identical dialeet; and souls of kindred calibre in different societies can hold no communion together. Nor does it accord with geographical divisions; nor yet, in its limits and degrees, with the apparent limits of races. Not seldom, far greater race-differences are met with among the speakers of one language, or of one body of resembling languages, than between those who use dialects wholly unlike one another.

These, and their like, are the problems which occupy the attention of those who pursue the science of language, or linguistic science. That science strives to comprehend language, both in its unity, as a means of human expression and as distinguished from brute communication, and in its internal variety, of material and structure. It seeks to discover the cause of the resemblances and differences of languages, and to effect a classification of them, by tracing out the lines of resemblance, and drawing the limits of difference. It seeks to determine what language is in relation to thought, and how it came to sustain this relation; what keeps up its life and what has kept it in existence in past time, and even, if possible, how it came into existence at all. It seeks to know what language is worth to the mind, and what has been its part in the development of our race. And, less directly, it seeks to learn and set forth what it may of the history of human development, and of the history of races, their movements and connections, so far as these are to be read in the facts of language.

No reflecting and philosophizing people has ever been blind to the exceeding interest of problems like these, or has failed to offer some contribution toward their solution. Yet the body of truth discovered in earlier times has been so small, that the science of lan

guage is to be regarded as a modern one, as much so as geology and chemistry; it belongs, like them, to the nineteenth century. To review its history is no part of our present task; no justice could be done the subject within the space that could be spared it in this volume; and the few words that we can bestow upon it will be better said in the last chapter than here. Although of so recent growth, the science of language is already one of the leading branches of modern inquiry. It is not less comprehensive in its material, definite in its aims, strict in its methods, and rich and fruitful in its results, than its sister sciences. Its foundations have been laid deep and strong in the thorough analysis of many of the most important human tongues, and the careful examination and classification of nearly all the rest. It has yielded to the history of mankind as a whole, and to that of the different races of men, definite truths and far-reaching glimpses of truth which could be won in no other way. It is bringing about a re-cast of the old methods of teaching even familiar and long-studied languages, like the Latin and Greek; it is drawing forward to conspicuous notice others of which, only a few years ago, hardly the names were known. It has, in short, leavened all the connected branches of knowledge, and worked itself into the very structure of modern thought, so that no one who hears or reads can help taking some cognizance of it. No educated person can afford to lack a clear conception of at least a brief connected outline of a science possessing such claims to attention.

The design of this volume, accordingly, is to draw out and illustrate the principles of linguistic science, and to set forth its results, with as much fullness as the limited space at command shall allow. The study is

not yet so developed and established as not to include subjects respecting which opinions still differ widely and deeply. But direct controversy will be avoided; and the attempt will be made to construct an argument which shall commend itself to acceptance by the coherence of its parts and the reasonableness of its conclusions. In accordance with the plan of the series of treatises into which this enters as a member, simplicity and popular apprehensibility will be everywhere aimed at. To start from obvious or familiar truths, to exemplify by well-known facts, will be found, it is believed, the best way to arrive with assurance at the ultimate results sought after. The prime facts of language lie, as it were, within the easy grasp of every man who speaks-yet more, of every man who has studied other languages than his own-and to direct intelligent attention toward that which is essential, to point out the general in the midst of the particular and the fundamental underneath the superficial, in matters of common knowledge, is a method of instruçtion which cannot but bear good fruit.

CHAPTER II.

HOW EACH INDIVIDUAL ACQUIRES HIS LANGUAGE: LIFE OF LANGUAGE.

Language learned, not inherited or made, by the individual; process of children's learning to speak; what this involves, outside the province of the linguistic student. Origin of particular words. Character of a word as sign for a conception. Mental training in learning language; determination of the inner form of language from without; constraint and advantage in the process. Acquisition of a second language, or of more than one; learning even of native speech a never-ending process. Imperfection of the word as sign; language only the apparatus of thought.

THERE can be asked respecting language no other question of a more elementary and at the same time of a more fundamentally important character than this: how is language obtained by us? how does each speaking individual become possessed of his speech? Its true answer involves and determines well-nigh the whole of linguistic philosophy.

There are probably few who would not at once reply that we learn our language; it is taught us by those among whom our lot is cast in childhood. And this obvious and common-sense answer is also, as we shall find on a more careful and considerate inquiry, the correct one.

plied in it.

We have to look to see what is im

In the first place, it sets aside and denies two other conceivable answers: that language is a race-characteristic, and, as such, inherited from one's ancestry, along with color, physical constitution, traits of character, and the like; and that it is independently produced by each individual, in the natural course of his bodily and mental growth.

Against both these excluded views of the acquisition of language may be brought such an array of facts so familiar and undeniable that they cannot be seriously upheld. Against the theory of a language as a racecharacteristic may be simply set, as sufficient rebutting evidence, the existence of a community like the American, where there are in abundance descendants of African, of Irish, of German, of southern European, of Asiatic, as well as of English ancestors, all using the same dialect, without other variety than comes of dif ferences of locality and education, none showing a trace of any other "mother-tongue" or "native speech." But the world is full of such cases, on the small scale and on the large. Any child of parents living in a foreign country grows up to speak the foreign speech, unless carefully guarded from doing so; or, it speaks both this and the tongue of its parents, with equal readiness. The children of missionary families furnish the most striking examples of this class: no matter where they may be in the world, among what remotely kindred or wholly unrelated dialects, they acquire the local speech as "naturally" as do the children of the natives. And it is only necessary that the child of English or German or Russian parents, born in their native country, should (as is often done) be put with a French nurse, and hear French alone spoken about it, and it will grow up to speak French first and