1885.] *^iy [Brinton. 



by the genius of the language are violently broken down, and 

 the mind is thus given wider play for its faculties. 



Such influences, however, do not act in accordance with fixed 

 laws of growth. There are no such laws, which are of universal 

 application. The development of the Mongolian or Aryan 

 tongues is not at all that of the American. The goal is one and 

 the same, but the paths to it are infinite. For this reason each 

 group or class of languages must be studied by itself, and its 

 own peculiar developmental laws be ascertained by searching its 

 history.* 



With reference to the growth of American languages, it was 

 Humboldt's view that they manifest the utmost refractoriness 

 both to external influence and to internal modifications. They 

 reveal a marvellous tenacity of traditional words and forms, not 

 only in dialects, but even in particular classes of the community, 

 men having different expressions from women, the old from the 

 young, the higher from the lower classes. These are maintained 

 with scrupulous exactitude through generations, and except by 

 the introduction of words, three centuries of daily commingling 

 with the white race, have not at all altered the grammar and 

 scarcely the phonetics of many of their languages. 



Nor is this referable to the contrast between an Aryan and an 

 American language. The same immiscibility is shown between 

 themselves. " Even where many radically diiferent languages 

 are located closely together, as in Mexico, I have not found a 

 single example where one exercised a constructive or formative 

 influence on the other. But it is by the encounter of great and 

 contrasted differences that languages gain strength, riches, and 

 completeness. Only thus are the perceptive powers, the imagina- 

 tion and the feelings impelled to enrich and extend the means of 

 expression, which, if left to the labors of the understanding 

 alone, are liable to be but meagre and arid."f 



§ 9. Internal Form of Languages. 



Besides the grammatical form of a language, Humboldt recog- 

 nized another which he called its internal form. This is that 



* Tliis reasoning is developed in the essay, JJeber das Vergleichende Sprach- 

 stxidium, etc., Gesammelte Wcrke^ Bd. iii, ss. 211-268; and see ibid, s. 270. 



t See the essay Ueber die Buchstabenschri/L und ihren Zusammenhang init dem 

 Sprachbau, Ges. Werke, Bd. vr, ss. 551-2. 



