155 
monosyllabic language, the adoption and development of 
inflexional forms is a matter of ease. It is by no means 
philologically impossible that out of the Chinese of the present 
day should be formed languages possessing inflexions, some 
of them assimilating themselves to the Aryan “ umlaut” 
(change of vowel) and varied termination, others to the 
Hamitic prefix and suffix system, others to the Shemitic dis- 
syllabic root and varied suffix, others to the Turanian agglu- 
tination. In fact (according to Muller), those Turanian 
languages which have hitherto been considered almost on 
a par with the uninflected Chinese, I mean the Tungusian 
or Manchu branches, are actually beginning to adopt in- 
flexions and develop verbal forms. What Manchu can do in the 
nineteenth century A.D., I suppose it might have done in the 
nineteenth (or twenty-third) B.C. There were adequate causes 
then, as there are adequate causes now, for throwing out from 
an uninflected and monosyllabic original a set of inflected 
polysyllabic and variable offshoots. 
But it must not be forgotten, as I said in the outset, that 
holy Scripture adds another disturbing force, supernatural, 
or at least exceptional in its character, communicating (to use 
mechanical language) an initial velocity. The Deity H imself 
willed to (< confound their language” — to mingle with the gift 
of speech an element of repulsion which it did not formerly 
possess, or at least not in so eminent a degree. “ We will go 
down (I translate literally from the Hebrew) ec and confuse 
there their lips, so that they shall not hear each man the lip 
of his neighbour . . . Therefore He called its name con- 
fusion, for there J ehovah confused the lip of all the earth ; and 
from thence J ehovah made them disperse upon the face of all 
the earth."” Such is the simple statement of the will of the 
Most High and its execution. The bold critic sees in these 
words a mere legend, engrafted on the original Elohistic docu- 
ment by some Jehovistic fabricator ; but more reverent minds 
will accept them as a Divine record of the chastisement of 
rebellious man by the timely withdrawal of that gift of unity 
which had been enjoyed and abused. And a sublime chastise- 
ment it was too — sublime in its simplicity and its perfectness. 
The mythology of man’s invention told of the consternation in 
Olympus, the battle of the celestials, the fallen giants welter- 
ing in a sea of sulphurous flame ; or of the wailing over Baldur, 
the howls of Fenris, the yawning gulf of Niflheim, the crashing 
blows of Mjolner ; but the Divine record bears the stamp of 
truth: Jehovah willed to restrain men, and restrained them 
by the effectual means of destroying the community of their 
speech. 
