THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 229 



and to thousands of other words for a special 

 purpose ; the same applies to the syllable " tion." 

 The first letter e distinguishes evolution from con- 

 volution, revolution, involution, and is also a later 

 growth. None of these extra syllables is of first 

 importance ; by themselves they have almost no 

 meaning. The part which will not disappear or 

 melt away into mere grammar, on which the stress 

 of the sense hangs, is the syllable " vol " or " volv," 

 and, so far as the English language is concerned, 

 it is to be looked upon as the root. By running 

 it to earth in older languages its source is found 

 in a still more radical word, and therefore it must 

 next be blotted out of the list of primitive words. 

 By patient comparison of all other words with all 

 other words, of Languages with Languages, and 

 apparent roots with apparent roots, the supposed 

 primitive roots of Language have been found. 

 Just as all the multifarious objects in the material 

 world — water, air, earth, flesh, bone, wood, iron, 

 paper, cloth — are resolvable by the chemist into 

 some sixty-eight elements, so all the words in each 

 of the three or four great groups of Language yield 

 on the last analysis only a few hundred original 

 roots. That still further analysis may break down 

 some or many of these is not impossible. But 

 the facts as they stand are all significant. The 



