The plurality of the human race / by Georges Pouchet ; translated and ed. (from the 2nd ed.) by Hugh J.C. Beavan.

Georges Pouchet

Date:: 1864

Credit: The plurality of the human race / by Georges Pouchet ; translated and ed. (from the 2nd ed.) by Hugh J.C. Beavan. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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$penetrate into any foreign literature, it becomes a labour and a fatigue, we only reach it by making an abstraction of our thoughts and our ideas, by endeavouring to enter entirely, by a violent effort, into the life and feelings of another people. Languages also have been considered capable of serving as a basis for the classification of the human race. Their im- portance has been largely discussed, and counts numerous warm partisans.* At their head we may perhaps mention Latham, who wishes the ancient history of mankind to be studied by languages,t and agreeing in Prichard^s ideas about the production of intermediary hybrid races, he only sees this method of reading the history of the past, and he is quite naturally led to language, which seems to him to offer better conditions of resistance^ than physical characteristics. It is true that philology, applied to anthropological research, is of immense assistance to it; it can give us powerful in- ductions on the history of the past, and on the origin of the present human species. But even these solutions agree very well with the theory of gradual evolution, and with the co- rollary of this theory, namely, that man has not always pos- sessed the faculty of speech. § Philologists tell us, for instance, * Philology is at once the most elevated and the most positive branch of the natural history of the human race. Chavee, Blo'ise et les Langues (La Revue). M. Flourens seems to give philological a superior rank to physical characteristics. [See above, p. 77, note.—Editor.] t He believes that by their means we can go back to the most distant geo- logical periods. See Apophthegms {Edinburgh New Philosophical Journ,, vol. li.) I Latham thus explains it: This is because whilst A and b, in the way of stock-blood or pedigree, will give c a true tertium quid, or a near approach to it, and A and b, in the way of language, will only give themselves, i. e., they will give no true tertium quid, nor a,ny very close approach to it. Celtic Nations, p. 33. We have endeavoured to prove that this true tertium quid— this real mean term, is never produced as far as sj^ecies. § [ Either language must have been originally revealed fi'om heaven, or it must be the fruits of human industry. The greater part of Jews and Christians, and even some of the wisest Pagans, have embraced the former opinion, which seems to be supported by the authority of Moses, who repre- sents the Supreme Being as teaching our first parents the names of animals. The latter opinion is held by Diodoriis Siculus, Lucretius, Horace, and many other Greek and Roman writers, who consider language as one of the arts invented by man. The first men, say they, Kved for some time in woods and caves, after the manner of beasts, uttering only confused and indistinct noises, till, associating for mutual assistance, they came by degrees to use articulate sounds mutually agreed upon, for the arbitrary signs or marks of those ideas in the mind of the speaker which he wanted to communicate to the hearer. This ojjinion sprung from the atomic cosmogony which was$