One of the most skilful philologists of Germany, M. A. F. P o t t ,
Professor of Linguistics at the University of Halle, has recently
combated (in a work entitled, “ The Inequality of Human Races,
viewed especially as regards the Constitution of their Speech?) the hypothesis
of a unique primitive language, whence all others are supposed
to have issued; and he has shown that it has no more foundation than
that which would make all the species of one and the same genus
issue from a single individual, and all varieties from one primitive
type. He has claimed for languages an ethnological character, suited
to the classification of races, not less certain than the physical type
and the corporeal fofms. Perhaps even, he observes, the idiom
is a criterion more certain than the physical constitution. Does not
speech, in fact, reflect the intelligence better,—:is not language
more competent to give the latter’s measurement, than can he gathered
from the dimensions of the -facial angle, and the amplitude of
the cranium ? A powerful mind may inhabit a slehder and misshapen
body, whilst a well-made tongue, rich in forms and nuances,
could not take its birth among intellects infirm or degenerate. This
observation of M. Pott is just; but it ought likewise to be allowed
that the classification of languages offers, perhaps, more uncertainty
than that of races considered physiologically. The truth of this
remark of M. Pott must, nevertheless, be restricted; because speech
is not the complete ijieasure of intelligence, taken in the aggregate.
It is merely proportionate to the degree of perception of relationships,
of sensibility, and of memory : because we shall see, further on, that
some peoples, very far advanced in civilization, could have a language
very imperfect in its forms; at the same time that some savage tribes
do speak an idiom possessing a certain: grammatical richness.
SECTION" m .
Philologists who have devoted themselves to the^comparative study
of the languages of Europe, MM. F. Bopp and P ott, in particular,
have established the more or less close relationship of these tongues
amongst each other. All, with the exception of some idioms, of
which we shall treat anon, offer the same grammatical system, and
a vocabulary whose words can be attached one to another through
the rules of etymology. I say the rules, because etymology now-a-
days possesses its own, and is no longer governed by arbitrary, often
ingenious, but chimerical distinctions. Through the attentive com5
Die Ungleichheit menschlicher Rassen haupsächlich vom Sprachwissenschaftlichen Standpunkte,
unter besonderer Berücksichtigung von des Grafen von Gobineau gleichnamigen Werke; Lemgo
& Detmold, 8vo., 1866. ‘
parison of the changes that well-known words have undergone in
passing from one language into another, modem philology has become
enabled to grasp the laws of permutation as regards the letters,
and the regular processes for the exchange of sounds. These facts
once settled, it has become possible to trace backward words, in appearance
strangely dissimilar, to a common root which stands forth as the
type whence modifications have produced all these derivative words.
It is in the Sanscrit that this type has been discovered ; or, at the
very least, the Sanscrit presents itself under a form much more
ancient than the European formations ; and, in consequence, it approaches
nearest to that type of which we can no longer grasp any
but the diversified derivatives.
In like manner, the grammar of the languages of Europe, in its
fundamental forms, is recognized in the Sanscrit grammar. This
grammar, of which we specified above the character and richness,
incloses, so to speak, in substance, those of all the European idioms.
The elements which compose these idioms are like so many débris of
a more ancient tongue, whose model singularly approximates to the
Sanscrit. It is not, however, that the languages of Europe have not
each their own riches and their individual genius besides. In certain
points they are often more developed than the Sanscrit. But,
taken in their collective amplitude, they are certainly branches more
impoverished than that which constitutes the Sanscrit. These
branches appertain to a common source that is called Indo-European
or Indo-Germanic. The sap seems, nevertheless, to have exhausted
itself little by little ; and those branches most distant from the trunk
have no longer anything like the youth, fulness, and life, which flow
in the vessels of the branches of primary formation.
Hence the languages of Europe belong to a great family, that, at
an early hour, divided itself into many branches, of whose common
ancestor we are ignorant, but of whom we encounter in the Sanscrit
the chief of one of the most ancient collateral lines. We have previously
stated that the Persic [Parsi) and the Zend were two tongues
very intimately allied to the Sanscrit. They are consequently sisters :
and, whilst certain tongues of Europe, such as the Greek and the
Shlavic languages, recall, in a sufficiently striking manner, the Sanscrit
; others, the Germanic tongues, hold more closely to the Persic
and the Zend.
Comparison of the languages of Europe has caused them to be
grouped into four great classes, representing, as it were, so many sisters
from the same mother, but sisters who have not been called to an
equality of partition. The more one advances toward the East, the
more are found those tongues that have partaken of the inheritance.