Sounds are not assigned to ideas by pure chance. The choice is governed by the instinctive recognition of a certain logical relation between noises heard outwardly by man’s ear and ideas that his throat or tongue wishes to express. In the eighteenth century men were greatly struck by this truth. Unfortunately, it was caught in the net of etymological exaggeration so characteristic of the time; and its results were so absurd that they justly fell into disrepute. For a long time the best minds were warned off the land that had been so stupidly exploited by the early pioneers. They are now beginning to return to it again, and if they have learnt prudence and restraint in the bitter school of experience, they may arrive at valuable conclusions. Without pushing a theory, true in itself, into the realm of chimeras, we may allow that primitive speech knew how to use as far as possible the different impressions received by the ear, in order to form certain classes of words; in creating others it was guided by the feeling of a mysterious relation between certain abstract ideas and some particular noises. Thus, for example, the sound of ē seems to suggest death and dissolution, that of v or w, vagueness in the moral or physical realm, vows, wind, and the like; s suggests starkness and standing fast, m maternity, and so on.[[117]] Such a theory is sufficiently well founded for us to take it seriously, if kept within due limits. But it must be used with great circumspection, if we are not to find ourselves in the dark paths where even common sense is soon led astray.
The last paragraph may show, however imperfectly, that material need is not the only element that produces a language, but that the best of man’s powers have helped in the task. Sounds were not applied arbitrarily to ideas and objects, and in this respect men followed a pre-established order, one side of which was manifested in themselves. Thus the primitive tongues, however crude and poor they may have been, contained all the elements from which their branches might at a later time be developed in a logical and necessary sequence.
W. von Humboldt has observed, with his usual acuteness, that every language is independent of the will of those who speak it. It is closely bound up with their intellectual condition, and is beyond the reach of arbitrary caprice. It cannot be altered at will, as is curiously shown by the efforts that have been made to do so.
The Bushmen have invented a system of changing their language, in order to prevent its being understood by the uninitiated. We find the same custom among certain tribes of the Caucasus. But all their efforts come to no more than the mere insertion of a subsidiary syllable at the beginning, middle, or end of words. Take away this parasitic element, and the language remains the same, changed neither in forms nor syntax.
De Sacy has discovered a more ambitious attempt, in the language called “Balaïbalan.” This curious idiom was invented by the Sufis, to be used in their mystical books, with the object of wrapping the speculations of their theologians in still greater mystery. They made up, on no special plan, the words that seemed to them to sound most strangely to their ears. If however this so-called language did not belong to any family and if the meaning given to its sounds was entirely arbitrary, yet the principles of euphony, the grammar and the syntax, everything in fact which gives a language its special character, bore the unmistakable stamp of Arabic and Persian. The Sufis produced a jargon at once Aryan and Semitic, and of no importance whatever. The pious colleagues of Djelat-Eddin-Rumi were not able to invent a language; and clearly this power has not been given to any single man.[[118]]
Hence the language of a race is closely bound up with its intelligence, and has the power of reflecting its various mental stages, as they are reached. This power may be at first only implicit.[[119]]
Where the mental development of a race is faulty or imperfect, the language suffers to the same extent. This is shown by Sanscrit, Greek, and the Semitic group, as well as by Chinese, in which I have already pointed out a utilitarian tendency corresponding to the intellectual bent of the people. The superabundance of philosophical and ethnological terms in Sanscrit corresponds to the genius of those who spoke it, as well as its richness and rhythmic beauty. The same is the case with Greek; while the lack of precision in the Semitic tongues is exactly paralleled by the character of the Semitic peoples.
If we leave the cloudy heights of the remoter ages, and come down to the more familiar regions of modern history, we shall be, as it were, presiding at the birth of many new tongues; and this will make us see with even greater clearness how faithfully language mirrors the genius of a race.
As soon as two nations are fused together, a revolution takes place in their respective languages; this is sometimes slow, sometimes sudden, but always inevitable. The languages are changed and, after a certain time, die out as separate entities. The new tongue is a compromise between them, the dominant element being furnished by the speech of the race that has contributed most members to the new people.[[120]] Thus, from the thirteenth century, the Germanic dialects of France have had to yield ground, not to Latin, but to the lingua romana, with the revival of the Gallo-Roman power.[[121]] Celtic, too, had to retreat before the Italian colonists. It did not yield to Italian civilization; in fact, one might say, that, thanks to the number of those who spoke it, Celtic finally gained a kind of victory. For after the complete fusion of the Gauls, the Romans, and the northern tribes, it was Celtic that laid the foundations of modern French syntax, abolished the strong accentuation of Germanic as well as the sonority of Latin, and introduced its own equable rhythm. The gradual development of French is merely the effect of this patient labour, that went on, without ceasing, under the surface. Again, the reason why modern German has lost the striking forms to be seen in the Gothic of Bishop Ulfilas lies in the presence of a strong Cymric element in the midst of the small Germanic population that was still left to the east of the Rhine,[[122]] after the great migrations of the sixth and following centuries of our era.
The linguistic results of the fusion of two peoples are as individual as the new racial character itself. One may say generally that no language remains pure after it has come into close contact with a different language. Even when their structures are totally unlike each other, the vocabulary at any rate suffers some changes. If the parasitic language has any strength at all, it will certainly attack the other in its rhythmic quality, and even in the unstable parts of its syntax. Thus language is one of the most fragile and delicate forms of property; and we may often see a noble and refined speech being affected by barbarous idioms and passing itself into a kind of relative barbarism. By degrees it will lose its beauty; its vocabulary will be impoverished, and many of its forms obsolete, while it will show an irresistible tendency to become assimilated to its inferior neighbour. This has happened in the case of Wallachian and Rhætian, Kawi and Birman. The two latter have been leavened with Sanscrit elements; but in spite of this noble alliance, they have been declared by competent judges to be inferior to Delaware.[[123]]