A difference between the historical forms of these two words will be remarked by the observant reader. In mother, mater, we have the initial consonant of the root preserved in all tongues, from the beginning (or as near the beginning as we can go); but in fa-ther, when we touch the Latin and the Greek, the f becomes p, pater; and this we find was the sound with which the word began in the elder speech,—Sanskrit pitri. This fact, so far from being at all inconsistent with the substantial identity of the word in its various forms, confirms that identity. The difference is the result of a phonetic change by which (according to well-established principles which can here be only thus mentioned) certain consonant sounds change to certain other sounds. The reason of this change is not known; but it is known as an observed fact, which observed fact is loosely called a law. We are in the habit of supposing that what always takes place does so because of a rule of law. But phonetic changes of this kind, which affect vowels and what are called semi-vowels, as well as consonants, take place in so regular a way that words can be traced through them with a certainty which is almost if not quite unerring. This change accounts not only for the f in father, but for the vowel difference between the Latin pater and the Sanskrit pitri. And in this word we have a good example in point as to the position of Sanskrit in relation to the other related Aryan languages. It is by no means certain, but rather the contrary, that the i in the pi of the Sanskrit pitri is older than the a in the Latin pater and the English father. The a in those words came not by any phonetic change from the i in the Sanskrit pitri and the Persian pidar. Probably, rather, it came directly down to the Teutonic, the Gothic, and the Celtic languages from that elder lost speech from which the Sanskrit as well as those others is derived.
One other family and household word is illustrative of our subject, and has a singular interest. Both son and daughter, like father and mother, are found in most of the Indo-European languages, and in Sanskrit. Son in Sanskrit is súnu, and is reasonably assumed to be derived from su, to beget, to bear, to bring forth. Daughter, the word just particularly referred to, is in Anglo-Saxon dohtor, Dutch dochter, Danish datter, Swedish dotter, Icelandic dôttir, Mæso-Gothic dauhtar, Russian do-che, German tochter, Greek thugater, Sanskrit duhitri. And if the generally accepted derivation of this word (which so conforms to all the required conditions that there is no reasonable ground of doubt about it) is correct, it records an interesting fact and tells a little story. Duhitri, the Sanskrit for daughter, is from duh or dhugh, which means, to milk; and daughter means the milker, a milk-maid. The milk-maid of the rural past has been gradually yielding place, first to an Irish lad in cowhide boots, and next to a machine more or less india-rubber in its structure; but within the memory of living men, not aged, New England, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania were filled with farmers’ daughters who performed a function which fell naturally to their share in the distribution of work, as it had done to their fore-mothers thousands of years before on the plateau of Central Asia; and every time that father or mother called one of them daughter, they heard unconsciously the name of their household place and office. Nor have these gentle milkers, these dugh-i-tri, I am glad to believe, quite disappeared before the march of Celtic emigration and machinery.
One of man’s first efforts at the orderly arrangement of things is numbering them, counting; and numeral words must have been among the earliest that were formed, and among those which, being most constantly used, would be most tenaciously preserved. So it proved. Most of the numeral words, one, two, three, etc., in all the Indo-European languages are found to be identical in origin, and some of them essentially so in form. For clearness and brevity of illustration let us take English two, which in Dutch is twe, Icelandic (in the objective) tvo, Danish to, Swedish tva, Mæso-Gothic twai, German zwei, Gælic da, Welsh dau, Russian dva, Latin duo, French deux, Italian due, Greek duo, Sanskrit dra:—so English three is in Dutch trie, Danish and Swedish tre, Icelandic thrir, in the Celtic tongues tri, in Russian tri, Mæso-Gothic threis, German drei, Latin tres, Greek treis, Sanskrit tri. It is unnecessary to continue the illustration of this point. Other numeral words are equally remarkable in their continuity; and all are traceable to a remote antiquity and through a wide dispersion.
One more pronoun may well be examined. The first thought of the human mind, as we have already seen, on the perception of something else than its own body is “me” and “not me:” a dual thought, both elements of which come into consciousness together:—this that I feel or see is not me. The second perception is of what we call the second person, for which the word in English until recently was, and among some English-speaking people still is, thou. This word, which supplies one of the commonest needs of life in language among people of all conditions, has been preserved among all the Aryan peoples for four thousand years almost without the signs of phonetic wear and tear. In Old Frisian (the language which, next to the so-called Anglo-Saxon, is nearest of kin to English) it is thu, in Dutch (which of spoken languages is next nearest) it has strangely disappeared, but in Icelandic it is thu, Danish and Swedish du, in Mæso-Gothic thu, in German du, in the Celtic tongues tu, in Russian tui, Latin, Italian and French tu, Greek su (for tu), Persian tu, Sanskrit tuam.
As the intelligent reader considers these lists of common words which are identical, or almost identical, in so many languages spoken through forty centuries, from a period extending far beyond historical records, the thought must arise that it was strange, almost unaccountable, that the close connection, the affiliation, of these languages was left to be clearly proved within only about fifty years. But it must be remembered that this affiliation in regard to some of them was as well known before that time as it is now. That the Scandinavian tongues were closely related, that English was connected with the Scandinavian and the Teutonic languages, that French, Spanish and Italian were close cousins, and were all direct descendants (with some mixture by inter-marriage) from Latin, was well known to all students of language. But beyond this line they were all abroad. Of the connection of the Celtic tongues—Welsh, Gælic, Erse (Irish) and Cornish—with the Teutonic and the Scandinavian, or even with the Latin and Greek (with which they are more nearly allied) there was no knowledge. Nor was it supposed that Greek and Latin had any other connection with English than that which existed through Greek words and Latin words transplanted into English. Latin was supposed to be derived from Greek, and indeed to be a debased form of that language; and as to the Sclavonic tongues, Russian, Polish, etc., they were the gabble of outside barbarians.
Besides all this, the influence of theology upon narrow and uninformed minds was felt in philology—if we can call the linguistic studies of those days philological. As the proclamation of the One God was made to the world in Hebrew, and as the grand generalities of the Mosaic record of creation were recorded in that language, it was assumed by many worthy and really learned men, at whose fond fancy we may smile but should not sneer, that Hebrew was the original speech of the human race; that it was bestowed upon man directly by divine beneficence; and that all the languages of the earth were derived from that in which the ten commandments were first written. Infinite labor, years of toilsome study, almost endless efforts of perverted ingenuity were given to the mistaken effort to establish this point, which was regarded by these in-the-dark-working linguists as one, almost if not quite, of religious importance. Now we know that the Hebrew language is totally, radically different from all the Indo-European languages; that they have no kinship whatever, and are as unlike as if they were spoken on two separate planets by creatures of different species. And besides, we know that Hebrew is not even in the position of a parent speech, but is one of a small, although very important family, the Semitic, and that in this family its position is that of a cadet.
The consequence in linguistic study of the discovery of Sanskrit, which was chief in importance, was not so much the establishment of kindred among all the languages of Europe, although that was very important, as the proof that they were not (with notable exceptions) derived the one from the other, but that they all were sprung from a common stock, to which the principal of them must be traced, not through one another, but directly. Thus the Danes and the Germans lie close together, and there is some likeness in substance between their languages, and a little in form; but it will not do to attempt to trace the Danish and the other Scandinavian languages to the German, or through the German to an older tongue. It is found that of the Scandinavian languages and the German, neither is derived from the other, but that both are the offspring of a lost elder speech, Teutonic or Gothic, of which the Mæso-Gothic is the oldest representative of which there are any remains. It is also found that the Latin language is not derived from the Greek, did not come through it, but that both Latin and Greek come independently from either a common branch of the old Aryan tongue, or directly from that tongue itself. Moreover it is now pretty well established to the total subversion of previous theories, that the Latin represents, or at least retains, older forms of the parent language than are to be found in Greek. This, however, is not true as to syntax, grammar, in which Latin diverges much more than Greek does from that approximation to the original language which we find in Sanskrit.
Let us glance at this subject of grammar; in doing which, without going into dry detail, or even into the niceties of construction, we may by the examination of one or two salient facts trace very clearly the connection of some of the most important and divergent branches of Indo-European speech. Every educated boy who has passed through a classical grammar school will remember his surprise, not to say his disgust, at finding, after mastering toilfully a little Latin, that when he entered upon the study of Greek, he found the Greek verb very unlike the Latin in its conjugation, and much more complicated. It has a middle voice which is reflective in its signification. For example, etupsa means I struck, etuphthen, I was struck, but etupsamen, I struck myself. It has in tenses not only present, perfect, future, and so forth, but a first perfect and a second perfect, a first plu-perfect and a second plu-perfect, a first future and a second future, and, moreover, two pestilential contrivances called the first and second aorists. Besides this, every tense has not only a singular and a plural number, but a dual number, by which the action or the being, or the suffering, is confined to two persons—a sort of grammatical buggy. The nouns, the pronouns, the adjectives, the very articles, have also this dual number. This is a fact, an oppressive, mysterious, unrelated fact with which the young student is brought face to face, and into conflict with which he enters, wondering at the cause of this bountiful dispensation of grammar. When Sanskrit was discovered, it was found that this middle voice, these first and second perfects, and futures, and first and second aorists, these dual numbers of verbs, nouns, and what not, were Sanskrit as well as Greek, and were nearly two thousand years older than any Greek writing that exists. But they are found not only in Sanskrit and in Greek. In the Mæso-Gothic, which, as we have seen is our earliest representative of one of the two great European divisions of Aryan speech, to the other of which the Greek belongs—it, the Greek, having separated itself at a time long before the historical period—in this Mæso-Gothic we have also the middle voice, the dual number, and tenses and inflections multitudinous. These grammatical facts bind, and without other evidence would bind, the Greek, the Teutonic or Gothic, and the Sanskrit languages in a bond of kinship.
It had been supposed by classical scholars, and the supposition yet lingers among them, that these Greek double perfects and futures, these aorists, and these middle voices and dual numbers, were the fruit of a great genius for language and literary expression, that they had been elaborated and painfully produced in the successive development of the Greek intellect—which indeed was one of the most remarkable phenomena in the history of the world. But the discovery of Sanskrit has shown us that these grammatical excrescencies were mere relics of a past; things that the Greek poets and philosophers found made to their hands, and which they must use whether they would or no. Nor are we relieved from the necessity of this inference and its consequences by the fact that Sanskrit is a highly elaborated language, and has been the object of religious care and veneration on the part of profound grammarians for many centuries. Its grammar has been thus solicitously preserved and minutely studied because it was involved with the Brahminical religion. Its origin dates back in the darkness of savagery. The Mæso-Goths, who had no Greek intellect or refinement, had in their language also the dual number, the middle voice, and the swarming inflections. Nor only so. In a corner of Scythian Europe, in Cimmerian darkness, were, and are, a rude people, the Lithuanians, who lie between the Prussians and the Russians, who had no literature, whose language was not even written until it was furnished with characters by strangers so late as the sixteenth century, who had not advanced intellectually beyond the making of folk-songs and ballads, whose very national existence was hardly more important than that of Comanches or Piutes; and yet these people had the dual number, the variety of inflection, and the complicated grammar of the old speech. It had merely come down to them as it had come to the Mæso-Goths, and to the Greeks, and to the Brahmins, from the early days of the Aryan people and their language. Simply this, and nothing more.
The fact upon this subject is that as we look backward through history we find that grammar increases as civilization and culture diminish; or, to put it conversely, that as culture increases and civilization becomes more elaborate and complex, grammar diminishes and simplifies, and gradually passes away. The traits once regarded as special and distinguishing excellencies of the Greek language, its dual number, its middle voice, its double tenses, and to the horror of some of the classical scholars among my readers, if I am honored by any such—I add, even the aorists, are not signs of a high development of language, but mere relics of barbarism. They are so in the Greek, just as they are so in the Mæso-Gothic and in the Lithuanian languages. They had no relation whatever to the power, the subtlety and the loftiness of the Greek intellect; they were not a necessary means nor even a happily adapted tool for the work of that intellect in literature, in art, and in philosophy; although it is not to be denied that the Greek intellect did leave its impress upon the Greek language. The Greeks were the great people that they were simply because they were Greeks; we know not why; just as the Lithuanians were and remained Lithuanians, we know not why. In the one case the complicated instrument of expression had no more to do with the splendid achievements of which it was the medium than in the other it had to do with the rudeness which it did not help to refine, or the obscurity to which it lent no luster.