easiest of all to make, the most pervading and irrepressible in their action, throughout every period of its existence. Here, then, more than in any other department, it is practicable for later generations to amend and complete the work of earlier; and yet, such is the power of linguistic habit that, even here, original infelicities sometimes adhere to a language during its whole development.
To make out a satisfactory scheme of arrangement for all human tongues upon the ground of their comparative value, accordingly, will be a task of extreme difficulty, and one of the last results reached by linguistic science. It will require a degree of penetration into the inmost secrets of structure and usage, an acuteness of perception and freedom from prejudice in estimating merits of diverse character, and a breadth and reach of learning, which will be found attainable only by a few master-minds. Great play is here afforded for subjective views, for inherited prepossessions, for sway of mental habits. Who of us can be trusted fairly to compare the advantages of his own and of any other language?
There can be no question that, of all the modes of classification with which linguistic scholars have had to do, the one of first and most fundamental importance is the genetical, or that which groups together, and holds apart from others, languages giving evidence of derivation from the same original. It underlies and furnishes the foundation of all the remaining modes. There can be no tie between any two dialects so strong as that of a common descent. Every great family has a structural character of its own, whereby, whatever may be the varying development of its members, it is made a unit, and more or less strikingly distinguished from the rest. Whatever other criterion we may apply is analogous in its character and bearings with the distinction of apetalous, monopetalous, and polypetalous, or of monogynous, digynous, etc., or of exogenous and endogenous, or of phenogamous and cryptogamous, in the science of botany—all of them possessing real importance in different degrees, variously crossing one another, and marking out certain general divisions; while the arrangement of linguistic families corresponds with the division of plants into natural
24
