Part 16

There need be no fear, therefore, that immigration might bring to this country a permanent foreign element. Such elements, when they do come, are of a passing nature. Their offspring, in passing the crucial test of the English tongue, sink the foreigner into the all-absorbing element of the English idiom; and in so doing are merged into and become an integral part of the people of this country. They may come of whatever nation, from whatever land; no matter how they may appear, act, or speak, the English idiom will continue to make them Americans, in their children at least, in the future as it has in the past. There is thus in the centrifugal force which dominates the speech of Anglo-Saxons that which is a safeguard to the homogeneity as well as the institutions of this nation.

An Anglo-Saxon cannot be a bondsman; his language forbids it. The centrifugal force which prevails with him does not permit fetters. The children of all foreigners born here and speaking the English language come under its spell. If language did not have this supreme influence, there is no other influence that would have prevented this country long ago from having become inhabited in special districts with permanent groups of people foreign to its aims and institutions, and alien to its genius, its character, and its customs. In districts where German is spoken as the principal language, as in some parts of Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, it is not, with the native-born at least, the pure German language, but its idiomatic expression is that of the English tongue.

People say, "It is the climate." We have every climate under the sun; yet in all that is essential the man from Maine is as thoroughly American as the one from Texas; the gold-digger in the frozen regions of the Yukon as the man of the orange-groves of Florida or California; the American fisherman on the Banks of Newfoundland as those on the Gulf of Mexico; the man who battles on the plains against the Indians as he who serves under the banner of the Republic and upholds its glory in foreign lands and seas. You can tell an American the moment you look at him. Yet if you ask some of them where their parents were born, you will hear strange tales of lands and peoples across the sea and far away.

Language does not work every wonder, of course. The influence of heredity perpetuates that of language; but the latter is the primary influence. Nor can it be denied that every foreigner living here for some time, whether he has learned to speak English or not, will, to some extent at least, be influenced by the habits, customs, institutions, climate, and language of this country. This does not detract, however, from the force of my argument regarding language and its influence as the most vital force in shaping a people's characteristic traits, physically as well as spiritually.

There has been of late a great deal of talk and enthusiasm even regarding the desirability of a closer alliance between the two great English-speaking nations; their natural affinity and kinship. This affinity, this belonging together, this being of one family and one stock, is commonly expressed by this term, "English-speaking peoples." That which I have endeavored to explain at length is thus tacitly acknowledged to be correct through the use of this term, which implies that it is the English tongue which makes these peoples one in sentiment, in feeling, in their aims and purposes, as it makes them one in their physical appearance, their motions, the exercise of their faculties and functions, etc.

NATIONALITY AND RACE DISTINCTIONS

While the English language makes Americans of all foreigners, it does not, of course, obliterate race distinctions as long as races continue to exist as such. Persons of alien races, nevertheless, when born in this country and reared under native influences, will become "American" in a truer sense than foreigners belonging to the Caucasian race coming here at maturity. I dare say Frederick Douglass was truly more of an American, in all this word implies, than any foreigner who ever came to live here; and so are all the better classes of native-born negroes, in a certain sense, more truly American, this indescribable something which constitutes a nation, than any aliens whosoever.

A gentleman once told me that, travelling on a steamboat on one of the New England rivers, he had been inadvertently listening to a conversation carried on behind him, between what seemed to be two New England farmers. On rising from his seat, he saw that one of the men was a Chinaman, dressed like the other and conversing precisely as he did.

Seeing an acquaintance, he pointed out the Chinaman and asked if he knew who he was.

"That's Jimmy O'Connor; he's from So-and-so."

"I mean the Chinaman."

"Yes, the Chinaman; that's him. You know he was picked up at sea, when still a baby, by a New Bedford whaler, and was brought up in the captain's family, who adopted him. He's as good a farmer and as true an American as you can find anywhere."

These studies are meant to be purely objective, and have no concern with politics or policies, regarding undesirable immigration, or issues of a similar nature. But language is nationality, and nationality language, always, in the first instance; and the purer a language is spoken, the truer, purer, and better such nationality will be expressed and represented by those who thus speak it. What an incentive to aim at the purest and best expression of language, for any people! But it will be said that language is subject to change. If it is, so will the people who speak it to some extent change with it. Such change, however, is in its dress, in words mainly; rarely and at long intervals, and under very peculiar circumstances only, in its expression. As a matter of fact, I doubt whether a change of the idiomatic expression ever takes place.

The difference existing between the English spoken in the United States and the mother country might be cited as an example. The idiomatic expression is precisely the same. But the necessary self-reliance of the first settlers, the privation, the barter and exchange, the vast extent of the territory of this country, the greater independence enjoyed by its people, etc., might be named as reasons for the greater dash and freedom, together with a possible want of culture, as compared with the language spoken by educated Englishmen, prevailing in its utterance.

The same influences prevail regarding the general appearance, motions, and characteristic traits of these respective nations. Though closely allied and connected in a specific, and very nearly allied to each other in a general sense, there is that which distinguishes the English of the old world from those of the new, and which can be easily recognized.

Being centrifugal, the English idiom, octopus-like, embraces anything and everything that comes within the radius of its omnivorous capacity, without, however, losing its original character. It is like a fisherman who has hung out his net in the ocean, taking in all that comes along; or like the sea itself, greedy without end. It has no scruples about roots and construction, but construes everything according to its wants and adapts it to its uses as it comes along from any quarter.

These adopted children, these waifs, however, it must not be lost sight of, before they become integral parts of English speech must submit to a change of their original idiomatic expression. No matter who came--Celts, Romans, Angles, Saxons, or French--the people of the British Islands, while adopting their terms of expression, remained true to their original idiomatic expression. As this country absorbs people from the whole world and makes one homogeneous American nation of them, so has the English language absorbed, and is still absorbing, words from every other people's language, and has transformed them into one homogeneous language of its own.

Comparative philology, if it wants to accomplish that which would be most worthy of its efforts, will have to come down to these strong and basic roots of language.

The German language, whose idiomatic expression is centripetal, on the other hand, does not possess the same capacity for adopting foreign words and adapting them to its idiom. When it does adopt them, as, for instance, those of French origin, they are pronounced, not in the German, but, as far as the German people are capable of so doing, in the French manner. They could not, in fact, be pronounced in the German manner, the German language being a close corporation, so to say, which does not admit of any foreign shareholders; while the English language is a company open to all comers. While it is the endeavor of Germans to purify their language by expelling as far as possible any foreign word and element therefrom, Anglo-Saxons are constantly adopting new words from foreign languages. It would be equal to the labor of Sisyphus for Anglo-Saxons to endeavor to purify their language from foreign words, in the same sense that Germans are attempting to purify theirs.

It appears to me that the capacity of England for successful colonization is largely due to the centrifugal force inherent in its language, while the want of success of Germany for the same purpose is due to the absence of this force. Anglo-Saxon government tends toward decentralization, German toward centralization. I say this in spite of the fact that Germany is still divided into many principalities; the fact of its adherence to this undesirable condition being a proof of the correctness of this assertion rather than otherwise--Germans not being able to readily get out of that in which they are once rooted. In regard to governing peoples in distant territories or colonies, this tendency is of importance. English government, being undemonstrative, is more effective than German, which is demonstrative, meddlesome, and therefore offensive; the former being material and practical, the latter immaterial and inclined to be visionary.

In a word, where are we to find explanations regarding national traits of character except through inner motive powers, productive of results individual as well as national? There is no factor which exercises an influence upon a nation as a unit so wide in extent and of so powerful a nature as that of language. It is the only motive power, in fact, which every member of a nation shares with every other member thereof, but not with any member of any foreign nation.

IDIOMATIC EXPRESSION

Although it is a well known fact that every language has an idiomatic expression, an intonation of its own, I am not aware of any attempt ever having been made at definitely stating what such expression, or intonation, really consists in; and in what respect it differs, as between one language and another. Yet this fact should be the most important of all in connection with ethnological studies. It is necessary to know what a people's idiomatic expression is before we can begin to make a study of its language, in comparison with that of any other people, by which we may expect to arrive at conclusions of any real value in an ethnological sense.

In comparison with idiomatic expression, the study of the roots of words and their derivation, it appears to me, is of but secondary importance; idiomatic expression being the kernel in which the tree of national expression had its incipiency, its origin. It is the life which pulsates through its veins, in which it has its stay and maintenance; the nerves which tingle with its intelligence, its genius, its soul. Take away this soul, and it ceases to exist. For every language there must have been a strong impulse making an impression before there could have been any expression at all. This impulse must have been of so powerful and continuous a nature as to have left its impression upon the minds of a sufficiently large number of people to form the nucleus for the expression of a specific language, and, in so doing, constituting such people a nation.

I have already stated that it is motion in the first instance which superinduces a specific mode of breathing and consequent expression. It is to motion, then, that we must ascribe the first impulse. Such motion may have been active as to defense against enemies, wild beasts, or the elements; or it may have been passive, consisting of the continuous noise produced by the motion of the sea, tempests, or thunder-storms, making a great and lasting impression. Then, again, the influence may have been of a peaceful, balmy, beneficial nature, as with people living in security, in a mild climate and on fertile lands. The stronger the expression of these movements, the stronger the impression they made and the more powerful the expression of the language; the softer and more harmonious their expression, the softer and the more rhythmical the expression of the language. These influences made their first impression by superinducing a mode of breathing in conformity therewith.

Thus sounds giving expression to pain, perhaps, in the first instance, or to sorrow, joy, surprise, etc., were made in conformity with this, their specific mode of breathing. These outcries, consisting of syllables, grew into words and sentences, which, being uttered in conformity and sympathy with their special mode of breathing, created a specific idiomatic expression. The same process, from its first inauguration, and with but slight alterations, has been practised and persisted in by the same people from the beginning to the present time. With the English people, as already mentioned, no migration, no invasion, no conqueror, no matter how powerful, has been able to swerve it from its path. The most these invaders could do was to graft some of the expressions in which their ideas were clad, some words, on to this aboriginal stem. This stem was so strong in its primeval conception that it could bear all these exotic graftings without losing its character, absorbing all, welcoming all beneath the widespread roof and homestead of its branches. It proved its superiority over the idiomatic expression of these foreign tongues by its survival, as the fittest.

What is this original sap in the English, and what is it in the German language?

The aborigines of the British Isles, living apart from their continental brethren, became possessed of an idiom different and apart from any other. It was the idiom of the sea, by which they were surrounded; the motion and commotion of the waves, the surf, the incoming and outgoing tides, their undertow and overflow; the waves advancing toward the shore, their breaking against it, and their final retreat from the same.