3. Now it is to be observed that in each of these three groups there are exceptional regions in which, owing to their nature, the prevalent form of activity is less strongly marked, and some in which one form is blended with another. In North America, the Eskimo is still a hunter, though the mammalia which he pursues inhabit the sea; for it is by a veritable pursuit that he captures them. But those American races which live by fishing are engaged rather in search than in pursuit. And those which dwelt amidst the exuberant fertility of the lands adjacent to the Mississippi might be led to find what they wanted ready to their hand, or adopting the obvious suggestions of its natural growth to increase its supply by using means to produce it. Still more might production be followed in the mountain regions, where animals were few and spontaneous produce scanty. But on the dry tableland of Mexico production was difficult and search was needed. In Africa there is a still greater mixture of the fundamental forms of activity. In the fertile valley of the Lower Nile and on its delta there is comparatively little room for animals which man might capture for his use; and the fertility of the land irrigated by the inundations yields a supply almost spontaneous for the few wants of life, so that man might live there mainly by an agriculture needing no art. In the tropical regions of Africa, though animals are abundant, the produce of the soil is so plentiful that man is in a great degree spared the fatigue of hunting by the facility of search. And in the less fertile regions of South Africa, a similar advantage is gained by combining production with pursuit. That quarter of the world south-east of Asia, where men seem to live by search, includes regions little known, to which apparently the Melanesian races belong, and to which probably they owe their character. In those regions it would seem, from the indications of the languages, that more care was needed in the guidance of action and more attention to the lessons of experience than was necessary in the other Oceanic regions. In them, therefore, the mental aptitudes for search were tempered by a tendency to generalise their experience of nature and of life. The regions also to which in the main production belongs, in the form of pastoral industry, reach into those in which, owing to their Arctic climate, production becomes so difficult that it has to be helped by pursuit and search. And some of those which are now occupied by the productive Indo-European seem originally to have favoured similar combinations of activity. These mixed forms of life may be discerned in language in the mixture of the effects which belong to the three fundamental varieties; but these must first be understood in their leading outlines. 4. Pursuit thinks objects as they are in themselves, rather than as means and conditions, and has a sense of difficulty in making them amenable to its purpose, so that the ideas of them do not fall readily into the correlations of action and fact. Search thinks objects as they are, without the sense of difficulty in use; but in proportion to the carefulness which it requires it strengthens the effort of observa SECT. I.] SELF-DIRECTION OF THE LIFE. tion, and gives a concrete fulness of particularity to ideas. A life of eager search involves also in a fully peopled region a tendency to mutual collisions amongst those who are seeking each his own advantage. And these are so detrimental that an effort to avoid them by mutual conciliation is a necessary condition of success, which will give an advantage to a race, and fit it to prevail in the region. An habitual inclination therefore to make such an effort is an aptitude proper to such a life in such a region, and cannot fail to show itself in language in the prevalent use of respectful expressions. Action itself, too, is thought differently, according as it is directed by these different aims. Pursuit has its object in its eye; and the action involves a sense of the object. Search directs action to the object without involving in the action such a sense of the object. Production directs action not to an object, but to a combination of objects, means, and conditions, and it is such a combination that productive action contemplates. And these varieties in the thought of objects and actions, arising respectively from the life of pursuit, of search, and of production, are accompanied by corresponding varieties in the construction of the noun and the verb. I.—The development of the subject, and the power of self-direction of the life. 1. The distinct expression of the subject as such, or, in other words, the development of the nominative case of the substantive, is hardly to be found outside the Indo-European languages. For though Arabic has a nominative case, it is a weak sense of the subject that is expressed in the Arabic nominative (Gram. Sk., V. 60); and in none other of the Syro-Arabian languages is it to be found (ibid. 83, 107, 143, 153, 166) except in Ethiopic in four old nouns which retain a trace of it (ibid. 132). There are, indeed, the following instances, in other languages, of affixes taken by nouns when they are related as nominative to a verb, but on examination none of them are found to be true nominative elements expressing the relation of subject. In Eskimo the substantive takes -p when it is the subject of a transitive verb with a direct object; but this is the genitive ending, and shows that the verb, having incorporated the person of its object, is thought as in a genitive relation with its subject, rather than as realised subjectively in it. When the verb is intransitive, the substantive, which is its subject, is in the stem form (ibid. II. 14). So, in Samoiede, the suffixes which express the persons of the verb are the possessive suffixes when the verb is transitive and has taken up a sense of its object; otherwise they are subjective suffixes (ibid. IV. 76). In Choctaw the element t refers to a noun, connecting it with a sentence as subject, but it is also used as a copulative conjunction, and is in fact a connective element (ibid. II. 48). POWER OF SELF-DIRECTION OF THE LIFE. [SECT. I. In Australian (Adelaide), in Tibetan, and in Selish (North America), the subject of an active verb takes the ablative or instrumental ending (Gram. Sk., II. 64; III. 83, 90, Ex. 2, 4, 5, 13; V. 37), a striking proof of the weak sense of the subject. And a similar peculiarity is found in Bask, in which the substantive with -k subjoined is nominative to an active verb, and ablative governed by a passive verb (ibid. Bask, 3). In Galla the nominative takes -n or -ni; but this is also taken by the instrumental and in other relations. And in Kanuri the nominative takes -yē; but this same suffix is sometimes taken by the direct object, and sometimes followed by postpositions which govern the noun. In both these languages these suffixes seem to be pronominal; they are plainly not subjective (ibid. III. 162, 173); and the same is to be said of -nem in Yakama (II. 56). The pronoun 7 is in the same way used after the nominative in Burmese (ibid. V. 24), and in Mongolian a pronominal element demonstrative of the subject is attached to the nominative, and to other cases (IV. 36). 2. Now, the exclusive possession of a true nominative with a subject element by the Indo-European and Syro-Arabian languages in their original form, naturally connects itself with the high subjectivity of the verb in these two families, which in the last chapter was attributed to the superior mental power of those races. And no doubt the strong sense in the verb of its realisation in the subject must have tended to produce in the subject a strong sense of its being the realiser of the verb. But how is it that in the Syro-Arabian languages, in which the subjectivity of the verb is so strong, the sense of subject in the nominative is so weak? Now a similar weakness affects in these languages the distinctive expression of the other cases, and indicates a weakness of interest in the relations of substantive objects. And this corresponds to the Syro-Arabian development in history, which was rather spiritual than material. In truth, the nature of the region made it so. For in the desert there were not external objects to attend to, and in the oases there was little scope for material production (Book II., chap. i., Part I., Sect. V., 5). The race which was fitted to prevail in such a region was one which would dispense with much of the material interests of life, not being able to promote them on account of the difficulty of the region. And with such a race its own experience of life was so little under the control of its will, that it could have little sense of self as governing the life. On the other hand, the Indo-European races, the inventors of art and explorers of nature, began from the first, where their breed was pure, to subdue the world to their purposes, and to govern the conditions of their life. And thus we find that the efficacy of selfdirecting originality in determining the course of life, which in the inferior races is low for want of mental power, and in the Syro-Arabian races small on account of the restrictions of the region, reaches its maximum in the Indo-European races, while the original development of the nominative accompanies it in corresponding variations according to the theory of Book I., chap. iii., 1. SEOT. II.] LITTLE DELIBERATION AND CHOICE. II.-The nominative tends to follow the verb, if the race has little habit of deliberation and choice. 1. In the natural order of thought the subject precedes the verb (Def. 23). But in the Polynesian and Tagala (Gram. Sk., III. 53) languages, the nominative as a rule follows the verb more or less closely. In Tagala, if the verb is active, the subject following it is followed by the object. In Polynesian the qualifying, the directive, and the locative adverbs come between the verb and the subject, and the object follows the latter (ibid. 9); but in Tongan the subject is somewhat less bound to follow the verb than in Hawaiian, Maori, or Tahitian, and in Samoan still less bound to do so (ibid. 13, 16, 3). In Fijian the ordinary arrangement is verb, object, subject, but the more subjective personal pronouns precede the verb (ibid. 17); and this also is the order in the language of Annatom (ibid. 21), the most southern of the New Hebrides. But in the other Melanesian languages it is different. In Maré, Duauru, and Bauro, the subject generally precedes the verbal element and verbal stem (ibid. 34, 40, 41); in Lifu it generally follows (ibid. 37); in Mahaga it may precede or follow (ibid. 42); in Erromango and Tana, in Sesake as a rule, in Ambrym and Vunmarama, it precedes (ibid. 24, 26, 28, 31, 32). In Australian (Adelaide) there is great freedom of arrangement, but the conditions and object tend to go before the verb, the subject either preceding or following it (ibid. 87). In Malay generally the subject precedes the verb (ibid. 77). 2. In Old Egyptian the subject generally followed the verb, sometimes with the object between; but in the later language it seems to have had a greater liberty to precede, and there was greater use of personal suffixes combined with detached verbal elements (ibid. 124). In Kafir the subject may either precede or follow the verb; it may come last in the sentence; it generally follows the detached verbal particle ti. When a conjunction precedes, the subject generally goes before the verb. The direct object generally follows the verb, but it often precedes it (ibid. I. 13). In the other African languages the subject generally is before the verb. 3. In the American languages the following are the displacements of the subject from before the verb: In Cree the ordinary arrangement is object, verb, subject; then the rest in the natural order (ibid. II. 38).. In Selish and in Maya the subject sometimes, perhaps generally, follows the verb (ibid. 64, 99); the object intervening in Selish. In Mexican the subject seems to tend to follow the verb, though sometimes the order is subject, verb, object (ibid. 88). In Caraib the subject follows the verb (ibid. 104, 3, 4). In Kiriri the verb usually stands before the subject (ibid. 128). VOL. II. T LITTLE DELIBERATION AND CHOICE. [SECT. II. In Chikito the grammarian gives no information on this point, but three or four examples occur in which the subject follows the verb.1 In Bauro there are similar examples of its following, but also others of its preceding.3 2 In Chilian, the subject may be placed before or after the verb (ibid. 143). The subject ordinarily goes before the verb in Eskimo (ibid. 16), in Dakota (ibid. 43), in Choctaw (ibid. 53), in Yakama (ibid. 56), in Pima (ibid. 73), in Otomi (ibid. 82), in Chiapaneca (ibid. 90), in Guarani (ibid. 119). Its place in the other American languages is not stated. In Otomi, when a personal pronoun is subject, it is taken up as a suffix by the verb in a reduced form, having been already partly expressed in the personal prefix of tense and being weakened as subject thereby. 4. In the languages of Central and Northern Asia and Northern Europe, and in the Dravidian languages of India, the subject, as a rule, precedes the verb, but in Hungarian there is great freedom of arrangement (ibid. IV. 121); and in Sirianian the nominative sometimes follows the verb; but this may be due to the verb being preceded by a conjunction (ibid. 146, 5), and may not be the normal order. The rule in the Chinese group of languages is that the subject precedes (ibid. V. 8, 18, 29, 37, 47). 5. In Arabic and Ethiopic the normal order is verb, subject, object, but in Hebrew and Syriac the subject seems to have more tendency to take the lead. In all there is great freedom of arrangement, especially in Ethiopic, perhaps partly owing to the Greek literary influence to which Ethiopic was subject (ibid. 72, 95, 117, 139). In Amharic and Haussa the nominative precedes the verb (ibid. 148, 170); in Tamachek it follows (ibid. 164). 6. In Sanskrit the verb is usually, though not always, last in the sentence (ibid. VI. 42). In Greek and Latin also, though there is great freedom of arrangement, the normal order is subject, conditions, object, verb (ibid. 88). In Irish the order is verb, subject, object, conditions, and if the verb be the copula it is followed by the predicate; if the copula be not expressed, the predicate goes first. Sometimes the object goes before the subject (ibid. 129). In Welsh the verb or predicate takes the lead, the predicate being followed by the verb substantive, or by the verbs equivalent to nominari, eligi, &c. ; but negative and interrogative and some other particles if they precede cause the verb substantive to go before the predicate; the other members are arranged as in Irish (ibid. 130). In Anglo-Saxon the order was subject, object, verb, the verb being last; but this was liable to be changed by emphasis or by the strength given to a member of the sentence by a relation in which the sentence stands and which specially affects that member. In Anglo-Saxon, however, the subject held its precedence more strongly than it does in New High German (ibid. 172). In Arte, p. 59-61. 2 Ibid. pp. 68, 96. 3 Ibid. P. 70. |