up also; nor do we know of any other cause of dialectic
diversity.
In applying this explanation of dialectic growth we have to allow for modifying circumstances of various nature, which alter not indeed the fact but the rate and kind of divarication. Some languages grow and change much more rapidly than others, with a corresponding effect upon divarication, since this is but a result of discordant growth. Usually, when there is division of a community, the parts get into different external circumstances, come in contact or mingle with different neighbouring communities, and the like; and this quickens and increases their divergence of speech. But the modifying factor of by far the highest importance here, as elsewhere in the history of language, is civilization. Civilization in its higher forms so multiplies the forces of communication as to render it possible that the widely-divided parts of one people, living in circumstances and under institutions of very different character, should yet maintain a substantial oneness of speech; of this there is no more striking example than the two great divisions of the English-speaking people on opposite sides of the Atlantic. On the other hand, a savage people cannot spread even a little without dialectic disunity, there arc abundant examples to be met with now of mutually unintelligible speech between the smallest subdivisions of a race of obviously kindred tongueas the different clusters of huts on the same coral islet. It is with linguistic unity Precisely as it is with political unity, and for the same reasons. Before the attainment of civilization the human race, whether proceeding from one centre of dispersion or from several, was spread over the earth in a state of utter disintegration; but every centre of civilization becomes also a centre of integration; its influences make for unity of speech as of all other social institutions. Since culture has become incontestably the dominant power in human history, the unifying forces in language have also been stronger than the diversifying, and with culture at its full height, and spread equally to every land and race, one universal language, like one universal community, is not an absurdity or theoretic impossibility, but only a Utopian or millennial dream. Dialectic variation is thus simply a consequence of the movements of population. As the original human race or races, so the divisions or communities of later formation, from point to point through the whole life of man on the earth, have spread and separated, but jostled and interfered, have conquered and exterminated or mingled and absorbed; and their speech has been affected accordingly. Hence something of these movements can be read in the present condition of languages, as in a faithful though obscure record-more, doubtless, than can be read in any other way, however little it may be when viewed absolutely. Dialectic resemblances point inevitably back to an earlier unity of speech, and hence of community; from what we know of the history of speech, they are not to be accounted for in any other way. The longer the separation that has produced the diversity, the greater its degree. With every generation the amount of accordance decreases and that of discordance increases the common origin of the dialects is at first palpable, then evident on examination, then to be made out by skilled research, then perhaps no longer demonstrable at all; for there is plainly no limit to the possible divergence. So long, now, as any speed, evidence of original unity is discoverable we call the languages “ related dialects, ” and combine them into a “ family ” The term “family ” simply signifies a group of languages which the evidence thus far at command, as estimated by us, leads us to regard as descended by the ordinary processes of dialectic divarication from one original tongue l'hat it does not imply a denial of the possibility of wider relationship is obvious from what has been said above. That there is abundant room for error in the classification represented by it is also clear, since we may take purely accidental resemblances, or the results of borrowing, for evidence of common descent, or may overlook or wrongly estimate real evidences, which more study and improved method will bring to light. Families of
Grouping into families is nothing more than the best classification attainable at a given stage in the progress of linguistic science; it is in no small part provisional only, and is always held liable to modification, even sweeping, by the results of further research. Of some families we can follow the history by external evidences a great way back into the past; their structure is so highly developed as to be traced with confidence everywhere; and their territory is well within our reach-such we regard with the highest degree of confidence, hardly allowing for more than the possibility that some other dialect, or group, or now-accepted family even, may sometime prove its right to be added on. But these are the rare exceptions; in the great majority of cases we have only the languages as they now exist, and in more or less scanty collections, of every degree of trustworthiness; and even their first grouping is tentative and incomplete, and involves an adjournment of deeper questions to the day of more light. To complete and perfect the work of classification by relationship, or the establishment of families and their subdivisions, is the first object of the comparative study of languages. No other classification has a value in the least comparable with it, that by grade of structure is a mere recreation, leading to nothing; that by absolute worth is of no account whatever, at any rate in the present state of our knowledge On genetic relationship, in the first place, is founded all investigation of the historical development of languages; since it is in the main the comparison of related dialects, even in the case of families having a long recorded history, and elsewhere only that, that gives us knowledge of their earlier condition and enables us to trace the lines of change. In the second place, and yet more obviously, with this classification is connected all that language has to teach as to the affinities of human races; whatever aid linguistic science renders to ethnology rests upon the proved relationships of human' tongues.
That a classification of languages, to which we have now to proceed, is not equivalent to a classification of races, and why this is so, is evident enough from the principles which have been brought out by our whole discussion 5;;f'p"""" of languages, and which, in their bearing upon this particular point, may well be recapitulated here. No language is a race-characteristic, determined by the special endowments of a race; all languages are of the nature of institutions, parallel products of powers common to all mankind —the powers, namely, involved in the application of the httest available means to securing the common end of communication. Hence they are indefinitely transferable, like other institutions-like religions, arts, forms of social organization, and so on-under the constraining force of circumstances. As an individual can learn any language, foreign as well as ancestral, if it be put in his way, so also a community, which in respect to such a matter is only an aggregate of individuals. Accordingly, as individuals of very various race are often found in one community, speaking together one tongue, and utterly ignorant of any other, so there are found great communities of various descent, speaking the dialects of one common tongue, which at some period historical circumstances have imposed upon them. The conspicuous example, which comes into every one's mind when this subject is discussed, is that of the Romanic countries of southern Europe, all using dialects of a language which, 2500 years ago, was itself the insignificant dialect of a small district in central Italy; but this is only the most important and striking of a whole class of similar facts. Such are the results of the contact and mixture of races and languages. If language-history were limited to growth and divarication, and race-history to spread and dispersion, it would be a comparatively easy task to trace both backward toward their origin; as the case is, the confusion is inextricable and hopeless. Mixture of race and mixture of speech are coincident and connected processes; the latter never takes place without something of the former; but the one is not at all a measure of the other, because circumstances may give to the speech of the one element of population a greatly disproportionate
