at all the languages actually existing cannot be
referred to a common ancestor, and it is altogether probable that
there never was any such common ancestor. I am not now referring to the
question of the unity of the human race. That question lies entirely
outside the sphere of philology. The science of language has nothing to
do with skulls or complexions, and no comparison of words can tell us
whether the black men are brethren of the white men, or whether
yellow and red men have a common pedigree: these questions belong to
comparative physiology. But the science of language can and does tell us
that a certain amount of civilization is requisite for the production
of a language sufficiently durable and wide-spread to give birth to
numerous mutually resembling offspring Barbaric languages are neither
widespread nor durable. Among savages each little group of families has
its own dialect, and coins its own expressions at pleasure; and in the
course of two or three generations a dialect gets so strangely altered
as virtually to lose its identity. Even numerals and personal pronouns,
which the Aryan has preserved for fifty centuries, get lost every few
years in Polynesia. Since the time of Captain Cook the Tahitian language
has thrown away five out of its ten simple numerals, and replaced them
by brand-new ones; and on the Amazon you may acquire a fluent command
of some Indian dialect, and then, coming back after twenty years, find
yourself worse off than Rip Van Winkle, and your learning all antiquated
and useless. How absurd, therefore, to suppose that primeval savages
originated a language which has held its own like the old Aryan and
become the prolific mother of the three or four thousand dialects now
in existence! Before a durable language can arise, there must be an
aggregation of numerous tribes into a people, so that there may be
need of communication on a large scale, and so that tradition may be
strengthened. Wherever mankind have associated in nations, permanent
languages have arisen, and their derivative dialects bear the
conspicuous marks of kinship; but where mankind have remained in their
primitive savage isolation, their languages have remained sporadic and
transitory, incapable of organic development, and showing no traces of a
kinship which never existed.

The bearing of these considerations upon the origin and diffusion of
barbaric myths is obvious. The development of a common stock of legends
is, of co