1885.] dlO [Brinton. 



By the subjective roots, Humboldt meant the personal pro- 

 nouns. To these he attributed great importance in the develop- 

 ment of language, and especially of American languages. They 

 carry with them the mark of sharp individuality, and express in 

 its highest reality the notion of Being. 



It is not easy to understand Humboldt's theory of the evolu- 

 tion of the personal pronouns. In his various essays he seems 

 to offer condicting statements. In one of his later papers, he 

 argues that the origin of such subjective nominals is often, per- 

 haps generally, locative. By comparing the personal pronouns 

 with the adverbs of place in a series of languages, he showed that 

 their demonstrative antedated their personal meaning.* With 

 regard to their relative development, he says, in his celebrated 

 " Introduction ": 



" The first person expresses the individuality of the speaker, 

 who is in immediate contact with external nature, and must dis- 

 tinguish himself from it in his speech. But in the ' 1 ' the 

 ' Thou ' is assumed ; and from the antithesis thus formed is 

 developed the third person. "f 



But in his " Notice of the Japanese Grammar of Father O^'an- 

 guren," published in 1826, he points out that infants begin by 

 speaking of themselves in the third person, showing that this 

 comes first in the order of knowledge. It is followed by the 

 second person, which separates one object from others; but as 

 it does so by putting it in conscious antithesis to the speaker, it 

 finally develops the " l."| 



The latter is unquestionably the correct statement so far as 

 the history of language is concerned and the progress of knowl- 

 edge. I can know myself only through knowing others. 



The explanation which reconciles these theories is that the one 

 refers to the order of thought, or logical precedence, the other 

 to the order of expression. Professor Ferrier, in his " Institutes 

 of Metaphysics," has established with much acuteness the thesis 

 that, " What is first in the order of nature is last in the order of 

 knowledge," and this is an instance of that philosophical prin- 

 ciple. 



* Ueber die Verwandtsclia/t der Orlsadverbia mit dem Pronomen in einigen 

 Spruchen, in the Abhandlungen der hist.-phil. Olasse def B^rlifier Akad. der }f i's*. 

 18-29 



t Ueber die VerschiedenJuit, etc., Bd, vj, s, 115. 



X Oesammelte Werke, Bd. vii, ss. 392-6. 



