A PRIMEVAL MOTHER TONGUE 



is sufficiently clear, I think, that under such 

 circumstances a language will seldom or never 

 acquire sufficient stability to give rise to mutu- 

 ally resembling derivative dialects. If the hab- 

 its of primitive men were in general similar to 

 those of modern savages, we need not be sur- 

 prised that philologists are unable to trace all 

 existing languages back to a common origin. In 

 order to get back to a universal mother tongue, 

 it would almost seem requisite that the history 

 of mankind should have begun with universal 

 empire. 



We shall conclude, I think, after a survey of 

 the whole matter, that in speech, as in other 

 aspects of social life, the progress of mankind 

 is from fragmentariness to solidarity; at the 

 beginning, a multitude of feeble, mutually hos- 

 tile tribes, incapable of much combined action, 

 with hundreds of half-formed dialects, each in- 

 telligible to a few score of people ; at the end, 

 an organized system of mighty nations, pacific 

 in disposition, with unlimited reciprocity of 

 intercourse, with very few languages, rich and 

 precise in structure and vocabulary, and under- 

 stood by all men. 



December, 1877. 



