AS A TEST OF MENTAL CAPACITY. 105 



foundL'd together, whereas they differ very widely iu their iutellectual qualities, and iu 

 the laug'viages which manifest these qualities. Due of the passages just quoted brackets 

 together the American and Polynesian languages, which are at the very opposite poles 

 in their lexical and grammatical characteristics. The Polynesian is among the simplest 

 and least wordy of languages. It has, properly speaking, no inflections, and makes 

 little use of " agglutination." The words are brief, usually of only two or three syllables. 

 Its grammar is carried to almost the last degree of analysis — the mark, as we are assured 

 by some writers, of high civilization and intellectual superiority. All the cases of nouns 

 and all the moods and tenses of verbs are indicated by separate particles. Fale, is house ; 

 tefale, the house ; o tefdie, of the house ; ki (e fale, to the house. The plural is also indi- 

 cated by a particle,— na fale, the houses. The Polynesian cannot, like the Iroquoian, 

 combine the personal pronoun with the noun ; he must say lau ulu, my head ; nau vlu, 

 thy head ; ana ulu, his head ; te idu o te lanata, the head of the man. He has two particles 

 which represent the substantive verb. There is no lack of general terms. Besides 

 a name for each kind of fish and tree, there are generic words for fish {ika) and tree 

 {lakau). Yet this simplest and most analytic of idioms is really a very poor one, with 

 feeble powers of expression ; and the people, when first known to Europeans, were still 

 in a low stratum of barbarism, ignorant even of pottery or the use of the bow. 



The truth is that not simplicity but complexity is the evidence alike of progress and 

 of the energies which lead to progress. The simplest forms of animal life are the lowest, 

 the most complex are the highest. Among inventions, compare the sickle with the 

 reaping machine, the canoe with the steamship. The simplest of governments is the 

 lowest, the patriarchal despotism ; the two most complex of all actual governments are 

 probably those of the British Empire and of the North American Federation, which are 

 surely among the highest. The complexity of the American and Australian languages, 

 rightly regarded, is the evidence, not of poverty of the powers of abstraction and analysis, 

 but of the very reverse. I have had occasion to give elsewhere an account of an American 

 people, the Iroquois, who, though possessing no greater natural advantages than the 

 Polynesians, had reached a much higher plane in the arts, as well as in their social and 

 political organization. Their language, iu its elaborate structure, corresponds to this 

 superiority, and accounts for it. As an instance of that complexity, which some scholars, 

 like the esteemed author just now quoted, have too hastily condemned in these languages 

 — while they doubtless admire it in the Sanskrit, the G-reek and the German, — I may ven- 

 ture to quote the analysis of a word which fairly indicates the system and qiiality of this 

 speech, and the inferences that may reasonably be drawn from it : ' 



" The word teskenonhwcronne, which is rendered, ' I come again to greet and thank,' 

 is a good example of the comprehensive force of the Iroquois tongue. Its root is nonhwe 

 or nonwe, which is found iu kenonhives, ' I love, like, am pleased with,' — the initial syllable 

 ke being the first personal pronoun. In the ' frequentative form ' this verb becomes 

 kenonhiveron, which has the meaning of ' I salute and thank,' i.e., I manifest by repeated 

 acts my liking or gratification. The s prefixed to this word is the sign of the ' reiterative 

 form.' skenonlnveron, ' again I greet and thank.' The terminal syllable ne and the prefixed 

 te are respectively the signs of the ' motional ' and the ' cislocative ' forms, — ' / come hither 



' " The Iroquois Book of Rites," in Brinton's " Library of American Aboriginal Literature," p. 149. 



Sec II, 1891. 14. 



