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
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

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.

    161/188 (page 143)
    that two sister tribes may have been able, at some past time, to create on each side of a mountain two different idioms, which may produce in their turn two families of languages absolutely irreducible one from the other. This is vdiat would take place, according to M. Renan, when the sons of the same parents, separating on the sides of the Imiius, became the double branch from whence have sprung the Semites on one side, and the Aryas on the other. This would be the explana- tion of the fact so embarrassing for anthropologists, that physical characteristics are sensibly identical among the Se- mites and Europeans, whilst these races are as distinct as possible in the matter of language. Now, we may even go further, and infer from these facts that the common species from whence the Semites, on the one hand, and the Aryas, on the other, are descended, did not yet know how to speak. Inversely to Latham, some anthropologists have given, in our opinion, too little importance to language : we speak espe- cially of Edwards and M. Omalius d^Halloy.* The truth lies, doubtless, between these two extremes. It must be acknow- ledged that language can very often fui-nish excellent evidence, but it must not be forgotten that it shows at the same time a more rapid liability to change than moral characteristics and corporal form. Niebuhr seems to us to be right when he insists upon the precautions to be taken in order to apply philology in a useful manner to the determination of races, and he concludes that we must give the greatest attention to physi- framed by Mochus, the Plioenician, and afterwards improved by Democritus and Epicui'us; and though it is part of a system in which the first men are represented as having grown out of the earth, Kke trees and other vegetables, it has been adopted by several modern writers of high rank in the rei^iiblic of letters, and is certainly in itself worthy of examination.—Encycloxi. Brit., vol. ix, p. 530, 1797.—Editor.] * I do not here mention the opinions of the Swede (see Latham, Celtic Nations, p. 2), who thinks that important changes can be introduced into a language by certain customs of a people, who change, for instance, the lips for the nostrils, and thus substitute nasal for labial consonants. These facts are, perhaps, true in the detail, but they ought not to have much importance, as they do not alter the specific and personal character of the language, which is far from consisting in the relative number of one or two kinds of letters.