er, 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-as, visch-en, fisk-ar,

fisch-e,

fisk-os,

fisk-e,

fisk, fisk. fisk-ar, fisk-ar.

Fishes',

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.

§ 13. MISCELLANEOUS ANALOGIES IN DIFFERENT FAMILIES OF THE INDO-EUROPEAN STOCK.

DIVERSITIES IN LANGUAGES.

§ 14. 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 own 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.

§ 15. 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.

3. Words will be compounded by two nations in a different manner.

4. The pronunciation and orthography of the same word will be different, especially by the use of convertible consonants.

This opinion, namely, in respect to the causes now in operation, does

State the three opinions which have prevailed in respect to the origin of the diversities of languages. State the causes of the diversities in languages. Mention the ways in which diversities of languages take place.

not interfere with the supposition that the "confusion of tongues" may have hastened the diversities in language, if it did not originate them.

THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE.

§ 16. There is the same reason for the study of language that there is for the study of thought.

It is by means of language that the thoughts and emotions of one mind are projected upon another. Language is the medium through which the object of thought in the mind of the speaker or writer is exhibited to the hearer or the reader, and the object is projected upon the receiving mind in an image that is true, distinct, and bright, or in one that is distorted, blurred, and dim, according as that mind is acquainted or not with the medium. If language is only expressed thought, or "the incarnation of thought," and if thought is the copy of things, then the value of things becomes transferred to language, or, rather, is connate with it. As a matter of fact, so entirely are words the exponents of the thought, and purpose, and character of him who uses them, that they form the ground of judging of character for ourselves in our estimate of each other, and for God in his estimate of us all. "Out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." "By thy words shalt thou be justified, and by thy words shalt thou be condemned."

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN WORDS AND THINGS.

§ 17. Such is the connection between words and things that a thorough study of language makes the student acquainted both with those minds of which it is the expression, and with those objects to which it is applied.

A language borrows its character, first, from the minds of those who use it in view of the objects to which it is applied, and, secondly, from the objects with which it is associated. The language of a nation is the accumulation of the experience, the wisdom, and the genius of a nation. "The heart of a people is its mother tongue," and it is only by learning that mother tongue that you can know that heart. It is only while listening to the "thoughts that breathe and the words that burn," from the lips of her poets and her orators, her historians and her dramatists, that you can feel that heart beating responsive to your

own.

THE CONNECTION BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND HISTORY.

§ 18. It is only by means of their language that we are able to trace the history and migration of the early inhabitants of the world.

What reasons can you give for the study of language? From what does a language borrow its character? What relation does language bear to history?

Describing philology as it was at the end of the last century, says Niebuhr, in his preface to the History of Rome, "It had recognized its calling to be the mediator between the remotest ages, to afford to us the enjoyment of preserving through thousands of years an unbroken identity with the noblest and greatest nations of the ancient world, by familiarizing us, through the medium of grammar and history, with the works of their minds and the course of their destinies, as if there were no gulf that divided us from them." In this way, fleeting as language in itself may be, it has raised for the primeval history of man more lasting monuments than those of stone or brass.

THE DISCOVERY OF THE LOST MEANING OF WORDS.

§ 19. In the flow of centuries, words often lose their meaning by being used in new applications; and to disinter that meaning out of the alluvium and drift of ages, and bring it up to the light, affords as much pleasure to the linguist as to disinter a fossil does to the geologist.

In digging down from the surface to the original meaning of words, applied first to some physical object, and then to a spiritual one, he often meets with this "fossil poetry," which is to him a medal of the nation, or of the race, just as the other is to the geologist a "medal of the creation." The word God means the Deity; but in the original AngloSaxon, besides this, it also meant good, or the Good. The word man, in English, means a human being, but in the Anglo-Saxon original its meaning, besides this, was sin, or the sinful. The full history of language would be a history of the human race.

RELATIONS OF LANGUAGE TO THE LAWS OF THE MIND.

$ 20. The careful study of language can not fail to make the student acquainted with the laws of the human

mind.

The origin and formation of words, and the structure of sentences, as exhibited in etymology and syntax, taken as a whole, are but a counterpart of those mental phenomena which have been collected and classified by the masters of mental science. The laws of suggestion, of memory, of imagination, of abstraction, of generalization and reasoning, are distinctly exhibited, not merely in the higher specimens of eloquence and poetry, but also in the common forms of language; so that there is truth in the remark "that we might turn a treatise on the philosophy of mind into one on the philosophy of language by merely supposing that every thing said in the former of the thoughts as subjective is said again in the latter of the words as objective."

What does your author say of the lost meaning of words? Describe the relation of language to the laws of the human mind.

MUTUAL INFLUENCE OF LANGUAGE AND OPINION.

§ 21. The study of language is necessary in order to understand the influence which language and opinion have upon each other.

The opinion entertained of an object influences the mind in the application of a term to that object, and the term, when applied, influences the opinion.

See English Grammar, § 23.

THE STUDY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

§ 22. From the general relations of language considered in this chapter, we gather an argument of great power in favor of carefully studying one's own language, whether for its own sake as an end, it being a subject of great intrinsic interest, or for its uses and applications to the great purposes of life.

To an Englishman or an American, the study of the English language offers a twofold advantage, to wit, in the mental discipline it furnishes, and in the knowledge it imparts. The discipline he can obtain without the necessity of studying a foreign language. The knowledge gained is appropriate to him as an Anglo-Saxon, embodied as it is in his native tongue. "If language is the outward appearance of the intellect of nations, if their language is their intellect and their intellect their language," then, by studying the English language, he becomes acquainted with the intellect of the Anglo-Saxon race, while his own intellect is improved by the disciplinary process through which the study must lead him. By studying the language, he is brought into contact, and thus into close sympathy with the race who have written and spoken it. By understanding it and using it in its full power, he becomes a teacher, a leader of those of the race who hear or read his words. Thus he at once takes possession of the inheritance bequeathed to him from past generations, constantly becoming more valuable by the contributions of the present; and, at the same time, he qualifies himself to use that inheritance for his own advantage and that of others, and to transmit it, enriched and improved, to future generations.

Describe the mutual influence of language and opinion. Mention the advantages of the study of the English language.