IMPERFECTION OF LANGUAGE.

§ 8. While language has power to express the fine emotions and the subtile thoughts of the human mind with wonderful exactness, still it must be admitted that it is imperfect as a sign of thought. It is imperfect because the thing signified by a term in a proposition either does not exist at all in the mind of the hearer, or because it exists under different relations from what it does in the mind of the speaker. In other words, language is imperfect because the term in a proposition, if it has any meaning in the mind of the speaker, has a different one from what it has in the mind of the hearer.

Hardly any abstract term has precisely the same meaning in any two minds; when mentioned, the same term calls up different associations in one mind from what it does in another. Thus the word xápis (grace) has, in SCHLEUSNER'S Lexicon, thirteen different meanings. The phrase "beast of burden" might, to one mind, mean a horse; to another, a mule; to another, a camel.

What is thus true of the vocabulary of a language is also true of its constructions; they also, in each case, call up different associations in different minds. It should be added that there is great vagueness in the common use of language, which, in practice, increases its imperfection as a medium of thought.

But while men differ in the meaning which they attach to certain classes of terms and of constructions, they also, when they have carefully studied a language, largely agree; so largely, that they can make their agreement the sure basis of reasoning and of action on important subjects.

§ 9. As languages grow, so they decay. As old modes of thought give place to new ones, so the forms in which those modes are expressed give place to new forms. Thus the language grows and decays at the same time, just as in nature, out of the decay of vegetation, other forms of vegetable life spring up. Out of the decay and death of the Latin sprang the Romanic languages. Out of the decay and death of the AngloSaxon sprang the English. Out of the decay and death of the

Old Slavonic sprang the Russian. In the progress of a nation from the employment of hunting to that of the shepherd and then to that of commerce, there is, at each step, a death of some words and the birth of new ones. The same law obtains in the change from one form of government or of religion to that of another; as, for instance, a change from kingly government in England to that of a republican government in the United States.

THE DEATH OF LANGUAGE.

§ 10. As languages have a life, which, like the life of an individual, may be written, so be written, so they die, and are numbered only with the things that were. They may, indeed, still exist in manuscript or on the printed page, but not on the lips of men. They may be embalmed in the hearts and memories of students, but they know no resurrection into the voices of the people. This is true of the Sanscrit, of the Greek, of the Latin, of the Anglo-Saxon. These are dead languages. They are in a petrified state, and they exhibit the "modes of thought of the people who spoke them, and their relations to other races, as fossil remains show the forms and relations of animal life." Thus languages die, but portions of them exist by transmission in other languages. Thus portions of the Latin exist in the Romanic languages, portions of the Greek in the Romaic, portions of the Sanscrit in the Hindostanee, portions of the Anglo-Saxon in the English. Thus languages, though dead, live in their descendants, as men, though in their graves, live in their posterity.

THE ORIGINAL UNITY OF LANGUAGE.

§ 11. The original unity of language is indicated,

1. By the supposed unity of the human race, of which there is satisfactory evidence.

2. By the declaration in Genesis, that the whole earth was "of one language and one speech."

3. By the analogies and affinities among the different languages, pointing to a common origin.

Affinities among languages may be seen either in their similarity of construction, in which case the proof is grammatical, or in the similarity of words themselves, in which case the proof

is lexical. Of the former kind of proof the Comparative Grammar of BOPP furnishes examples. Occasional examples will be given in the part on etymology in this work. Only the latter kind of proof can be here adduced, as sufficiently satisfactory and more convenient. When, for instance, in Sanscrit we find nama, and in Latin nomen, both meaning name; nasa in the one, nasus in the other, both meaning nose; ganu in the one, and genu in the other, both meaning knee; and when we find this similarity between a great many words in the two languages, we are necessarily led to infer that a relationship exists between the two languages. The same kind of reasoning may be extended to several languages of the same family, or to several families of the same stock, to prove an affinity between them.

Fishes',

fisk-es, fisk-ars, fisk-a.

fisc-a, visch-en, fisk-a, fisch-e, fisk-e,

To fishes, fisc-um, visch-en, fisk-um, fisch-en, fisk-en, fisk-e, fisk-ar, fisk-um. Fishes, fisc-as, visch-en, fisk-ar, fisch-e, fisk-ans, fisk-e, fisk-ar, fisk-a.

BOPP'S VIEWS.

§ 13. "Philology would ill perform its office if it accorded an original identity only to those idioms in which the mutual points of resemblance appear every where palpable and striking; as, for instance, between the Sanscrit dadami, the Greek didwu, Lithuanian dumi, and Old Slavonic damy. Most European languages, in fact, do not need proof of their relationship to the Sanscrit, for they themselves show it by their forms, which, in part, are but little changed. But that which remained for philology to do, and which I have endeavored, with my utmost ability, to effect, was to trace, on the one hand, the resemblances into the most retired corner of the construction of the language, and, on the other hand, as far as possible, to refer the greater or the less discrepancies to laws through which they become possible or necessary. It is, however, of itself evident, that there may exist languages which, in the interval of thousands of years in which

they have been separated from the sources whence they arose, have, in a great measure, so altered the forms of words, that it is no longer practicable to refer them to the mother dialect, if it be still existing and known. Such languages may be regarded as independent, and the people who speak them may be considered Autochthones."-Borr's Compar. Grammar, vol. i., p. 74.

It should be added that the real difference in languages is not so great as is indicated by the different characters different nations employ in expressing the same sounds. No one can doubt that the word water in one language is the same as the word wasser in another, though the characters employed are not all of them the same in each case.

It should also be added that the analogies between languages of different stocks are still a matter of remote deduction.. Philologists are now industriously gathering materials for a broad induction, by which they are expecting to prove that affinities exist between different stocks, just as they have already proved that affinities exist between different families of the same stock.