244 MENTAL EVOLUTION IN MAN. 



expect to have been of later growth. For they serve only 

 the function of giving specific meanings to the general 

 meanings already present in the roots ; and, therefore, in the 

 absence of the roots would themselves present no meaning at 

 all. Consequently, as I have said, we should antecedently 

 expect to find that the roots are the earliest discoverable 

 (though not on this account necessarily the most primitive) 

 elements of all languages. And this, as a general rule, is 

 what we do find. In tracing back the family tree of any 

 group of languages, different demonstrative elements are 

 found on different branches, though all these branches proceed 

 from {i.e. are found to contain) the same roots. Of course 

 these roots may be variously modified, both as to sound and 

 the groups of words to which in the different branches they 

 have given origin ; but such divergent evolution merely 

 tends to corroborate the proof of a common descent among 

 all the branches concerned.* 



I have said that all philologists now agree in accepting the 

 doctrine of evolution as applied to languages in general ; while 

 there is no such universal agreement touching the precise 

 method or history of evolution in the case of particular 

 languages. I will, therefore, first give a brief statement of the 

 main facts of language-structure, and afterwards render an 

 equally short account of the different views which are enter- 



* There is a difference of opinion among philologists as to the extent in which 

 modifying constants were themselves originally roots. The school of Ludwig 

 regards demonstrative elements as never having enjoyed existence as independent 

 words ; but, even so, they must have had an independent existence of some kind, 

 else it is impossible to explain how they ever came to be employed as constantly 

 modifying different roots in the same way. Moreover, as Max Miiller well 

 observes, "to suppose that Khana, Khain, Khanana, Khaintra, Khatra, &c., 

 all tumbled out ready-made, without any synthetical purpose, and that their 

 differences were due to nothing but an uncontrolled play of the organs of speech, 

 seems to me an unmeaning assertion. . . . What must be admitted, how-ever, is 

 that many suffixes and terminations had been wrongly analyzed by Bopp and his 

 school, and that we must be satisfied with looking upon most of them as in the 

 beginning simply demonstrative and modificatorj- " [^loc. cif., pp. 224 and 225). 

 See also Farrar, Origin of Language, pp. 100, et seq.; Donaldson, G7-eek Grammar, 

 pp. 67-79 ; -^^^ Hovelacque, Science of Language, p. 37. It will be remarked 

 that this question does not affect the exposition in the text. 



