DEVELOPMENT OF LANGUAGE. 17 



ever consisted solely of exclamations, and so was strictly ho 

 mogeneous in respect of its parts of speech, we have no evi 

 dence. But that language can be traced down to a form 

 in which nouns and verbs are its only elements, is an estab 

 lished fact. In the gradual multiplication of parts of speech 

 cut of these primary ones in the differentiation of verb* 

 into active and passive, of nouns into abstract and concrete 

 in the rise of distinctions of mood, tense, person, of num 

 ber and case in the formation of auxiliary verbs, of adjec 

 tives, adverbs, pronouns, prepositions, articles in the di 

 vergence of those orders, genera, species, and varieties of 

 parts of speech by which civilized races express minute 

 modifications of meaning we see a change from the homo- 



o o 



geneous to the heterogeneous. And it may be remarked, 

 in passing, that it is more especially in virtue of having 

 carried this subdivision of function to a greater extent and 

 completeness, that the English language is superior to all 

 others. 



Another aspect under which we may trace the devel 

 opment of language is the differentiation of words of 

 allied meanings. Philology early disclosed the truth that 

 in all languages words may be grouped into families having 

 a common ancestry. An aboriginal name applied indiscrim 

 inately to each of an extensive and ill-defined class of things 

 or actions, presently undergoes modifications by which the 

 chief divisions of the class are expressed. These several 

 names springing from the primitive root, themselves become 

 the parents of other names still further modified. And by 

 the aid of those systematic modes which presently arise, 

 of making derivations and forming compound terms ex 

 pressing still smaller distinctions, there is finally developed 

 a tribe of words so heterogeneous in sound and meaning, 

 that to the uninitiated it seems incredible that they should 

 have had a common origin. Meanwhile from other roots 

 there are being evolved other such tribes, until there r* 1 - 



