Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 5.djvu/533

Rh time, thanks to the telegraph! and even annihilating pain, thanks to chloroform!

Then, along with the material characters which we studied at our last lecture, we now take up intellectual characters.

It is our distinct intention, in taking up characters of a nature so new, still to remain exclusively on the ground of science.

We know the existence of faculties, and we shall point out their most general manifestations; but we shall have no concern with the nature of these faculties. In a word, we are not philosophers. Here, as in preceding lectures, we shall remain a man of science—a naturalist, and nothing else.

It will be impossible for me to examine these characters in detail. I shall neglect several, and limit myself to saying something on language, on writing, on the fundamental forms of society, on industry, and on dress.

I. Language.—It will not be denied that the most essential of all the manifestations of intelligence is language.

"Animals have voice, man alone has speech." This phrase is from an ancient philosophic naturalist—from the great Aristotle, who lived some four centuries before our era; it is as true to-day as it was more than two thousand years ago. In fact, man alone possesses articulate speech.

But, you all know that the manifestations of speech vary from people to people. Each of these manifestations—the languages, as we call them—constitutes one of the most essential characters of the different human groups. You all know a German, a Spaniard, an Englishman, by his language. But this is not the limit of the scientific importance of this character. Unhappily, I cannot here enter into details. I shall only attempt to show you, in a few words, how the study of language throws light on the history of human groups, even in the case of those who have lost all historic data.

You know that in France other languages than French are spoken, and that, on all sides of us, we find the Gascon in the south, the bas-Breton in Brittany, the Alsatian in Alsace, etc. Whence comes this diversity of language among a people at present so remarkably homogeneous?

History answers this question. It teaches us that, until a certain epoch, Languedoc, Alsace, Brittany, formed so many separate states, having each its own language. From this fact we are enabled to draw important consequences.

When we encounter a group actually designated by a single name, and when we find in this group secondary groups speaking diverse languages, we may almost to a certainty conclude that formerly all these secondary groups had their individual life, their political independence.

The study of language conducts us still further.