Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/389

X.] it as a merit, not as a fault: it thus fairly represents the exceeding variety of languages, the complexity of the characteristics which distinguish them, and their incapacity of separation into a few sharply defined classes.

No single trait or class of traits, however fundamental may be its importance, can be admitted as a definite criterion by which the character of a language shall be judged, and its rank determined. We saw reason above to challenge the absolute superiority of the inflective principle, strongly as it may indicate a valuable tendency in language-making. Certainly it is wholly conceivable that some language of the agglutinative class may decidedly surpass in strength and suppleness, in adaptedness to its use as the instrument and aid of thought, some other language or languages of the inflective class. Not morphological character alone is to be taken account of; for not every race of equal mental endowment has originated and shaped a language, any more than an art, of equivalent formal merit. Some one needed item of capacity was wanting, and the product remains unartistic or the work of the earliest period, which has determined the grand features of the whole after-development, was unadroitly performed; the first generations left to their successors a body of constraining usages and misguiding analogies, the influence of which is not to be shaken off; and the mental power of the race is shown by the skill and force with which it wields an imperfect instrument. Many a tongue thus stands higher, or lower, in virtue of the sum of its qualities, than its morphological character would naturally indicate. The Chinese is one of the most striking instances of such a discordance; though so nearly formless, in a morphological sense, it is nevertheless placed by Wilhelm von Humboldt and Steinthal in their higher class of "form languages," along with the Indo-European and Semitic, as being a not unsuitable incorporation of clear logical thought as, though not distinctly indicating relations and categories, yet not cumbering their conception, their mental apprehension, by material adjuncts which weaken and confuse the thought.