Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 29.djvu/111

Rh independent organism; besides, the sounds or vocal emissions do not become a language till they acquire significance by means of an operation that escapes us. It is easy to answer to this that, while language is in relation with a mental operation, it nevertheless constitutes a fact which is perceived by a sense—the sense of hearing. Of course, it is only in the abstract sense that we can regard language as an organism, but there is no doubt that in reality it behaves like an organism, and that it is in a constant state of evolution. And it is to this condition of evolution that I invite attention.

The phases of this evolution, as we understand it, are those of formation, growth, maturity, and decay. The variation is continual. Languages arise, are developed, pass on to decadence, and perish, like other organized beings. That their historical development is modified in the course of ages, according to certain conditions, is incontestable; but the observer of these modifications never sees in them anything other than phenomena of natural evolution. The evident proof of this fact is that the evolution is, as a whole, the same in linguistic families essentially different from one another.

Abel Rémusat has, in his "Recherches sur les langues tartares," indicated the general nature of the evolution of idioms: "In studying them attentively," he says, "we are tempted to believe that they are as constant in their march as the physical constitution that gives origin to them. . . . Possibly there prevails in languages less of the arbitrary than we have been accustomed to suppose; and, if we bring to their study the necessary care, we may be able to find in them signs as sure, as pronounced, and as characteristic as 'those which we can deduce from physiognomy, the color of the skin, or any other physical and external peculiarity." This "necessary care has been carried into the study of languages, and we shall see to what conclusions it has led us.

We are not acquainted with any language in its embryonic condition, if such a term is admissible. All of the languages submitted to our direct observation, even those of the most primitive stage, have passed the period of formation, which was prehistoric, and are now in the historical period, and generally in their decay. But by methodically separating and comparing their formative elements we can put ourselves, as it were, into the period of their formation.

The result of such comparative researches has confirmed the theory proposed in 1818 by William Schlegel, that languages first passed through a monosyllabic period; that some of them rose to the stage of development called the agglutinative; and that a small number of these last reach a later stage of flexion. The structure of the languages of the first class is simple, that of the second class is complex, and that of the third class is still more complex.

In the first phase of language, the root and the word are one, and each word-root or root-word is monosyllabic. The phrase is therefore