OF LANGUAGES. 



13 



of communication between different persons ; the very nature 

 of the institution of speech necessitates, therefore, to a 

 certain degree, the sinking of the individuality. For speech 

 adapts itself to the want it is required to fill up. 



As a rule an original language springs up in the infancy 

 of national life, expressing the peculiar mental disposition 

 of the community who used it, and retaining the impression 

 which constitutes its individuality. Everybody possesses the 

 latent capacity of speaking, as has been said before, every 

 language ; the descent of the individual need not therefore 

 necessarily coincide with, or become apparent from, the idiom 

 he uses. Languages are occasionally adopted by people 

 whose original idiom is in words and in thought quite different. 

 Aryan Brahmans speak in South India Dravidian dialects, 

 while the non- Aryan inhabitants of North India yielded in 

 this respect to Aryan predominance. African Negroes have 

 in America taken to the language of their European masters, 

 the Celtic has been supplanted in France by a "Romanic 

 language, as the Cornish in England by a Teutonic. 

 Speech alone is therefore not a test of race. Yet it may be 

 possible that linguists well acquainted with the peculiarities 

 and intricacies of the dialects they have particularly paid 

 attention to, will discover in the expressions of those who 

 use languages foreign to them by practice or descent, 

 eccentricities which can only be sufficiently explained by 

 their inborn individuality. Who has not heard of Grecisms, 

 Latinisms, Gallicisms, Anglicisms, Germanisms, &c, being 

 ascribed to Greeks, Latins, French, English or Germans, 

 when speaking or writing a language other than their own. 



Men may, moreover, speak in public life a foreign 

 language, and yet keep up in their domestic life at home 

 for generations their original idiom— a fact which often 

 occurs in conquered provinces, when the victor tries to 

 impose his language on his defeated enemy. In order not 

 to be misled into wrong conclusions, one must, in questions 



