A PRIMEVAL MOTHER TONGUE 



reindeer with a lobster. The only conclusion to 

 which you can logically come is that while cer- 

 tain languages, here and there, have become 

 variously modified, so as to give rise to well- 

 defined families of speech, the like process has 

 not taken place universally. In other words, the 

 derivation of a dozen languages from a common 

 ancestor is not a permanent and universal, but 

 a temporary and local phenomenon in the his- 

 tory of human speech, and we need not expect 

 to come across any such fact of derivation, ex- 

 cept where it can be duly accounted for by the 

 peculiar circumstances of the case. 



This conclusion is reinforced when we consider 

 the circumstances under which a single language 

 gives rise to several mutually resembling descend- 

 ants. Obviously such a language must have a 

 high degree of permanence and a wide extension. 

 It must be spoken for a long time by large 

 bodies of men spread over a wide territorial area. 

 Take, for example, the rise of the modern Ro- 

 manic languages from the Latin. In the fourth 

 century after Christ the Latin language was 

 spoken all over the Italian and Spanish penin- 

 sulas, throughout most of Gaul and Switzerland, 

 along the banks of the Upper Danube, and in 

 what are now called the Rumanian principalities. 

 In all these countries Latin was the speech in 

 which the ordinary affairs of life were transacted, 

 and this had come to be so mainly because the 

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