Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/394

372 an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Chinaman talk unlike one another because their brains and organs of articulation are unlike; and that all Englishmen talk alike, as do all Frenchmen, or all Chinamen, because, in consequence of their living amid similar physical conditions, and their inheritance of a common race-type, their nervous and muscular systems minutely correspond. And doctrines akin with these are more or less distinctly and consciously implied in the views of those who hold that language is beyond the reach of the free-agency of men, and can be neither made nor changed by human effort. All who think thus virtually deny the existence of such a thing as linguistic science, or reduce it to the position of a subordinate branch of physiology: speech becomes a purely physical characteristic, one among the many which by their common presence make up man, and by their differences distinguish the different varieties of men; and it would be for the physicist to determine, here, as in the case of other physical characteristics, how far its joint possession indicated specific unity, or how far its diversities of kind indicated specific variety. All these false theories are brushed away at once by our recognition of the fact that we do not produce our speech from within, but acquire it from without ourselves; that we neither make nor inherit the words we use, whether of our native tongue or of any other, but learn them from our instructors.

But from this it also follows that no individual's speech directly and necessarily marks his descent; it only shows in what community he grew up. Language is no infallible sign of race, but only its probable indication, and an indication of which the probability is exposed to very serious drawbacks. For it is evident that those who taught us to speak, of whose means of expression we learned to avail ourselves, need not have been of our own kith and kin. Not only may individuals, families, groups of families, of almost every race on earth, be, as at present in America, turned into and absorbed by one great community, and made to adopt its speech, but a strange tongue may be learned by whole tribes and nations of those who, like our negroes, are brought