THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE. 171 



primitive and common source. In citing an example of this law or 

 tendency, to be seen in its operations in physiology it will suffice 

 for us to take the human face. Now it is an incontestable fact that 

 the facial features are gieatly influenced by a force at work upon 

 them from the moment of their embryonic existence down to their 

 full development and decay, known as the Law of Conformity to 

 Type. To take the nose for an example we know that in certain 

 families and even i)eoples this is invariably the most marked and 

 striking feature of the face, and which has been known to persistently 

 run in that family or people for many generations, and when we ask 

 the reason of this phenomenon we are told and we have proved the 

 force of this tendency in many of our domestic animals, of which 

 the pug-dog is a noted instance, that some remote ancestor of this 

 particular family or people possessed a remarkably developed nasal 

 organ, which by the unique force and strength of his characte-, he 

 conferred in perpetuity so to speak on his fav'ored descendants. 



And as it is with the nasal feature so is it with all the others. 

 Now in precisely the same way in piimitive times when men were 

 S])litting up into families and clans and struggling hard with the 

 difficulties that naturally then in the early stages of language, beset 

 the expression of their wants and thoughts, certain of them stood 

 out like Nimrods above their fellows in mental capacity and power, 

 and so left the imjn-ess of their individuality upon their language, 

 giving it just that tendency, setting it just on those lines within that 

 certain gi-oove that would start it on the plane of its development 

 and characterise it through all the phases of its existence. 



[n the operation of this law of Conformity of Type we maintain 

 that we can discover why we have found it is necessary in the first 

 place to group languages into families ; and secondly, and here is our 

 point of divergence from the notion held by Mons Havelocque and 

 his school, that this and this alone, is the reason why language is in 

 a limited sense beyond the direct control or power of man, not 

 because it is an organism given to him in the same way as his nose 

 or his eyes, but rather acquired in the way in which he gets his 

 teeth, if the figure is allowable, by much vexation of spirit, multiplying 

 and developing as do his teeth in corresponding ratio with his needs. 

 Every growth, change and development in speech is due and indeed 

 must be in the first place to an initiatory action of some one individual 



