independence by the modification which they continue to produce in the meaning of the words to which they are appended." Thus, the letter d in loved, marking a past tense, is but the remnant of the modifying word did, originally appended to love, to indicate its past action.

To flow into different forms, and so constantly change, is a law of language. It has an inherent vitality, and as soon as it becomes fixed and changeless, it is a dead language. Thus our author. "Literary dialects, or what are commonly called classical languages, pay for their temporary greatness by inevitable decay. They are like stagnant lakes at the side of great rivers. They form reservoirs of what was once living and running speech, but they are no longer carried on by the main current.' When a language assumes to be so choice, elegant, and finished, that it cannot be careless, and so add, subtract, or vary, to suit new wants in new times, that language dies, and a dialect of it or several dialects spring into prominence in its place. So the Romance languages, that is, Italian, Wallachian, Provençal, French, Spanish, and Portuguese, came up in the place of the finished and aristocratic Latin of Cicero. It retired to the library, while the democratic Romance was made by, and became the expression of, the popular will. English yields to this flow or law of change, and so is bidding high for the popular vote of the world. It is dropping and adding more than most suppose. Take the Bible in illustration. Since 1611, the date of its publication, three hundred and eighty-eight of its words or meanings of words have become obsolete. At the same time we mark that each rival edition of Webster and Worcester shows its new words by thousands. As we now read Latimer and Chaucer with a glossary, so the seventh generation from us may spell out the orations of Webster and Everett. Yet of this change our author says, "it is not in the power of man either to produce or to prevent it," an inherent and inexorable law of language controls this.

The number of dialects is almost incredible. The Italian has about twenty reduced to writing. French has fourteen. Modern Greek as many as seventy. Pliny says that in Colchis there were more than three hundred, and that the Romans

were obliged to employ a hundred and thirty interpreters to carry on intercourse with these different tribes.

Where there are no books, a new dialect springs up easily. Hence missionaries in Central America found that their new dictionaries became obsolete in ten years. And Moffat informs us that in Southern Africa, where the wandering tribes are sometimes obliged to leave the little children for many months with the aged, the growing infants and older children form a language of their own, "and in the course of one generation the entire character of the language is changed." We recall a case from personal knowledge in Bristol County, Massachusetts, where a singular impediment in a child's speech made his language unintelligible except to his older brothers and sisters, with whom his wakeful hours were mostly spent. In accommodation and constant playful intercourse they adopted, when with him, his language, and so it came about that a dialect sprung up in that family, which the parents even could not understand, and so used the older children as interpreters. In the same way a dialect may die out, as lately the Cornish has died with the last old woman who spoke it, and who is to have a monument for her singularity.

These dialects are the antecedents and sources of a language. They arise first, and the language is of their outgrowth and combination, just as the state is made up of preëxisting towns. English, so called, is a mixture and growth on a similar principle, though it takes a broader sweep for its material, reminding us of that decree of Cæsar Augustus, "that all the world should be taxed." For our language is made up of Latin, Greek, Hebrew, Celtic, Saxon, Danish, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Norwegian, Hindustani, Malay and Chinese, not to mention many more. But speaking more strictly, English sprung from the several dialects spoken in Great Britain, and was modified by Latin, Danish, Norman, French, &c. It is, however, Teutonic, and nothing else, in its ultimate analysis. The articles, pronouns, prepositions, and auxiliary verbs in English are Saxon.

One of the interesting incidentals connected with this science of language, as unfolded by Müller, is the origin of nations. Without attempting it, and indeed without admitting it, he

gives us a fair system of ethnography, and we are gratified in being able easily to mark the pedigree of any considerable people far back and almost to the flood. The exceptions to this statement are few.

As to the origin of language, he discusses somewhat the three theories, that it is a human art, that it is the direct gift of God, that it is natural. The theory of human invention is disposed of by the absurd supposition of a convention and agreement on adopting it, while yet men had no language to express preference or dissent on the invention. Müller says the first fact is yet to be offered in support of this theory. Of the theory of language as a direct divine gift, the author makes as effectual a disposition, though not as summary. The theory, then, is adopted that language is natural to man. He is endowed with the faculty of speech, as the distinctive characteristic of mankind. In the natural exercise of this original endowment, man comes into the use of language. Certain conditions being supplied, he will speak, and as certainly and as naturally as a bird will fly in certain conditions.

The constituent elements of all languages are roots, and so the main question that remains is this: "What inward mental phase is it that corresponds to these roots, as the germs of human speech?" It is conceded that some words in every language are imitations of sounds, onomatopoetic, but these constitute so small a part of every vocabulary that their origin will not explain the origin of a language. language. Others, as Condillac, have urged that man would give expression by sounds to his different feelings as excited by different objects, and that these cries or interjections would constitute the natural and real beginnings of human speech. To this theory Müller replies as before, that the interjectional part of a language is too small a portion for a theoretic basis for the origin of the whole. Our author next approaches his conclusion in these words: "Language and thought are inseparable, words without thought are dead sounds; thoughts without words are nothing. To think is to speak low; to speak is to think aloud. The word is the thought incarnate." The roots are found to be the first words in the foundation and use of a language, and are expressive of only general ideas. The mind receiving these

ideas, by the conditions of its being, it incarnates in rootwords.

A final question arises: "How did roots become the signs of general ideas? How was the abstract idea, for example, of giving, expressed by the root-word da? Muller answers: "The four hundred or five hundred roots which remain as the constituent elements in different families of language are not interjections, nor are they imitations. They are phonetic types produced by a power inherent in human nature. They exist, as Plato would say, by nature; though with Plato we would add that, when we say by nature, we mean by the hand of God. . . . Man in his primitive and perfect state... possessed the faculty of giving articulate expression to the rational conceptions of his mind. That faculty was not of his own making. It was an instinct of the mind as irresistible as any other instinct." "All that is formal in language is the result of rational combination; all that is material, the result of a mental instinct."

Of the unity of origin for the human race it is comforting to hear a profound scholar thus speak: "This idea is so natural, so consistent with all human laws of reasoning, that, as far as I know, there has been no nation on the earth which, if it possessed any traditions on the origin of mankind, did not derive the human race from one pair, if not from one person.'

And the author quite confidently asserts the possibility of a common origin of language, though he regards this as a question totally distinct from the unity of the origin of mankind, and one that should be kept open for discussion and settlement as long as possible.

Comparing the principles and theories set forth in this volume with those popular twenty and thirty years ago, we leave a wide margin on this able volume for the inquiry, how many of its positions will be held by a second Müller at the end of another score of years? Still be its fate what it may, this volume will do a noble work in filling the chasm between the known and the unknown in the Science of Language.