The Chautauquan, Vol. 05, May 1885, No. 8

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The Chautauquan.
A MONTHLY MAGAZINE DEVOTED TO THE PROMOTION OF TRUE CULTURE. ORGAN OF THE CHAUTAUQUA LITERARY AND SCIENTIFIC CIRCLE.
Vol. V. MAY, 1885. No. 8.
President , Lewis Miller, Akron, Ohio. Chancellor , J. H. Vincent, D.D., New Haven, Conn. Counselors , The Rev. Lyman Abbott, D.D., the Rev. J. M. Gibson, D.D.; Bishop H. W. Warren, D.D.; Prof. W. C. Wilkinson, D.D.; Edward Everett Hale. Office Secretary , Miss Kate F. Kimball, Plainfield, N. J. General Secretary , Albert M. Martin, Pittsburgh, Pa.
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BY PRESIDENT D. H. WHEELER, D.D., LL.D.
1. The mere arraying of numbers carries with it a kind of presumption in favor of English. Did 5,000,000 ever at one time use either classic Greek or the Hellenic form of that speech? I seriously doubt that at any time 5,000,000 of people could have understood each other in any one form of that tongue. Did ever at any one time 15,000,000 of people speak the Latin of our classic authors? I doubt it. Turn to English, and we find not less than 110,000,000 of people speaking it at the present time. And this comparison is made much stronger when we remember that, one hundred years ago, our number did not probably exceed fifteen millions. Our vast growth is related to forces and conditions still existing, and now giving us an accelerating progress in numbers. I shall return to these forces and conditions in a later paragraph. Looking at our competitors, we see that the Germans come next to us, with probably not more than 45,000,000. The German empire counts 45,000,000, and there are 5,000,000, perhaps, of Austrian Germans; but the empire envelops millions of non-Germans. They sometimes zealously claim the Low Dutch; but we could claim them for English with better right. Next come the French with 37,000,000, about one third only of our strength. I think it fair for these purposes to count the populations under the dominion of the several tongues. French, English and German are spoken all over the world. Among the three runs the competition for the first place in the Aryan tribe. I do not commit the folly of making race lines and speech lines the same; but it is a convenient mode of describing the field of this competition as that of the Aryan race, although there have been so many fusions of tribes that perhaps there is no Aryan race at this late day.