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Show 32 ON TITE DISTRIBUTION AND speech. The Zcnd, notwithstanding its traits of resemblance with the V odic Sanscrit, allows our p rcciving, as it were, the :first symptoms of a lauor of condensation in the pronunchLtion, and of analysis in the expression. It wears all the extorna·l guise of a tougue with flexions (langue a flexion); but at the epoch of the Sassanides [A. D. 224 to 644] as M. SPIEOl!JI. remarks, it already commences to disrobe itself ofthcm. The tendency to analysis makes itself by far more felt in the old Pcrsic, or Parsi; and, in modern Persian, decomposition has attained its ultimate term. We might reproduce the same observations for the languages of the Caucasus, the Armenian and the Ge01·gian; for Semitic tongues, hy comparing the Rabbinical with the ancient Hebrew; but what has been already said suffices for the comprehension of the fact. The cause of these transformations is found in the very condition of a tongue, in tho method through which it moulds itself upon the impressions and wants of the mind,-it proceeds from its own mode of generation. An idiom is an organism subject, like every organism, to the laws of devolopmeut. One must not, writes Wrr.uELM voN IIutl\IBOLDT, consider a language as a product dead and formed hut once; it is an animate being and over creative. Human thought elaborates itself with the progress of intelligence; and of this thought, language is a manifestation. An idiom cannot, therefore, remain Atationary; it walks, it develops itself~ it geows up, it fortifies itself, it becomes old, ::md it reaches decrepitude. The tongue sets forth with a first phonetic radical, which renders the sensation in all its simplicity and its generality. 'l'his is not yet a vcru, nor an acljcctivc, nor a substantive; it is a word that expresses the common sensation that may lie at the bottom of these grammatical categories; which translates tho sentiment of welfare, of pleasure, of pain, of joy, of hope, of light, or of heat. Iu the use that is made of speech, there is doubtless by tums a sense verbal or nominal, adverbial or quali(ying; but nothing, however, in its form indicates or specifics such a part (rOle). Very simple lano-uao-es are still nearly all at this elementary stage. It is at a later da; o1~ly that tbe mind creates those forms which are called members of a discourse. These had existed without doubt virtually, hnt the intelligence did not feel tho need of distinguishing them profoundly by an essential form. .subsequently there forms wont on multiplying themselves; hut thou ~bundauce no loss than their nature has varied according ~o c~unt~·tcs and to races. Sometimes it is upon the verb that ~magmatwn has ~xhausted all the shades of expression; at others it If> to the snbstanhvo that it has attributed tbcso modifications. Mind has been more or loss inventive, and more or less ratio1utl: it has CLASSIFICATION OF TONGUES. 33 seized here upon delicacies which completely escaped it tnore; and in the clumsiest tongues one remarks shadowings, ot· gmdations, that arc wanting to tho most refined. Of this lot us gi vo an example: -tho Sanscrit is a geeat doal richer than Greek in tho manner by tho aid of which it expresses the relationship of the noun to a phrase, and the relations of words between themselves. It possesses a far deeper and much pnror sentiment of tho nature of the vct'b and of its intrinsic value: yet, notwitbstawling, the cone ption of the mood in a verb, considered as distinct from time, escaped it,- the verbal nature of the infinitive remained to it unknown. Sanscrit in this respect, th rcforc, yields to Greek, which, moreover, is united to it by vcey tight bands. Tlms then, human intelligence did not arrive in every langnage to the same degree, ancl consequently it did not create tho same secondary wheel-work. 1'ho gcnoi·al mechanism prosontccl itself everywhere tho same; because this mechanism proceeds from the iutcrnal nature of our mind, and this nature is the same ior all mankind. The genius of each tongue, then, marked out its pattern; and this genius has boon more or loss fecund, exhibits more oe leAs of mol.Jility. Words have constantly represented the same orclcr of objcctH, h ause these oujocts do not change according to countries or ac ·or<ling to races; but they arc o.ficrod nuder al:li cots the most varied, ~mel th 'Se aspects have not always boon identical under difloront skies and amid diverse societies. lie nco the creation of words in uncq ual number to represent the same sum-total of known objects. 'l'lle brilliant imagination of one people has boon a ncvcr-ihiling sont·ce of now words, of novel forms; at the same time that, amono-~>t others, tho ilea has remained almost cmbryouic, and the object ever presented it elf under the same aspect. If given impros ionH wore paramount, the words by which they were trauslated became greatly multiplied. In tho days of chivalry there was a host of expressions to rOJH.lor tho idea of horse. In Sanscrit, the language of Jiindost.'Ln, where tho elephant plays a part as important as the horse among Olll"HC1vcs, wot·ds auound to designate this pachyderm. Somoti.UlCS it js denominated as "the twicc-drinkino- animal," sometimes as "he who has two teeth;" sometimes as "the animal with proboscis." And that which happens for substantives occurs also for verbs. Among tho American tongues, spoken by populations who had few ohj cts before their sight, but whoso lifo consisted altogether in a •tion and feeling, verbal forms arc singularly multitudinous. On the oppoHito hand, in anscrit and in Greek, which were spoken in the prol:lonco 3 |
