CHAP. XXIII. EACH LANGUAGE FORMED SLOWLY. 465 



latiou of the Bible acted as a powerful cause of " selection," 

 giving at once to one of many competing dialects (that of 

 Saxou}') a prominent and dominant jDOsition in Germany; 

 but the style of Luther has, like that of our English Bible, 

 already become somewhat antiquated. 



If the doctrine of gradual transmutation be applicable to 

 languages, all those spoken in historical times must each of 

 them have had a closely allied prototype; and accordingly, 

 whenever we can thoroughly investigate their history, we 

 find in them some internal evidence of successive additions 

 by the invention of new words or the modification of old 

 ones. Proofs also of borrowing are discernible, letters being 

 retained in the sjDelling of some words which have no longer 

 any meaning as they are now pronounced, — no connection 

 with anj' corresponding sounds. Such redundant or silent let- 

 ters, once useful in the parent speech, have been aptly com- 

 pared by Mr. Darwin to rudimentaiy organs in living beings, 

 which, as he interprets them, have at some former period 

 been more fully developed, having had their proper functions 

 to perform in the organization of a remote progenitor. 



If all known languages are derivative and not primordial 

 creations, they must each of them have been slowly elaborated 

 in a single geographical ai-ea. No one of them can have had 

 two birthplaces. If one were carried by a colony to a distant 

 region, it would immediately begin to vary unless frequent 

 intercourse was kept up with the mother country. The 

 descendants of the same stock, if j)erfectly isolated, would in 

 five or six centuries, perhaps sooner, be quite unable to 

 converse with those who remained at home, or with those 

 who may have migrated to some distant region, where they 

 Avere shut out from all communication with others speaking 

 tlie same tongue. 



A Norwegian colony which settled in Iceland in the ninth 

 century maintained its independence for about 400 years, 



