[Sidenote] _The individuality of speech and the classification of
languages._
Linguistic also discovered the irreducible individuality of the
aesthetic fact, when it affirmed that the word is what is really spoken,
and that two truly identical words do not exist. Thus were synonyms and
homonyms destroyed, and thus was shown the impossibility of really
translating one word into another, from so-called dialect into so-called
language, and from a so-called mother-tongue into a so-called foreign
tongue.
But the attempt to classify languages agrees ill with this correct view.
Languages have no reality beyond the propositions and complexes of
propositions really written and pronounced by given peoples for definite
periods. That is to say, they have no existence outside the works of
art, in which they exist concretely. What is the art of a given people
but the complex of all its artistic products? What is the character of
an art (say, Hellenic art or Provencal literature), but the complex
physiognomy of those products? And how can such a question be answered,
save by giving the history of their art (of their literature, that is to
say, of their language in action)?
It will seem that this argument, although possessing value as against
many of the wonted classifications of languages, yet is without any as
regards that queen of classifications, the historico-genealogical, that
glory of comparative philology.
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