THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE. 179 



that " Sans doubte les langues, comme tout ce qui 

 est organise, sont sujettes a la loi du development 

 graduel." And even Max Muller, the least thorough- 

 going from an evolutionary point of view of all philol- 

 ogists, asserts that " no student of the science of Lan- 

 guage can be anything but an evolutionist, for, wher- 

 ever he looks, he sees nothing but evolution going on 

 all around him." 



The outstanding discovery of the dissector of 

 words is that, vast and complex as Languages ap- 

 pear, they are really composed of few and simple 

 elements. Take the word "evolutionary." The ter- 

 mination " ary " is a late addition added to this and 

 to thousands of other words for a special purpose ; 

 the same applies to the syllable "tion." The first 

 letter e distinguishes evolution from convolution, 

 revolution, involution, and is also a later growth. 

 None of these extra syllables is of first importance ; 

 by themselves they have almost no meaning. The 

 part which will not disappear or melt away into mere 

 grammar, on which the stress of the sense hangs, is 

 the syllable " vol " or " volv," and, so far as the English 

 language is concerned, it is to be looked upon as the 

 root. By running it to earth in older languages its 

 source is found in a still more radical word, and 

 therefore it must next be blotted out of the list of 

 primitive words. By patient comparison of all other 

 words with all other words, of Languages with 

 Languages, and apparent roots with apparent roots, 

 the supposed primitive roots of Language have been 

 found. Just as all the multifarious objects in the 

 material world — water, air, earth, flesh, bone, wood, 

 iron, paper, cloth — are resolvable by the chemist into 



