16 HISTORY OF LANGUAGE 



a question whether the languages of smaller peoples will not recede 

 before the encroachments of their powerful neighbors, just as dialects 

 steadily tend to disappear before the advance of the literary speech. 

 At all events the danger which once threatened cultivated lan- 

 guages from the limitation of the knowledge of their literature to a 

 comparatively small number of men, has largely disappeared with the 

 invention of printing and the diffusion of education which increas-. 

 ingly reaches every one in the community, the low as well as the 

 high. Forecasts about the future of any speech and its permanence 

 must therefore now be made subject to conditions which never before 

 prevailed. The one thing only, which has been indicated, can be 

 relied upon with certainty. The continuance of any language rests 

 upon the ability, upon the character, upon the strength of the men 

 to whom it belongs. Its literature may be its glory. It may be a 

 source of just pride to the race which has created it or has inherited 

 it. But however rich and varied it be, it cannot of itself preserve its 

 life, though it may retard its death and hallow its memory. No 

 tongue can depend for its continuance upon the achievements of its 

 past. It can exhibit no more than the vigor, the purity, and the 

 vitality of the men who speak it now, or are to speak it hereafter: and 

 if their vigor, their purity, and their vitality disappear, the language 

 as a living speech will not survive their decay. 



