therefore, the unity of these three fundamental parts of speech. That is to say, every single word implies necessarily a complete proposition, consisting of subject, predicate, and copula. Such, indeed, we found to be the case in Chinese.

The following figure will make this clearer:

Thus if the very beginning of speech be impossible without the creative power of the mind reacting upon the impression of the senses, the original expression of thought is entirely substantial. Nothing but a substance is expressed by mind, although no substance can ever be expressed without the ideal power of the mind which stamps it. The action of the contemplating mind itself, the copula, as it is called in logic, the affirmation or negation which connects a subject and predicate, a noun and a verb, substantive and adjective, will least of all have originally an abstract expression. Indeed, the negation of a sentence (which sentence may be one word) is most naturally expressed by a gesture, added to the expression of some existence or movement. Gestures and accents are the natural commentaries upon the sentence-forming word. The same is the case with the relations of nouns and verbs to space and time, or to any quality or degree. The prepositions and postpositions, the affixes and suffixes, the declensions and conjugations of our languages, are, in primeval speech, expressed like the copula, by position, by accent, declamation, pauses, gestures, finally by the accompanying image of the object. Language, in its primitive substantial state, requires for its completion and illustration the writing of the image of things, as much as later languages find a useful commentary in the orthography of words, and a necessary one in the context of speech. How, for instance, are we to distinguish in English might

and mite; or right, wright, write and rite; or u, you, yew, ewe; or to, too, two; unless an unmistakeable synonym be added, or the context offer a direct explanation of it? But before, as after, the invention of image-writing, the musical and gesticular element are necessary accompaniments of speech.

Absolute, unchangeable, and unbending substantiality then is the character of the primitive language, if, as we must suppose, it be not a conventional arbitrary expression of the mind, but the product of instinctive necessity. It is equally true, that the ideal principle, or the action of the mind, which produced language by a spontaneous repercussion of the perception received, cannot be considered as ever resting or ceasing; but, on the contrary, as being continually working upon the language. If substantiality be the principle of existence in a language, ideality is as essentially its principle of development or evolution. Language has in itself, by the very nature of the principle of its origin, a principle of development. The mind which forms a language changes it also. Having started from sentence-forming words, it tends to break their absolute isolating nature, by rendering them subservient to the whole of a developed sentence, and changing them into parts of speech; and this it can only do by gradually using full ancient roots for the expression of all that is formal in language. The same principle which works upon those languages, the formation of which we can investigate, must therefore have been working upon the most ancient language of mankind. What we found as a prominent phenomenon is the necessary effect of a general law, of that law without which there would be no language. What exists in thought must gradually find its positive expression in language.

Language therefore is driven by this incessant action of the mind to express what is not substantial— that ideal conception by which men connected from the beginning of all speech (indeed before it) things with existence and things with things. But it

cannot express these ideal connexions except by using the substantial materials it possesses. The substantial words become to the mind what the things themselves were at the beginning of speech - the objects of its action.

The affirmation or negation of the connexion between a subject and predicate, and the accidental relations as to space and time, certainly claim now an explicit expression: so also do the internal necessary relations of nouns and verbs in general. All these must be gradually expressed, which can only be done by words originally coined for things substantial. This is the origin of personal pronouns (the consciousness of self and its antithesis, which is a great abstraction), of other pronouns, of prepositions, lastly, of conjunctions, or words expressing the relation of whole sentences to each other, as prepositions do the relation of nouns with nouns or with verbs. The words thus divested of their substantial meaning, lose their substantiality, in the proper sense of the term.

This step coincides necessarily with the division between syllables and words, and precedes the origin of affixes and inflexions.

THIRD CHAPTER.

THE CHINESE LANGUAGE, AN EXAMPLE OF THE INORGANIC

FORMATION.

EVERY really primitive language (if there are more than one) must therefore have commenced, as we find that the Chinese and all monosyllabic languages really did commence. We may perhaps also discover the necessary steps of development from such a beginning to the perfection of formative languages. Whatever they are, there is above all one step which forms the paramount distinction between the languages of mankind. This is the transition from a language in which all the component parts of a sentence are themselves signs of an undeveloped sentence and incapable of modification according to their specific meaning, in a given sentence, to one in which the form of words has been made subservient to this sense. This difference is that between inorganic and organic languages. That transitional step which is still within the first inorganic structure, and therefore compatible with the rigidly monosyllabic state, is from simple to compound roots or syllables. The simplest roots must consist either of a mere vowel (pure syllables in the strictest sense), or of a consonant having its inherent vowel either before or after it. Of these compound syllables again those ending with a consonant, unless it be a servile one, as the liquids and the sibilating sounds generally are, are already suspected as maimed dissyllables. This difference in the degree of substantiality of the consonants is a powerful element in the development of words into an organic structure. Monosyllables

with two substantial (mute) consonants are the furthest point to which monosyllabic languages can reach, if we only follow out our fundamental assumption, that in languages of this nature (having only full roots, or sentence-forming words) there is a rational correspondence between the unity of perception and of sounds. Two equally strong consonants again of the same organ of speech (as two labials, two linguals, and so on), may come under the head of a simple increase and slight modification of the one impression. But syllables with two mute consonants of two different organic classes imply a union of two perceptions, which requires originally two syllables.

The

In measuring the capabilities of this system, the difference of accent must not be considered a trivial circumstance. original language is certainly one which must be accompanied by gestures, and rendered intelligible by the position of the words. The gesture interprets the sound, the position shows whether the word be subject or object, whether noun or verb. Both are assisted by image-writing. But the principal resource of such a language lies necessarily in the tone. The language of monosyllabic sentence-words is calculated for being, not spoken, but sung. The vowel may be pronounced long or short; the word may be enunciated in an ascending or descending scale. Thus only can such a primitive structure be not only intelligible, but even a vehicle of development for the mind in this primary stage. As soon as it combines all these elements, it is perfect. The line of its progress is its path to death; for no progress is possible but by breaking up the character of substantial fulness and the isolation of the single words. The only preparation which, after a literature of four thousand years, the Chinese presents for such a change is the use of some of its unchangeable roots as signs of grammatical relations. A nation starting, by a great intellectual and natural movement, into existence from such a state of language, may easily have made that great step which leads to affixes and then to in