crossings which have made, of the branches of the Negro-
race, populations very unequal in development of faculties,
and in intelligence exceedingly diverse. One perceives a
Semitic influence in the speech, as one sometimes discovers
it in the type of face. The Hottentots, who are more distinct
from Hegro-populations than any other race of Austral
Africa, separate themselves equally through their tongue.
The Foulahs and the Wolofs, so superior to the other
Negroes by their intellect and their energy, distinguish
themselves equally through the respective characteristics
of their idiom. And in like manner that, maugre the
variety of physical forms, a common color, differently shaded
(nuancée), reunites into one group all those inhabitants of
Africa whose origin is not Asiatic, a common character
links together the grammars of their languages ;—or, in
other words, African idioms have all a family-air, without
precisely resembling each other.
There is one important remark to he made here. It is, that
some African languages-denote a development sufficiently
advanced of the faculty of speech, and consequently of the
reflective.aptitudes of which this is the manifestation. In
this fact we have a new proof that tells against the unity
of the origin of languages. Because, if African languages
were the issue of other idioms, fallen in some way among
minds more narrow (bornés) than had been those of the
supposed-elder nations that spoke them, they ought necessarily
to have become impoverished, to have altered themselves
; and the laws, which have been established above in
the history of one and the same tongue, would lead us to
expect that these last ought to be at once more analytical
and more simple.
How, their very-pronounced characteristic of agglutination
excludes the idea of languages arising from out of the
decomposition of others ; and the complex nature of their
grammar attests a date extremely ancient for their formation.
The idioms of Africa carry, then, the stamp both of
primitive and complicated languages ; and, as a consequence,
of tongues which are not derived, at an epoch
relatively modern, from other languages possessing the
same parallel character. Hence it must be concluded, that
these African languages are formations as ancient as other
linguistic formations ; possessing their own characteristics ;
and of which the analogies correspond with those that bind
up together the great branches of the Hegro-race.
We have seen that a few of the African languages recall to mind,
either through their vocabulary, or by peculiarities of their grammar,
the P o l y n e s i a n idioms.
These idioms constitute, as it were, a grand Zone, that extends
betwixt Africa and America: and this position explains how migrations
of the race that spoke them, and which we shall call Malayo-
Polynesian, may have come over to blend themselves with the negroes
of Africa. From Madagascar às far as Polynesia, we find a family
of similar tongues that has become designated by the name of Ma-
layo-Polynesian, after that of the race.
It decomposes itself into two groups, viz : the Malay group, comprehending
an “ ensemble ” of idioms spoken from Madagascar to
the Philippine-islands ; and the Polynesian group, properly so-termed.
One meets again, in this family, with the self-same inequality of
development amid the different languages that compose it. Whilst
the Malay denotes an advanced degree of culture, the idioms of Polynesia
offer a simplicity altogether primitive. These have restricted
their phonetic system within very narrow limits ; and they employ
matter-of-fact méthods, no less than very poor forms, in order to
mark the grammatical categories'. It is through the help of particles,
oftentimes equivocal, that these languages try to give clearness to a
discourse compounded, albeit, of rigid and invariable elements. The
structure of Polynesian words is much more simple than that of the
Malay words : a syllable cannot be terminated by a consonant followed
by a vowel; or it is not even formed save through a single
vowel. These languages ¿re, besides, deprived of sibilants ; and they
tend towards a planing-away of homogeneous consonants, and to
cause those that possess a too-pronounced individuality to disappear.
It has seemed, therefore, that the Polynesian tongues result from the
gradual alteration of Malay languages ; which are far more energetic
and much more defined. Otherwise this Polynesian family offers a
tolerably great homogeneity : everywhere one re-beholds in it this
identical elementary phonology. The idioms of the Marquesas-isles,
of New-Zealand, of Taiti, of the Soeiety-islands, of the Sandwich and
Tonga, are bound together by close ties of relationship. Such is the
paucity of their vocal system, that they have recourse frequently to
foe repetition of thé same syllable, in order to form new words.
The onomatopée is very frequent in them. The grammatical categories
are also but vaguely indicated; and one often sees the same
word belonging to different parts of the same sentence. The methods
oí enunciating one idea are sometimes the same, whether for expressing
an action or for designating an object. The gender and
num er are often not even indicated. The vocal system (whiçb