Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/266

244 is unmindful of the two opposing possibilities which interfere with the certainty of his conclusions: first, that seeming coincidences may turn out accidental and illusory only; second, that beneath apparent discordance may be hidden genetic identity. With every new analogy which his researches bring to view, his confidence in the genuineness and historic value of those already found is increased. And when, examining each separate fact in all the light that he can cast upon it, from sources near and distant, he has at length fully satisfied himself that two tongues are fundamentally related, their whole mutual aspect is thereby modified; he becomes expectant of signs of relationship everywhere, and looks for them in phenomena which would not otherwise attract his attention for a moment. When, on the contrary, an orderly and thorough examination, proceeding from the nearer to the remoter degrees of connection, has demonstrated the position of two languages in two diverse families, the weight of historic probability is shifted to the other scale, and makes directly against the interpretation of their surface resemblances as the effect of anything but accident or borrowing.

The new etymological science differs from the old, not in the character of the results which it is willing to admit, but in the character of the evidence on which it is willing to admit them. It will even derive lucus, 'grove,' from non lucendo, 'its not shining there,' if only historical proof of the derivation be furnished. It finds no difficulty in recognizing as identical two words like the French évêque and the English bishop, which have not a single sound or letter in common; for each is readily traceable back to the Greek episkopos. But it does not draw thence the conclusion that, in this or in any other pair of languages, two words meaning the same thing may, whatever their seeming discordance, be assumed to be one, or are likely to be proved