A PRIMEVAL MOTHER TONGUE 



the fate of local patois. One by one they will 

 become extinct, leaving English as the universal 

 language of mankind. 



There is, I think, a considerable probability 

 that things will come to pass in this way, though 

 the process must of course be a very slow one, 

 and the result here prefigured will very likely 

 come so far down in the future as to coincide 

 with the disappearance of barbarism from the 

 earth, and with the inauguration of that pacific 

 " parliament of man " of which the philosophic 

 poet has told us. But, however the actual result 

 may shape itself in its details, the considerations 

 here brought forward would seem to indicate 

 that complete community of speech belongs 

 rather to the later than to the earlier stages of 

 human progress. What we may regard as cer- 

 tain is that community of speech on a wide scale 

 requires prolonged and continuous business 

 communication among large bodies of men. 

 Where communication is seriously interrupted 

 for a long period of time, as in the Dark Ages 

 of Europe, the tendency is for the common 

 language to break up into a number of more or 

 less similar dialects ; and in proportion as fre- 

 quent communication is resumed there is mani- 

 fested an opposite tendency of a few central dia- 

 lects to crush out their neighbours, and to grow 

 into wide-spread languages. This is, in brief, 

 the way in which languages grow, and diverge, 



'45 



