e empires Europe has
had in the last 2000 odd years, _our_ history; and how long each of our
cultures has lasted. All of them put together would go into one of these
older periods, and have plenty to spare. Passing over what may be the
real meaning and bearing of this fact on the problem of universal
history and human evolution, and the position of our race today, the
linguistic considerations which follow are most interesting.

If the fundamental thesis of language as a human activity is its direct
correspondence to and expression of all the inner motives and forces of
the users, we have here a key to the survival to our day, an unknown
period past its own time, of the Chinese type.

Of the development, modification and decay of languages we have ample
material in our own times for study, the periods over which the
modifying forces operate being an equal measure of the periods of
national activity and change. And, what is perhaps not always
sufficiently recognized, we have an elaboration of the formal elements
going on under very different impulses, at different periods of the life
of the language. The time has come in the history of a people for it to
play a greater part on the world's stage: some danger has threatened the
national life and aroused its energies, or other causes have worked to
quicken the mental and spiritual life; an Elizabethan era is ushered in,
frequently by a forerunner, a Chaucer, and the language responds, its
forms develop and are perfected. Or else some fitting or amalgamating
force comes in from outside, the life of the people is widened, new
blood enters in every sense, and the forms of the language respond. Or
perhaps, when they may seem to have come to the tether end of things,
and men's minds turn back to older, even prehistoric times, seeds long
buried and forgotten in the nature spring up, and a true national
Renaissance follows. In these cases the change and elaboration of forms
is a symptom of new life; the vehicle is being molded and expanded to
fit the growing thought.

But it is not always so. There comes a time when the outgoing force, the
activity of life, wanes and, after a greater or less period of settled
conditions, a period of proper use and government of the regions
occupied, a change sets in. And then we may have again the wholly
deceptive phenomenon of linguistic amplification; but it is the false
activity of decay. The energy has turned in and begun to feed upon
itsel