Biinton.] dJo [March 20, 



vei-bal exhausts all the formal portion of the language. The rela- 

 tions of the other words are intimated by their position. Thus 

 ni-tlagotlaz-neqiiia, I wished to love, is literally " I, I shall love, 

 I wished." Tlogofla'z, is the first person singular of the future, 

 ni-nequia, I wished, which is divided, and the future form in- 

 serted. The same expression may stand thus : ni-c-nequia-tlago- 

 tlaz, where the c is an intercalated relative pronoun, and the lit- 

 eral rendering is, " I it wished, I shall love." 



In the Lule language the construction with an infinitive is sim- 

 ply that the two verbs follow each other in the same person, as 

 caic tncxec, "I am accustomed to eat," literally, " I am acusLomed, 

 I eat." 



None of these devices fullfils all the uses of the infinitive, and 

 hence they are all inferior to it. 



In languages which lack formal elements, the deficiency must 

 be supplied by the mind. Words are merely placed in juxtaposi- 

 tion, and their relationship guessed at. Thus, when a language 

 constructs its cases merel}'' by prefixing prepositions to the unal- 

 tered noun, there is no grammatical form ; in the Mbaya lan- 

 guage e-tiboa is translated " through me,'' but it is really " I, 

 through ; " Vemani^ is rendered " he wishes," but it is strictly 

 " he, wish." 



In such languages the same collocation of words often corres- 

 ponds to quite different meanings, as the precise relation of the 

 thoughts is not defined by any formal elements. This is well 

 illustrated in the Tupi tongue. The word ^iha is " father;" with 

 the pronoun of the third person prefixed it is tithn^ literally "he, 

 father." This may mean either " his father," or " he is a father," 

 or " he has a father," just as the sense of the rest of the sen- 

 tence requires. 



Certainlj" a language which thus leaves confounded together 

 ideas so distinct as these, is inferior to one which discriminates 

 them ; and this is why the formal elements of a tongue are so 

 important to intellectual growth. The Tupis may be an Qper- 

 getic and skillful people, but with their language they can never 

 lake a position as masters in the realm of ideas. 



The absence of the passive in most, if not all, American 

 tongues is supplied by similar inadequate collocations of words. 

 In Huasteca, for example, nana tanin tahjaJ, is translated " I 



