The Natural History of the Varieties of Man

by R. G. Latham

The phænomena, however, which the multiplicity of mutually unintelligible tongues spoken within limited areas exhibited, were first made known in the case of the languages of America; and, as new facts, they were not likely to be undervalued. On the contrary, another natural tendency of the human mind, viz., a readiness to exaggerate difference in cases where similarity had been expected, was allowed full play; and not only were the really remarkable phænomena of philological diversity overstated, but the inferences from them rather exceeded than fell short of their legitimate compass. A measure of the extent to which this was carried may be collected from the following extract from Prichard,—"We owe the earliest information respecting the languages of America to the missionaries sent from time to time by the kings of Spain at the instigation of the Pope, with the view of converting the native inhabitants to the Christian religion. Many of these persons devoted immense labour to the acquisition of the idioms of various tribes, with the intention of qualifying themselves for the effectual performance of their duties. They represent the number of distinct languages spoken in the New World as very great. Abbé Gilii, who wrote a history of the Orinoco and collected specimens of the languages spoken in different districts with which he was acquainted, says that if a catalogue were formed of all the idioms of the continent, they would be found to be 'non molte moltissime,' but 'infinite, innumerabili.' Abbé Clavigero declares that he had cognisance of thirty-five different idioms spoken by races within the jurisdiction of Mexico. Father Kircher, a celebrated philologer of his time, after consulting the Jesuits assembled in Rome on the occasion of a general congregation of the order in 1676, informs us that those missionaries who had been in the New World supposed the number of languages, of which they had some notices in South America, to be five hundred. But the Abbé Royo, who had made diligent inquiries about the language of Peru, where he had dwelt, asserts that the whole people of America spoke not less than two thousand languages. The learned Francisco Lopez, a native of South America, who had extensive knowledge of that country as well as of the northern continent, a great part of which was traversed by the Jesuits, thought it no rash assertion to say that the idioms, 'notabilmente diversi,' of the whole country were not less than fifteen hundred."

It is difficult to say what would have been the natural growth, in the way of opinion from these strong (and not much overstated) phænomena, as to the apparently radical differences between the languages in question if they had come down to the present generation of scholars in an unmodified and unqualified form. This, however, was not the case. A most important disturbing element was soon indicated, which I follow Prichard in ascribing to Vater.

It was this—viz.: that different as may be the languages of America from each other, the discrepancy extends to words or roots only, the general internal or grammatical structure being the same for all.

Of course this grammatical structure must, in and of itself, be stamped with some very remarkable characteristics. It must differ from those of the whole world. Its verbs must be different from other verbs, its substantives other than the substantives of Europe, its adjectives unlike the adjectives of Asia. It must be this, or something like this—otherwise its identity of character goes for nothing; inasmuch as a common grammatical structure in respect to common grammatical elements is nothing more than what occurs all the world over.

At present it is enough to say, that such either was or appeared to be the case. "In Greenland,"[133] writes Vater, "as well as in Peru, on the Hudson river, in Massachusetts as well as in Mexico, and as far as the banks of the Orinoco, languages are spoken, displaying forms more artfully distinguished and more numerous than almost any other idioms in the world possess." "When we consider these artfully and laboriously contrived languages, which, though existing at points separated from each other by so many hundreds of miles, have assumed a character not less remarkably similar among themselves than different from the principles of all other languages, it is certainly the most natural conclusion that these common methods of construction have their origin from a single point; that there has been one general source from which the culture of languages in America has been diffused, and which has been the common centre of its diversified idioms."

"In America," says Humboldt,[133] "from the country of the Eskimo to the banks of the Oronoco, and again, from these torrid banks to the frozen climate of the Straits of Magellan, mother-tongues, entirely different with regard to their roots, have, if we may use the expression, the same physiognomy. Striking analogies of grammatical construction are acknowledged, not only in the more perfect languages, as that of the Incas, the Aymara, the Guarani, the Mexican, and the Cora, but also in languages extremely rude. Idioms, the roots of which do not resemble each other more than the roots of the Sclavonian and Biscayan, have those resemblances of internal mechanism which are found in the Sanscrit, the Persian, the Greek, and the German languages. Almost everywhere in the New World we recognise a multiplicity of forms and tenses in the verb, an industrious artifice to indicate beforehand, either by inflection of the personal pronouns which form the terminations of the verb, or by an intercalated suffix, the nature and the relation of its object and its subject, and to distinguish whether the object be animate or inanimate, of the masculine or the feminine gender, simple or complex in number. It is on account of this general analogy of structure; it is because American languages, which have no words in common, the Mexican for instance, and the Quichua, resemble each other by their organisation, and form complete contrasts with the languages of Latin Europe, that the Indians of the missions familiarise themselves more easily with other American idioms than with the language of the mistress country."

Lastly, definitude was given to these and similar somewhat too general expressions as to the difference in grammatical structure on the part of the American languages from those of the Old World, and their likeness to each other by the analytical investigations of Du Ponceau,[134] whose term polysynthetic, as descriptive of the characteristic and peculiar complicated grammar of the American idioms from Greenland to Cape Horn, has been generally received.

We now see in a general way (and this is as much as in a work like the present can be shown), the meaning of a statement made in a former page,[135] viz.: that "where the American languages differ from each other they differ in a manner to which Asia supplies no parallel," whilst when they "agree with each they agree in a way to which Asia supplies no parallel"—i. e., whilst they agree grammatically they differ glossarially; so exhibiting what may be called a philological paradox.

At present we are neither doubting the reality nor measuring the amount of this paradox; we are only asking in which of two ways it has been interpreted. What has been the effect of the antagonism between the philologico-grammatical and the philologico-glossarial test? Which has told most? the difference or the likeness? Has the first determined investigators to separate what the latter unites, or has the latter united what the former separates?

The answer to this is—that the likeness in the grammars has been generally considered to over-ride the difference in the vocabularies; so that the American languages are considered to supply an argument in favour of the unity of the American population stronger than the one which they suggest against it.