But this uncertain, confused, primitive form must have existed for thousands of years in a yet vaguer shape before it took root in that parent tongue, which, ancient as it seems, was yet perhaps unborn at the time of the pyramids of Giseh, sixty centuries ago.

It may be noted in passing, that this uncertainty of utterance does not hold good of the pure consonants alone; it is true also of all the continuous consonants and of the vowels and semi-vowels. This variability occurs in each branch of a given stem, and in every stem of this forest which numbers three thousand trees; herein lies the cause of the original or acquired diversity of related languages. As for the far wider divergence between linguistic groups of families, IndoEuropean, Semitic, Chinese, Uralo-Altaic, Dravidian, Basque, Algonquin, Malay, or Bantu, we must look deeper for the point of departure; not only in the possession of some special aptitude for a given sound, but in the variety and inequality of the intellectual development.

If we disregard those Biblical and national prejudices which would trace the descent of the whole human race from a single couple, even though science, whether disinterested or complaisant, yet certainly influenced by current beliefs, has, under the name of monogenesis, given her sanction to the theory of original unity, it has always seemed to me difficult to contravene the opposite hypothesis, viz., that the genus homo appeared simultaneously in various places and under different skies. It is very true that the farther we go back towards prehistoric time the closer the analogy and the nearer the resemblance between rudimentary industries and ideas. But because the first efforts of man to raise himself above the brutes have

everywhere led him to employ the same methods of construction, to display the same social tendencies, and the same errors in his conception of the universe, it does not follow that the structure of the skeleton, that the form of the cranium, that the faculty of the brain has everywhere been identical. Just as there is no individual who does not differ in some respects from those who most resemble him, so the earliest ancestors of races now distinguished by colour and by the quality of the hair, by social polity and intellectual capacity, must have possessed, in order to transmit them to their descendants, the earliest germ of that divergence which now shows itself in such various and such manifest differences.. However this may be, these distinguishing characteristics, primordial or acquired, peculiar to each group of races, pure or mixed, are to be found in the very structure of language.

A cursory glance at a chart showing the distribution of languages reveals the fact that a third of the human. race, not the least advanced in civilisation, the subjects of the Chinese Empire, with its dependencies, Burmah and Indo-China, are ignorant of that which we call grammar. From the beginning of the world these people have made use of isolated syllables to which a strict syntax assigns in turn the value of verb, substantive, adjective, adverb, or preposition.

Everywhere else, as far as we can ascertain, the other human groups, whether low in the scale or well endowed, homogeneous or of mixed race, whether numbered by hundreds or by millions, have associated with a root-syllable other syllables which determine or modify its sense. This agglomeration, which does not indicate any degree of kindred among the languages to which it is common, is of two kinds. In the fami

lies-some of them very rich and very varied-called Mongolian, Uralo-Altaic, Dravidian, Malay, in the innumerable dialects of Oceania, Africa, and America, >>the root or central syllable remains as a rule unchanged; the accessory syllables, whether prefixed or suffixed, are more or less obliterated according to the laws proper to each family and dialect. These are called the agglutinative languages. Here again the classification is purely formal, since it ranges in the same category types as diverse as Japanese and Basque, Mandchu and Tamil, Polynesian and Turkish, Algonquin and Kaffir or Bushman. We insist the more on this incoherence because a false air of kinship has been given to this class of languages by bestowing on them the fantastic name of the Turanian family.

The Semitic and the Indo-European languages make the fusion of the agglutinated syllables more complete, alter and inflect the root itself, and often reduce suffixes and prefixes to unrecognisable fragments. The Semitic group, however, respect the root consonants; so much so, that if we disregard the terminations, since the Semitic character usually omits the vowels, the vocabulary, really identical at bottom, appears not to vary at all in Assyrian, Phoenician, Hebrew, or Arab. In the Indo-European languages, on the other hand, whether in passing from one language to another, or within the limits of the same tongue, the variation affects both vowels and consonants-we only note these distinctive characters in passing. The two marked types which we have just defined constitute inflected languages; they differ from the preceding as vertebrate from articulated animals. Inflection makes of each word an organism, a solid and robust individual, distinguished in form, as in

meaning, from other words in which analysis discovers the same original root; it gives to thought incomparable freedom and precision, and furnishes it with an abundant vocabulary of exact terms and of derivatives independent of the parent root and of other cognate words.

At length, and as the result of long use and close contraction, the words of inflected languages lose all:trace of the syllables which have atrophied in the terminations of nouns and verbs, and return by another road to the syntax of monosyllabic tongues; while the part formerly played by the termination in declension and conjugation is taken up by particles and auxiliary verbs. The type of these languages is modern English, and in a hardly less degree the group of languages derived from Latin; these are called analytic languages, as distinguished from the ancient. tongues, called synthetic, from which they descend. The evolution of language may be divided into four stages monosyllabic, agglutinative, inflected, analytic.'

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Without at present staying to inquire whether the monosyllabic tongues may not themselves be the result of contraction applied to confused and prolonged modulation, we may be permitted to regard as successive the four degrees or planes presented by the table of languages. No gulf separates one from another; it is easy to find transitions from one to another. as our analytic are derived from inflected languages, so these latter are but a variety of the agglutinative, which are composed of monosyllables placed in contact with one another, but capable of independent existence. The problem is to determine why certain tongues should have stopped at the first or second stage, while others reach or pass the third. Whatever weight we

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allow to historical circumstances, it is hardly possible to ignore some original inequality.

It is clear that, however this may be, the monosyllable is the embryo of every language and of every vocabulary which is known at the present day, and that, in the last analysis, it can be traced through all subsequent modifications. This search for the original elements is one of the great attractions of the study of language. For, if we have correctly defined the intimate relations between speech and thought, there is the chance of discovering in these syllables or roots, as they are termed, the trace of the first beginnings of intellect, the very dawn of thought. And these delicate researches have nowhere a greater charm than when prosecuted in those groups of tongues which are most advanced, in which the mind finds its most powerful instrument, its richest treasure-house.

While indicating the attractions and the importance. of the search, we would not conceal the difficulties which attend the seeker, nor the pitfalls to be shunned. In the first place, the formal, morphological differences which separate the four great categories render all comparison useless. Chinese is of no avail to the student of Turkish; the American, Kaffir, or Malay dialects throw no light on the Semitic, Berber, or Indo-European languages. Not only does the difference of grammatical construction forbid useful comparison, but the fundamental diversity of vocabulary erects another barrier. In all families of languages the same association of consonants and vowels may be met with, but the same sound does not correspond to the same sense. This is yet another proof of the original differences in the faculty of speech. We may go farther. If, in a given family of languages, in