tongue, in the island of Java;”43 elsewhere cited in Cosmos. One
of these passages is noteworthy, not only for the law it enunciates
but also for the variety of rendering it has received:
G e rm a n Or ig in a l . « — “ Die Sprache umschlingt mehr, als sonst etwas im Menschen,
das ganze Geschlecht. Gerade in ihrer völkertrennenden Eigenschaft vereinigt sie durch
das Wechselverständnisz fremdartiger Rede die Verschiedenheit der Individualitäten, ohne
ihrer Eigenthümlichkeit Eintrag zu rhun. (A. a 0« S. 427.)”
S a b in e ’s T r a n s l a t io n . « - "Language, more than any other faculty, binds mankind
together. Diversities of idiom produce, indeed, to a certain extent, separation between
nations; but the necessity'of mutual understanding occasions the acquirement of foreign
languages, and reunites men without destroying national peculiarity.”
O t t é ’s T r a n s l a t io n « - " Language, more than any other attribute of mankind, binde
together the whole human race. By its idiomatic properties, it certainly seems to separate
natmns; but the reciprocal understanding of foreign languages connects men together, on
the other hand, without injuring individual national characteristics.”
G u ig n ia u t ’s T r a n s l a t io n . « — " Le langage, plus qu’aucune autre faculté de l’homme
forme un faisceau de l’espèce humaine tout entière. H semble, au premier abord, séparer
les peuples comme les idiomes; mais c’est justement la nécessité de s’entendre réciproquement
dans une langue étrangère qui rapproche les individualités, en laissant à chacune son
originalité propre.”
That the organs of speech enable mankind to interchange their
thoughts, is one of those truisms to question which would be absurd
Speech is an inherent attribute of the “ genus homo just as mewing
is to the feline, and barking to the canine: but it does not follow
that, because a Lapp might by some chance acquire Guarani, a
Tasmanian English, an Arab Korean, & Mandingo Madjar, an Esquimau
Tamul, or, what is more possible, that a thorough-bred Israeli-
tish emigrant from ancient Chaldea (his own national tongue being
forgotten) might now be found speaking any one of these tongues
as his own vernacular,—it does not follow, I repeat, either that
humanity is indivisible into groups of men linguistically, as well as
physically and geographically, distinct in origin ; or that Wilhelm
von Humboldt thought so: any more than because “felis catus
Angorensis" of Turkish Angora “mews” like “felis brevicaudata"
of Japanese Nippon, and both these animals like “felis domestica
ccerulia” of Siberian Tobolsk,48 that these three cats are necessarily
« Ueber die Kam-Sprache auf der Insel Java, Berlin, 4to, 1836. Cardinal W is em a n frequently
quotes it eulogistically in his Connection between Science and revealed Religion.
« Op. ät. (supra, p. 407), p. 493.
16 Supra (note 10)—Cosmos, I, p. cxv, note 443.
46 Supra (note 6)— Cosmos, I, p. 359, note.
« Supra (note 1 )—Cosmos, I, pp. 579-80, note 43.
« Not being myself a zoologist, it may be well to shield assertions, on this cm-question,
w i t h the authority of one who is. P r o f . S . S . H a ld em a n . remarks : "Thus, the cat
mummies of Egypt were said to be identical with the modem Felis domestica ; and such
was the general opinion, until the discovery, of Dr. Rüppell, of the genuine analogue of the
embalmed species, in the Felis maniculata of Noubia. I believe Professor Bell to be
of the same blood lineage, identical species, or proximate geographical
origin: notwithstanding that, amongst other “philosophical
aphorisms,” Bunsen-:—with whom philology and ethnology are syno-
nym.es through which we shall recover, some day, the one primeval
language spoken by the first pair, who are now accounted to be
“beatorum in ccelis”—declares, “ that physiological inquiry [one, as
we all know, completely outside of the range of his high education
aud various studies], although it can never arrive by itself at any
conclusive result, still decidedly inclines, on the whole, towards the
theory of the unity of the human race.” !49 I have no hopes, in
view of his early education and present time of life, that the accomplished
Chevalier will ever modify such orthodox opinion; but
readers of the present volume may perhaps discover some reasons
for differing from it.
But, even under the supposition that Wilhelm von Humboldt, in
his now-past generation, when writing “ on the Diversity of Languages
and Peoples,” may have speculated upon the possibility of
reducing both into one original stock, it will remain equally certain,
that, in such assumed conclusion, he was biassed by no dogmatical
respect for myths, f ict io n, or pr e t en d e d t r a d it io n [ubi supra)-, and
furthermore that, if he grounded his results on the “ Kami Sprache,”
he inadvertently built upon a quicksand; as subsequent researches
have established.
Amongst scientific travellers and enlightened Orientalists of England,
the venerable author of the “ History of the Indian Archipelago
” has long stood in the foremost rank. His speciality of investigation
occupied—“ a period of more than forty years, twelve of
which were passed in countries of which the Malay is the vernacular
or the popular language, and ten in the compilation of materials;”—*
of which a recent30 “Dissertation” embodies not»merely the precious
ethnographical issue; but, through his method of analysis and
depth of logic, superadded to vast practical knowledge of his theme
—combined with sterling common sense, its author has produced
what, in my individual opinion, must become the model text-book,
correct in deciding that Felis domestica can neither be referred to this species, nor to the
Felis catus found wild in the forests of Europe.” (Recent Freshwater Mollusca, which art
common to North America and Europe, Boston Jour, of Nat. Hist., Jan. 1844, pp. 6-7.)
48 Outlines (supra, p. 102), I, p. 46. “ Multge terricolis linguae, coelestibus una,” is another
way of stating such axiom. How did this last writer know that people do talk one language
m heaven? Can he show us whether the “ dead” have speech at all? During some generations,
the Sorbonne, at Paris, discussed, in schoolboys’ themes, a coherent enigma, viz.,
An sancti resurgant cum intestinis—not a less difficult problem for such youths’ pedagogues!
50 A Grammar and Dictionary of the Malay Language, with a preliminary Dissertation; 2
vols. 8vo., London, 1852. Our citations are from I. pp. 35-6, 128-9.