ἀνίστατο, “then rose the wise Odysseus;” μέλανες S'ava Bóτpues oav, "above hung the black grapes ;" ává@nua (ex-voto), an object dedicated to a god; ȧvà νεὼς βαίνειν, to go on board; χρυσέῳ ἀνὰ σκέπτρῳ, on or with a golden sceptre; ἀνὰ ποταμὸν πλέειν, to go up the river; ἀνάβασις, a climb in high land, ανα πᾶσαν ἡμέραν, throughout the day; ἀνὰ μέρος, by turns; ȧvαжIπрηoкw, to sell again; avapáoμai, to retract. Latin has only an-helare, to take breath again; but Gothic has ana fotuns, on the feet; High German ana-sikt, view; an, towards, on, as; erkomm an, he comes, he arrives. English, on. The combination of upa with ana (Gothic infana, afana) has produced the English upon, OHG. fana, fona, the German von, and the Dutch van.

Under the forms ein, en, in, the ancient ana has caused the gradual disappearance of the locative in Greek, Latin, and the Germanic languages; it has expressed all shades of movement towards or against, and thence of rest in, a place. It has been questioned how els could be derived from en. Evs, the Cretan form, is to en as ex to ek, aps to apo, pros to pro, and in Latin abs to ab, subs to sub; it may be an accusative plural or a contraction of εντος. We know that the Greek v readily gave place to an ɩ (evti = eiσi); for the rest, the identity is complete; so much so, that the Dorians used ev with the accusative in the sense of movement towards; es is a later variant which the language has made use of.

But it is time to draw some conclusion from these lists. All show us the reciprocal action of the form and the thought, the precision of the meaning increasing with the number of variants. Whether we have simple prepositions, par, pour, de, à, or compounds, sur, en

(inde), dans (de intus), sous (subtus), &c., or conjunctions, either relative or dubitative, dass, denn, when, ob, if, que, quand, si, whether copulative or disjunctive, at, et, que, und, and, everywhere we find a primitive pronominal root, or group of roots, of indetermined meaning; these syllables, which served for suffixing and to form the declension, were also capable of independent life. As, by inflexion, they were gradually atrophied in the body and at the end of words, the freedom, or the more extended use, of prefixation retained their forms while it varied them and accentuated their diverse meanings. They were thus prepared to supply with advantage the place of the worn-out terminations. As they gave to the phrase and to thought greater exactness and elasticity, they broke the fetters of grammatical synthesis, and urged language forward along the open road of analysis. Auxiliaries simplified and developed the verb, invariable words broke up the declension. Philologists are sometimes inclined to regret the ingenious mechanism which has been unable to resist the slow action of these dissolving particles; but however great our admiration for the stately Latin phrase, for the luxuriant wealth of Greek and German, we cannot see that the language of Rabelais and of Ronsard, of La Fontaine, of Molière, of Voltaire, of Merimée, or of Victor Hugo, that the tongue of Cervantes or of Ariosto, or finally that of Shakespeare, Swift, Byron, Shelley, and Dickens, need fear comparison with the famous idioms of Homer, Eschylus, Aristophanes, Lucretius, Virgil, Cicero, Horace, and Tacitus, or with the languages of Schiller and Goethe, of Tolstoi or Mickiewicz. Regrets, moreover, are unavailing. Language resists all efforts of the will; it has fatally, unconsciously, followed its destined path.

In the course of these researches numerous comparisons have shown what metamorphoses, what accretions, what mutilations, what changes in form and sense are produced in the elements and the combinations of Indo-European speech by the preferences, the aptitudes, the decadence, and the progress of the various nations which have received an Aryan education. Among the circumstances, the natural causes, which have most contributed to the differentiation, and thus to the respective originality of the idioms, the most powerful was undoubtedly the original or acquired difference in the vocal organs. Why does the Frenchman say mois and voir where the Latin pronounced mensis and videre? Why do the English say tooth, the Germans zahn, and the Latins dens? Why have we Tévre in Greek, quinque in Latin; Téoσapes instead of quatuor or tchatvaras; TVоs for svapna and somnus? Because at a given time among different peoples the larynx, the teeth, the lips, and the third frontal circonvolution of the brain worked differently. These initial divergences cannot be detected by physiological examination, because the observation could only be taken after death; but if it is almost impossible to discover them in themselves, it is interesting and comparatively easy to describe their effects and to classify the results. This comparative study of the different pronunciations of a same vowel or consonant, or of the same original vocal group, is the object of phonetics. Its importance will be seen if I indicate beforehand the conclusion arrived at it is a general rule that, except in the case of borrowed words, or of accidental similarity, or of particular affinities, the same word cannot exist in the same form throughout the series of kindred idioms. This is the first principle of scientific etymology.

CHAPTER V.

INDO-EUROPEAN PHONETICS.

I. THE CONTINUOUS LETTERS.

Dialectic variation-The primitive vowels-The metamorphoses of the a-Bopp's theories on the weight of vowels-The variants of i and ou (ü, i, y)—Contraction and abbreviation of Latin-A word about spelling-R and I, vowels; guttural and dental r-Vowel scale-The semi-vowels y and v in Sanscrit and in Latin, in Zend and in Greek-The sibilant s and its transformations in Greek and in Latin; its affinities with the hard breathing and with the liquid r―The nasal n both liquid and dental-The labial nasal m.

THE respective individuality of languages which have a common vocabulary and a common structure results from two distinct though connected phenomena: the varied use of attributive or demonstrative roots and of grammatical artifices; the different pronunciation of the phonetic elements. These are the two factors in dialectal variation; they have acted together, and under the rule of circumstances which are as little understood as they are evident the progressive distance and isolation of the various groups imbued with the primitive Indo-European culture, contact and crossing with foreign groups, unequal or varying development of the variously proportioned mixtures which have constituted the nations as we now know them, the influence of climate, of new needs and interests. These are causes of an historical nature, yet of which the history is often unknown to us, even

in the case of languages such as the Neo-Latin or English, which have grown up as it were under our eyes. But whatever share, and it is a considerable one, we must attribute to these historical causes in the growing separation of Sanscrit and Greek, of Latin and Slav, of Teutonic and Persian, we must seek the starting-point of these divergences in cerebral and vocal aptitudes. It may even be doubted if there ever was a time when the common speech was pronounced in the same manner by the seven or eight tribes destined to scatter it over the world; whether the children of the first chief who first pronounced distinctly a few Indo-European syllables did not modify them from the beginning, one inclining to a thickness of speech, another to a lisp, another hardening or suppressing the aspirate, or perhaps unable to distinguish the r from the 7, the v or the s from the hard or soft aspirate. The comparison, letter by letter, of a number of words, of which the identity is no less obvious than their differences, of such forms, for instance, as padas, Todos, pedis, fotus, foot; or again hrdaya, kapdía, cordis, hairts, heart, herz; çunas, Kuvós, canis, hund; djanu, yóvv, genu, kniu, knee, has shown that the observed changes are constant, and thus the phonetic laws peculiar to each idiom have been established. And while the general regularity of the corresponding changes threw into relief the physiognomy of each language, it was itself an evidence of the primæval unity. Thus the deviations proper to French, to Provençal, and to Italian bring us back to an original Latin form which dominates and throws light upon them all. The rôle which belongs to Latin in the phonetics of the Romance languages is therefore precisely that of the lost mother