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speech. The Zend, notwithstanding its traits of resemblance with
the Vedie Sanscrit, allows our perceiving, as it were, the first symptoms
of a labor of condensation in the pronunciation, and of analysis
in the expression. It wears all the external guise pf a tongue with
flexions (langue à fléxion) ; hut at the epoch of the Sassanides [ a . d.
224 to 644] as M. S p i e g e l remarks, it already commences to disrobe
itself of them. The tendency to analysis makes itself by far more
felt in the old Persic, or Parsi; and, in modern Persian, decomposition
has attained its ultimate term.
We might reproduce the same observations for the languages of
the Caucasus, the Armenian and the Georgian ; for Semitic tongues,
by comparing the Rabbinical with the ancient Hebrew; hut what has
been already said suffices for the comprehension of the fact.
The cause of these transformations is found in the very condition
of a tongue, in the method through which it moulds itself upon the
impressions and wants of the"mind,—it proceeds from its own mode
of generation. An idiom is an organism subject, like every organism,
to the laws of development. One must not, writes W i l h e lm
v o n H u lm b o ld t , consider a language as a product dead and formed
but once ; it is an animate being and ever creative. Human thought
elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence ; and of this thought,
language is # manifestation. An idiom cannot, therefore, remain
stationary ; it walks, it develops itself, it grows up, it fortifies itsejf,
it becomes old, and it reaches decrepitude.
The tongue sets forth with a first phonetic, radical, which renders
the sensation in all its simplicity and its generality. This is not yet
a verb, nor an adjective, nor a substantive ; it is a word that expresses
the common sensation that may lie atfhe bottom of these grammatical
categories ; which translates the sentiment of welfare, of pleasure,
of pain, of joy, of hope, of light, or of heat. In the- use that
is made of speech, there is doubtless by turns a sense verbal or
nominal, adverbial or qualifying ; but nothing, however, in its form
indicates or’specifies such a part (rôle). Very simple languages are
still nearly all at this elementary stage. It is at a later day only that
the mind creates those formswhich are called members of a discourse.
These had existed without doubt virtually, but the intelligence did
not feel the need of distinguishing them profoundly by an essential
form. Subsequently there forms went on multiplying themselves ;
but their abundance no less than their nature has varied according
to countries and to races. Sometimes it is upon the verb that
imagination has exhausted all the shades of expression; at others it
is to the substantive that it has attributed these modifications. Mind
has been more or less inventive, and more or less rational : it has
seized here upon delicacies which completely escaped it tnere; and
in the clumsiest tongues one remarks shadowings, or gradations,
that are wanting to the most refined. Of this let us give an example:
—the Sanscrit is a great deal richer than Greek in the manner by
the aid of which it expresses the relationship of the noun to a phrase,
and the relations of words between themselves. It possesses a far
deeper and much purer sentiment of the nature of the verb and of
its intrinsic value: yet, notwithstanding, the conception of the mood
in a verb, considered as distinct from time, escaped it, — the verbal
nature of the infinitive remained to it unknown. Sanscrit in this
respect, therefore, yields to Greek, which, moreover, is united to it
by very tight hands.
Thus then, human intelligence did not arrive in every language
to the same degree, and consequently it did not create the same
secondary wheel-work. The general mechanism presented itself
everywhere the same; because this mechanism proceeds from the
internal nature of our mind, and this nature is the same for all
mankind.
The genius of each tongue, then, marked out its pattern; and this
genius has been more or less fecund, exhibits more or less of mobility.
Words have constantly represented the same order of objects, because
these objects do not change according to countries or according to
races; hut they are offered under aspects the most varied, and these
aspects have not always been identical under different skies and
amid diverse societies. Hence the creation of words in unequal
number to represent the same sum-total of known objects. The
brilliant imagination of one people has been a never-failing source
of new words, of novel forms; at the same time that, amongst
others, the idea has remained almost embryonic, and the object ever
presented itself under the same aspect. H‘ given impressions were
paramount, the words by which they were translated became greatly
multiplied.
In the days of chivalry there was a host of' expressions to render
the idea of horse. In Sanscrit, the language of Hindostán, where the
elephant plays a part as important as the horse among ourselves,
words abound to designate this pachyderm. Sometimes it is denominated
as “ the twice-drinking animal,” sometimes as “ he who
has two teeth;” sometimes as “ the animal with proboscis.” And
that which happens for substantives occurs also for verbs. Among
the American tongues, spoken by populations who had few objects
before their sight, but whose life consisted altogether in action and
feeling, .verbal forms are singularly multitudinous. On the opposite
hand, in Sanscrit and in Greek, which were spoken in the presence