io6 TRANSACTIONS iSgg-'oo 



all — capable of being used as a means of communication. 

 What the reactive effect of such a language has been upon 

 the people who use it, is a profound and interesting question ; 

 and no less profound and interesting is the question as to what 

 the effect would be of the adoption by the Chinese nation of the 

 English language — the only one they conceivably could adopt 

 were they ever to abandon their own. To what extent could 

 they avail themselves of its resources ? Would they take from 

 it simply enough to satisfy their present intellectual and moral 

 needs, and deform what they so appropriated ? Or would it be- 

 come to them an educational instrument of inexhaustible potency ? 

 One thing seems certain, that it could not for a long time be 

 to them what it is to us ; and during that time, there is reason to 

 fear, they would convert it into a dialect of very doubtful character. 

 There are those, indeed, who predict that the future universal lan- 

 guage will be pigeon-English. I^et us hope that something better 

 may be in store for the world ; though it might argue a little con- 

 ceit to imagine that the best thing for the world would be to have 

 the English language in its present form stereotyped for all time. 

 The Eatin language as spoken by Cicero and written by Caesar 

 was a noble form of speech ; but the time came when it was 

 thrown into the crucible, to emerge as French, Spanish, Italian, 

 Portuguese and Provencal. Its transformation was the work of 

 barbarians ; but who would say that the barbarians did not ac- 

 complish some wonderful results ? 



Eet us now turn our attention to tne group of languages to 

 which our own belongs, the so-called Indo-Germanic. It is main- 

 ly through the languages of this family that the intellectual pro- 

 gress of the world has been, and is being, carried on. In their 

 history we can trace the histor^^ of our own thought. The 

 ancient classical languages had an extraordinary beauty of their 

 own ; yet in point of fulness and precision they are surpassed by 

 the leading languages of the modern world, We cannot surpass 

 the beauty — word for word or phrase for phrase — of the lyric and 

 dramatic poetry of the ancient Greeks ; still, on the whole, the 

 mind of man has, in the present day, vaster instruments of ex- 

 pression, of analysis and of research at its command than in any 

 former age. Just as the need for precision of thought 

 made itself felt, were the means for securing it developed. 



