have preserved itself the least altered in that very country where languages
had been one at the beginning. And yet, the Hebrew and
Chaldæan tongues, which were those of these countries, are very far
from belonging to what may be called the first floor in the formation
of language. The Chinese, and the languages of Thibet as well as
of the trans-Gangetic peninsula, have held to much more of the type
of primitive tongues, than have those of the Semitic stock. Analogies
infinitely greater ought to he perceived among the most ancient
languages—Hebrew, Egyptian, Sanscrit, Chinese ; inasmuch as they
should be much nearer to the source. Albeit we, meet with nothing
of the kind ; and the style of Genesis no more resembles that of the
-Chinese “ Kings,” than the language of the Rig-veda approaches that
which the hieroglyphics have preserved for us. Amidst these idioms
there exists nothing but those identities that are due to the use of
onomatopées, which was more frequent in primitive times than at
the present day. The grammatical forms are different. How, let us
note that—such is the persistency of these forms in languages—the
Greek and the German, which have been separated from the San-
scritic stem for more than 3000 years, have preserved, notwithstanding,
a common stock of grammar. How much richer should not
this stock have been amongst those languages of which we cited the
names above.
Besides, even were the similar words of these primitive idioms
much more numerous than a few biliteral and monosyllabic onomatopées,
this would he far from sufficing to establish unity. Many
similar words result, in tongues the most diverse, from the natural
(liaisons) connections that certain sounds have with such or such
ahother sensation. Between the word and the perception, there are
very many secret analogies that escápe us, and which were more decided
when man lived in closer contact with nature. This is what
the learned historian of Semitic tongues, M. E r n e s t R e n a n ,3 has judiciously
remarked. Primitive man endeavored to imitate everything
that surrounded him ; because he lived altogether externally. Other
verbal resemblances are the effect of chance. The scale of sounds in
human speech is too little extended, and the sounds themselves merge
too easily one into another, to prevent the possibility of the production
of a fortuitous affinity in a given case.
Similitudes, to be veritable, ought to be grounded upon principles
more solid than a few rare analogies. And these resemblances do
not exist among those languages carried, according to the ipse dixit
of the slavish interpreters of Genesis, from the valley of Shinâr to
the four corners of the world. The constitution of the tongues of
8 Histoire et Système comparé des Langues Sémitiques, Paris, 8yo., Ire partie, 1855.
each family appears as a primitive fact, of which we can no more
pierce the origins than we can seize those of the animal species. In
the same manner that creation has sported amid the infinite varieties
of one and the same type, so human intelligence has manifested
itself through a multitude of idioms which have differently rendered
its conceptions and its ideas.
SECTION H.
The ancient grammarians, who submitted speech to a logical and
reasoned analysis, had figured to themselves that, in its formation, the
human mind must have; -followed the rational march indicated by
reason. An examination of the facts has proved that there happened
nothing of the sort.
Upon studying a tongue at the divers epochs of its grammatical
existence, it has become settled that our processes -of logic and of
analysis were unknown to the first men. Thought presented itself
at first under a form at one and the same time confused and complex,
in which the-mind had no consciousness of the elements of which it
was composed. Sensations succeeded each other so rapidly that
memory and speech, in lieu of reproducing their signs separately,
reflected them all together in their simultaneous action. Thought
was wholly sympathetic. That which demonstrates it is, that the
most ancient languages offer this character in the highest degree.
In them the word is not distinguishable from the phrase,—otherwise
speaking, they talked by phrases, and not by words. Each expression
is the complete organism, of which the parts are not only
appendices one of another, but are inclosed within each other, or are
tightly interlocked. This is what philologists have termed agglutination,
polysynthetism. Such manner of expressing oneself is doubtless
little favorable to perspicuity; but, besides that the first men werg
far from possessing the clear and precise ideas of our time, their
conception was sufficiently simple to be seized without great labor
of reflection. Furthermore, men, without doubt, then understood
each other rather by intuition than through reasoning. What they
sought for was an intimate relation between their sentiments and
those vocal signs, by the help of which the former could be manifested;
and these relations once established, they were perceived and comprehended
like the play of the features, like the meaning of a gesture,
rather spontaneously than through analysis of their parts.
In whatever method we would explain to ourselves, however, this
primitive characteristic of human speech, it is now-a-days not the