EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 249 



Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally 

 simple reasons for the almost infinite diversification of language. 

 It is invariably found that, wherever society is at once dense 

 and refined, language tends to be uniform throughout the 

 whole population, and to undergo few changes in the course 

 of time. Wherever, on the contrary, we have a scattered and 

 barbarous people, we have great diversities, and comparatively 

 rapid alterations of language ; insomuch that, while English, 

 French, and German, are each spoken with little variation by 

 many millions, there are islands in the Indian archipelago, 

 probably not inhabited by one million, but in which there are 

 hundreds of languages, as diverse as are English, French, and 

 German. It is easy to see how this should be. There are 

 peculiarities in the vocal organization of every person, tending 

 to produce peculiarities of pronunciation : for example, it 

 has been stated that each child in a family of six gave the 

 monosyllable, fly, in a different manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, 

 when the organs were more advanced, correct example induced 

 the proper pronunciation of this and similar words. Such de- 

 partures from orthoepy are only to be checked by the power 

 of example ; but this is a power not always present, or not 

 always of sufficient strength. Robert Moffat, in his work on 

 South Africa, states, without the least regard to hypothesis, 

 that amongst the people of the towns of that great region, 

 " the purity and harmony of language is kept up by their 

 pitches or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, 

 as well as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With 

 the isolated villages of the desert it is far otherwise. They 

 have no such meetings ; they are compelled to traverse the 

 wilds, often to a great distance from their native village. On 



not so remarkable for copiousness of words, as for its great and almost 

 unlimited flexibility. Its expansions, contractions, and inflexions, 

 though exceedingly numerous, and having, apparently, special reference 

 to euphony, are all governed by grammatical rules, which seem to be 

 well established in the minds of the people, and which enable them to 

 express their ideas with the utmost precision. How a language so soft, 

 so plaintive, so pleasant to the ear, and at the same time so copious and 

 methodical in its inflexions, should have originated, or how the people 

 are enabled to retain its multifarious principles so distinctly in their 

 minds as to express themselves with almost unvarying precision and 

 uniformity, are points which we do not pretend to settle. It is spoken 

 coastwise nearly two hundred miles, and perhaps with some dialectic 

 differences it reaches the Congo river. How far it extends into the in- 

 terior is not satisfactorily known." Report, British Association, 1847, 

 p. 174. 



