528 Evolution and Language 



acted in the case is stopped, and this particular form enters on the 

 same course of development as other forms to which it does not 

 belong 1 ." 



Schleicher was wrong in defining a language to be an organism 

 in the sense in which a living being is an organism. Regarded 

 physiologically, language is a function or potentiality of certain 

 human organs; regarded from the point of view of the com- 

 munity it is of the nature of an institution 2 . More than most 

 influences it conduces to the binding together of the elements that 

 form a state. That geographical or other causes may effectively 

 counteract the influence of identity of language is obvious. One 

 need only read the history of ancient Greece, or observe the existing 

 political separation of Germany and Austria, of Great Britain and the 

 United States of America. But however analogous to an organism, 

 language is not an organism. In a less degree Schleicher, by defining 

 languages as such, committed the same mistake which Bluntschli 

 made regarding the State, and which led him to declare that the 

 State is by nature masculine and the Church feminine 3 . The views 

 of Schleicher were to some extent injurious to the proper methods 

 of linguistic study. But this misfortune was much more than fully 

 compensated by the inspiration which his ideas, corrected and modified 

 by his disciples, had upon the science. In spite of the difference 

 which the psychological element represented by analogy makes be- 

 tween the science of language and the natural sciences, we are 

 entitled to say of it as Schleicher said of Darwin's theory of the 

 origin of species, " it depends upon observation, and is essentially an 

 attempt at a history of development." 



Other questions there are in connection with language and evolu- 

 tion which require investigation — the survival of one amongst several 

 competing words (e.g. why German keeps only as a high poetic word 

 ross, which is identical in origin with the English work-a-day horse, 

 and replaces it by pferd, whose congener the English palfrey is 

 almost confined to poetry and romance), the persistence of evolution 

 till it becomes revolution in languages like English or Persian which 

 have practically ceased to be inflectional languages, and many other 

 problems. Into these Darwin did not enter, and they require a fuller 

 investigation than is possible within the limits of the present paper. 



1 P. Giles, Short Manual of Comparative Philology, 2nd edit., p. 57, London, 1901. 



2 This view of language is worked out at some length by Prof. W. D. Whitney in an 

 article in the Contemporary Review for 1875, p. 713 ff. This article forms part of a con- 

 troversy with Max Miiller, which is partly concerned with Darwin's views on language. 

 He criticises Schleicher's views severely in his Oriental and Linguistic Studies, p. 298 ff . , 

 New York, 1873. In this volume will be found criticisms of various other views mentioned 

 in this essay. 



3 Bluntschli, Theory of the State, p. 24, Second English Edition, Oxford, 1892. 



