400 



'SCIENCE. 



[Vol. VII., No. 169 



Why is it natural to Frenchmen, Germans, and 

 Italians, to Malays. Mongols, Arabs, Azteks, and 

 Zulus, to talk in a certain way ? What is the 

 origin of those traits of character which develop 

 themselves in these different modes of speech ? 

 And what are the laws which govern this develop- 

 ment ? Speech, like every thing else, is subject to 

 laws : and as zoologists know, from the fossil 

 skeleton of some mammal of the tertiary era, the 

 kind of life which the creature led, and the food 

 that it ate, so a philologist ought to be able to 

 judge, from the vocabulary and grammar of an 

 extinct language, what sort of people were those 

 who spoke it. 



The question is one of great interest to anthro- 

 pologists as well as to philologists; yet it seems 

 to have attracted, until now, comparatively little 

 attention. An English — or, rather, if we must 

 make the ' home-rule ' distinction which he would 

 perhaps disdain, an Irish — scholar has just given 

 to the world an elaborate work, in which he has 

 endeavored, with much philosophical acumen and 

 a careful analysis of many languages, to solve this 

 important problem, and to establish the principles 

 which govern the formation of languages. 1 The 

 epithet ' epoch-making ' has been somewhat freely 

 applied of late years ; but it is not too much to 

 say that the work to which the learned dean of 

 Clonfert has evidently devoted many years of 

 assiduous study and much profound thought will 

 make a new departure in ethnological science, so 

 far as this depends on language. So much may 

 be affirmed, without adopting in all cases the views 

 which are set forth in his work. 



Mr. Byrne finds the most important quality 

 which influences the structure of a language to be 

 the greater or less degree of mental excitability in 

 the people who speak it. His arguments on this 

 point are ingenious and forcible, and his main 

 example is a striking one. According to the 

 greater or less persistency with which the thought 

 of the speaker dwells on his subject will be the 

 tendency to compactness or looseness in the frame- 

 work of his speech. The aborigines of Africa and 

 those of America offer a notable contrast in this 

 respect, and the contrast is faithfully reproduced 

 in their language. The slow, cautious, considerate 

 Indian temperament is shown in the polysynthetic 

 — or, as Mr. Byrne prefers to style it, the 1 mega- 

 synthetic ' — character of the Indian languages, 

 tending to combine many circumstances and 

 qualifications in a single long and many-jointed 

 word. On the other hand, however, the African 

 quickness of thought, and lightness of mood, are 



1 General principles of the structure of language. By 

 James Byrnk, M.A., dean of Clonfert. In 2 vols. London, 



TrUbner, 18R6. 8°. 



displayed in the brief fragmentary words, and 

 loose, disjointed phrases, which compose the ordi- 

 nary speech of the tribes of that continent. Many 

 examples are given in illustration of these opposite 

 characteristics, both of mind and of speech, and 

 the author may be fairly said to have proved his 

 thesis. 



He is not content with establishing the fact of 

 this difference of character, and tracing to it the 

 difference in the style of language. His next 

 inquiry relates to the causes in which this differ- 

 ence of character originates. These causes he has 

 no difficulty in finding in the different influences 

 to which the inhabitants of the two continents are 

 exposed. America lies, for the most part, in the 

 temperate zones ; and the portions which are 

 within the tropics are either elevated into rugged 

 tablelands, or covered, as in Brazil, with dense 

 forests. The life of the people is almost every- 

 where one of hardship and anxiety, — the life of 

 hunters, fishermen, and agriculturists, — requiring 

 constant toil and watchfulness. In Africa, mainly 

 a tropical country, the bountiful soil and genial 

 climate make subsistence easy, and tend to pro- 

 duce in the people an impulsive and thoughtless 

 character. 



The author seeks to trace the operation of these 

 and similar influences in the formation of the best- 

 known languages in all parts of the globe. He 

 submits each idiom to a minute scrutiny, and en- 

 deavors to point out the part which the habits of 

 the speakers, and the natural influences that sur- 

 round them, have had in producing their peculiari- 

 ties of speech. If in any instances he has been 

 unsuccessful, it is apparently because he has not 

 sufficiently adhered to his own method, and has 

 failed to take into account all the qualities of the 

 human mind which would affect the language. 

 An instance of this failure may perhaps be found 

 in his attempt to account for the fact that in some 

 languages the adjective precedes, and in others fol- 

 lows, its substantive. This difference in arrange- 

 ment proceeds, he thinks, from the more or less 

 careful attention which the communities who 

 speak the languages are accustomed to give to the 

 nature of substantive objects. But what reason 

 is there for thinking that the Algonkin Indians, 

 in whose speech the adjective precedes the sub- 

 stantive, pay more attention to the natu-.< of 

 things than the Iroquois, who place the adjec- 

 tive last, but are nevertheless, to all appearances, 

 the more careful and industrious race ? Can it be 

 said that the artistic Italians, in whose language 

 the adjective usually follows the noun, think less 

 of the nature and qualities of things than do the 

 Magyars, who place the adjective first? The true 

 solution of this question seems to be found in the 



