Brinton.] Olo [March 20, 



In defining and appraising these inherent and inalienable 

 qualities of languages lios the highest end and aim of linguistic 

 science. This is its true philosophic character, its mission which 

 lifts it above the mere collecting of words and formulating of 

 rules. 



If the higher languages did not develop from the lower, how 

 did they arise? Humboldt answered this question'fairly, so far 

 as he was concerned. He said, he did not know. Individuals 

 vary exceedingly in their talent for language, and so do nations. 

 He was willing to call it an innate creative genius which en- 

 dowed our Aryan forefathers with a richly inflected speech ; but 

 it was so contrar}^ to the results of his prolonged and profound 

 study of languages to believe, for instance, that a tongue like the 

 (Sanscrit could ever be developed from one like the Chinese, that 

 he frankly said that he would rather accept at once the doctrine 

 of those who attribute the different idioms of men to an imme- 

 diate revelation from God.* 



He fully recognized, however, a progress, an organic growth, 

 in human speech, and he expressly names this as a special branch 

 of linguistic investigation. f He laj's down that this growth 

 may be from two sources, one the cultivation of a tongue within 

 the nation by enriching its vocabulary, separating and classify- 

 ing its elements, fixing its expressions, and thus adapting it to 

 wider uses ; the second, by forcible amalgamation with another 

 tongue. 



The latter exerts alwa^'s a more profound and often a more ben- 

 eficial influence. The organism of both tongues may be de- 

 stroyed, but the dissolvent force is also an organic and vital one, 

 and from the ruins of both constructs a speech of grander plans 

 and with wider views. " The seemingly aimless and confused 

 interminglings of primitive tribes sowed the seed for the flowers 

 of speech and song which flourished in centuries long posterior." 



The immediate causes of the improvement of a language 

 through forcible admixture with another, are : that it is obliged to 

 drop all unneccessary accessory elements in a proposition ; that 

 the relations of ideas must be expressed by couA'entional and not 

 significant syllables ; and that the limitations of thought imposed 



* The eloquent and extraordinary passage in which tliese opinions are ex- 

 pressed is in liis Lettre H M. Abel-Remnsat, Gesammelte U'erke, Bd. vii, ss. 33t)-7. 

 t GesammcUe Werke, Bd. iii, ss. 218, 257. 



