These adopted children, these waifs, however, it must not be lost sight of, before they become integral parts of English speech must submit to a change of their original idiomatic expression. No matter who came—Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, or French—the people of the British Islands, while adopting their terms of expression, remained true to their original idiomatic expression. As this country absorbs people from the whole world and makes one homogeneous American nation of them, so has the English language absorbed, and is still absorbing, words from every other people's language, and has transformed them into one homogeneous language of its own.
Comparative philology, if it wants to accomplish that which would be most worthy of its efforts, will have to come down to these strong and basic roots of language.
The German language, whose idiomatic expression is centripetal, on the other hand, does not possess the same capacity for adopting foreign words and adapting them to its idiom. When it does adopt them, as, for instance, those of French origin, they are pronounced, not in the German, but, as far as the German people are capable of so doing, in the French manner. They could not, in fact, be pronounced in the German manner, the German language being a close corporation, so to say, which does not admit of any foreign shareholders; while the English language is a company open to all comers. While it is the endeavor of Germans to purify their language by expelling as far as possible any foreign word and element therefrom, Anglo-Saxons are constantly adopting new words from foreign languages. It would be equal to the labor of Sisyphus for Anglo-Saxons to endeavor to purify their language from foreign words, in the same sense that Germans are attempting to purify theirs.
It appears to me that the capacity of England for successful colonization is largely due to the centrifugal force inherent in its language, while the want of success of Germany for the same purpose is due to the absence of this force. Anglo-Saxon government tends toward decentralization, German toward centralization. I say this in spite of the fact that Germany is still divided into many principalities; the fact of its adherence to this undesirable condition being a proof of the correctness of this assertion rather than otherwise—Germans not being able to readily get out of that in which they are once rooted. In regard to governing peoples in distant territories or colonies, this tendency is of importance. English government, being undemonstrative, is more effective than German, which is demonstrative, meddlesome, and therefore offensive; the former being material and practical, the latter immaterial and inclined to be visionary.
In a word, where are we to find explanations regarding national traits of character except through inner motive powers, productive of results individual as well as national? There is no factor which exercises an influence upon a nation as a unit so wide in extent and of so powerful a nature as that of language. It is the only motive power, in fact, which every member of a nation shares with every other member thereof, but not with any member of any foreign nation.
IDIOMATIC EXPRESSION
Although it is a well known fact that every language has an idiomatic expression, an intonation of its own, I am not aware of any attempt ever having been made at definitely stating what such expression, or intonation, really consists in; and in what respect it differs, as between one language and another. Yet this fact should be the most important of all in connection with ethnological studies. It is necessary to know what a people's idiomatic expression is before we can begin to make a study of its language, in comparison with that of any other people, by which we may expect to arrive at conclusions of any real value in an ethnological sense.
In comparison with idiomatic expression, the study of the roots of words and their derivation, it appears to me, is of but secondary importance; idiomatic expression being the kernel in which the tree of national expression had its incipiency, its origin. It is the life which pulsates through its veins, in which it has its stay and maintenance; the nerves which tingle with its intelligence, its genius, its soul. Take away this soul, and it ceases to exist. For every language there must have been a strong impulse making an impression before there could have been any expression at all. This impulse must have been of so powerful and continuous a nature as to have left its impression upon the minds of a sufficiently large number of people to form the nucleus for the expression of a specific language, and, in so doing, constituting such people a nation.
I have already stated that it is motion in the first instance which superinduces a specific mode of breathing and consequent expression. It is to motion, then, that we must ascribe the first impulse. Such motion may have been active as to defense against enemies, wild beasts, or the elements; or it may have been passive, consisting of the continuous noise produced by the motion of the sea, tempests, or thunder-storms, making a great and lasting impression. Then, again, the influence may have been of a peaceful, balmy, beneficial nature, as with people living in security, in a mild climate and on fertile lands. The stronger the expression of these movements, the stronger the impression they made and the more powerful the expression of the language; the softer and more harmonious their expression, the softer and the more rhythmical the expression of the language. These influences made their first impression by superinducing a mode of breathing in conformity therewith.
Thus sounds giving expression to pain, perhaps, in the first instance, or to sorrow, joy, surprise, etc., were made in conformity with this, their specific mode of breathing. These outcries, consisting of syllables, grew into words and sentences, which, being uttered in conformity and sympathy with their special mode of breathing, created a specific idiomatic expression. The same process, from its first inauguration, and with but slight alterations, has been practised and persisted in by the same people from the beginning to the present time. With the English people, as already mentioned, no migration, no invasion, no conqueror, no matter how powerful, has been able to swerve it from its path. The most these invaders could do was to graft some of the expressions in which their ideas were clad, some words, on to this aboriginal stem. This stem was so strong in its primeval conception that it could bear all these exotic graftings without losing its character, absorbing all, welcoming all beneath the widespread roof and homestead of its branches. It proved its superiority over the idiomatic expression of these foreign tongues by its survival, as the fittest.