268 



KNOWLEDGE. 



[December, 1903. 



influence. The conversion of Popular Latin and not 

 Literary Latin into literary as well as spoken French was 

 a consequence of this defeat, which had its i)arallels in 

 Spain and Italy. 



The coutliet continues everywhere in our own days. 

 Thus French is driving back all but one of the languages 

 spoken on its frontiers. It kills Celtic in Brittany, 

 various Languedoeian dialects in the south, Flemish in 

 the Department of the North and in Belgium, and German 

 in Switzerland. In the Southern Tyrol Germanic dialects 

 are retreating before Italian. In Posen, on the other 

 hand, Polish yields to German, but the islets of German 

 speech in Bohemia melt into Czech. In Transylvania 

 Magyar recoils before Roumanian ; in Bukoviua Roumanian 

 recoils before Little Russian. On the banks of the Volga 

 the Ural-Altaic languages disappear before Russian. At 

 all these points, and at a thousand others, the struggle is 

 never for a moment intermitted. The census records its 

 vicissitudes. The diminished numbers of the speakers of a 

 language is that of its dead. Finally it survives only in 

 remote or isolated spots — in the mountains of Kentucky or 

 Tennessee, in the wilder districts of Ireland, in those parts 

 of the Scottish Highlands off the tourist beat, in the 

 Faroe Islands, or wherever nature or a stationary state of 

 society prevents the immigration of new species. 



Languages owe their survival or their conquests to a 

 variety of causes. No more than races, or than other 

 sociological species, or than biological species, do languages 

 flourish and survive on their merits. Not the intrinsic 

 superiority of a language, its flexibility, or smoothness, or 

 strength, or the wealth of its vocabulary, or the perfection 

 of its inflections, gives it the victory in its struggle with 

 rivals, or at least not these alone. Attic was not stronger 

 than Doric, or the dialect of Wessex than that of North- 

 umbria, or Erse than the Norse of the invaders of the 

 west coast of Scotland. 



Force incarnated as political ascendancy plays a large 

 part. It may act indirectly. The Roman Conquest made 

 Greek, and not Latin, the literary, judicial, and commercial 

 language of the Orient But it is more commonlv direct. 

 Through conquest Latin drove Greek from Magna Graecia 

 or Southern Italy, Sicily, and Marseilles, and killed the 

 indigenous languages in most Western countries. So did 

 the Aryan invaders impose their language on the peoples 

 of India, Greece, and Italy. Yet the conquering Teutons 

 adopted the languages they found in Gaul, Spain, and 

 Italy ; the conquering Normans those first of Normandy 

 and then of England. 



Numbers are force, and the victorious language is often 

 that of the more numerous race, but it is sometimes that 

 of the less numerous; the Burgundians are shown by 

 skull-measurements of the existing population to have 

 been more numerous than the indigenous population, yet 

 they adopted the Latin language. The conquering Arabs 

 and Turks must have been far less numerous than the 

 North Africans and the natives of Asia Minor. 



Some point of advantage, extrinsic to the language, may 

 endow it with superiority. Its fitness for the uses of 

 commerce enabled Aramaic to overcome Hebrew, Assyrian, 

 and Babvlonian. The prestige of French conquests "made 

 French the language of diplomacy. The world-wide com- 

 merce of England has made English a world-wide language. 



Yet in most cases it seems to have been the superior 

 language that has prevailed. The Aryan languages have 

 almost everywhere extirpated not only the Turanian, but 

 also the highly-organized Semitic languages. Owing to 

 the wealth of its vocabulary, its harmony, and its flexi- 

 bility, Hindustani, a language born in the camp of the 

 Grand Mogul, has supplanted several Indian tongues, and 

 is now spoken by fifty millions. Perhaps a single notable 



example records the victory of the inferior language. 

 Arabic superseded Greek and Latin in Syria, Egypt, and 

 North Africa. The defeat of the higher dialects was an in- 

 evitable consequence of the defeat of the higher civilization. 

 A century hence, we may imagine, all other struggles 

 over or reduced to insignificance, four world-languages 

 will enter on an unending strife. A new and straight- 

 forward German will lord it over Central Europe. Imperial 

 English will reign alone over the North American continent, 

 and a more business-like Spanish will dominate its South 

 American sister. While Russian, or some other rich 

 Slavonian dialect, will blend the races of Eastern Europe 

 and Central Asia into a harmonious federation. 



MAN'S PLACE IN THE UNIVERSE."* 



By E. Walter Maunder, f.r.a.s. 

 Dr. Wallace has not been long in fulfilling his promise 

 to supplement his articles on the above subject in the 

 March and September numbers of the Fortnightly Review 

 with a fuller exposition of his views in book form. Appear- 

 ing so soon after the discussion to which the first of those 

 essays gave rise, the public interest has not had time to 

 subside, and the book ought, and beyond doubt will, 

 attain an exceptionally wide circulation. Should this be 

 the case, as we trust it will be, the success of the book will 

 be due to the extraordinary energy and promptitude of its 

 venerable author. For an octogenarian to have produced, 

 in barely half a year, so large a volume dealing with so 

 wide a range of intricate subjects, and involving so 

 large an amount of reading and reference, is in itself a 

 remarkable achievement. 



Dr. Wallace's great object is to prove, — or, at any rate, 

 to show that it is exceedingly probable, — that this earth 

 upon which we live is the only inhabited world in the 

 universe. For this purpose it is necessary to bring 

 forward some form of reasoning which shall not only 

 show that our earth is the only planet within the solar 

 system capable of sustaining life, but — a far more diflicult 

 proposition— to show that no sim other than our own 

 could have a life-bearing planet amongst its attendants. 

 From the nature of the case we cannot see a single planet 

 of any star whatsoever, not even as a mathematical point 

 of light. The only mode, therefore, by which the necessary 

 argument can be constructed is by bringing out some 

 point of difference lietween our sun and all other suns, [f 

 the system, of which it is the centre and luminary, is the 

 only one in which intelligent life has a place, then it is 

 indeed special, peculiar, unique. And if — and this is Dr. 

 Wallace's fundamental assumption — this speciality of our 

 sun is the necessary outcome of its physical properties and 

 conditions, then these must be wholly and entirely different 

 in some most important characteristics from those of any 

 other of the untold millions of stars. 



The problem, therefore, is, in effect, " Is our sun unique 

 amongst the stars ? " " Have we been able to detect any 

 difl'erence between it and all the host of its brethren ? " 

 And, if so, " Is this difference one which would affect the 

 suitability of its planetary cortege for the origin and 

 maintenance of life ? " 



Dr. Wallace's answer to these questions, as given in his 

 first paper in the March number of the Fortnightly Review, 

 was that our sun does difter from all others. It differs in 

 position. It is in the very centre of the universe, and 

 nowhere else than in that centre could life have been 

 maintained sufficiently long to develop intelligence. He 

 claimed that the whole trend of modern astronomical 



* " Man's Place in the Universe : A Study of the Results of Scientific 

 Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds." By Alfred R. 

 Wallace, Li.D., D.C.L., f.b.s., etc. (Chapman & Hall.) 12s. 6d. net. 



