EXCURSIONS OF AN EVOLUTIONIST 



barian theories of the universe. And no wonder, 

 since attention had been chiefly directed toward 

 Hebrew, a language entirely unrelated to those 

 of Europe, so that any attempt to explain the 

 latter by a reference to the former could end 

 only in mental confusion. It was a very striking 

 discovery that was made when it was proved 

 that though no likeness whatever exists be- 

 tween the European tongues and Hebrew, yet 

 the closest similarity is manifest between these 

 tongues and a much more remote Asiatic lan- 

 guage. The completion of this discovery was 

 no less striking when it was shown that while 

 linguistic relationship can be clearly traced, ac- 

 cording to fixed rules of inference, among all 

 the various members of the Indo-European 

 group, yet the moment we step outside of this 

 group we can neither detect relationship nor 

 establish rules of inference, but have before us 

 a new set of facts, quite incongruous with the 

 old ones. Such a contrast was just what was 

 needed in order to indicate what the true signs 

 of linguistic relationship are, and thus our whole 

 mental horizon was shifted, as far as concerns 

 the study of language. In the act of establish- 

 ing the existence of our own great family of 

 speech, scientific methods of comparison were 

 gradually worked out, and the results of this 

 have been far-reaching enough. 



In the present paper I propose briefly to no- 

 98 



