66 COSMIC PHILOSOPHY. [pt. L 



have grown out from the roots, just as branches of trees 

 grow from axillary buds. Inductive philology has proved 

 this notion to be false, and has shown that in all cases a 

 termination is the abraded relic of an originally distinct 

 qualifying word, which by constant use and through rapid 

 pronunciation, during primitive ages when words were ad- 

 dressed only to the ear, has become inseparably agglutinated 

 to the qualified word or root. This discovery, which has long 

 been completely verified, of course supersedes and renders 

 antiquated the hypothesis of Schlegel. But the point which 

 here concerns us is that no such elaborate induction was 

 needed to show that the notion of a budding termination is 

 in itself absurd. All that was needed to reveal its absurdity 

 was to stop and translate the words used into ideas. To say 

 that a termination buds out from a root, is to combine words 

 which severally possess a meaning into a phrase which has 

 no meaning. We can severally form concepts of a word- 

 termination, of a word-root, and of the process of budding; 

 but the three concepts are wholly disparate and refuse to unite 

 into a thinkable proposition. The hypothesis had no othei 

 foundation than the vague associations with the processes 

 of vegetal life which cluster about such a word as " root " ; 

 and the fact that a scholar like Schlegel could seriously found 

 a theory of language upon such a mere chaos of half-shaped 

 conceptions shows us how easy it is for highly-educated men 

 to think in a very slovenly manner. But it likewise con- 

 clusively shows us that the assent of philosophers in past 

 ages, or of uneducated people in our own age, to sundry 

 unthinkable propositions, is not to be cited as evidence that 

 there are minds which can think what is unthinkable. The 

 building up of enormous theories out of purely verbal 

 propositions, which do not correspond to any thinkable con- 

 catenation of conceptions, has always been the besetting 

 sin of human philosophizing. It has been known, since the 

 Middle Ag^s, by the apparently incongruous epithet of 



