Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/264

242 and setting apart all that is the result of independent growth and change among its dialects, recognizing what in it is original, and therefore fair subject of comparison with the results of a like process performed upon the other branches of the same family. It needs not, indeed that the restoration of primitive Germanic speech should be made complete before any farther step is taken; there are correspondences so conspicuous and palpable running through all the varieties of Indo-European speech, that, the unity of the family having been once established, they are at a glance seen and accepted at their true value. But only a small part of the analogies of two more distantly related languages are of this character, and their recognition will be made both complete and trustworthy in proportion as the nearer congeners of each language are first subjected to comparison. If English were the only existing Germanic tongue, we could still compare it with Attic Greek, and point out a host of coincidences which would prove their common origin; but, as things are, to conduct our investigation in this way, leaving out of sight the related dialects on each side, would be most unsound and unphilological; it would render us liable to waste no small share of our effort upon those parts of English which are peculiar, of latest growth, and can have no genetic connection whatever with aught in the Greek: it would expose us, on the one hand, to make false identifications (as between our whole and the Greek holos, 'entire'); and, on the other hand, to find diversity where the help of older dialectic forms on both sides would show striking resemblance. What analogy, for instance, do we discern between our bear, in they bear, and Greek pherousi? but comparison of the other Germanic dialects allows us to trace bear directly back to a Germanic form berand, and Doric Greek gives us pheronti, from which comes pherousi by one of the regular euphonic rules of the language; the law of permutation of mutes in the Germanic languages (see above, p. ) exhibits b as the regular correspondent in Low German dialects to the original aspirate ph; and the historical identity of the two words compared, in root and termination, is thus put beyond the reach of cavil.