446 COSMIC PIIILOSOril V. [it. ii. 



Now if we take a general survey of this family-tree, we 

 find that kindred words in languages down near the trunk 

 resemble each other closely, while kindred words in languages 

 high up on the twigs have often well-nigh lost all traces of 

 their primitive family-likeness. To be sure we can still 

 recognize the English daughter in the Sanskrit duhitr, but 

 such strong resemblances are not usual, and it is only too easy 

 to look at a page of Sanskrit without realizing its kinship 

 with English. But to show how the likeness diminishes as 

 we recede from the original source, let us consider two 

 English words — one of which has come to us by natural 

 descent, through the North Aryan line, while the other has 

 come to us, by adoption, from the South Aryan stock. No 

 two words could well be more unlike than the words pen and 

 feather. Of these the latter is a purely English word, while 

 the former is a word we have adopted from the Latin. Now 

 great as is the difference between these two words, it very 

 nearly disappears when we have recourse to their Old Aryan 

 prototypes pata-tra and pat-na. Pat is a word designating 

 flight. Pata-tra and pat-na are words designating a wing, or 

 instrument used in flying. In the course of the North Aryan de- 

 velopment pata-tra becomes fath-thra and finally feather, just 

 as patar becomes father, in accordance with a general tendency 

 of the Teutonic toward aspirating the hard mutes of the old 

 language ; while on the other hand, in the course of the South 

 Aryan development pat-na became first pes-na and then pen-na, 

 in accordance with a general tendency of the Latin toward the 

 assimilation of contiguous consonants. Who but a linguist, 

 knowing the history of the words, and familiar with the 

 general principles of phonetic change, would suspect that 

 words apparently so distinct as pen and feather could be re- 

 ferred so nearly to a common origin ? Or consider the French 

 larme and the English tear. These words are demonstrably 

 descended from the same ancestral form dahru-ma. But 

 while the South Aryan form has undergone one kind of 



