate which cannot be understood without a most minute microscopic analysis. Here, then, you have an instance of what is meant by phonetic corruption; and you will perceive how, not only the form, but the whole nature of language is destroyed by it. As soon as phonetic corruption shows itself in a language, that language has lost what we considered to be the most essential character of all human speech, namely, that every part of it should have a meaning. The people who spoke Sanskrit were as little aware that vin'sati meant twice ten [pg 054] as a Frenchman is that vingt contains the remains of deux and dix. Language, therefore, has entered into a new stage as soon as it submits to the attacks of phonetic change. The life of language has become benumbed and extinct in those words or portions of words which show the first traces of this phonetic mould. Henceforth those words or portions of words can be kept up only artificially or by tradition; and, what is important, a distinction is henceforth established between what is substantial or radical, and what is merely formal or grammatical in words.

For let us now take another instance, which will make it clearer, how phonetic corruption leads to the first appearance of so-called grammatical forms. We are not in the habit of looking on twenty as the plural or dual of ten. But how was a plural originally formed? In Chinese, which from the first has guarded most carefully against the taint of phonetic corruption, the plural is formed in the most sensible manner. Thus, man in Chinese is ģin; kiai means the whole or totality. This added to ģin gives ģin-kiai, which is the plural of man. There are other words which are used for the same purpose in Chinese; for instance, pÉi, which means a class. Hence, ĭ, a stranger, followed by pÉi, class, gives ĭ-pÉi, strangers. We have similar plurals in English, but we do not reckon them as grammatical forms. Thus, man-kind is formed exactly like ĭ-pÉi, stranger-kind; Christendom is the same as all Christians, and clergy is synonymous with clerici. The same process is followed in other cognate languages. In Tibetan the plural is formed by the addition of such words as kun, all, and t'sogs, multitude.27 [pg 055] Even the numerals, nine and hundred, are used for the same purpose. And here again, as long as these words are fully understood and kept alive, they resist phonetic corruption; but the moment they lose, so to say, their presence of mind, phonetic corruption sets in, and as soon as phonetic corruption has commenced its ravages, those portions of a word which it affects retain a merely artificial or conventional existence, and dwindle down to grammatical terminations.

I am afraid I should tax your patience too much were I to enter here on an analysis of the grammatical terminations in Sanskrit, Greek, or Latin, in order to show how these terminations arose out of independent words, which were slowly reduced to mere dust by the constant wear and tear of speech. But in order to explain how the principle of phonetic decay leads to the formation of grammatical terminations, let us look to languages with which we are more familiar. Let us take the French adverb. We are told by French grammarians28 that in order to form adverbs we have to add the termination ment. Thus from bon, good, we form bonnement, from vrai, true, vraiment. This termination does not exist in Latin. But we meet in Latin29 with expressions such as bon mente, in good faith. We read in Ovid, “Insistam forti mente,” I shall insist with a strong mind or will, I shall insist strongly; in French, “J'insisterai fortement.” Therefore, what has happened in the growth of Latin, or in the change of Latin into French, is simply this: in phrases such as forti mente, the last word was no longer felt as a distinct [pg 056] word, and it lost at the same time its distinct pronunciation. Mente, the ablative of mens, was changed into ment, and was preserved as a merely formal element, as the termination of adverbs, even in cases where a recollection of the original meaning of mente (with a mind), would have rendered its employment perfectly impossible. If we say in French that a hammer falls lourdement, we little suspect that we ascribe to a piece of iron a heavy mind. In Italian, though the adverbial termination mente in claramente is no longer felt as a distinct word, it has not as yet been affected by phonetic corruption; and in Spanish it is sometimes used as a distinct word, though even then it cannot be said to have retained its distinct meaning. Thus, instead of saying, “claramente, concisamente y elegantemente,” it is more elegant to say in Spanish, “clara, concisa y elegante mente.”

It is difficult to form any conception of the extent to which the whole surface of a language may be altered by what we have just described as phonetic change. Think that in the French vingt you have the same elements as in deux and dix; that the second part of the French douze, twelve, represents the Latin decim in duodecim; that the final te of trente was originally the Latin ginta in triginta, which ginta was again a derivation and abbreviation of the Sanskrit da'sa or da'sati, ten. Then consider how early this phonetic disease must have broken out. For in the same manner as vingt in French, veinte in Spanish, and venti in Italian presuppose the more primitive viginti which we find in Latin, so this Latin viginti, together with the Greek eikati, and the Sanskrit vin'sati presuppose an earlier language from which they are in turn [pg 057] derived, and in which, previous to viginti, there must have been a more primitive form dvi-ginti, and previous to this again, another compound as clear and intelligible as the Chinese eÚl-shĭ, consisting of the ancient Aryan names for two, dvi, and ten, da'sati. Such is the virulence of this phonetic change, that it will sometimes eat away the whole body of a word, and leave nothing behind but decayed fragments. Thus, sister, which in Sanskrit is svasar,30 appears in Pehlvi and in Ossetian as cho. Daughter, which in Sanskrit is duhitar, has dwindled down in Bohemian to dci (pronounced tsi).31 Who would believe that tear and larme are derived from the same source; that the French mÊme contains the Latin semetipsissimus; that in aujourd'hui we have the Latin word dies twice!32 Who would recognize the Latin pater in the Armenian hayr? Yet we make no difficulty about identifying pÈre and pater; and as several initial h's in Armenian correspond to an original p (het = pes, pedis; hing = πέντε; hour = πῦρ), it follows that hayr is pater.33

We are accustomed to call these changes the growth of language, but it would be more appropriate to call this process of phonetic change decay, and thus to distinguish it from the second or dialectical process which we must now examine, and which involves, as you will see, a more real principle of growth.

In order to understand the meaning of dialectical [pg 058] regeneration we must first see clearly what we mean by dialect. We saw before that language has no independent substantial existence. Language exists in man, it lives in being spoken, it dies with each word that is pronounced, and is no longer heard. It is a mere accident that language should ever have been reduced to writing, and have been made the vehicle of a written literature. Even now the largest number of languages have produced no literature. Among the numerous tribes of Central Asia, Africa, America, and Polynesia, language still lives in its natural state, in a state of continual combustion; and it is there that we must go if we wish to gain an insight into the growth of human speech previous to its being arrested by any literary interference. What we are accustomed to call languages, the literary idioms of Greece, and Rome, and India, of Italy, France, and Spain, must be considered as artificial, rather than as natural forms of speech. The real and natural life of language is in its dialects, and in spite of the tyranny exercised by the classical or literary idioms, the day is still very far off which is to see the dialects, even of such classical languages as Italian and French, entirely eradicated. About twenty of the Italian dialects have been reduced to writing, and made known by the press.34 Champollion-Figeac reckons the most distinguishable dialects of France at fourteen.35 The number of modern Greek dialects36 is carried by some as high as seventy, and though many of these are hardly more than local varieties, yet some, like the Tzaconic, differ from the literary language as much as Doric differed from Attic. [pg 059] In the island of Lesbos, villages distant from each other not more than two or three hours have frequently peculiar words of their own, and their own peculiar pronunciation.37 But let us take a language which, though not without a literature, has been less under the influence of classical writers than Italian or French, and we shall then see at once how abundant the growth of dialects! The Friesian, which is spoken on a small area on the north-western coast of Germany, between the Scheldt and Jutland, and on the islands near the shore, which has been spoken there for at least two thousand years,38 and which possesses literary documents as old as the twelfth century, is broken up into endless local dialects. I quote from Kohl's Travels. “The commonest things,” he writes, “which are named almost alike all over Europe, receive quite different names in the different Friesian Islands. Thus, in Amrum, father is called aatj; on the Halligs, baba or babe; in Sylt, foder or vaar; in many districts on the main-land, tÄte; in the eastern part of FÖhr, oti or ohitj. Although these people live within a couple of German miles from each other, these words differ more than the Italian padre and the English father. Even the names of their districts and islands are totally different in different dialects. The island of Sylt is called SÖl, Sol, and Sal.” Each of these dialects, though it might be made out by a Friesian scholar, is unintelligible except to the peasants of each narrow district in which it prevails. What is therefore generally called the Friesian language, and described as such in Friesian grammars, is in reality [pg 060] but one out of many dialects, though, no doubt, the most important; and the same holds good with regard to all so-called literary languages.

It is a mistake to imagine that dialects are everywhere corruptions of the literary language. Even in England,39 the local patois have many forms which are more primitive than the language of Shakespeare, and the richness of their vocabulary surpasses, on many points, that of the classical writers of any period. Dialects have always been the feeders rather than the channels of a literary language; anyhow, they are parallel streams which existed long before one of them was raised to that temporary eminence which is the result of literary cultivation.

What Grimm says of the origin of dialects in general applies only to such as are produced by phonetic corruption. “Dialects,” he writes,40 “develop themselves progressively, and the more we look backward in the history of language the smaller is their number, and the less definite their features. All multiplicity arises gradually from an original unity.” So it seems, indeed, if we build our theories of language exclusively on the materials supplied by literary idioms, such as Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, and Gothic. No doubt these are the royal heads in the history of language. But as political history ought to be more than a chronicle of royal dynasties, so the historian of language ought never to [pg 061] lose sight of those lower and popular strata of speech from which these dynasties originally sprang, and by which alone they are supported.

Here, however, lies the difficulty. How are we to trace the history of dialects? In the ancient history of language, literary dialects alone supply us with materials, whereas the very existence of spoken dialects is hardly noticed by ancient writers.

We are told, indeed, by Pliny,41 that in Colchis there were more than three hundred tribes speaking different dialects; and that the Romans, in order to carry on any intercourse with the natives, had to employ a hundred and thirty interpreters. This is probably an exaggeration; but we have no reason to doubt the statement of Strabo,42 who speaks of seventy tribes living together in that country, which, even now, is called “the mountain of languages.” In modern times, again, when missionaries have devoted themselves to the study of the languages of savage and illiterate tribes, they have seldom been able to do more than to acquire one out of many dialects; and, when their exertions have been at all successful, that dialect which they had reduced to writing, and made the medium of their civilizing influence, soon assumed a kind of literary supremacy, so as to leave the rest behind as barbarous jargons. Yet, whatever is known of the dialects of savage tribes is chiefly or entirely due to missionaries; and it is much to be desired that their attention should again and again be directed to this interesting [pg 062] problem of the dialectical life of language which they alone have the means of elucidating. Gabriel Sagard, who was sent as a missionary to the Hurons in 1626, and published his “Grand Voyage du pays des Hurons,” at Paris, in 1631, states that among these North American tribes hardly one village speaks the same language as another; nay, that two families of the same village do not speak exactly the same language. And he adds what is important, that their language is changing every day, and is already so much changed that the ancient Huron language is almost entirely different from the present. During the last two hundred years, on the contrary, the languages of the Hurons and Iroquois are said not to have changed at all.43 We read of missionaries44 in Central America who attempted to write down the language of savage tribes, and who compiled with great care a dictionary of all the words they could lay hold of. Returning to the same tribe after the lapse of only ten years, they found that this dictionary had become antiquated and useless. Old words had sunk to the ground, and new ones had risen to the surface; and to all outward appearance the language was completely changed.

Nothing surprised the Jesuit missionaries so much as the immense number of languages spoken by the natives of America. But this, far from being a proof of a high state of civilization, rather showed that the various races of America had never submitted, for any length of time, to a powerful political concentration, and that they had never succeeded in founding great [pg 063] national empires. Hervas reduces, indeed, all the dialects of America to eleven families45—four for the south, and seven for the north; but this could be done only by the same careful and minute comparison which enables us to class the idioms spoken in Iceland and Ceylon as cognate dialects. For practical purposes the dialects of America are distinct dialects, and the people who speak them are mutually unintelligible.

We hear the same observations everywhere where the rank growth of dialects has been watched by intelligent observers. If we turn our eyes to Burmah, we find that there the Burmese has produced a considerable literature, and is the recognized medium of communication not only in Burmah, but likewise in Pegu and Arakan. But the intricate mountain ranges of the peninsula of the Irawaddy46 afford a safe refuge to many independent tribes, speaking their own independent dialects; and in the neighborhood of Manipura alone Captain Gordon collected no less than twelve dialects. “Some of them,” he says, “are spoken by no more than thirty or forty families, yet so different from the rest as to be unintelligible to the nearest neighborhood.” Brown, the excellent American missionary, who has spent his whole life in preaching the Gospel in that part of the world, tells us that some tribes who left their native village to settle in another valley, became unintelligible to their forefathers in two or three generations.47

In the north of Asia the Ostiakes, as Messerschmidt informs us, though really speaking the same language [pg 064] everywhere, have produced so many words and forms peculiar to each tribe, that even within the limits of twelve or twenty German miles, communication among them becomes extremely difficult. Castren, the heroic explorer of the languages of northern and central Asia,48 assures us that some of the Mongolian dialects are actually entering into a new phase of grammatical life; and that while the literary language of the Mongolians has no terminations for the persons of the verb, that characteristic feature of Turanian speech had lately broken out in the spoken dialects of the Buriates and in the Tungusic idioms near Njertschinsk in Siberia.

One more observation of the same character from the pen of Robert Moffat, in his “Missionary Scenes and Labors in Southern Africa.” “The purity and harmony of language,” he writes, “is kept up by their pitches, or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the isolated villagers of the desert it is far otherwise; they have no such meetings; they are compelled to traverse the wilds, often to a great distance from their native village. On such occasions fathers and mothers, and all who can bear a burden, often set out for weeks at a time, and leave their children to the care of two or three infirm old people. The infant progeny, some of whom are beginning to lisp, while others can just master a whole sentence, and those still further advanced, romping and playing together, the children of nature, through their livelong day, become habituated to a language of their own. The more voluble condescend to the less precocious; and [pg 065] thus, from this infant Babel, proceeds a dialect of a host of mongrel words and phrases, joined together without rule, and in the course of one generation the entire character of the language is changed.”

Such is the life of language in a state of nature; and in a similar manner, we have a right to conclude, languages grew up which we only know after the bit and bridle of literature were thrown over their necks. It need not be a written or classical literature to give an ascendency to one out of many dialects, and to impart to its peculiarities an undisputed legitimacy. Speeches at pitches or public meetings, popular ballads, national laws, religious oracles, exercise, though to a smaller extent, the same influence. They will arrest the natural flow of language in the countless rivulets of its dialects, and give a permanency to certain formations of speech which, without these external influences, could have enjoyed but an ephemeral existence. Though we cannot fully enter, at present, on the problem of the origin of language, yet this we can clearly see, that, whatever the origin of language was, its first tendency must have been towards an unbounded variety. To this there was, however, a natural check, which prepared from the very beginning the growth of national and literary languages. The language of the father became the language of a family; the language of a family that of a clan. In one and the same clan different families would preserve among themselves their own familiar forms and expressions. They would add new words, some so fanciful and quaint as to be hardly intelligible to other members of the same clan. Such expressions would naturally be suppressed, as we suppress provincial peculiarities and [pg 066] pet words of our own, at large assemblies where all clansmen meet and are expected to take part in general discussions. But they would be cherished all the more round the fire of each tent, in proportion as the general dialect of the clan assumed a more formal character. Class dialects, too, would spring up; the dialects of servants, grooms, shepherds, and soldiers. Women would have their own household words; and the rising generation would not be long without a more racy phraseology of their own. Even we, in this literary age, and at a distance of thousands of years from those early fathers of language, do not speak at home as we speak in public. The same circumstances which give rise to the formal language of a clan, as distinguished from the dialects of families, produce, on a larger scale, the languages of a confederation of clans, of nascent colonies, of rising nationalities. Before there is a national language, there have always been hundreds of dialects in districts, towns, villages, clans, and families; and though the progress of civilization and centralization tends to reduce their number and to soften their features, it has not as yet annihilated them, even in our own time.

Let us now look again at what is commonly called the history, but what ought to be called, the natural growth, of language, and we shall easily see that it consists chiefly in the play of the two principles which we have just examined, phonetic decay and dialectical regeneration or growth. Let us take the six Romance languages. It is usual to call these the daughters of Latin. I do not object to the names of parent and daughter as applied to languages; only we must not allow such apparently clear and simple terms to cover [pg 067] obscure and vague conceptions. Now if we call Italian the daughter of Latin, we do not mean to ascribe to Italian a new vital principle. Not a single radical element was newly created for the formation of Italian. Italian is Latin in a new form. Italian is modern Latin, or Latin ancient Italian. The names mother and daughter only mark different periods in the growth of a language substantially the same. To speak of Latin dying in giving birth to her offspring is again pure mythology, and it would be easy to prove that Latin was a living language long after Italian had learnt to run alone. Only let us clearly see what we mean by Latin. The classical Latin is one out of many dialects spoken by the Aryan inhabitants of Italy. It was the dialect of Latium, in Latium the dialect of Rome, at Rome the dialect of the patricians. It was fixed by Livius Andronicus, Ennius, NÆvius, Cato, and Lucretius, polished by the Scipios, Hortensius, and Cicero. It was the language of a restricted class, of a political party, of a literary set. Before their time, the language of Rome must have changed and fluctuated considerably. Polybius tells us (iii. 22), that the best-informed Romans could not make out without difficulty the language of the ancient treaties between Rome and Carthage. Horace admits (Ep. ii. 1, 86), that he could not understand the old Salian poems, and he hints that no one else could. Quintilian (i. 6, 40) says that the Salian priests could hardly understand their sacred hymns. If the plebeians had obtained the upperhand over the patricians, Latin would have been very different from what it is in Cicero, and we know that even Cicero, having been brought up at Arpinum, had to give up some of his [pg 068] provincial peculiarities, such as the dropping of the final s, when he began to mix in fashionable society, and had to write for his new patrician friends.49 After having been established as the language of legislation, religion, literature, and general civilization, the classical Latin dialect became stationary and stagnant. It could not grow, because it was not allowed to change or to deviate from its classical correctness. It was haunted by its own ghost. Literary dialects, or what are commonly called classical languages, pay for their temporary greatness by inevitable decay. They are like stagnant lakes at the side of great rivers. They form reservoirs of what was once living and running speech, but they are no longer carried on by the main current. At times it may seem as if the whole stream of language was absorbed by these lakes, and we can hardly trace the small rivulets which run on in the main bed. But if lower down, that is to say, later in history, we meet again with a new body of stationary language, forming or formed, we may be sure that its tributaries were those very rivulets which for a time were almost lost from our sight. Or it may be more accurate to compare a classical or literary idiom with the frozen surface of a river, brilliant and smooth, but stiff and cold. It is mostly by political commotions that this surface of the more polite and cultivated speech is broken and carried away by the waters rising underneath. It is during times when the higher classes are either crushed in religious and social struggles, or [pg 069] mix again with the lower classes to repel foreign invasion; when literary occupations are discouraged, palaces burnt, monasteries pillaged, and seats of learning destroyed,—it is then that the popular, or, as they are called, the vulgar dialects, which had formed a kind of undercurrent, rise beneath the crystal surface of the literary language, and sweep away, like the waters in spring, the cumbrous formations of a by-gone age. In more peaceful times, a new and popular literature springs up in a language which seems to have been formed by conquests or revolutions, but which, in reality, had been growing up long before, and was only brought out, ready made, by historical events. From this point of view we can see that no literary language can ever be said to have been the mother of another language. As soon as a language loses its unbounded capability of change, its carelessness about what it throws away, and its readiness in always supplying instantaneously the wants of mind and heart, its natural life is changed into a merely artificial existence. It may still live on for a long time, but while it seems to be the leading shoot, it is in reality but a broken and withering branch, slowly falling from the stock from which it sprang. The sources of Italian are not to be found in the classical literature of Rome, but in the popular dialects of Italy. English did not spring from the Anglo-Saxon of Wessex only, but from the dialects spoken in every part of Great Britain, distinguished by local peculiarities, and modified at different times by the influence of Latin, Danish, Norman, French, and other foreign elements. Some of the local dialects of English, as spoken at the present day, are of great importance for a critical study of English, [pg 070] and a French prince, now living in this country, deserves great credit for collecting what can still be saved of English dialects. Hindustani is not the daughter of Sanskrit, as we find it in the Vedas, or in the later literature of the Brahmans: it is a branch of the living speech of India, springing from the same stem from which Sanskrit sprang, when it first assumed its literary independence.

While thus endeavoring to place the character of dialects, as the feeders of language, in a clear light, I may appear to some of my hearers to have exaggerated their importance. No doubt, if my object had been different, I might easily have shown that, without literary cultivation, language would never have acquired that settled character which is essential for the communication of thought; that it would never have fulfilled its highest purpose, but have remained the mere jargon of shy troglodytes. But as the importance of literary languages is not likely to be overlooked, whereas the importance of dialects, as far as they sustain the growth of language, had never been pointed out, I thought it better to dwell on the advantages which literary languages derive from dialects, rather than on the benefits which dialects owe to literary languages. Besides, our chief object to-day was to explain the growth of language, and for that purpose it is impossible to exaggerate the importance of the constant undergrowth of dialects. Remove a language from its native soil, tear it away from the dialects which are its feeders, and you arrest at once its natural growth. There will still be the progress of phonetic corruption, but no longer the restoring influence of dialectic regeneration. The language which the Norwegian refugees brought to [pg 071] Iceland has remained almost the same for seven centuries, whereas on its native soil, and surrounded by local dialects, it has grown into two distinct languages, the Swedish and Danish. In the eleventh century, the languages of Sweden, Denmark, and Iceland are supposed50 to have been identical, nor can we appeal to foreign conquest, or to the admixture of foreign with native blood, in order to account for the changes which the language underwent in Sweden and Denmark, but not in Iceland.51

We can hardly form an idea of the unbounded resources of dialects. When literary languages have stereotyped one general term, their dialects will supply fifty, though each with its own special shade of meaning. If new combinations of thought are evolved in the progress of society, dialects will readily supply the required names from the store of their so-called superfluous words. There are not only local and provincial, but also class dialects. There is a dialect of shepherds, of sportsmen, of soldiers, of farmers. I suppose there are few persons here present who could tell the exact meaning of a horse's poll, crest, withers, dock, hamstring, cannon, pastern, coronet, arm, jowl, and muzzle. Where the literary language speaks of the young of all sorts of animals, farmers, shepherds, and sportsmen would be ashamed to use so general a term.

“The idiom of nomads,” as Grimm says, “contains an abundant wealth of manifold expressions for sword and weapons, and for the different stages in the life of [pg 072] their cattle. In a more highly cultivated language these expressions become burthensome and superfluous. But, in a peasant's mouth, the bearing, calving, falling, and killing of almost every animal has its own peculiar term, as the sportsman delights in calling the gait and members of game by different names. The eye of these shepherds, who live in the free air, sees further, their ear hears more sharply,—why should their speech not have gained that living truth and variety?”

Thus Juliana Berners, lady prioress of the nunnery of Sopwell in the fifteenth century, the reputed author of the book of St. Albans, informs us that we must not use names of multitudes promiscuously, but we are to say, “a congregacyon of people, a hoost of men, a felyshyppynge of yomen, and a bevy of ladies; we must speak of a herde of dere, swannys, cranys, or wrenys, a sege of herons or bytourys, a muster of pecockes, a watche of nyghtyngales, a flyghte of doves, a claterynge of choughes, a pryde of lyons, a slewthe of beeres, a gagle of geys, a skulke of foxes, a sculle of frerys, a pontificality of prestys, a bomynable syght of monkes, and a superfluyte of nonnes,” and so of other human and brute assemblages. In like manner, in dividing game for the table, the animals were not carved, but “a dere was broken, a gose reryd, chekyn frusshed, a cony unlaced, a crane dysplayed, a curlewe unioynted, a quayle wynggyd, a swanne lyfte, a lambe sholdered, a heron dysmembryd, a pecocke dysfygured, a samon chynyd, a hadoke sydyd, a sole loynyd, and a breme splayed.”52

What, however, I wanted particularly to point out in this lecture is this, that neither of the causes which [pg 073] produce the growth, or, according to others, constitute the history of language, is under the control of man. The phonetic decay of language is not the result of mere accident; it is governed by definite laws, as we shall see when we come to consider the principles of comparative grammar. But these laws were not made by man; on the contrary, man had to obey them without knowing of their existence.

In the growth of the modern Romance languages out of Latin, we can perceive not only a general tendency to simplification, not only a natural disposition to avoid the exertion which the pronunciation of certain consonants, and still more, of groups of consonants, entails on the speaker: but we can see distinct laws for each of the Romance dialects, which enable us to say, that in French the Latin patrem would naturally grow into the modern pÈre. The final m is always dropped in the Romance dialects, and it was dropped even in Latin. Thus we get patre instead of patrem. Now, a Latin t between two vowels in such words as pater is invariably suppressed in French. This is a law, and by means of it we can discover at once that catena must become chaine; fata, a later feminine representation of the old neuter fatum, fÉe; pratum a meadow, prÉ. From pratum we derive prataria, which in French becomes prairie; from fatum, fataria, the English fairy. Thus every Latin participle in atus, like amatus, loved, must end in French in É. The same law then changed patre(pronounced pa-tere) into paere, or pÈre; it changed matrem into mÈre, fratrem into frÈre. These changes take place gradually but irresistibly, and, what is most important, they are completely beyond the reach or control of the free will of man.