THE DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 95' 



synthesis."* " That which," he continues, "so often induces linguists 

 to regard the elementary monosyllabism of the Chinese as the pi-iuii- 

 tive condition of all languages is the inclination which leads us to- 

 look TTpon simplicity as the mark of a state of infancy, or, at least, as 

 the character of a high antiquity. But this is an erior, from which 

 philology should guard itself. The Chinese speech, wholly monosyl- 

 labic as it is, has served as the organ of a highly developed civilization. 

 On the other hand, the languages of the barbarous tribes of America 

 and of the people of Central and Southern Africa, which begin to fur- 

 nish unexpected revelations to science, offer a truly suri)rising wealth 

 of grammatical forms. According to G-rimm's hypothesis, we must 

 suppose in these populations a powerful effort, which at a certain 

 epoch has caused them to issue from the infantile stage, and to pass 

 into that of reflection. The grammatical system of the Hottentots 

 being much more advanced than that of the Chinese, we should have 

 to admit that the Hottentots have made greater progress than the 

 Chinese in the path of intellectual development, and are farther 

 removed from their primitive condition. This is a conclusion which 

 it would be impossible to maintain. "t 



M. Renan's argument appears to be decisive against the theory of 

 the great German philologist ; but, strange to say, he does not observe 

 that it is equally decisive against his own. If there is no fact which 

 proves that the synthetic condition of the Sanscrit, the Greek and the 

 Arabic has been preceded by a monosyllabic stage, there is equally no 

 fact to show that the monosyllabic condition of the Chinese has been 

 preceded by a polysyllabic or synthetic stage. Some writers have, 

 indeed, suggested that such a stage once existed, and that the mono- 

 syllables which have been spoken for four thousand years in China 

 are merely the relics of inflected dissyllables or longer words, which,, 

 by the combined influences ot analysis and of phonetic decay, have 

 been reduced to their px-esent formless condition. This suggestion, 

 however, fails to take in view the fact that the Chinese is only one of 

 a large family of monosyllabic tongues. Several such languages ai'e 

 spoken in the region south of China and east of the Ganges. The 

 Khasi, the Tai of Siam, and the Anamese are as purely monosyllabic 



* " De rOrigine du Langage," p. 11. 

 t lb., p. 14. 



