themselves some particular analogies, which are made evident upon
comparing these families one with another; but such resemblances
are never the same amongst many families; and two groups, that
have a given characteristic in common, differ through some other
which, notwithstanding, links one of them to a group more remote.
In brief, the specific characters of languages are like those of animals
; no characteristic taken singly possesses an absolute value,
being merely a true indication of lineage or of relationship. It is
their multiplicity, the frequent recurrence of grammatical forms altogether
special, which really constitutes families. The closer affinity
becomes grasped when words are discovered, either in their “ ensemble,
or for uses the most customary and most ancient, to be identically
the same. ■
Thus, then, we recognise two degrees of relationship among the
idioms spoken by mankind, viz : the relationship of words coupled
with a conformity of the general grammatical system; or, this conformity
without similitude of vocabulary. Languages may be termed
daughters or sisters when they offer the former degree of relationship,
and allied when they are connected through the latter.
Do all languages proceed from a common stock—from one primitive
tongue, which has been the (souche) trunk of the branches now-a-
days living isolately ?
This, for a long time, was believed. Hevertheless, such belief was
not based upon an attentive comparison of tongues that had either
not yet been attempted, or which was hardly even sketched out: but
it arose simply from confidence reposing upon the recital of Genesis,
and owing to the servile interpretation that had been foisted upon
its text. Genesis, indeed, tells us, at the beginning of its Xlth chapter,
1—“ There were then upon all the earth one single language and the
same words.’’
This remark of the sacred historian has for its object to explain
the account of the Tower of Babylon. The nature of his narrative
cannot occasion doubt in the eyes of criticism the least practised.
We have here a myth that is certainly very ancient, and which the
Hebrews had brought back again (after the Captivity) from their
mother-country. But it is impossible to behold in it an exposé really
historical. The motive given for the construction of the tower is
that which would suggest itself to the mind of a simple and ignorant
population, unable to comprehend the reason why the Assyrians
should erect this tower destined for astronomical observations, inti1
Verse 1 > Hebrew Text ( C a h e h , La Bible, Traduction nouvelh, Paris, 1881, -i. p. 28) —
“ And now [KuL H-AReTs] the whole earth was of [SAePAell AKAaTt] one u p and of
[DeBeRIM AKAaDIM] one (set of) words.”
mately woven with their religion. And the explanation of the name
of BaBeL (Babylon) itself completes the evidence that the recital had
been written ex post facto; and, like so many myths, suggested by
the double acceptation of a word.2
The confounding of the speech of the whole earth, could have been
but the work of time, and of time very prolonged; because we now
know what lengthened persistency, what vitality, is the property of
tongues! One perceives in this antique legend a remembrance of
the confusion which prevailed among the divers peoples, and amid
the different races, who visited Babylon for political or commercial
interests. As these populations must have been already very divided,
their languages were parcelled out, at the period of the narrative,
into a great number of dialects; and the simultaneous employment
of all these idioms in one and the same city appropriately gave it the
name of Qity of confusion. Babylon, moreover (like its modern successor,
Bagdad of the present day), was situate almost at the point qf
partitibn of the two great branches of the white race, viz : the S h e -
m it e s , or Syro-Arabians, on the one side, and of the J a p e t id 2E, or
Irhno-Arians, on the other. The valley of Shindr was then, therefore,
as the frontier-line betwixt two races who possessed some traditions
of a common origin; and the Biblical mythos of the “ Tower ”
had for its object an explanation of the forgotten motives of their
separation.
Certainly, if one were to take the account of Genesis to the letter,
it would be necessary to suppose that the first men had not yet
attained more than the first degrees of speech, and that their idiom
was then of great simplicity. How, this primitive idiom ought to
2 [It is an amusing coincidence that, while the above scientific passages by my erudite
friend, M. Maury, are in the stereotyper’s hands, the religious and profane press of
the United States should be ringing with the joyful news of the actual discovery, on the
classic plain of Arbela too, of “ that Titanic structure” (as the enthusiastic penny-a-liner
well terms it), the “ Tower of Babel” ! “ Surprising,” indeed, would it be were such discovery
authentic. It becomes still more “ surprising” in view of the palpable anachronisms
by which this pious writer betrays his total ignorance of the nature, epochas, and results,
of cuneiform researches: but, what seems most “ surprising ” is, that this newest canard of
some adolescent missionary writing to Boston (the “ modern Athens”) from “ Beirut, Dec.
8, 1856,” should travel the rounds of the whole press of America without (so far as I can
learn) one word of critical commentary, or exposure of its preposterous fallacies. Those
who, even in this country, follow step by step each discovery made in Assyria, for account
of the Imperial Government, by the erudite and indefatigable Monsieur P lace, as it is
announced at Paris, are perfectly aware that every newly-examined “ tower ” in that region
(besides being long posterior in age to the last built of 67 Egyptian pyramids) only affords
additional “ confirmations I of the modus through which,—during the Babylonish captivity,
and duly registered in passages of Hebrew literature written after the “ school of Esdras”
established itself at Jerusalem—this myth of the “ Tower of BaB6eL,” as shown above, arose
in the Israelitish mind. Compare Types of Mankind, 1854, pp. 297, 506, 559-60:—G. R. G.]