EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



flection and syntax, the entire structure of these 

 two families of speech is so radically unlike, that 

 only the most desperate feeling of speculative 

 necessity could ever have induced any one to 

 seek a common original for the two. But after 

 getting irretrievably worsted in the encounter 

 with facts, this speculative craving is now out- 

 grown and laid aside with the others. The anti- 

 quity of the human race again comes in to alter 

 entirely our standpoint. Considering how mul- 

 tifariously language varies from age to age, and 

 considering that mankind has doubtless pos- 

 sessed the power of articulate speech for some 

 thousands of centuries, it no longer seems worth 

 while to seek immediate conclusions about prim- 

 itive speech from linguistic records which do 

 not carry us back more than four or five thou- 

 sand years. 



From the vantage-ground which we now oc- 

 cupy, it is not difficult to see that the hypothesis 

 of a single primeval language, from which all 

 existing languages have descended, involves an 

 absurd assumption. Those who maintain such 

 an hypothesis, in so far as their statements have 

 any definite and tangible meaning, must mean 

 that all existing languages stand in relation to 

 the hypothetical primitive language very much 

 as French and Italian stand in relation to Latin, 

 or English and German to Old Teutonic, or 

 Latin and Old Teutonic to Old Aryan. But in 



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