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 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,

fisc-e,
fisc,
fisc-as, visch-en, fisk-ar,

visch-e, fisk-e,
visch, fisk,

fisch-e,

fisk-a,

fisk, fisk,

fisk-i.

fisch, fisk,

fisk, fisk,

fisk.

Fishes',

fisch-e, fisk-os, fisk-e, fisk-ar, fisk-ar. fisc-a, visch-en, fisk-a, fisch-e, fisk-e, fisk-es, fisk-ars, fisk-a. 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 dadâmi, the Greek didou, 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."-BOPP'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.

DIVERSITIES IN LANGUAGES.

§ 16. While affinities among languages have to be sought with painful care over a wide field, diversities are obvious, and have to be accounted for.

Three opinions have existed in respect to the origin of the diversities in languages.

One opinion proceeds, on the supposition that there were originally several distinct stocks of the human race, to the conclusion that there were as many distinct languages as stocks.

A second opinion is, that the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel will, by its miraculous origin and agency, account for the diversities in human languages, just as the flood has, by some divines, been considered as a cause adequate to the production of certain geological irregularities which are found in the structure of the earth. .

On the assumption that languages were originally one, a third opinion is, that causes now in operation will account for the existing diversities.

CAUSES OF DIVERSITIES IN LANGUAGES.

§ 17. These causes are,

1. Difference of occupation. The vocabulary of a shepherd must differ from that of a mariner.

2. Difference of improvement in sciences and the arts of life. The man of science must increase the number of his terms as he becomes acquainted with new facts.

3. Difference of climate, both by bringing different classes of objects before the mind, and by producing different effects upon the organs of speech.

Hence it happens that, when two races of men of a common stock are placed in distant countries, the language of each begins to diverge from that of the other in various ways.

1. One word will become obsolete and lost in the one race, and another word in the other.

2. The same word will be differently applied by two distant races of men, and the difference will be so great as to obscure the original affinity.