COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY. 24 1 



was clearly educed from, and applied to, the study of 

 languages by some of the more scientific philologists, before 

 it had been clearly enunciated by naturalists. Thus, for 

 instance. Dr. Latham, while criticizing the passage above 

 quoted, wrote in 1857 : — " In the actual field of language, the 

 lines of demarcation are less definitely marked than in the 

 preceding sketch. The phenomena of growth, however, are, 

 upon the whole, what it suggests. ... In order to account 

 for the existing lines of demarcation, which are broad and 

 definite, we must bear in mind a fresh phenomenon, viz. the 

 spread of one dialect at the expense of others, a fact which 

 obliterates intermediate forms, and brings extreme ones into 

 geographical juxtaposition." * 



Now, at the present day — owing partly to the establish- 

 ment of the doctrine of evolution in the science of biology, 

 but much more to direct evidence furnished by the science of 

 philology itself — students of language are unanimous in their 

 adoption of the developmental theory. Even Professor Max 

 Miiller insists that "no student of the science of language can 

 be an}'thing but an evolutionist, for, wherever he looks, he sees 

 nothing but evolution going on all around him ; " f while 

 Schleicher goes so far as to say that "the development of 

 new forms from preceding forms can be much more easily 

 traced, and this on even a larger scale, in the province of 

 words, than in that of plants and animals." f 



Here, however, it is needful to distinguish between 

 language and languages. A philologist may be firmly con- 

 vinced that all languages have developed by way of natural 

 growth from those simplest elements, or " roots," which we 

 shall presently have to consider. But he may nevertheless 

 hesitate to conclude, with anything like equal certainty, that 

 these simplest elements were themselves developed from still 



* Encycl. Brit., loc. cit. Remembering that the above was published two 

 years before the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, this clear enunci- 

 ation of the struggle for existence in the field of j^hilology appears to me deserving 

 of notice. 



t Science of Thought, preface, p. xi. 



\ Darwinism tested by the Science of Language, p. 41. 



R 



