THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY, 349 



inquiry to be considered, and its consideration will tend yet 

 further and most forcibly to corroborate all the general con- 

 clusions already attained. Hitherto we have been engaged 

 for the most part on what I have already called the palaeonto- 

 logy of human thought as revealed, fossil-like, in the linguistic 

 petrifactions of pre-historic man. But the science of com- 

 parative philology is not confined in its researches upon early 

 forms of speech to the bygone remnants of a distant age. On 

 the contrary, just like the science of comparative anatomy, 

 it is furnished with still existing materials for study, which are 

 of the nature of living organisms, and which present so many 

 grades of evolution that the lowest members of the series 

 bring us within easy distance of those aboriginal forms which 

 can only be studied in the fossil state. Hitherto I have 

 considered these lowest existing languages only with refer- 

 ence to their forms of predication. Here I desire to consider 

 them with reference to the quality of ideation that they 

 betoken. 



In the next instalment of my work I shall have to treat of 

 the psychology of savages, and then it will become apparent 

 that there is no very precise relation to be constantly traced 

 between grades of mental evolution in general, and of 

 language-development in particular. Nevertheless there is a 

 general relation : and therefore it is among the lowest savages 

 that we meet with the lowest types of language-structure.* 



gesture is founded, while they are similar in their fertile combination of radicals. 

 Indian language consists of a series of words that are but slightly differentiated 

 parts of speech following each other in the order suggested in the mind of the 

 speaker without absolute laws of arrangement, as its sentences are not completely 

 integrated. The sentence necessitates pans of speech, and parts of speech are 

 possible only when a language has reached that stage where sentences are logically 

 constructed. The words of an Indian tongue, being synthetic or undifferentiated 

 parts of speech, are in this respect strictly analogous to the gesture elements 

 which enter into a sign-language. The study of the latter is therefore valuable 

 for comparison with the words of the former. The one language throws much 

 light upon the other, and neither can be studied to the best advantage without a 

 knowledge of the other." 



• There are certain writers, such as Du Ponceau, Charlevoix, James, Apple- 

 yard, Threlkeld, Caldwell, &c., who have sought to represent that the languages 

 of even the lowest savages are "highly systematic and truly philosophical," &c. 



