THE INADEQUACY OF SPEECH 433 



a well-supplied vocabulary. The range of their observations being 

 limited, the natural tendency to loquacity manifests itself by multiply- 

 ing words for the same or nearly the same object. It is not an un- 

 common thing to find persons even in civilized countries whose words 

 are numerous in an inverse ratio to their thoughts. It is very much 

 easier to talk than to think. The language-making faculty produces 

 such a luxuriant crop of words that where the range of percepts is 

 circumscribed it invents a new word for every possible relation in 

 which they may be perceived. If the conditions of the primitive races 

 were changed they would probably find their vocabulary sadly deficient. 

 Under such circumstances it is likely that they would invent a new 

 stock of words, using the material on hand as a basis as far as it would 

 reach. Such we may suppose to be the case of the Eskimo and the 

 Kafirs, if they were to exchange habitats. On the other hand, it needs 

 to be said that this proceeding is not carried very far, but new objects 

 are named by words used to designate them by the people that serve 

 as intermediaries. We accordingly find among the Eskimo of the 

 northwest a number of terms borrowed from the Eussians, and, among 

 the native tribes of Africa, words appropriated from the Arabic, the 

 Portuguese and the English, always trimmed to fit the native vocal 

 organs ; for it must be remembered that they are learned by adults and 

 not by children, whose vocal organs are sufficiently plastic to reproduce 

 any sound accurately. The process may be seen among the Vai, a 

 dialect of the Mande spoken to some extent in the republic of Liberia : 

 lamp becomes " dampo," bowl " bowli " or " bowri," fork " f urokia," 

 hundred " hondoro," coat " coti," pillow " puro " or " puro," trunk 

 " torungu." 



When a language has reached a stereotyped stage and the people 

 speaking it continue to advance in thought, there is nothing left for 

 them to do except to discard it for another. This happened with the 

 Hebrew. The library of the British Museum is said to contain ten 

 thousand modern books in this language, among them most of Shakes- 

 peare's plays and even Goethe's Faust. It is hard to see how these 

 versions can be more than a mere adumbration of the originals. It is 

 simply impossible to express the subtle thoughts of these works in the 

 rigid ancient tongue. The Jews themselves recognized this. When 

 they undertook to discuss philosophical and metaphysical themes they 

 had recourse to the Greek even when they wrote for their own country- 

 men. This language of unlimited resources and perfect adaptability to 

 the expression of the minutest shades of thought had been so fully 

 developed and had a vocabulary ready-made for abstract discussion that 

 all who aspired to wide culture betook themselves to it. The New 

 Testament furnishes evidence within the reach of every one. The 

 Emperor Marcus Aurelius, although a Eoman of the Romans, felt that 



vol. Lxxni — 28. 



