II.
“Nothing necessitates the admission of different beginnings for the formal elements of the Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech;—and though it is impossible to derive the Aryan system of grammar from the Semitic, or the Semitic from the Aryan, we can perfectly understand how, either through individual influences, or by the wear and tear of speech in its own continuous working, the different systems of grammar of Asia and Europe may have been produced.”
It will be seen, from the very wording of these two paragraphs, that my object was to deny the necessity of independent beginnings, and to assert the possibility of a common origin of language. I have been accused [pg 341] of having been biassed in my researches by an implicit belief in the common origin of mankind. I do not deny that I hold this belief, and, if it wanted confirmation, that confirmation has been supplied by Darwin's book “On the Origin of Species.”[313] But I defy my adversaries to point out one single passage where I have mixed up scientific with theological arguments. Only if I am told that no “quiet observer would ever have conceived the idea of deriving all mankind from one pair, unless the Mosaic records had taught it,” I must be allowed to say in reply, that this idea on the contrary is so natural, so consistent with all human laws of reasoning, that, as far as I know, there has been no nation on earth which, if it possessed any traditions on the origin of mankind, did not derive the human race from one pair, if not from one person. The author of the Mosaic records, therefore, though stripped, before the tribunal of Physical Science, of his claims as an inspired writer, may at least claim the modest title of a quiet observer, and if his conception of the physical unity of the human race can be proved to be an error, it is an error which he shares in common [pg 342] with other quiet observers, such as Humboldt, Bunsen, Prichard, and Owen.[314]
The only question which remains to be answered is this, Was it one and the same volume of water which supplied all the lateral channels of speech? or, to drop all metaphor, are the roots which were joined together according to the radical, the terminational, and inflectional systems, identically the same? The only way to answer, or at least to dispose of, this question is to consider the nature and origin of roots; and we shall then have reached the extreme limits to which inductive reasoning can carry us in our researches into the mysteries of human speech.
Lecture IX. The Theoretical Stage, And The Origin Of Language.
“In examining the history of mankind, as well as in examining the phenomena of the material world, when we cannot trace the process by which an event has been produced, it is often of importance to be able to show how it may have been produced by natural causes. Thus, although it is impossible to determine with certainty what the steps were by which any particular language was formed, yet if we can show, from the known principles of human nature, how all its various parts might gradually have arisen, the mind is not only to a certain degree satisfied, but a check is given to that indolent philosophy which refers to a miracle whatever appearances, both in the natural and moral worlds, it is unable to explain.”[315]
This quotation from an eminent Scotch philosopher contains the best advice that could be given to the student of the science of language, when he approaches the problem which we have to examine to-day, namely, the origin of language. Though we have stripped that problem of the perplexing and mysterious aspect which it presented to the philosophers of old, yet, even in its simplest form, it seems to be almost beyond the reach of the human understanding.