Three chief points are to be noted, when we are concerned with the progress of the intellect:—
1. The creative activity of humanity is the basis of all the roots of words.
2. The source of all abstract ideas lies in acts which are entirely material.
3. It has been satisfactorily proved that we speak the language derived from that spoken by our primitive ancestors. It was the custom of Nebuchadnezzar to have his name stamped on every brick that was used during his reign in erecting his colossal palaces. Those palaces fell to ruins, but from the ruins the ancient materials were carried away for building new cities; and on examining the bricks in the walls of the modern city of Bagdad, travellers have discovered on every one the clear traces of that royal signature. Our modern languages were built up with the materials taken from the ruins of the ancient languages, and every word that we pronounce displays the royal stamp impressed upon it by the founders. The formation of those derived languages, by means of the roots with their successive change of meaning, the construction of their grammatical forms, the continued changes amongst the different dialects, all indicate the presence of a germ in man tending from the first to make him a reasoning being.
CHAPTER VI
ANCIENT LANGUAGE
Language may be divided into three distinct periods, when taken as a whole.
The first is, when language, finding itself released from those restraints which enveloped it in its cradle, supplies those words which are most indispensable to man in connecting the one word with others, such as pronouns, prepositions, names of numbers, and of objects of daily use. This must have been the first stage of a language hardly yet agglutinate, free from trammels, with no sign of nationality, or individuality, but containing in itself all the chief features of the many forms belonging to the Turanian, Aryan and Semitic families; the explorer of philosophic antiquity does not penetrate beyond this first period.
The second phase is that in which two linguistic families passing out of the agglutinate stage, unattached as yet to grammatical forms, received once for all the stamp of the formation which we find amongst the popular and modern dialects belonging both to the Semitic and Aryan divisions, and to which they owe this family resemblance, which justifies their inclusion in one or other of these branches of language; on the one side the Teutonic, Celtic, Slav, Italic, Hellenic, Iranian and Indian; on the other Arabic, Armenian and Hebrew; the yet unformed elements of grammar were eventually introduced into these languages at the substitution of the amalgamate for the agglutinate. The Turanian or Ural-Altaic languages have an entirely different character; they preserved for some time—and one or two still retain—the agglutinate form which retards the development of the grammar, and hides the evidence of relationship to the languages between China and the Pyrenees, and between Cape Comorin and Lapland.
These two periods are followed by a third, generally known as the mythological; it is obscure, and is calculated to shake one’s faith in the regular and orderly progress of human reason. We find it to be a phase through which all peoples have passed; yet in using the word mythology our thoughts naturally turn to the mythology of Greece, the only one with which we were made acquainted in our school days, and also the only one with which those were familiar who had not given themselves over specially to the study of the beliefs of antiquity. In the schools this study ran side by side with history; from our earliest days we had been taught the complete polytheism of heathen divinities; our work as pupils was to know our lessons, the work of the masters was to see that we learnt them. Mythology, therefore, was to us only one chapter in that great work, entitled the compulsory course of studies—a chapter which apparently required no more elucidation than the gymnastic lesson.
Our masters represented the Greeks as a people endowed with a vivid imagination, who recounted in exalted pure language most fantastic stories; we read in these authors: “Eos has fled—Eos will return—Eos has returned—Eos wakens the sleepers—Eos lengthens the life of mortals—Eos rises from the sea—Eos is the daughter of the sky—Eos is followed by the sun—Eos is loved by the sun—Eos is killed by the sun,” and so on ad infinitum; and we were told, “These are myths.” As no explanation was given of the word myth, we were none the wiser.