Languages, however, differ not only in grammar and roots, but also in a manner which it is more diHicult for those, like ourselves, familiar with only one type of language, to realize, viz. ' morpho- logically,' or in the manner in which ideas are built up into a sentence. Different races do not think in the same way ; and consequently the forms taken by the sentence in different languages are not the same. The only type of language with which we are practically acquainted is the ' inllectional ' type, which prevails in Western Asia and Europe, and to which both tlie Semitic and Aryan families belong ; but there are besides the 'agglutinative' type (of which Turkish is an example), spoken chielly in Central Asia, the Islands of the Pacific, and many parts of Africa, the 'incorporating,' of which Basque (in S.VV. France) is the cliief representative, the 'poly- sj-nthetic,' which prevails throughout America,* and the 'isolating' (of which Cliinese is the best- known example), characteristic of Eastern Asia (Tiliet, Burmah, etc.) : all these types of language dillbring in the manner in which ideas are grouped by tlie mind, and combined into sentences (for further particulars reference must be made to Sayce, op. cit. i. 118-132, 374ff.,ii. 18811'.; Jiaces of tlie OT, 35 f. ; or Whitney's art. 'Pliilology' in the Encycl. Britannica, ed. 9). It is remarkable, as even this cursory description will have indi- cated, that the morphological character of a lan- guage is correlateii, in some hidden way, with the geographical and climatic conditions of the country in which it originated : thus the different families of languages spoken in America, though utterly unrelated to each other, are nevertheless all 'poly- synthetic'
It is an obvious corollary from the radical differ- ences which the various families of language dis])lay, as compared with one another, that, whatever may have been the case with the races of mankind, the families of language spoken by man- kind must have arisen independently at different centres of human life. 'The languages of the present world arc hut the selected residuum of the inlinito variety of tongues that have grown up and decayed among the races of mankind. . . . The idioms of manKind have had many independent starting-points, and, like the Golden Ago, which science has shifted from the past to the future, the dream of a universal language must be realized, if at all, not in the Paradise of Genesis, but in the unifying tendencies of civilization and trade ' (Sayce, Science of Lang. ii. 3'22, 323).
* In polysynthetio languages the sentence is the unit of thought ; and in Diony of them separate words hardly exist.
792 TONGUES, COXFUSION OF
TONGUES, CONFUSION OF
As need hardly be remarked, what the iirimitive lanijuage of mankind waa. is unknown. Formerly, indeed, it was the ^reneral belief that it was Hebrew, and all other languages were sup- posed to be deri\ed from this (I); see Max Muller, Lectures on the Se. of Lang. 1st series, ed. 1SG4, p. 13iff. Leibnitz appears to have been the first to point out the absunlitv of this view, remarkuig justly (i*. p. 135 f.) that 'to call Hebrew the primitive language was like calling branches of a tree primitive branches ' ; and the science of comparative philology, which has arisen since Leibnitz's day, has but confinned the sountiness of his judgment. Even among the Semitic languages, Anahic, in many respects, e.xiiibits older and more original features than Hebrew ; besiiies, unless all analogy is deceptive, the language of primitive man must have been of a far more simple, un- developed type than any of the existing Semitic languages.
4. Differences of language and ditt'erences of race thus point independently to the great antiquity of man upon the earth. And their evidence is more than confirmed by testimony from other quarters. Even during the last ten years the discoveries of Petrie and de Morgan in figypt, and of Hilpreeht and others in Babjlonia, have shown that civiliza- tion existed in tiiese two countries at a period considerably earlier than had previously been sup- posed ; while the existence of inscriptions, sculp- tures, paintings, and various objects of art, belong- ing certainly to a date not later than B.C. 4000, makes it evident that the beginnings of civiliza- tion and art in both these countries must have preceded tli.it date by many centuries, not to say by millennia. And the numerous relics of human workmanship, especially stone implements of different kinds, and bone or other material, engraven with figures, which have been found during recent years in different parts of Europe and America, bear testimony, in the opinion of geologists, to a greater antiquity still, and show that man, in a rude and primitive stage of develop- ment, ranged through the forests and river-valleys of these continents, in company with mammals now extinct, during periods of the so-called 'glacial age,' when the glaciers (which then extended over large parts both of the British Isles and of the Continent of Europe) retreated sufBciently to enable him to do 80 (Dawkins, Early Man, 112-122, 137, 152ff., 161-164, 169, etc.). The date at which these relics of human workmanship were embedded in the deposits in which they are now found, can- not be estimated, precisely, in years B.C. ; but the late Prof. Prestwich, a geologist not addicted to extravagant opinions, assigned to pala-olithic man, as 'a rough approximate limit, on data very in- sufficient and subject to correction,' a period of from 20,000 to 30,000 years from the present time.