WAS THERE A PRIMEVAL 

 MOTHER TONGUE? 



OF all the great changes in thought which 

 the present century has witnessed, per- 

 haps none is more striking than that 

 which has occurred in our methods of studying 

 the beginnings of human culture. The dis- 

 coveries of Grimm and Bopp in comparative 

 philology, the decipherment of mysterious in- 

 scriptions in Egypt and Assyria, the study of 

 legal archaeology illustrated by Sir Henry Maine, 

 the doctrine of survivals so ably expounded by 

 Mr. Tylor, and especially the geologic proof 

 of the enormous antiquity of the human race, 

 together with the wide-reaching and powerful 

 speculations of Mr. Darwin, have all contributed 

 to bring about this change. So completely has 

 our point of view been shifted by these various 

 theories and discoveries that many speculations 

 which at the beginning of the present century 

 possessed an absorbing interest have now come 

 to seem frivolous or irrelevant; and nothing 

 can better illustrate the extent of the change 

 than the fate of some of these speculations. It 

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