258 
NATURE 
| Fan. 6, 1870 
derived. There was, according to him, an ancient Aryan 
language, not only perfect and complete in itself, but so 
constituted that it contained the germs of everything 
which we find in Sanskrit, Greek, Latin, German, 
Celtic, and Slavonic. Such a language may no doubt 
be constructed theoretically, in the same manner as 
out of French, Italian, Spanish, and Portuguese, some 
kind of Latin language might be reconstructed. But 
such Latin would be very different from real Latin. 
Historically the admission of type-languages is perfectly 
impossible. No one would think of deriving the ancient 
Greek dialects from one actually existing common language 
containing within itself the germs of every dialect. No 
one could realise a language which should be at the same 
time both High and Low, and yet neither High nor Low 
German. What kind of language could the primitive 
Celtic have been, if it had to combine the peculiarities of 
the Gadhelic and the Cymric branches? How could a 
common Italian language have existed, if it had to main- 
tain and to neutralise the distinctive features of Oscan, 
Latin, or Umbrian speech? What applies to the dialects 
of each language, applies with the same force to all these 
languages in common, when considered themselves as 
dialects of Aryan speech. As we cannot derive the Greek 
dialects from a presupposed primitive ko:v7, we should not 
attempt to derive the great dialects—viz. Greek, Latin, 
Celtic, Teutonic, and Slavonic—from a presupposed 
primitive Palao-Aryan type of speech. In tracing the 
origin of species, whether among plants or animals, we do 
not begin with one perfect type of which all succeeding 
forms are simply modifications, but we begin with an 
infinite variety of attempts, out of which by the slow but 
incessant progress of natural selection, more and more 
perfect types are gradually elaborated, some of which are 
still further improved by artificial domestication. It is 
the same with languages. The natural state of language 
consists in unlimited dialectic variety, out of which, by 
incessant weeding, more and more definite forms of 
languages are selected, till at last by literary cultivation 
those highly elaborated classical languages are produced 
which, in spite of their beauty, are nevertheless abnormal 
and unnatural, and invariably die without leaving any 
offspring. New languages do not spring from classical 
parents, but draw their life and vigour from the spoken 
rustic and vulgar dialects. No reader of Mr. Darwin’s 
books can fail to see that an analogous process pervades 
the growth of a new species of language, and of new species 
of animal and vegetable life. But these analogies should 
not be carried too far, At all events we should never 
allow ourselves to forget that, if we speak of languages as 
natural productions, and of the science of language as 
one of the natural sciences, what we chiefly wish to say is, 
that languages are not produced by the free-will of indi- 
viduals, and that if they are works of art, they are works 
of what may be called a natural or unconscious art—an 
art in which the individual, though he is the agent, is not 
a free agent, but checked and governed from the very first 
breath of speech by the implied co-operation of those to 
whom his language is addressed, and without whose 
acceptance language, not being understood, would cease 
to be language. 
There are other spheres of mental activity to which 
the same remark applies, but to none so much as to 
language. It might be said, and it has been said by 
high authorities, that neither in framing his codes of 
law, nor in settling the rules of morality, nor in believing 
the truths of religion, is man an entirely free agent, but 
that the freedom of the individual is necessarily limited by 
the pressure exercised by all upon all, and by the circum- 
stances and conditions of the age in which we live. 
It is true, also, that the science of psychology, which 
forms the basis of juridical, ethical, and religious science, 
is imperfect unless it has its foundations in physiology. 
“Ta tendance de la physiologie moderne,” as M. Claude 
Bernard remarks, “est donc bien caractérisée ; elle veut 
expliquer les autres phénoménes intellectuels au méme 
titre que tous les autres phénoménes de la vie; et si elle 
reconnait avec raison qu'il y a des lacunes plus considér- 
ables dans nos connaissances relativement auxmécanismes 
fonctionnels de Jintelligence, elle n’admet pas pour cela 
que les mécanismes soient par leur nature ni plus ni moins 
accessibles A notre investigation que ceux de tous les 
autres actes vitaux ?” 
But in none of these spheres of mental activity is the 
freedom of the individual so completely absorbed, and all 
but annihilated, as in the sphere of language. Not only 
are the first impulses of language purely physical ; not 
only is the material of language entirely dependent on the 
physical organs, such as they are; not only does the 
activity of the functional nervous centre of speech become 
quickly habitual, automatic, and almost instinctive, but even 
in its purely mental aspect, language rests from the very first 
on an unconscious compromise. Speech in its very nature 
is mutual: even a mere exclamation is nothing unless it 
is understood. Even now we do not speak to others as 
we should speak to ourselves, but speak their language 
rather than our own. So it was, only in an infinitely 
higher degree, in the first formation of speech. If we 
represent the individual speaker by ?, and the unlimited 
number of his fellow-creatures by x, the conscious free- 
dom of action which can be claimed for any individual 
speaker may be expressed by 1/x, a quantity oscillating 
between one divided by one, and one divided by infinity. 
With every generation this x becomes larger and larger, 
because it includes not only the present, but the more 
powerful influence of the past, till at last use and habit 
exercise the power of a tyrant, 
‘Quem penes arbitrium est et jus et norma loquendi,” 
and whose behests we can no more think of disobeying 
than the laws of nature. 
It is but fair to state, in conclusion, that the first sug- 
gestion of the necessity of admitting some of the so-called 
moral sciences to the circle of the natural sciences came, 
not from the students of psychology and glossology, but 
from the historian of the inductive sciences, who saw that 
the old definition ofnatural science was becoming too narrow, 
and that with a new definition the circle of physical know- 
ledge had necessarily to be widened. Dr. Whewell wrote in 
1845 :—‘We have seen that biologyleads us to psychology, 
if we choose to follow the path ; and thus the passage from 
the material to the immaterial has already unfolded itself 
at one point ; and we now perceive that there are several 
large provinces of speculation which concern subjects 
belonging to man’s immaterial nature, and which are 
governed by the same laws as sciences altogether physical. 
