Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/309

VII.] of the fabric is, even more than the rate, determined by external circumstances. It is because the very earliest epoch of recorded history are still far distant from the beginnings of Indo-European language, as of human language generally, that we find its peculiar structure completely developed when it is first discovered by our researches. We have fully acknowledged the powerful influence exerted by culture over the growth of language: but neither the accident of position and accessibility to other nations that at a certain time brings a race forward into the light of record, and makes it begin to be an actor or a factor in the historic drama, nor its more gradual and independent advance to conspicuousness in virtue of acquired civilization and political power, can have any direct effect whatever upon its speech. The more thorough we are in our study of the living and recent form of human language, the more rigorous in applying the deductions thence drawn to the forms current in ante-historic periods, the more cautious about admitting forces and effect in unknown ages whereof the known afford us no example or criterion, so much the more sound and trustworthy will be the conclusions at which we shall arrive. It is but a shallow philology, as it is a shallow geology, which explains past changes by catastrophes and cataclysms.

We have now long enough given our almost exclusive attention to the language of the Indo-European race, and, in the next two lectures, shall proceed to define the boundaries and sketch the characters, as well as we may, of the other grand divisions of human speech.