importance in the study of human nature.

It proves that so far as language can be traced to its actual source, that source does not lie in some lost gifts or powers of man, but in a state of mind still acting, and not above the level of children and savages. The origin of language was not an event which took place long ago once for all, and then ceased entirely. On the contrary, man still possesses, and uses when he wants it, the faculty of making new original words by choosing fit and proper sounds. But he now seldom puts this faculty to serious use, for this good reason, that whatever language he speaks has its stock of words ready to furnish an expression for almost every fresh thought that crosses his mind.

CHAPTER V.

LANGUAGE (continued).

Articulate Speech, 130-Growth of Meanings, 131—Abstract Words, 135-Real and Grammatical Words, 136-Parts of Speech, 138— Sentences, 139— Analytic Language, 139-Word Combination, 140 - Synthetic Language, 141 — Affixes, 142 - Sound-change, 143—Roots, 144—Syntax, 146—Government and Concord, 147–— Gender, 149-Development of Language, 150.

A SENTENCE being made up of its connected sounds as a limb is made up of its joints, we call language articulate or "jointed," to distinguish it from the inarticulate or "unjointed" sounds uttered by the lower animals. Such conversation by gestures and exclamations as was shown in the last chapter to be a natural language common to mankind, is half-way between the communications of animals and full human speech. Every people, even the smallest and most savage tribe, has an articulate language, carried on by a whole system of sounds and meanings, which serves the speaker as a sort of catalogue of the contents of the world he lives in, taking in every subject he thinks about, and enabling him to say what he thinks about it. What a complicated and ingenious apparatus a language may be, the Greek and Latin grammars sufficiently show. Yet the

more

carefully such difficult languages are looked into, the plainly it is seen that they grew up out of earlier and simpler kinds of speech. It is not our business here to

more

make

a systematic survey of the structure of languages, such as will be found in the treatises of Max Müller, Sayce, Whitney, and Peile. What we have to attend to, is that many of the processes by which languages have been built up are still to be found at work among men, and that grammar is not a set of arbitrary rules framed by grammarians, but the result of man's efforts to get easier, fuller, and exacter expression for his thoughts. It may be noticed that our examples are oftener taken from English than from any other tongue. The reason of this is not merely the convenience of using the most familiar words as instances, but that English is of all existing languages perhaps the best for explaining the development of language in general. While its words may in great part be traced to high antiquity, its structure has passed through extreme changes in coming down to modern times, and in its present. state the language at once keeps up relics of ancient formations, and has the freest growth actually going on. Thus, in one way or another, English has something to show in illustration of three out of four of the processes known to have helped in the making of language, at any time and anywhere.

As in the course of ages man's knowledge became wider and his civilization more complex, his language had to keep up with them. Comparatively few and plain expressions had sufficed for his early rude condition, but now more and more terms had to be added for the new notions, implements, arts, offices, and relations of more highly organized society. Etymology shows how such new words are made by altering and combining old ones, carrying on old words

from the old state of things to do duty in the new, shifting their meanings, and finding in any new thought some resemblance to an old one that would serve to give it a name. English is full of traces of these ways of word-making and word-shifting. For instance, that spacious stone building is still called, as its rough predecessors were, a barrack (that is, hut); in it a regiment (that is, a ruling or command) of soldiers (that is, paid men) of the infantry (that is, lads, who fought on foot) are being inspected (that is, looked into); each company (that is, those who have bread together) being under a captain (that is, head-nan) and his lieutenants (that is, place-holders). On the front of the building is a clock, a machine which keeps on its old name, meaning a bell, from the ages when its predecessor was only a bell on which a watchman struck the hours; in later times were added the weights, lumps of metal so-called from the weights of the balance, the pendulum (or hanger), and what are metaphorically called the face and hands, for showing on a scale (or ladder) the hours (or times), divided into minutes (or smalls), and then again into seconds (or followings). These instances are intentionally not drawn from the depths of etymology, but are taken to show the ordinary ways in which language finds means to supply the new terms of advancing society. It will be worth while to give a few cases showing that the languages of less civilized races do their duty in much the same ways. The Aztecs called a boat a "water-house" (acalli), and thence the censer in which they burnt copal as incense came to be called a "little copal-boat" (copalacaltontli). The Vancouver Islanders, when they saw how a screwsteamer went, named it at once yetseh-yetsokleh, that is, the "kick-kicker." The Hidatsas of the Missouri till lately had only hard stone for their arrows and hatchets ; so when they became acquainted with iron and copper they made

names for these metals-uetsasipisa and uetsahisisi, that is to say, "stone black" and "stone red." The horse, when brought by the white men among peoples who had never seen it, had to be named, and accordingly the Tahitians. called it "pig-carry-man," while the Sioux Indians said it was a "magic-dog."

As a help to understand how words have come to express still more difficult thoughts, it is well to remember the contrast between the gesture-language and spoken English (p. 119). It was seen how the deaf-and-dumb fall short of our power of expressing general and abstract ideas. Not that they cannot conceive such ideas at all. They use signs as general terms when they can lay hold of some quality or

action as the mark of a whole class. Thus flapping one's arms like wings means any bird, or birds in general, and the sign of legs-four, means beasts, or quadrupeds in general. The pretence of pouring something out of a jug expresses the notion of fluid, which they understand, as we do, to comprise water, tea, quicksilver; and they probably have, though more dimly than we, such other abstract notions as the whiteness common to all white things, and the length, breadth, and thickness which all solid objects have. But while the deaf-mute's sign must always make us think of the very thing it imitates, the spoken word can shift its meaning so as to follow thought wherever it goes. It is instructive to look at words in this light, to see how, starting from thoughts as plain as those shown by the signs of the American savage, they can come on to the most difficult terms of the lawyer, the mathematician, and the philosopher. To us words have become, as Lord Bacon said, counters for notions. By means of words we are enabled to deal with abstract ideas, got by comparing a number of thoughts, but so as only to attend to what they have in common. The