In

sciousness to a state of decline. It justly disclaims the savage as the prototype of natural, original man; for linguistic inquiry shows that the languages of savages are degraded, decaying fragments of nobler formations. The language of the Bushman, as before observed, is a degraded Hottentot language, and this language is probably only a depravation of the noble Kafre tongue. But, on the other hand, when that school pretends, as Frederic Schlegel does, that in the noblest languages, those of organic structure, as he calls them, the spiritual and abstract signification of roots is the original, such an assumption is contradicted by the history of every language of the world. Nay, his whole distinction between organic and atomistic languages is decidedly unhistorical. The African languages in particular protest against such an unholy divorce in the human race. dividually, we believe with Kant, that the formation of ideas or notions, embodied in words, implies the action of the senses, and the impression made by outward objects on the mind, as much as the formative power of the reacting mind. It is the mind which creates and forms; but this power of the mind is one reacting only upon impressions received from the world without. We believe Leibnitz to be perfectly right in his great supplement to Locke's dictum: "Nihil est in intellectu quod non ante fuerit in sensu "nisi ipse intellectus." We are moreover convinced that the power of the mind which enables us to see the genus in the individual, the whole in the many, and to form a word by connecting a subject with a predicate, is essentially the same which leads man to find God in the universe, and the universe in God. Language and religion are the two poles of our consciousness, mutually presupposing each other. The one is directed to the changing phenomena of the world, in the assumption of their unity, the other to the unchangeable, absolute One, with the subsumption of all that is changeable and relative under Him. Our present purpose, however, is not to enter into these higher spheres of speculation; we are desirous of showing how

by the application of the inductive method, based upon facts, we may arrive at understanding the origin and the principle of the progress of speech, and show that the primeval facts of language, and all those phenomena which we have examined in the preceding section, may be explained by a law so simple and constant, that we may hope to apply it with equal success to the researches still to be made.

SECOND CHAPTER.

INDUCTIVE METHOD TO DEFINE THE GENERAL CHARACTER BOTH OF INORGANIC AND ORGANIC LANGUAGES.

IN examining the phenomena of languages which are perfectly well known and sufficiently investigated, we arrived at the fact, that the further we proceed in the examination of the most ancient formations, the more we perceive that every sound had originally a meaning, and every unity of sounds (every syllable) answered to a unity of object in the outward world for the world of mind. We found this to be the character of the Chinese language. We again found, beginning with the latest formations, that inflexions, apparently mere modifications of the sound of a word, were in most cases reducible to prepositions or postpositions, and these again and all particles to full roots, or nouns and verbs. We established the fact, that every word had first a substantial object in the outward world, and received only in process of time an application to the inward.

In order to arrive at the law which we are endeavouring to find, let us first assume, as Geology does, that the same principles which we see working in the development, were also at work at the very beginning, modified in degree and in form, but essentially the same in kind. We leave it here a moot point, whether there was one beginning, or whether there were many beginnings of speech - whether one only of the great families of mankind began the work from the first elements of speech, and handed it down to others who successively developed it, or whether there be many beginnings, each tribe forming its own

materials of speech, and developing them more or less, according to their peculiar nature and history. This question cannot be settled by speculation: history alone, based upon philological facts, can decide, and, I think, does decide it. Let us consider here what we are obliged to assume. If we adopt the latter of these two suppositions, we shall find ourselves obliged to assume that the starting-point of all was essentially the same, but that the materials employed were quite distinct from the beginning. Different families of languages will then, according to this system, represent at the utmost only different stages in lines of parallel development. According to the first supposition, on the contrary, they all, with the exception of one, must have found something of speech, and materials, more or less, already stamped and fixed, which they had to work upon, when entering upon the critical process of their nascent nationality. But whether there was one beginning or more beginnings, the primitive language or languages must be substantial, without words or syllables set apart for grammatical forms.

Now as to the principle of development, the supreme law of progress in all language shows itself to be the progress from the substantial isolated word, as an undeveloped expression of a whole sentence, towards such a construction of language as makes every single word subservient to the general idea of a sentence, and shapes, modifies, and dissolves it accordingly. Language is the product of inward necessity, not of an arbitrary or conventional arrangement; consequently, every sound must originally have been significative of something; it must have been connected both with the sound and with the object to be expressed. Now the link between the two is the analogy felt between this object and the configuration of that wonderful musical instrument, the mouth. This protoplastic instrument is capable of a great variety of configurations by the difference in the employment of one only or of more of the special organs of speech. These organs are the throat (guttur), the palate, the

tongue, the teeth, the lips. This, then, is the subjective organon of language, the physiological vehicle for that protoplastic art, speech, which combines architecture and music, the plastic or sculptural, and the picturesque. Johannes Müller has developed this physiologically, Sir John Herschell acoustically. But we must now examine the objective substratum more closely. The unity of sound (the syllable, pure or consonantized) must originally have corresponded to a unity of conscious plastic thought; and every thought must have had a real or substantial object of perception. The mind cannot embrace existence except in things existing; and, on the other hand, every distinct notion of a thing presupposes its existence. Thus every object of perception appears necessarily to the mind as a thing placed under the category of qualitative existence, existence being the necessary attribute of everything contemplated by the mind. Now the noun is the expression of a thing existing. The substantive noun is the existing thing, denominated according to that quality of the object which strikes the mind, when reacting upon the impression received from it through the senses. The nounadjective in general is the quality of an existing thing, considered as separate from it. Or, we may say, as was suggested to us by the nature of Chinese words, that the substantive and verb represent the two opposite poles of the originally undivided notion; the adjective is the indifferential point between the two poles, presenting itself towards the nominal pole as an adjective, towards the verbal as a participle. But the original substantial word must represent the unity of these differences, by being a substantive, or verb, or adjective, according to its use, indicated by its tone and position in the sentence. No substantive-noun can originate without the specific quality or property of the thing (which is expressed by the adjective) having operated upon the mind. Quality, therefore, is only a term for a mode of existence, that is to say, for a mode of that, of which the verb is the abstract expression. Every act of word-forming implies,