34 SATURDAY LECTURES 



into the origiu of language, and many hard-fought battles 

 attest the energy with which the various champions have 

 entered into the subject. Languages have changed and 

 differentiated. How, and through what causes ? They 

 mix, and new languages arise. They have their anatomy 

 and physiology. They have their purely physical side, 

 being composed of muscular gestures and vocal utterances, 

 purely physiological. They have their psychological side, 

 " Sound is but the curtain behind which is concealed the 

 mystery of thought." As before stated, the whole his- 

 tory of man is the unfolding of mind, and language 

 thus becomes a historical science. The anthropologist does 

 not stop with vocal speech. For him bodily attitudes, 

 animal voices, the gestures of the dumb, and of lower races 

 are language. We have in this very building a Bureau of 

 Ethnology, where, under the direction of Major Powell, such 

 specialists as Mailer}^ Dorsey, Gatschet, Hinman, and Riggs 

 are wrestling with the American Indian languages. The 

 same zeal characterizes the cultivated nations of Europe. 

 The vocal and written speech of man is found to have kept 

 pace with the progress of his thoughts. 



The growth of language is spoken of as having passed 

 through three stages, or as occurring in three fundamental 

 types :— 



1. The Holophrastic, {holos, whole, phrasis, phrase,) in 

 which whole phrases or sentences were thrown into a single 

 utterance; or polysynthetic {pohis, much, and synthesis, 

 compounding.) 



2. Agglutinative, {agglutino, to fasten or glue to,) in which 

 the words are much compounded, but only one of the word- 

 elements retains the ancient forms, the others being pared 

 down to mere appendages. 



3. The Inflected, in which relations are indicated by 

 endings, which no longer have any meaning, but serve 

 merely to indicate the function of their stem. The whole 

 subject is thoroughly and freshly worked up in Major 

 Powell's " Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages," 

 which I would advise you all to read. 



