AS A TEST OF MENTAL CAPACITY. lOt 



against the languages of savage nations. The pride of civilization is reluctant to admit 

 facts like these in their utmost extent, because they show how little philosophy and 

 science have to do with the formation of language. A vague idea still prevails that the 

 idioms of barbarous tribes must be greatly inferior to those of civilized nations ; and 

 reasons are industriously sought for to prove that inferiority, not only in point of cultiva- 

 tion, which would readily be admitted, but also to show that their organization is com- 

 paratively imperfect. Thus a learned member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, in an 

 ingenious and profound dissertation on the forms of languages [Baron William von Hum- 

 boldt — "On the Origin of G-rammatical Forms, and their intiuence on the development of 

 ideas "], while he admits that those of the American Indians are rich, methodical, and 

 artificial in their structure, yet will not allow them to possess what he calls genuine 

 grammatical forms {iichie Formen), because, he says, their words are not inflected, like 

 those of the Greek, Latin, and Sanskrit, but are formed by a different process, which he 

 calls ' agglutination ;' and on that supposition he assigns lo them an inferior rank in the 

 scale of languages, considered in the point of view of their capacity to aid the develop- 

 ment of ideas. That such prejudices should exist among men who have deservedly 

 acquired an eminent reputation for science is much to be regretted ; and it is particularly 

 with a view to remove them from the minds of such men that this grammar is published. 

 The learned baron will, I hope, recognize in the conjugations of the Delaware A'erbs those 

 inflected forms which he justly admires, and he will find that the process which he is 

 pleased to call agglutinative is not the only one which our Indians employ in the combi- 

 nation of their ideas and the formation of their words." 



After citing some striking examples of these modes of word-formation and inflection, 

 the author comes to the point now under discussion. He remarks that in view of the 

 considerable degree of art and method which have presided over the formation of the 

 American languages, the question arises whether we are to suppose (as many had been 

 inclined to believe) that this continent was foi-merly inhabited by a civilized race, or 

 whether, on the other hand, it is not more reasonable to hold that men are " endowed 

 with a natural logic which leads them, as it were by instinct, to such methods in the 

 formation of their idioms as are best calculated to facilitate their use." He does not hesi- 

 tate to decide in favour of the latter view, because, as he afiirms, " no language has yet 

 been discovered, among either savage or polished nations, which was not governed by 

 rules and principles which nature alone could dictate, and human science never could 

 have imagined." No language, he adds, " can be called ' barbarous ' in the sense which 

 f)resumption has affixed to that word." Culture stands for something, but for compara- 

 tively little. The question of the respective shares to be assigned to nature and to culti- 

 vation in the composition of such noble instruments as the languages of men is one well 

 worthy of being thoroughly investigated. "The result, it is true, will be mortifying to 

 our pride ; but this pride, which makes us ascribe so much to our own efforts and so 

 little to the silent operations of nature, is the greatest obstacle that we meet in our road 

 to knowledge." 



The result, therefore, of our inquiries — a result deduced alike from the evidence of 

 language and that of history — is that a state of barbarism does not imply any inferiority 

 in intellectual power. It simply indicates that the barbarous people have been compelled to 

 live amid surroundings which rendered any advancement in culture impossible. Remove 



