1914I Northwestern DfeN^s and Northeastern Asiatics 141 



in these Transactions four years earlier. Whether this ever came to his 

 notice is more than I can say; but not only did the famous anthropolo- 

 gist know of my humble person (we had exchanged some correspond- 

 ence), but he refers to me in the very incriminated paper. 



Nor should it be forgotten that the essence of a language consists 

 less in its vocabulary than in its grammar and syntax, its peculiar 

 structure and morphology. Its words are its body, but its soul rests 

 in its grammar. 



An anthropologist of the French materialistic school, A. Hovelacque, 

 has the following in his work on La Linguistique: 



"Si I'aptitude speciale a la connaissance pratique des langues n'est 

 point une science, Vetymologie, par centre, telle qu'elle est pratiqu6e 

 le plus souvent, ne pent ^tre regardee ni comme une science ni comme 

 un art. L'4tymologie, par elle-meme, n'est qu'une jonglerie, une sorte 

 de jeu d'esprit, si bien que le grand ennemi de I'etymologiste, son ennemi 

 implacable, c'est le linguiste. En un mot, I'etymologie par elle-meme 

 et pour elle-meme n'est que de la divination; elle fait abstraction de 

 toute experience, neglige les difficultes et se contente des apparences 

 specieuses de ce qui n'est qu'a peine probable ou a peine vraisemblable".^ 



By etymologie the French author means in the above passage word- 

 assimilations. 



Perfectly applicable to amateur or over enthusiastic philologists, 

 his observations, if understood without qualifications, could be con- 

 sidered as exaggerations at the expense of the terminological school. 

 They are prompted by excesses on the part of many of its champions; 

 but they are themselves open to the charge of being an excess the oppo- 

 site way. In medio stat virtus, and there is not the least doubt that 

 terminological comparisons, when properly conducted, can be of much 

 value. 



At all events, it is a remark which has by this time acquired the 

 force of an ethnological axiom that of all the anthropological sciences 

 comparative philology is the one whose conclusions have the most 

 weight when it is a question of tracing the origin or parentage of a race. 



Witness the case of the Sanscrit roots used by both the blackish 

 peoples of southern Asia and the blonde nations of northern Europe; 

 witness, nearer home, the monosyllabic radicals of the D6n6 tongue 

 which we now find on the lips of the timid Hare of the northern wastes 

 and the fierce Apache of the South; of the progressive Chippewayan 

 and Carrier of British America and the conservative Navaho of the 

 southern States — and this in spite of the fact that several alien stocks 

 intervene between the two sections of that important aboriginal family. 



Prompted by this consideration and moved by the thought that 

 said family could not be autochthonous in America, I published some 



' Op. cit., p. 16; Paris, sans date (reimpression). 



