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ideal of a classic epoch of language, offered as a standard for the imitation and emulation of the ages to come. This is the statement, briefly given, of the case for the purists, and its tenets have been put into practice, especially as we have seen, by the Germans, and also by such peoples as the Greeks, and the Czechs of Bohemia. It need hardly be said that such reforms have sometimes been suggested in the case of English. Three centuries ago the Eliza- bethan writers and critics had many bitter and sarcastic things to say about our borrowing of outlandish terms. More recently, to give only one instance, Barnes, in his Outlines of English Speech-craft, suggested a large number of English words-such as airfarer for aeronaut, war- pause for armistice," yeardole for annuity, wortlore "for botany," folk-dom for demo- cracy," sky-line for horizon, mistiming for anachronism "-to exclude and take the place of the Greek, Latin, and French words now employed. When the defenders of a mixed language come to state their case, they at once assert that the ideal of purity is primarily political rather than philo- logical. They maintain that the French words in the German language are disliked because they recall the long period when Germany was in bondage to the political, literary, and social supremacy ot France and that as an ambitious Naval Power with its future on the sea the German attempts even before the war to rid themselves of English nautical terms are simply the outcome of jealousy of Great Britain's naval supremacy, one notable result of which has been to make English the international language of the sea. In the same way and for similar reasons the Greeks, who wish to banish Turkish words from their vocabulary, are continuing in their own way the War of Independence: whilst the Czechs go so far as to advocate even the translation of the German proper names in their language so as not to leave a single trace of the domination under which they have long suffered. Next the advocates of mixed languages maintain that their opponents deceive themselves by assuming that there is a real connection between purity of language and purity of race. Both philologists and anthropologists are now on the whole in agreement in no longer supposing that language, by itself at least, and apart from other clues, can provide a key to the endless riddles of racial descent. Indeed, thanks mainly to the investigations of the anthropologists themselves, it has become increas- ingly clear that race and language need not go together at all. Dr. Marett, in a recent book, pertinently asks what philologist could ever discover, if he had no history to help him, but must rely wholly on the examination of modern French, that the bulk of the population of France is connected by way of blood with ancient Gauls, who spoke Celtic, until the Roman conquest caused them to adopt a vulgar form of Latin in its place. It is probable that not so very long before this Conquest, the Celtic tongue in its turn had ousted some earlier type of language, perhaps one allied to the still surviving Basque; though Dr. Marett adds the necessary warning that it is not in the least necessary to suppose that the Celtic speaking invaders had wiped out the previous inhabitants of the land to a corresponding extent. The just conclusion seems to be that races mix readily; languages, except in very special circumstances, to a much less extent, What is important is to treat language as a function of the social life, and from this point it may be regarded as a reflection of the fact that no civilisation is a thing sui generis, but a compound of many simples," of ideas, products, and inventions inter- changed, with the terms that name and describe them, among the peoples of the earth. It is this common vocabulary, formed by the nations for each other's use, that constitutes, as it were, an inter- national speech of immense value for the present and future advancement of civilisation. It is well known that in this matter the ancients did the same thing. The Latin vocabularies of science, law, art, and even of military tactics, show abundant traces of Creek influence. Borrowings are therefore a characteristic of every epoch. They are as old as civilisation. Objects useful in daily life, the instruments of the sciences and the arts, as well as those abstract conceptions which enhance the dignity of men, are not invented twice over, but are propagated from one people to another, to become the common property of the nations. Words being, in their way, historical documents, why should the witness that they bear be deliberately suppressed? The defenders of purity are not entirely blind to these considerations, but they suggest that, ij borrowing be an absolute necessity, nations should have recourse to a sister language, that French, for example, should turn to Italian or Spanish, whilst English should borrow only from the Teutonic languages. It is, however, obvious that words can only be taken from those nations in whose ideas and activities they have had their origin. The English parliamentary terms that have found their way into nearly every language of the world, only reflect the fact that Great Britain was the birthplace ot. con- stitutional governments, just as we have seen that the languages of the world teem with English sea-