SCIENTIFIC INTELLIGENCE. 



ANTHROPOLOGY. 



1. On a Universal Language. — The idea of a universal language 

 has long been a favourite with sanguine and speculative minds ; each 

 individual speculator looking to his native tongue for the common 

 interpreter, and of course ovei'rating its natural fitness for such an 

 office. Sir John Herschel has said that the adoption of a common 

 language — at least by the leading nations of the world — is one of 

 the grand desiderata at which mankind should aim by general con- 

 sent. On the other hand, there are ethnolgists who repudiate the 

 notion altogether, looking upon the varieties of form and terminology in 

 language as the natural result and expression of organic differences 

 of race and climatic environment, and, therefore, on the diversity as an 

 inevitable consequence of causes which no artificial arrangements can 

 ever permanently overcome. The moral and intellectual advantages 

 of unity of speech in neighbouring nations are manifest and momen- 

 tous ; and the argument, that the common medium of communica- 

 tion to be adopted should be the language of Shakespear, is based as 

 follows : — Of the three great tongues of Europe, English, French, 

 and Dutch, it possesses, in a higher degree than either of its rivals, 

 nearly all those natural and accidental advantages which are neces- 

 sary to qualify it for universality, namely — organic simplicity, 

 acquired wealth, extent of present diffusion, and irrevocable connec- 

 ti'jn with rapidly expanding institutions. Inits easiness of grammatical 

 construction — in its almost total disregard of the distinctions of cen- 

 dur, excepting those of nature — in the simplicity and precison of its 

 terminations and auxihary verbs, not less than in the majesty, vigour, 

 and copiousness of its expression, our mother tongue seems well , 

 adapted by organization to become the language of the world. To 

 boast of its wealth is needless, with such a literature as exists to 

 prove it. It its now spoken by sixty millions of people : and before 

 the termination of the present century, will, in all human proba- 

 bility, be spoken by two hundred millions, in the British Islands, 

 in the United States, in Canada, in Central America, in Guiana, in 

 the West Indian group of Islands, on the seaboard of Africa, in 

 Ilindostan, in the Asiatic Archipelago, and in Australia and tlie 

 vast islands of the surrounding seas — a population nearly equal to 

 that of the whole of Europe. To what extent the revolutions of 

 science, the progress of free institutions, and tlie developments of 

 civilization generally may contribute to spread the English languago 

 on the neighbouring Continent it is not so easy to determine ; but it 

 need scarcely bo supposed that a language which lias already belted 

 the world, and established itself permanently in every latitude, will 

 prove unable in the future, with new advantages in its favour, to fix 

 itself firmly in the countries of Europe. 



VOL. .\L1V. NO. LXXXVIir.— Al'Kir, 18-18. 2 V. 



