I have dealt in detail with the special case of France, but the principle could easily be illustrated from the rest of Europe; and it would be seen, as a universal rule, that the successive changes and modifications of a language are not, as one usually hears, the work of centuries. If they were, Ekkhili, Berber, Euskara, and Bas-Breton would long have disappeared; and yet they still survive. The changes in language are caused by corresponding changes in the blood of successive generations, and the parallelism is exact.
I must here explain a phenomenon to which I have already referred, namely the renunciation by certain racial groups (under pressure of special necessity, or their own nature) of their native tongue in favour of one which is more or less foreign to them. I took the Jews and the Parsees as examples. There are others more remarkable still; for we find, in America, savage tribes speaking languages superior to themselves.
In America, by a curious stroke of fate, the most energetic nations have developed, so to speak, in secret. The art of writing was unknown to them, and their history proper begins very late and is nearly always very obscure. The New World contains a great number of peoples which, though they are neighbours and derive in different directions from a common origin, have very little resemblance to each other.
According to d’Orbigny, the so-called “Chiquitean group” in Central America is composed of tribes, of which the largest contain about 1500 souls, and the least numerous 50 and 300. All these, even the smallest, have distinct languages. Such a state of things can only be the result of a complete racial anarchy.
On this hypothesis, I am not at all surprised to see many of these tribes, like the Chiquitos, in possession of a complicated and apparently scientific language. The words used by the men are sometimes different from those of the women; and in every case when a man borrows one of the women’s phrases, he changes the terminations. Where such luxury in vocabulary is possible, the language has surely reached a very refined stage. Unfortunately, side by side with this we find that the table of numerals does not go much further than ten. Such poverty, in the midst of so much careful elaboration, is probably due to the ravaging hand of time, aided by the barbarous condition of the natives to-day. When we see anomalies like these, we cannot help recalling the sumptuous palaces, once marvels of the Renaissance, which have come, by some revolution, into the hands of rude peasants. The eye may rove with admiration over delicate columns, elegant trellis-work, sculptured porches, noble staircases, and striking gables—luxuries which are useless to the wretchedness that lives under them; for the ruined roofs let in the rain, the floors crack, and the worm eats into the mouldering walls.
I can now say with certainty that, with regard to the special character of races, philology confirms all the facts of physiology and history. Its conclusions however must be handled with extreme care, and when they are all we have to go upon, it is very dangerous to rest content with them. Without the slightest doubt, a people’s language corresponds to its mentality, but not always to its real value for civilization. In order to ascertain this, we must fix our eyes solely on the race by which, and for which, the language was at first designed. Now with the exception of the negroes, and a few yellow groups, we meet only quaternary races in recorded history. All the languages we know are thus derivative, and we cannot gain the least idea of the laws governing their formation except in the comparatively later stages. Our results, even when confirmed by history, cannot be regarded as infallibly proved. The further we go back, the dimmer becomes the light, and the more hypothetical the nature of any arguments drawn from philology. It is exasperating to be thrown back on these when we try to trace the progress of any human family or to discover the racial elements that make it up. We know that Sanscrit and Zend are akin. That is something; but their common roots are sealed to us. The other ancient tongues are in the same case. We know nothing of Euskara except itself. As no analogue to it has been discovered up to now, we are ignorant of its history, and whether it is to be regarded as itself primitive or derived. It yields us no positive knowledge as to whether the people who speak it are racially simple or composite.
Ethnology may well be grateful for the help given by philology. But the help must not be accepted unconditionally, or any theories based on it alone.[[143]]
This rule is dictated by a necessary prudence. All the facts, however, mentioned in this chapter go to prove that, originally, there is a perfect correspondence between the intellectual virtues of a race and those of its native speech; that languages are, in consequence, unequal in value and significance, unlike in their forms and basic elements, as races are also; that their modifications, like those of races, come merely from intermixture with other idioms; that their qualities and merits, like a people’s blood, disappear or become absorbed, when they are swamped by too many heterogeneous elements; finally, that when a language of a higher order is used by some human group which is unworthy of it, it will certainly become mutilated and die out. Hence, though it is often difficult to infer at once, in a particular case, the merits of a people from those of its language, it is quite certain that in theory this can always be done.
I may thus lay it down, as a universal axiom, that the hierarchy of languages is in strict correspondence with the hierarchy of races.