Again, the first argument in favour of Waitz’s theory is itself clearly founded upon a paradox. It can scarcely be seriously maintained that while we can trace the growth of implements, such as spears and knives, from the simplest possible form upwards, such implements as speech and social laws have been ready made in a highly complex form. Argument number two serves to expose the grossness of this paradox. It would be as reasonable to maintain that mankind had begun by drawing pictures before they learnt to draw the elements out of which the pictures were composed.
The whole theory, therefore, belongs to the category of theories which explain obscurum per obscurius. It may be, and no doubt is, practically impossible to explain in any natural way how speech arose. But at all events it is easier to understand how it may have arisen in a simple form and grown to one more complex, than to imagine it beginning in a complex state and by detrition resolving into simple elements.
[P. 68]. Consonantal and vowel sounds.—The fact that even in Aryan roots the consonants have more weight than the vowel sounds will be evident merely from the instances given in the course of this and the following chapter—fly, flee, flew (w is here a vowel sound); night, Nacht; knight, Knecht; Raum, room; asmi, esmi (eimi), sum, etc. This general rule holds good for almost all languages, and seems necessarily to do so from the stronger character of the consonantal and the weaker character of the vowel sounds.
But the relative importance of vowels and consonants is very different in different classes of language. In the Aryan tongues the essential root is made up of vowels and consonants, and the variations upon the root idea are generally expressed by additions to the root and not by internal changes in it. In this way, as we saw, most grammatical inflexions are made: hom-o, hom-inis, am-o, am-abam, τύπτω, ἒτυτον, ἒτυψον, etc. But in Semitic languages the root consists of the consonants only, and the inflexions are produced by internal changes, changes of the vowels which belong to a consonant. For example, in Arabic the three consonants k-t-l (katl) represent the abstract notion of the act of killing. From them we get kátil, one who kills; kitl (pl. aktal), an enemy; katala, he slew; kutila, he was slain. From z-r-b (zarb), the act of striking; zarbun, a striking (in concrete sense); zarábun, a striker; zaraba, he struck; zuriba, he was struck. Compare these with occido, occidi, occisor, or with τύπτω, τέτυφα, etc., and we see that in the Aryan tongues the radical remains almost unchanged, and the inflexions are made ab extra; but in the Semitic language the inflexions are made by changes of vowel sound within the framework of the root consonants.
The usual grammatical root in Arabic is composed of three consonants, as in the examples given above. Most of the Semitic languages are in too fully formed a state to allow us to see whether or no these roots, which are of course at the least dissyllabic, grew up out of single sounds; but a comparison with some languages of the Semitic family (e.g. Egyptian) which are still near to their early radical state, show us that they have probably done so.
The Coptic language, which is the nearest we can get to the tongue of the ancient Egyptians, is extremely interesting in that it displays the processes of grammar formation, as has just been said, in a more intelligible shape than we find in the higher Semitic tongues.
[P. 98]. We are here speaking, be it remembered, of families of language. The ethnology of a people is not necessarily the same as its language; so that when we speak of a family of language including the tongues of a certain number of races, we do not imply that they were wholly of the same ethnic family. This caution is especially necessary as regards the earliest great pre-historic nations who seem to have been what are called Cushites—anything but pure Semites (see Chapter V.)—but whose languages may properly be ranged in the Semitic family. The Egyptian, for instance, was more nearly monosyllabic than any other Semitic tongue (Chapter XIII.); yet such inflexions as it has show an evident relationship with Hebrew and other Semitic languages (see Appendix to Bunsen’s Egypt’s Place in Universal History).
CHAPTER V.
Brugsch, Recueils de Monuments Égyptiens.
Brugsch, Histoire d’Égypt.
Brugsch, Matériaux pour servir, etc.
Bunsen, Egypt’s Place, etc. (ed. Dr. Birch).
Ebers, Egyptian History.
Flower, W. H., Races of Men.
Legge, Chinese Classics, with Introduction, etc.
Lenormant, Manual of the Ancient History of the East (trs.).
Lepsius, Chronologie der Egypten.
Mariette Pasha, Abrégé de l’Histoire d’Égypte.
Maspero, Histoire Ancienne des Peuples de l’Orient.
Maury, Le Livre et l’Homme.
Rawlinson, Herodotus, with Notes.
Rawlinson, Five Great Monarchies, etc.
Rougé (Vte. de), Examen de l’Ouvrage de M. Bunsen.
Sayce, Ancient Empires of the East.
Tylor, Anthropology.
[P. 119]. The word Turanian is untenable as an ethnic term. It can be used—though with a somewhat loose signification—to distinguish those languages which are in the agglutinative stage. But the reader must be careful not to suppose that it comprises a class of nearly allied peoples, as the Aryan and Semitic families of language, upon the whole, do. The only race which includes the Turanian peoples of Europe and Asia includes also those who speak monosyllabic languages: this is the yellow race, and is of course a division of the widest possible kind.