ROOTS OF LANGUAGE, 2/3 



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 analysis 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 the 

 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. 



♦ ** Unsere Wurzeln sind die Urwurzeln nicht ; wirhaben viellcicht, von keiner 

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

 Urbedeutung " (Geiger, Ursprung der Sprache, 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 practically the same language, to a date 

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

 tion^ dfc.^ ii., p. 320). 



