unknown to the Ionian Thales, the only one which has been able to come through the dark portal of the past, which contains certain statements of the genesis of Nature. These statements are so meager as to bear to the observed facts a relationand not in number merely-like that which the polar star bears to the hosts of this winter sky. They certainly awaken more curiosity than they appease. One easily imagines himself unfairly treated on being put off with such insufficiency of communications. When now, under any impulse derived from accession of knowledge or presentation of opportunity, the mind becomes specially active on any ontological question, the record of Moses is in its track. With a quietude seeming like mockery, it demands harmony and adjustment. Its rejection has ever been as futile as for Macbeth to say "Down" to the ghost of Banquo.

The history of the science of geology illustrates this procedure. Men of large thought and industry have tried by every method, grave and gay, lively and severe, to manage the first chapters of Genesis. They remain unmanaged. They are likely to withstand many a discovery of palæontic bones, of the skull of Calaveras and the giant of Cardiff. Thus far every theory which assumes to ignore or refute Moses seems to have its hour, but not its future. Adventurers will still persist in correcting rather than interpreting the record of the only Beholder. They will try to breach or scale the barrier of the Impassable, but the Impassable will guard its own like the Sphinx:

"Staring right on, with calm, eternal eyes."

In philology the same tendency has been manifested. By philology we conveniently designate, without asserting the critical fitness of the term, whatever pertains to the scientific treatment of language, comprising linguistics, etymology, grammar. After half a century and more of vigorous prosecution the actual condition of this science is somewhat as follows:

The origin of language is now quite dropped from discussion. It is indeed high time that such were the case. A sufficient number of honest, learned, and ingenious men have consumed their toil upon it. Voltaire said that Sir Isaac Newton wrote

a work upon the prophecies to prove himself like other men. So has many an acute and laborious philologer, whose toil has really enriched our science, seemed in dalliance with this charming problem to lose his hair and the strength that hung in it. The quack-quack or bow-wow theory found the source of human language to be in imitation of brutes, and sent us to ducks and dogs to learn speech, making the road from Kunic or Anadic to English as long and eventful as that from a brute to a Yankee by the development route. The poo-poo theory traced the delicate and complex structure of speech to impulsive and unpremeditated interjections, giving it thus a wholly personal and subjective origin. The early man takes his first interjections which burst from his inner consciousness, and from them, as on a "sounding anvil," forges all the rest of his words. The ding-dong theory, the converse of this, after the suggestions of Locke's philosophy, makes language a response of the soul to outward sensuous impressions, as the bell to the blow, or the Æolian harp to the breeze, a theory which has at least the pleasant gift of beauty. These and many others of the sort have illustrated the fertile feebleness of the learned.

At length the learned have become weary of their inventions. A society in Paris, on whose roll may be seen the names of the most eminent scholars in France, has by solemn statute refused to receive any communication concerning the origin of language. Some of our American scholars express relief at the thought that naturalists have come to their rescue by placing the origin of man himself so many thousands of ages back that we may surmise his speech to have formed itself in the lapse of the same, no matter how, thus shuffling the matter. In the gatherings of our American Philological Society beneath the torrid star, he will be a reckless man who will dare intrude upon its midsummer night a dream upon this topic. One thinks he might be rewarded with the head of Bottom.

The prevailing sentiment is to accept language as an original endowment of man, to account it as inhering in his definition as extension inheres in the definition of matter. A creature with human thought and affection, unsupplied with a form of speech, however difficult it might be to classify him, could not be recognized and admitted as a member of the human family. When Caspar Hauser emerged from his dungeon he could talk,

The

and his meager speech expressed what thought he had. Bushmen of South Africa, though their cluck and whistle be very poor, differ from brutes even in this by a whole horizon.

The history of thought in this direction is interesting, though similar to that in other directions. In days not long past-when etymology was so beggarly that Horne Tooke could control it by shrewd guesses in his Fleet Prison, when preach was derived from Heb. barak, "to bless or curse;" when the word man was supposed to be as underived as the interjection O, now shown to be from the Sanscrit root man, "to think," "the thinker;" when woman was made from womb-man, and the inconsistency of its pronunciation in the plural disregarded, now known to stubbornly assert its Sanscrit origin as we-man, "the weaver," Lat. femin-a, and so not at all connected with man; in those days of imperfect examination and ready ingenuity, not destitute of absurdity equal to the famous "lucus a non lucendo "— the origin of speech was regarded as a problem not at all difficult. Now, after sixty years of ardent toil by the finest minds of the leading intellectual nations, the problem comes to be reverently laid aside as too hard for present treatment, if not utterly beyond the grasp of the human faculty. So sixty years ago Hutton, in his Theory of the Earth, had no difficulty in making all things clear, where later geologists confess some perplexity. The origin of language, like that of matter and of man, is in the domain of the supernatural-in the hand of God.

Perhaps not so the origin of languages. What man seems to have done, though unconsciously, what he seems to be doing before our eyes, we may hope to trace at least the effort has not yet been proved unlawful or unprofitable.

The first step in philological science has been by the analysis of words. That words are formed by composition is so familiar as to be hardly noticed. It occurs at almost every breath. Some languages do it abruptly, like the English and German; others gracefully, as the Greek and Sanscrit; others are quite averse to it, as the French. We say wood-splitter; the Greek, xyloschistes; the French, fendeur de bois.

It was also noted that the component words might be so mutilated that only close observation could detect them. Thus the Danish bisp is the Greek episcopos, "overseer." Which is

Gothic, hwa-leik, "of what sort." German, welch. These little etymologies throw so pleasant a light on our simple words, that in a life-time of professional labor one hardly finds a pupil so dull as not to be interested in them.

Etymology is a lawful recreation in recitations of language, as the search and analysis of plants in those of botany. The discovery of the Holy Land in saunter (sainte terre-sainterrier, leisurely, loitering wayfarers thither) has started a thoughtless student. A pleasing light is often thus thrown on common words, a light which, as Robertson beautifully says, has long since melted off them. The original conception is fully restored. So twelve is twa-liba, and this Gothic liba is the Lithuanian lika, the Greek deka, the Sanscrit dacan, and twelve is simply two +ten. Twenty is twa-tigus in Gothic, and this tig is also a lineal derivative from the same origin as deka taihun, ten. These changes of letters are known to be so uniform and reliable as to be reducible to regular law. Now that the student has access to many languages, and he who reads a dozen is but an ordinary proficient, etymology is quite exhaustively studied.

The resolving of words into their roots is something more than this. Take the Latin word amabitur, corresponding to the English he shall be loved. Here is found one word equivalent to four English words.

Some fifty years ago Francis Bopp, the most successful philologist of the century, (whose library stands upon the shelves of the Cornell University like the bow of Ulysses in his Ithacan hall, mocking feebler men,) began a comparative inquiry into the formation of such words as amabitur.

He began his work amid many inspirations. The Sanscrit, now just risen into the horizon of modern learning, shed upon his mind its fresh, inspiring beams, and his acquaintance with it is attested by his still unsurpassed grammar. Anquetil, in a passion for learning rising almost to frenzy, had sacrificed himself in toil and travel to those places of the East where he had gathered the lore of the Parsees; and the more accurate Burnouf, following him, had made available to criticism the forins of the Zend, the tongue of the ancient Zoroaster. There was a stir of learned activity in England, France, Germany, and Denmark. While some developed the treasures of the

Sanscrit the knowledge of which is so needful to the ordinary teacher of the classics, and provision for instruction in which is so needed in our American colleges-others, as William Humboldt, made researches into the obscurer tongnes of Europe, Asia, and other lands. Thus aided and animated, he began the task of comparing the forms of the languages apparently kindred with each other-a work from which are evolved in substance all the great issues of philology.

According to an analysis which is justly referred to him, amabitur is composed of the following roots. Am is a root which may be either verbal or substantive, signifying love. To this is added in Sanscrit aya, in Latin reduced to a, a frequent element of a causative, verbal nature, which gives the idea of doing, and thus is formed a complete verbal notion. B is from the Sanscrit bhu, as our English be and the Greek phu. Latin fui-i, or its Sanscrit identical form, ya, signifies to go, and, in connection with b, gives, as is abundantly shown by parallel cases, a very strong expression of futurity. Tur is made of the two pronominal elements ta and se. The s and r are often interchanged as our was, German war. These pro

nouns being both of the third person make this form of the verb really reflexive. Indeed, the Latin may be said to possess no proper passives except its periphrastic perfects. Its reflexives have become passive by usage, as may be traced in the forms of those still called deponent. This use of the reflexive for the passive is frequent in the languages of the Indo-European family, from the Sanscrit to the French.

Thus amabitur is found to be am-aya-bu-ya-ta-se—a formidable word. Said the French surgeon to Sir Astley Cooper: "The operation was very brilliant." "Did the patients survive?" "Ah, sir, they all died, but the operation was very brilliant!" Did a word ever live through such an analysis? Yes. Every element here shown is a true root, logically ascertained by careful examination of numerous specimens of various languages of the family.

Amabitur is an instance, but the manifold forms of declined words admit of similar treatment. From one we can learn all, and a few specimens will suffice. Our had is have, Latin hab, with the Gothic element equal to did, and have-did is proved from history. Some languages show the same roots more