EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 231 



rately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding, in this respect, 

 the languages of the most refined European nations. These 

 are but a few out of many facts tending to show that lan- 

 guage is in a great measure independent of civilization, as far 

 as its advance and development are concerned. Do they not 

 also help to prove that cultivated intellect is not necessary for 

 the origination of language ? 



Facts daily presented to our observation afford equally 

 simple reasons for the almost infinite diversification of lan- 

 guage. It is invariably found that, wherever society is at 

 once dense and refined, language tends to be uniform through- 

 out the whole population, and to undergo few changes in the 

 course of time. Wherever, on the contrary, we have a scat- 

 tered and barbarous people, we have great diversities, and 

 comparatively rapid alterations of language ; insomuch that, 

 while English, French, and German, are each spoken with 

 little variation by many millions, there are islands in the 

 Indian archipelago, probably not inhabited by one million, 

 but in which there are hundreds of languages, as diverse as 

 are English, French, and German. It is easy to see how 

 this should be. There are peculiarities in the vocal organiz- 

 ation of every person, tending to produce peculiarities of pro- 

 nunciation : for example, it has been stated that each child in 

 a family of six gave the monosyllable, fly, in a different 

 manner, (eye, fy, ly, &c.) until, when the organs were more 

 advanced, correct example induced the proper pronunciation 

 of this and similar words. Such departures from orthoepy 

 are only to be checked by the power of example ; but this is a 

 power not always present, or not always of sufficient strength. 

 The self-devoted Robert Moffat, in his work on South 

 Africa, states, without the least regard to hypothesis, that 

 amongst the people of the towns of that great region, " the 

 purity and harmony of language is kept up by their pitches 

 or public meetings, by their festivals and ceremonies, as well 

 as by their songs and their constant intercourse. With the 

 isolated villages of the desert it is far otherwise. They have 

 no such meetings ; they are compelled to traverse the wilds, 

 often to a great distance from their native village. On such 



