248 EARLY HISTORY OF MANKIND. 



selves with a quantity of words, infinitely exceeding in 

 proportion what they acquire in the course of any subsequent 

 similar portion of time. 



Discussions as to which parts of speech were first formed, 

 and the processes by which grammatical structure and inflec- 

 tions took their rise, appear in a great measure needless, after 

 the matter has been placed in this light. The mental powers 

 could readily connect particular arbitrary sounds with parti- 

 cular ideas, whether those ideas were nouns, verbs, or interjec- 

 tions. As the words of all languages can be traced back into 

 roots which are monosyllables, we may presume these sounds 

 to have all been monosyllabic accordingly. The clustering of 

 two or more together to express a compound idea, and the 

 formation of inflections by additional syllables expressive of 

 pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to, are processes 

 which would or might occur as matters of course, being simple 

 results of a mental power called into action, and partly directed, 

 by external necessities. This power, however, as we find it in 

 very different degrees of endowment in individuals, so would 

 it be in different degrees of endowment in nations, or branches 

 of the human family. Hence we find the formation of words, 

 and the process of their composition and grammatical arrange- 

 ment, in very different stages of development in different races. 

 The Chinese have a language composed of a limited number of 

 monosyllables, which they multiply in use by mere variations 

 of accent, and which they have never yet attained the power 

 of clustering or inflecting ; the language of this immense 

 nation the third part of the human race may be said to be 

 in the condition of infancy. The aboriginal Americans, so 

 inferior in civilization, have, on the other hand, a language of 

 the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps even exceeding, 

 in this respect, the languages of the most refined European 

 nations. These are but a few out of many facts tending to 

 show that language is in a great measure independent of 

 civilization, as far as its advance and development are con- 

 cerned. 1 Do they not also help to prove that cultivated 

 intellect is not necessary for the origination of language ? 



1 The following is an extract from the Progress of Ethnology, by J. 

 Russell Bartlett, Corresponding Secretary of the American Ethnological 

 Society, New York, 1847. It is preceded by a statement, that the 

 American Missionaries on the Gaboon river, have framed a grammar of 

 the Roongwee language i.e., the language of those parts. "It is one 

 of the most perfect languages of which they have any knowledge. It is 



