which words and roots are identical, at least in outward appearance, where all is material, and nothing, as yet, purely formal. In such languages, whatever their age may be, we have again a tangible proof of the theory which we formed for ourselves, from an analysis of more developed languages, such as Sanskrit and Hebrew, namely that language begins with roots and thought with concepts, and that the two are one.

Our conceptual world.

When the human mind had once reached the conceptual stage, the battle was won, an entrance into the ideal world had been effected. With the first real word, a new world was created, the world of thought, our real home.

When we have once seen that thought, in its true sense, is always conceptual, and that every word is derived from a conceptual root, we shall no longer be surprised when we are told that words, being conceptual, can never stand for a single percept. There can be nothing in the world of sense corresponding even to such simple words as dog, tree, apple, table, to say nothing of colour, virtue, goodness and all the rest, for they are all conceptual. We can never expect to see a dog, a tree, an apple, or a chair. Dog means every kind of dog from the greyhound to the spaniel; tree every kind of tree from the oak to the cherry; apple every kind of apple from the pineapple to the pippin; chair every kind of chair from the royal throne to the professorial chair. People often imagine that they can form a general image of a dog, by leaving out what is peculiar to every individual dog, or to every kind of dog. Let them try

the experiment, which Mr. Galton has tried for human faces, namely, photograph a greyhound, and over it a spaniel, and then a St. Bernard, and then a Scotch terrier, and so on till every breed has been superadded. They will then see what kind of general image they would arrive at, and they will strongly object to harbouring such monsters in their mind.

Here also Berkeley acted as a most resolute pioneer. He showed that it is simply impossible for any human being to make to himself a general image of a triangle, for such an image would have to be at the same time right-angled, obtuse-angled, acute-angled, equilateral, isosceles, and scalene. This is impossible, whereas it is perfectly possible to have an image of any single triangle, to name some characteristic feature common to all triangles, namely their possessing three angles, and thus to form a name and at the same time a concept of a triangle. This mental process which Berkeley described so well as applied to modern concepts, we can watch with regard to all, even the most primitive concepts, if we examine the annals of language. Man discovered in a smaller or larger number of trees, before they were as yet trees to him, something which was interesting to him and which they all shared in common. Now trees were interesting to primitive man for various reasons, and they could have been named for every one of these reasons. For practical purposes, however, trees were particularly interesting to the primitive framers of language, because they could be split in two, cut, shaped into blocks and planks, shafts and boats. Hence from a root dar, to tear, they called trees dru or dâru, lit. what can be split or torn or cut to pieces.

From the same root they also called the skin dépμa, because it was torn off, and a sack dópos, because it was made of leather (Sanskrit driti), and a spear, dópu, because it was a tree, cut and shaped and planed.

Such words being once given, they would produce ever so many offshoots. The Gauls called their priests Druides, the Irish drui, literally the men of the oak-groves. The Greeks called the spirits of the forest-trees Dryades; and the Hindus called a man of wood, or a man with a wooden, or, as we say, flinty heart, dâruna, cruel.

What applies to this single word for tree, applies to all words. They are all derived from roots, they are all conceptual, they all express something common to many things, and therefore something that can be thought of and spoken of, but can never be perceived with our senses as a single and real object.

If then we think in words, and in words only, is there anything in the world, I will not say now, more wonderful simply, but more momentous, more serious, more paramount for all our intellectual work than our words? And if that is so, need we wonder that religion also has its deepest roots in language, nay would be perfectly inconceivable without language. It has often been said that numina are nomina, and if our line of argument hitherto has been straight, we shall not only accept this statement, but understand its true meaning. Try to realise Zeus or Hera without their names, and you will see that there is nothing to realise. But do not let us say therefore that Zeus and Hera are mere names. This expression, mere names, is one of the most objectionable and self-con1 Hibbert Lectures, John Rhys, p. 221.

tradictory expressions in the whole dictionary of philosophy. There is no such thing as a mere name, as little as there is a mere concept. There is something that was meant by Zeus and even by Hera, and though these names were weak, and tentative only, and exposed to all the dangers of mythology, yet the best among the Greeks never forgot what the name of Zeus was really intended for-the Infinite, it may be, the nameless Power behind all names. You all remember the words of Aeschylus in the Chorus of the Agamemnon-for who that has read them can ever forget then again :

Zeus, whoever he is, if this be the name by which he loves to be called-by this name I address him. For if I verily want to cast off the idle burden of my thought, proving all things, I cannot find any on whom to cast it, except Zeus alone '.'

Aeschylus knew or divined what we want to prove, that religion is the language or interpretation of the Infinite. There may be nothing corresponding to Zeus, as pictured by Phidias, and as believed in by the people of Greece. But Zeus was not a mere name, for all that. It was but one out of many names by which the Greeks, and, as we shall see, not the Greeks only, but all the Aryas, tried to grasp the Infinite behind the Finite, tried to name the Unknown by the Known, tried to see the Divine behind the veil of nature.

1 Lectures on the Science of Language, ii. 485.

WE

LECTURE XV.

DYNAMIC STAGE.

Lessons of Language.

E ask to-day, What can language teach us with regard to the origin of religion? We have seen that nothing can be more ancient than language. Myth is but a modification of language. Our sacred books are language in its highest development. Our customs and traditions are often founded on decayed and misunderstood words. If therefore we can decipher the original meaning of our words, if we can discover the purpose with which they were framed, we shall have opened archives which, by their antiquity at all events, are far superior to any other evidence within our reach.

Now let us remember what I tried to explain in my last Lecture, that the Aryan languages have been reduced to about 800 roots. The Semitic and Turanian languages also have been submitted to the same process and have yielded a very similar result. But though many of the observations which we are going to make with regard to the Aryan languages apply with equal force, though mutatis mutandis to other languages also, I shall in these lectures concentrate my attention chiefly on our own family of speech, and only occasionally glance at other families for confirmation or modification of our results.