232 VESTIGES OF THE 



in propoi'tion what tliey acquire in the course of any 

 subsoquent similar portion of time. 



Discussions as to which parts of speech were first 

 formed, and the processes by which grammatical struc- 

 ture and inflections took their rise, appear in a great 

 measure needless, after the matter has been placed in 

 this light. The mental powers could readily connect 

 particular arbitrai-y sounds Mdth particular ideas, whether 

 those ideas were nouns, verbs, or interjections. As the 

 words of all languages can be traced back into roots which 

 are monosyllables, we may presume these sounds to have 

 all been monosyllabic accordingly. The clustering of 

 two or more together to express a compound idea, and 

 the formation of inflections by additional syllables expres- 

 sive of pronouns and such prepositions as of, by, and to, 

 are processes which would or might occur as matters of 

 course, being simple results of a mental power called into 

 action, and partly directed, by external necessities. This 

 power, however, as we find it in very different degrees of 

 endowment in individuals, so would it be in diflerent 

 degrees of endowment in nations, or branches of the 

 human family. Hence we find the formation of words 

 and the process of their composition and grammatical 

 arrangement, in very different stages of development in 

 different races. The Chinese have a language composed 

 of a limited number of monosyllables, which they mul- 

 tiply in use by mere variations of accent, and which they 

 liave never yet attained the power of clustering or 

 inflecting; the language of this immense nation — the 

 third part of the human race — may be said to be in the 

 condition of infancy. The aboriginal Americans, so 

 inferior in civilisation, have, on the other hand, a lan- 

 guage of the most elaborately composite kind, perhaps 

 even exceeding, in this ]-espect, the languages of the 



