[111]. I have no hesitation in regarding the exaggerated development of instinct among savage races as a specific mark of intellectual inferiority. The sharpening of certain senses can only be gained by the deterioration of the mental facilities. On this point, compare what Lesson says of the Papuans, in a paper printed in the Annales des sciences naturelles, vol. x.
[112]. See p. 139.
[113]. W. von Humboldt, in one of the most brilliant of his minor works, has admirably expressed this fact, in its essentials. “In language,” he says, “the work of time is helped everywhere by national idiosyncrasies. The characteristic features in the idioms of the warrior hordes of America and Northern Asia were not necessarily those of the primitive races of India and Greece. It is not possible to trace a perfectly equal, and as it were natural, development of any language, whether it was spoken by one nation or many” (W. von Humboldt, Über das Entstehen der grammatischen Formen, und ihren Einfluss auf die Ideenentwickelung).
[114]. W. von Humboldt, Über die Kawi-Sprache, Introduction.
[115]. I am inclined to believe that the monosyllabic quality of Chinese is not really a specific mark of the language at all; and though a striking characteristic, it does not seem to be an essential one. If it were, Chinese would be an “isolating” language, connected with others having the same structure. We know that this is not so. Chinese belongs to the Tatar or Finnish system, of which some branches are polysyllabic. On the other hand, we find monosyllabic languages among groups with quite a different origin. I do not lay any stress on the example of Othomi, a Mexican dialect which, according to du Ponceau, has the monosyllabic quality of Chinese, and yet in other respects belongs to the American family among which it is found, as Chinese does to the Tatar group (see Morton, “An Inquiry into the Distinctive Characteristics of the aboriginal race of America,” Philadelphia, 1844). My reason for neglecting this apparently important example is that these American languages may one day be recognized as forming merely a vast branch of the Tatar family; and thus any conclusion I might draw from them would simply go to confirm what I have said as to the relation of Chinese to the surrounding dialects, a relation which is in no way disproved by the peculiar character of Chinese itself.
I find therefore a more conclusive instance in Coptic, which will not easily be shown to have any relation to Chinese. But here also every syllable is a root; and the simple affixes that modify the root are so independent that even the determining particle that marks the time of the verb does not always remain joined to the word. Thus hon means “to command”; a-hon, “he commanded”; but a Moyses hon, “Moses commanded” (see E. Meier, Hebräisches Wurzelwörterbuch).
Thus it seems possible for monosyllabism to appear in every linguistic family. It is a kind of infirmity produced by causes which are not yet understood; it is not however a specific feature, separating the language in which it occurs from the rest, and setting it in a class by itself.
[116]. Goethe says in Wilhelm Meister: “Few Germans, and perhaps few men of modern nations, have the sense of an æsthetic whole. We only know how to praise and blame details, we can only show a fragmentary admiration.”
[117]. Cf. W. von Humboldt, Über die Kawi-Sprache, Introduction, p. xcv: “We may call the sound that imitates the meaning of a word symbolic, although the symbolic element in speech goes far deeper than this.... This kind of imitation undoubtedly had a great, and perhaps exclusive, influence over the early attempts at word-building.”
[118]. There is probably another jargon of the same kind as Balaïbalan. This is called “Afnskoë,” and is spoken by the pedlars and horse-dealers of Greater Russia, especially in the province of Vladimir. It is confined to men. The grammar is entirely Russian, though the roots are foreign. (See Pott, Ersch and Gruber’s Encyclopädie, Indogermanischer Sprachstamm, p. 110.)