the languages which we are comparing together, and the looser their possible mutual connexion, the more scrupulous must be our attention to every misgiving that might force itself upon us; since where, with our imperfect knowledge, a misgiving arises, completer knowledge would probably array a whole army of arguments against us. Let us remember in the first place what elements are common to all language, and beware lest we use any of these as arguments for community of origin between individual languages. All language is produced by the agency of tongue, palate, teeth, and lips, and consequently the same sounds will recur in all. And let us not even suppose that the predominance of a certain class of peculiar sounds constitutes any argument for common origin; for this is found to be mainly the natural effect of climate; mountain idioms being harsher, producing their sounds deeper in the throat, whilst coast idioms are smoother, producing theirs at the front of the mouth with the teeth and lips. Again, if we admit that any words designating sounds, or that which produces a sound, are formed by a literal reproduction of the sound itself (onomatopeia), the identity of these words furnishes no argument for relationship between languages, inasmuch as each may have taken the word separately. The word cuckoo is an example. Again, as the first syllables that are possible to the lips of the infant are, from physical causes, the same all the world over, it need not surprise us if many words out of the simple infantine vocabulary of languages from every part of the world bear a certain similarity. Again, when we remember what fundamental notions are with us sometimes expressed by borrowed words (of French or Latin origin), we shall be advised to be very cautious how we determine the affinities of a language upon the evidence of a few words. Again, coincidence even in a very peculiar and idiomatic mode of expression, which might appear even to the cautious linguist as an argument for affinity, is by no means always

so.

This will appear in an example. There are several tribes in Africa which express the numerals by counting on the fingers and toes: up to five on the left hand, up to ten on the right hand, then on the feet for the numbers up to twenty; thus "a complete left hand" denotes five, "a complete right hand" ten, "a whole man" twenty, "two whole men" forty, and so on.

"The simplest articulations, and those which are readiest caught by the infant mouth, are the syllables formed by the vowel a with the primary consonants of the labial and dental classes, especially the former: ma, ba, pa, na, da, ta. Out of these, therefore, is very generally formed the limited vocabulary required at the earliest period of infant life, comprising the names for father, mother, infant, breast, food." Wedgwood's Dictionary of English Etymology, s. v. Babe.

Uncle, aunt, cousin, nephew, niece; face, palate, voice, stomach; air, mountain, valley; and even numerals, as second, dozen.

But when we find that the Greenlanders do the very same, it is obvious that we cannot derive the African practice from the Greenlandish, or vice versa, but must regard each as the product of a natural (and therefore universal) impulse to use those limbs which we possess in greatest number for the expression of number in general. Again, when we remember how often, in languages of which we can trace the history, words which look like one another, and would unhesitatingly have been cited as evidence of affinity between the languages in which they occur, are seen by the light of their older forms to have nothing to do with one another, we shall learn a lesson of caution when dealing with languages of which we only know the present (possibly very degraded) condition. And, lastly, as to this new argument for community of origin from similarity of grammatical system only (without community either of root or of affixes), how little it is worth is seen most forcibly in the case of the Basque. This ancient language, which was spoken in the same locality by the ancient Iberians, has so peculiar a construction that W. von Humboldt formed a fourth class for it, which he called the Polysynthetic. It bears the most striking similarity in these very points to the native American languages, which Humboldt included in the same morphological division. Yet who will dare to affirm their community of origin?

It is, then, our conviction that community of origin can never be proved except by the method which has been so successful in the Aryan family. Though both roots and affixes may change very rapidly in nomad languages, and real affinities be from this cause obscured, yet we have no confidence in any other system of comparison than that which attends to these fundamental elements of language. It will be necessary to know far more than we do at present of the history of the various languages, and to understand the relations of the languages of each smaller group among themselves,† before we can expect much fruit from

e.g. Sp. matar (to slay) has nothing to do with Heb. ♫, mōth, but is from Lat. mactare. The Egyptian Horus (although a solar deity) is not the Persian Khor (the sun), for the latter is known to be from the Sanskrit sûrya. The Hebrew Jehovah (of which the correct pronunciation is believed to be Jahveh') has often (e. g. in Pope's "Universal Prayer," and by Gesenius) been compared with the Latin Jove; although the latter has lost an initial d, the restoration of which in the Sanskrit Dyau, and Greek Zevs (§ being=dy), destroys the similarity which tempted to connect them.

If the mutual relations of the various Teutonic languages had not been previously understood, so that the comparative grammarian could at once select Gothic, Old High German, and Old Norse, as the most satisfactory representatives of the family, how imperfectly might the position of this great family among the Aryan languages have been understood! Fancy that Dutch or English had been used instead. Or, to take another case, the Aryan character of modern Persian could scarcely have been recognised but for previous examination of the Iranian languages which linked it to the old Persian, Pehlevi, and Zend.

the endeavour to class these groups as shoots from one parent stem. The Aryan method of comparison fails when tried upon the agglutinative languages en gros, not from inherent inapplicability, but from the insufficiency of our knowledge of these, if not from the absence of the relationship we are trying to establish.

All these questions about the mutual relations of various families of languages, however uninteresting they be in themselves to many minds, have a certain universal interest from their connection with the problem of the common origin, and the original common language, of mankind. If an original community of language could be proved, it would indeed prove community of origin; yet even if all existing languages could be shown to diverge from one common type, how should we prove this to be the original language? It might be the language of conquerors, which had displaced and survived numer ous previous idioms. But we have already expressed our belief that the day is far distant when any thing of this sort shall be possible. On the other hand, an original diversity of language is by no means inconsistent with the common origin, provided that by the expression common origin" we do not insist on understanding the origin from a single pair, but understand simultaneous creation, in whatever numbers, with similar physical and mental faculties. On these grounds we do not expect that much light will be thrown by the progress of linguistic science upon the very earliest ages of human history; nor certainly that the "one primeval language," which some scholars, more hasty than sound, imagine they have disinterred, will ever be known to cautious and impartial judges.

Theoretical considerations on the origin of language may, however, clear and elevate our ideas. Whether the human race was created in one pair or in many, whether the earth has been peopled from one centre or from many, man has every where learned to speak; and, we may ask, what is speech, and how does he come by it? Müller's concluding chapter on this subject is one of the best reasoned in the book. For brutes he claims "sensation, perception, memory, will, and intellect, only we must restrict intellect to the comparing or interlacing of single perceptions." In other words,

"brutes see, hear, taste, smell, and feel; that is to say, they have five

* Lest those who allow themselves to be biassed in purely scientific problems by impressions derived from the Bible should unduly stigmatize this view as unbiblical, let us notice that it is that of the first of the two accounts of the creation (Gen. i. 1—ii. 4), where man is created just as all the other animals had been; a noun which in the singular has a collective meaning being in each case used, and being afterwards referred to by a plural pronoun (vv. 26-29), manifestly with the idea of the creation of a multitude of individuals in order to establish the species

senses, just like ourselves, neither more nor less. They have both sensation and perception.. . . Brutes have sensations of pleasure and pain. . . . . Brutes do not forget, or, as philosophers would say, brutes have memory. .. Brutes are able to compare and to distinguish. .. Brutes have a will of their own. ... Brutes show signs of shame and pride.. Brutes show signs of love and hatred."

And,

"if we tear a spider's web, and see the spider examining the mischief that is done, and either giving up his work in despair, or endeavouring to mend it as well as may be, surely here we have the instinct of weaving controlled by observation, by comparison, by reflection, by judgment;"

to which the name of intellect may be unhesitatingly applied. Yet, with all these faculties, brutes have not language.

"Man speaks, and no brute has ever uttered a word. Language is our Rubicon, and no brute will dare to cross it. This is our matter-offact answer to those who speak of development, who think they discover the rudiments at least of all human faculties in apes, and who would fain keep open the possibility that man is only a more favoured beast, the triumphant conqueror in the primeval struggle for life." Now to what mental difference does this outward difference correspond? Müller answers in the words of Locke:

"If it may be doubted whether beasts compound and enlarge their ideas that way to any degree; this, I think, I may be positive in, that the power of abstracting is not at all in them, and that the having of general ideas is that which puts a perfect distinction betwixt man and brutes, and is an excellency which the faculties of brutes do by no means attain to."

Now precisely these general ideas are the basis of language. "After we had explained every thing in the growth of language that can be explained, there remained in the end, as the only inexplicable residuum, what we called roots."

These roots, although in highly complex languages, as Greek or Sanskrit, they are so constantly loaded with various inflexional syllables as never to appear in their bare form at all, nevertheless were originally used as words, and are so used in languages of simpler organization. They appear both as verbs and as substantives, the context determining which is intended. English words such as fear and sleep show how this is possible. But what is important to our present purpose is to notice that the notion of an act (i. e. the verbal sense) always precedes that of a being (the substantive sense), and that the root, indicating an act, can only be transferred to a being inasmuch as the being is either subject, or object, or instrument of the act. Thus man

is "the thinker," and all beings (understanding by this term both personal and impersonal existences) can only in this way receive designations at all, viz. in consequence of some previously noticed action characteristic of them. That this is so may be verified by the language of children, who, till they have advanced a stage in knowledge of the English language, call a cow a "moo," a sheep a "ba," from the sound uttered by each. Now what is this but affirming that that very abstraction which we saw to be the distinction between man and brute is the basis of language? The verb is the general, the substantive the particular; and the verb is the fundamental, the substantive the derived. That the verb is the general is obvious; from the general idea "to cover" how many particular ideas may be individualized! First, any thing that covers--a lid, a thatch, the arch of heaven, a hat, a cloak, the skin, and countless others; secondly, that which is covered-a house, a box, and many others. If we could suppose each of these things to have received its designation arbitrarily, and not from a perception of its "covering" property, language would become an impossibility, from the enormous extent of the stock-in-trade with which it would have to start. Instead of the single root 'to cover,' it would have required perhaps twenty distinct names, with the further disadvantage that, as these names had been created as mere arithmetical ciphers, expressing no quality and no action, neither they nor any derivative formed from them could be used to express any other object which the generalizing faculty associated with the former. In opposition to this, the growth of language into an incalculable copiousness is a very intelligible result of the constant action of the generalizing faculty; and the original stock of verbal roots required is very small. For, to take examples, to walk, to run, to go, to rush, might be expressed by the same root, with variations indicating the difference of intensity in the act; and the same may be said of to look, to see, to gaze, to stare; to hear, to listen; to touch, to strike, to maul. Again, to set may be expressed, as in English, by a derivative (causative) from to sit, to fell from to fall, &c. Hence the problem of the origin of language reduces itself to an inquiry into the origin of a small number (Müller says 400 or 500) of roots of a general or verbal signification.

Among these we cannot refrain from asking, "How was the abstract idea of measuring expressed by má, the idea of thinking by man? How did gá come to mean 'going,' stha 'standing,' sad sitting,' dá 'giving,' mar dying,' char'walking,' kar 'doing'?"

The origin of these roots was explained by many philosophers on the theory of onomatopoeia (wittily and express