"Some non-evolutionary writers on language, who, as the Egyptian priest said of the Greeks, wear the 'down of juvenility' in their souls, appear to speak as if the origin of language itself depended on 'Grimm's Law.' Indeed, one shallow reviewer of the previous volumes of this work thought it sufficient to condemn them if he put forth the foolish falsehood that the author had expressed contempt for 'Grimm's Law.'
Grimm having pointed out a law of diversity which governs the interchange of phonetics his followers have further assumed the non-existence of a law of uniformity in an earlier stratum of language. But words did not have their beginning in any known form of the Aryan languages, and the proto-Aryan is unknown to them, excepting that which has been created by the Evolutionists of the inner consciousness....
"The followers of Grimm have led men to believe that beyond the little Aryan oasis there is a desert world, trackless, chartless, limitless; and none but they could lead in the work of showing the way; towards which they have not as yet advanced a second step. For Grimm's Law has been the obliterator of landmarks throughout the range of the prehistoric past. According to the prevailing delusion and preposterous pretensions of its advocates, it is not only unsound and non-scientific but positively pitiful for anyone to compare the words and myths of two different languages which they have not previously proved to be grammatically allied; this being one of the 'first principles' of 'comparative philology.'...
"But is only by the aid of what is designated here as 'comparative typology' that we can reach the stages of languages in which the unity of origin is recoverable. Gesture signs and ideographic symbols alone preserve the early language in visible figures. We are unable to get to the roots of all that has been pictured, printed, or written, except by deciphering the signs that have been made primarily by the early man. The latest forms of these have to be traced back to the first before we can know anything of Origines; these are the true radicals of language, without which the philologist has no final or adequate determinatives, and hitherto these have been left out of the range of discussion by Grimm, Bopp, Pictet, Muller, Fick, Schleicher, Whitney, and the rest of the Aryan school. ...
"Wherever ideographic signs of the earliest civilizations can be compared, evidence of the original unity becomes evident, just as we find in gesture language. In fact, the farther we go back the nearer is our approach to some central unity. From circumference to center diversity diminishes and dwindles. Finally the most primitive customs, rites, and ceremonies are the most universal, and these could not have proceeded from the circumference towards a center of unity. The unity was first even as the diversity is final. ...
"Here the Egyptian hieroglyphics constitute the connecting link between language in Inner Africa and the Aryan phase or status out of it. The origin of Grimm's law is made manifest in the earliest modes of speech, and the facts are patented, so to say, or stereotyped in the hieroglyphics. These show the Ideographic phase of language which preceded the Alphabetic."
P. 241-243, THE NATURAL GENESIS, by Gerald Massey (Black Classic Press, Baltimore: 1883, 1998)
Thursday, August 28, 2014
THE NATURAL GENESIS...
"Some non-evolutionary writers on language, who, as the Egyptian priest said of the Greeks, wear the 'down of juvenility' in their souls, appear to speak as if the origin of language itself depended on 'Grimm's Law.' Indeed, one shallow reviewer of the previous volumes of this work thought it sufficient to condemn them if he put forth the foolish falsehood that the author had expressed contempt for 'Grimm's Law.'
Grimm having pointed out a law of diversity which governs the interchange of phonetics his followers have further assumed the non-existence of a law of uniformity in an earlier stratum of language. But words did not have their beginning in any known form of the Aryan languages, and the proto-Aryan is unknown to them, excepting that which has been created by the Evolutionists of the inner consciousness....
"The followers of Grimm have led men to believe that beyond the little Aryan oasis there is a desert world, trackless, chartless, limitless; and none but they could lead in the work of showing the way; towards which they have not as yet advanced a second step. For Grimm's Law has been the obliterator of landmarks throughout the range of the prehistoric past. According to the prevailing delusion and preposterous pretensions of its advocates, it is not only unsound and non-scientific but positively pitiful for anyone to compare the words and myths of two different languages which they have not previously proved to be grammatically allied; this being one of the 'first principles' of 'comparative philology.'...
"But is only by the aid of what is designated here as 'comparative typology' that we can reach the stages of languages in which the unity of origin is recoverable. Gesture signs and ideographic symbols alone preserve the early language in visible figures. We are unable to get to the roots of all that has been pictured, printed, or written, except by deciphering the signs that have been made primarily by the early man. The latest forms of these have to be traced back to the first before we can know anything of Origines; these are the true radicals of language, without which the philologist has no final or adequate determinatives, and hitherto these have been left out of the range of discussion by Grimm, Bopp, Pictet, Muller, Fick, Schleicher, Whitney, and the rest of the Aryan school. ...
"Wherever ideographic signs of the earliest civilizations can be compared, evidence of the original unity becomes evident, just as we find in gesture language. In fact, the farther we go back the nearer is our approach to some central unity. From circumference to center diversity diminishes and dwindles. Finally the most primitive customs, rites, and ceremonies are the most universal, and these could not have proceeded from the circumference towards a center of unity. The unity was first even as the diversity is final. ...
"Here the Egyptian hieroglyphics constitute the connecting link between language in Inner Africa and the Aryan phase or status out of it. The origin of Grimm's law is made manifest in the earliest modes of speech, and the facts are patented, so to say, or stereotyped in the hieroglyphics. These show the Ideographic phase of language which preceded the Alphabetic."
P. 241-243, THE NATURAL GENESIS, by Gerald Massey (Black Classic Press, Baltimore: 1883, 1998)