We should have, in such a case, to believe that our observation has been suddenly brought to a stop, not by something unknown or unintelligible (as often happens) but by a mere absurdity.
At first sight, this tantalizing answer seems the correct one. If we take the races as they are to-day, we must admit that the perfection of idiom is very far from corresponding, in all cases, to the degree of civilization reached. The tongues of modern Europe, to speak of no others, are unequal in merit, and the richest and most beautiful do not necessarily belong to the most advanced people. Further, they are one and all vastly inferior to many languages which have been at different times spoken in the world.
A still more curious fact is that the languages of whole groups of peoples which have stopped at a low level of culture may be of considerable merit. Thus the net of language, with its varied meshes, might seem to have been cast over mankind at random, the silk and the gold sometimes covering rude, ferocious, and miserable tribes, while wise and learned peoples are still caught in the hemp, the wool, and the horsehair. Happily, this is so only in appearance. If, with the aid of history, we apply our doctrine of the difference of races, we shall soon find that our proofs of their intellectual inequality are even strengthened.
The early philologists were doubly in error, when they thought, first that all languages are formed on the same principle, secondly that language was invented merely under the stress of material needs. In the former point they were influenced by the unitarian doctrine that all human groups have a common origin.
With regard to language, doubt is not even possible. The modes of formation are completely different; and whether the classifications of philology require revision or not, we cannot believe for a moment that the Altaic, Aryan, and Semitic families were not from the first absolutely foreign to each other. Nothing is the same. The vocabulary has its own peculiar character in each of these groups. There is a different modulation of the voice in each. In one, the lips are used to produce the sounds; in another, the contraction of the throat; in another the nasal passage and the upper part of the head. The composition of the parts of speech, according as they confuse or distinguish the various shades of thought, points equally to a difference of origin. The most striking proof of the divergence in thought and feeling between one group and another are seen in the inflexions of the substantive and the conjugations of the verb. When, therefore, the philosopher tries to give an account of the origin of language by a process of purely abstract conjecture, and begins by conceiving an “original man,” without any specific racial or linguistic character, he starts from an absurdity, and continues on the same lines. There is no such being as “man” in the abstract; and I am especially sure that he will not be discovered by the investigation of language. I cannot argue on the basis that mankind started from some one point in its creation of idiom. There were many points of departure, because there were many forms of thought and feeling.[[113]]
The second view, I think, is just as false. According to this theory, there would have been no development save as dictated by necessity. The result would be that the “male” races would have a richer and more accurate language than the “female”; further, as material needs are concerned with objects apprehended by the senses, and especially with actions, the main factor of human speech would be vocabulary.
There would be no necessity for the syntax and grammatical structure to advance beyond the simplest and most elementary combinations. A series of sounds more or less linked together is always enough to express a need; and a gesture, as the Chinese know well, is an obvious form of commentary, when the phrase is obscure without it.[[114]] Not only would the synthetic power of language remain undeveloped; it would also be the poorer for dispensing with harmony, quantity, and rhythm. For what is the use of melody when the sole object is to obtain some positive result? A language, in fact, would be a mere chance collection of arbitrary sounds.
Certain questions are apparently cleared up by such a theory. Chinese, the tongue of a masculine race, seems to have been at first developed with a purely utilitarian aim. The word has never risen above a mere sound, and has remained monosyllabic. There is no evolution of vocabulary, no root giving birth to a family of derivatives. All the words are roots; they are not modified by suffixes, but by each other, according to a very crude method of juxtaposition. The grammar is extremely simple; which makes the phraseology very monotonous. The very idea of æsthetic value is excluded, at any rate for ears that are accustomed to the rich, varied, and abundant forms, the inexhaustible combinations of happier tongues. We must however add that this may not be the impression produced on the Chinese themselves; and their spoken language certainly aims at some kind of beauty, since there are definite rules governing the melodic sequence of sounds. If it does not succeed in being so euphonious as other languages, we must still recognize that it aims at euphony no less than they. Further, the primary elements of Chinese are something more than a mere heaping together of useful sounds.[[115]]
I admit that the masculine races may be markedly inferior in æsthetic power to the others,[[116]] and their inferiority may be reproduced in their idioms. This is shown, not merely by the relative poverty of Chinese, but also by the careful way in which certain Western races have robbed Latin of its finest rhythmic qualities, and Gothic of its sonority. The inferiority of our modern languages, even the best of them, to Sanscrit, Greek, and Latin, is self-evident, and corresponds exactly to the mediocrity of the Chinese civilization and our own, so far as art and literature are concerned. I admit that this difference, alone with others, may serve to mark off the languages of the masculine races. They still, however, have a feeling for rhythm (less than that of the ancient tongues, but still powerful), and make a real attempt to create and obey laws of correspondence between sounds and the forms by which thought is modified in speech. I conclude that even in the languages of masculine races there still flickers the intellectual spark, the feeling for beauty and logic; this feeling, as well as that of material need, must preside at the birth of every language.
I said above that if material need had reigned alone, a set of any chance sounds would have been enough for human necessities, in the first ages of man’s existence. Such a theory cannot be maintained.