ROOTS OF LANGUAGE. 273 



unmistakably referable to semi-civilized as distinguished 

 from savage life, what guarantee can we have that the 

 remainder are " original " ? Obviously we can have no such 

 guarantee ; but, on the contrary, find the very best, because 

 intrinsic evidence, that they belong to a more or less high 

 level of culture, far removed from that of primitive man. 

 In other words, we must conclude that these 121 concepts 

 are " original " only in the sense that they do not now 

 admit of further anal}-sis at the hands of comparative 

 philologists : they are not original in the sense of bringing us 

 within any measurable distance of the first beginnings of 

 articulate speech.* 



Nevertheless, they are of the utmost value and significance, 

 in that they bring us down to a period of presumably 

 restricted ideation, as compared with the enormous develop- 

 ment since attained by various branches of this Indo-European 

 stock — so far, at least, as the growth of language can be 

 taken as a fair expression of such development. They are 

 likewise of the highest importance as showing in how 

 presumably short a period of time (comparatively speaking) 

 so immense and divergent a growth may proceed from such 

 a simple and germ-like condition of thoughtf Lastly, they 

 serve to show in a most striking manner that the ideas 

 represented, although all of a general character, are neverthe- 

 less of the lowest degree of generality. Scarcely any of them 

 present us with evidence of reflective thought, as distinguished 

 from the naming of objects of sense-perception, or of the 



hundred; there is no general Indo-European word for 'thousand.' Some of llie 

 stars were noticed and named ; the moon was the chief measurer of time. The 

 religion was polytheistic, a worship of the personified powers of nature " 

 (Whitney, Language and the Study of Language, pp. 207, 208). For a more 

 detailed account of this interesting people, see Poescher, Die Arier. 



* " UnsereWurzeln sind die Urwurzeln nicht ; wirhaben viellcicht, von keincr 

 einzigen die erste, urspriingliche Laut-form mehr vor uns, ebensowenig wohl die 

 Urbedeutung" (Geiger, Ursprung der Sprac/ie, s. 65). And this opinion, so far 

 as I know, is adopted as an axiom by all other philologists. 



t " It is impossible to bring down the epoch at which the Aryan tribes still 

 lived in the same locality, and spoke ]Mactically the same language, to a date 

 much later than the third millennium before tiic Christian era" (Saycc, Introduc- 

 tion, crV., ii., p. 320). 



T 



