141 



But if, as we see by the above chart vvould take place, instead of 

 only the three primary contacts P, T, K, we must add the Ungual L 

 or R as distinct from T, and in fact a fourth primary element, while 

 N plays a prominent role as primary grammatical affix, it is easy to 

 imagine the great extent to which the perfected scheme will descend. 

 The point of remark, however, is this: — the scheme is not one made 

 up artificially like a row of arithmetical numbers or algebraic figures, 

 to see how many different compounds of three or four or five elements 

 exist arithmetically in the abstract ; on the contrary, it results from 

 a process of alternate growth and decay, of alternate additions and 

 elisions, or of alternate expansions of expression and contractions, 

 under the influence of two very different, opposite but co-ordinated 

 laws of speech, by one of which the human mind endeavours always 

 to enlarge and make more precise its words for better comprehension, 

 and by the other to shorten and sweeten them for use. Thus language 

 has a phyllotaxis of its own, by which its stem is regularly occupied 

 to the utmost possibilities of the occasion. 



As to the aboriginal meaning of these words for STONE, or which 

 came first, or what radicals are original prefixes and what are affixes, 

 these are recondite questions not involved in this discussion, and 

 perhaps impossible to answer. 



It may, however, not be uninteresting to point out as a possible key 

 to some of these riddles, the form PTR, PTL, contracted to P'R, P'L, 

 (Romance Peiro, Coptic Pial, c. Boina, Piorna, Pjun, Fualla, &c. &c. 

 in the chart), which explains at all events the Greek ^er^*, as P- Tor, 

 the tor, the tabor, the taurus, the tower, meaning the rock or stone; 

 and shows why the Apostle of the keys was chosen to bear the church. 

 The sermon was on the mount. But these sucraestions are foreign from 

 the subject of this paper. 



The Greek A.'^e$ seems to be as true an inversion of tor, or tel, as 

 the Tangutch RTo evidently is. And here mention cannot be omitted, 

 however casually, of the intimate mythological connection between 

 the ideas of STONE and MAN in language. RT was the Egyptian, 

 ROT the Coptic word for both, while ReT meant form, species, 

 sculpture; and herein lies the explanation : the principal bardic use of 

 stone was to represent the human form divine, whether in sculpture 

 on the native rock or propylon wall, or as set up in ambrose stones alone 

 or in circles, or as termini, caryatides, images, or columns in the 

 temple. Idolatry being ancestral worship, the stone PaTaR had the 

 same name as father, -^aTep, and all standing stones were legendary 

 giants, or patriarchs turned to stone in some past age of human magic 



