NATIONAL GROWTH AND NATIONAL CHARACTER 187 



map grew apace into the greatest national power the world has 

 seen. 



Britain's supremacy, although commonplace to the educated, 

 is the marvel of history ; and there is no worthier theme for the 

 thinker than analysis of the factors of that supremac} 7 . The 

 factors are far too man} 7 for present consideration • the blending 

 of blood and the commingling of culture derived from an un- 

 precedented number of notabl} 7 vigorous tribes and peoples 

 gathered from all Europe and hither Asia, have been men- 

 tioned ; but a seldom-recognized factor is worthy of special note : 

 After long puzzling over the Aryan problem, philologists have 

 begun to realize that Aiyan speech, with its numerous patois and 

 dialects and languages, is a product of combination rather than 

 differentiation; and some knowledge has been gained as to the 

 modes in which the combination was effected. As tribe met 

 tribe and as nation met nation (whether amicably or inimically), 

 ideas and their linguistic symbols were interchanged, one of the 

 modes of interchange being indicated in the well-known gener- 

 alization that the conqueror takes the language of the conquered ; 

 so that a struggle for existence arose among the linguistic ele- 

 ments, in which the worse were gradually eliminated while the 

 better survived. Through this survival of the fit, the originally 

 multifarious tongues were gradually combined into a limited 

 number of groups, the combination receiving great impetus with 

 the development of writing and still more with printing; and 

 the recorded modifications in the groups of tongues suggest what 

 appears to be the ultimate tendency of linguistic development — 

 i. e., the development of the word as a discrete oral and graphic 

 symbol for a discrete idea. Most of the Aryan tongues approach 

 those of still more primitive character in the utterance of ideas 

 in associative terms (or holophrasms), the association being ex- 

 pressed by verbal combinations and inflections; apparently the 

 associative languages are the more economical of thought when 

 the number of ideas is small, but the experience of mankind, as ex- 

 pivssnl iii linguistic growth, clearly indicates that such languages 

 are not adapted to the expression of the numberless ideasof abun- 

 dant knowledge; and it is easy to observe that the associative 

 languages of the Aryan stock are gradually losing their verbal 

 mutations, or else becoming extinct because no longer adapted 

 to living needs. Now. measured by the standards of linguistic 

 development, there is one European tongue which towers above 

 its neighbors, like Saul among his brethren — it is the English, 



