No sooner has he finished his classification of languages than a mine of almost exhaustless wealth then opens before the philologist—a mine, too, which has at present been only broached. He soon learns the laws governing the changes of sound from one tongue into another. We have noted experimentally some of these laws in the more simple relationships of language, as between English and German, where ‘tag’ becomes ‘day,’ ‘dorf’ ‘thorpe,’ and the like; and all relationships of language are answerable to similar rules. There are laws for the change of sound from Sanskrit into the primitive forms of Greek, Latin, German, English, etc., just as there are laws of change between the first two or the last two.[34] So we soon learn to recognize a word in one language which reappears in altered guise in another. And it may be well imagined how valuable such knowledge can be made. If we find a word common say to Greek and Latin, signifying some simple object, a weapon, a tool, an animal, a house, it is not over-likely that it will have changed from the time when it was first employed: the words of this kind which are now in use have, we know, little tendency to change. So that the time when this word was first used is in all probability the time when the thing was first known to primitive man; and if the word is common to the whole Aryan family, or if it is peculiar to a portion only, then it is argued that the thing was known or unknown before the separation of the Aryan folk. I do not, of course, say that rule is never at fault, only that this is a better criterion than any other sort of research would afford us, and that by this method of word-comparison we get no bad picture of the world of our earliest Aryan ancestors.
It might well have happened that when the migrations began our ancestors were still like the stone-age men of the shell-mounds, still in the hunter condition; that they knew nothing of domesticated animals, or of pastures and husbandmen: or it might be, again, that they had left the pastoral state long behind, and that all their ideas associated themselves with agriculture, with the division of the land, and with the recurring seasons for planting. The evidence of language, dealt with after the fashion we have described, points to the belief that the ancient Aryans had only made some beginnings of agriculture, as a supplement to their natural means of livelihood, their flocks and herds: for among the words common to the whole Aryan race there are very few connected with farming, whereas their vocabulary is redolent of the herd, the cattle-fold, the herdsman, the milking-time. Even the word daughter, which corresponds to the Greek thugatêr and the Sanskrit duhitar, means in the last language ‘the milker,’ and that seems to throw back the practice of milking to a vastly remote antiquity.[35]
On the other hand, the various Indo-European branches have different names for the plough, one name for the German races, another for the Græco-Italic, and for the Sanskrit. And though aratrum has a clear connection with a Sanskrit root ar, it is not absolutely certain that it ever had in this language the sense of ploughing, and not merely of wounding, which is a still more primitive meaning of the same root, whence came the expression for ploughing as of wounding the earth.
Or say we wish to form some notion of the social life of the Aryans. Had they extended ideas of tribal government? Had they kings, or were they held together only by the units of family life? Our answer would come from an examination of their common word for ‘king.’ If they have no common word, then we may guess that the title and office of kingship arose among the separate Aryan people and received a name from each. Or is it that their common word for king had first some simpler signification, ‘father,’ perhaps, showing that among the Aryan folk the social bond was still confined within the real or imaginary boundary of the family? In fact we do find a common word for king in several of the Aryan languages which has no subsidiary meaning less than that of directing, or keeping straight. This is the Latin rex, the Gothic rîks, Sanskrit rîg, etc., and its earliest ascertainable meaning was ‘the director.’ The Aryans then, even in those days, acknowledged as supreme[36] some director chosen (probably) from out of the tribe, a chief to lead their common warlike or migratory expeditions.
These are but illustrations of the method upon which are founded all conclusions touching these our ancestors, and the manner of our knowledge concerning them; far better obtained than merely by gazing upon the instruments which have fallen from their hands, or the monuments they might have raised to commemorate the dead. The difference, in truth, between relics such as these which lie enclosed in language, and the weapons and tombs of the Stone Ages, is exactly the difference between Shakespeare’s statue in Westminster Abbey or his bust at Stratford, and that ‘livelong monument’ whereof Milton spoke. By perfecting beyond the power of any other race the wonderfully complex faculty of speech the Aryans secured that their memory should be handed on the more certainly, and with far greater completeness, than by records left palpable to men’s eyes and hands. Many of their secret thoughts might be unlocked by the same key. Already the same means are being used to give us glimpses of their religious ideas. For the names of the common Aryan gods can be arrived at by just the same comparative method: it may well happen that a name which is only a proper name in one language, can in another be traced to a root which unravels its original meaning. It was so, we saw, with the word daughter. Here the Sanskrit root seems to unravel the hidden—the lost, and so hidden—meaning in the Greek or English words. So with a god, the meaning of a name, concealed from the sight of those who used it in prayer or praise, becomes revealed to us by the divining rod of the science of language.
And it is true, nevertheless, that the mine of wealth thus opened has as yet been but cursorily explored.[37] There are far more and greater fish in this sea than ever came out of it. Some day, perhaps, a strictly scientific method may be found for classifying and tracing the changes which words undergo. Sometimes a word is found greatly modified; sometimes it survives almost intact between the different tongues. Is there any reason for this? At present we cannot say.
The question might be answered by means of an elaborate classification under the head of the alterations which words have undergone,[38] and such a comparative vocabulary would lead to the solution of infinite questions concerning the growth of nations. We should be able to look almost into the minds of people long ago, better than we can examine the minds of contemporary races in a lower mental condition, and see what ideas took a strong hold upon them, what things they treated as realities, what metaphorically, and how large for them was the empire of imagination.
Next there is the boundless field of proper names, both those of persons and geographical names. These last in every country bear a certain witness to the races who have passed through that country, and show—roughly at least—the order of their appearance there. The older geographical names will be those of natural features, rivers, mountains, lakes, which have been never absent from the scene; the newer names will be those bestowed upon the works of man. In our own country this is the case. The names of our rivers (Thames, Ouse, Severn, Wye) are nearly all Keltic, i.e. British; those of our towns are Teutonic, Saxon or Norse. Some few Roman names linger on, as in the name and termination ‘Chester;’ but this, as meaning a place of strength, shows us clearly the reason of its survival. Every European country has changed hands, as ours has done; nay, every country in the world.[39] So here again we have promise of plenty of work for the philologist in compiling a ‘Glossary of Proper Names’ with etymologies.
Lastly, let it not be forgotten that a great part of all that has been done for the Aryan can be done likewise for the Semitic languages—a field as yet little turned by the plough; and the reader will confess the debt the world is likely some day to owe to Comparative Philology.