THE WITNESS OF PHILOLOGY. 311 



'Petrus est,' ' Maria est,' ' Homines sunt,' it is quite sufficient, 

 and perfectly intelligible, to say, ' Petrus hie,' ' Maria hac,' 

 ' Homines hi.' The above forms, according to Champollion 

 and other investigators of ancient hieroglyphics, occur in the 

 oldest known monumental inscriptions, showing plainly that 

 the ideas of the ancient Egyptians as to the method of 

 expressing the category to be, did not exactly accord with 

 those of some modern grammarians. . . . Every Semitic 

 scholar knows that personal pronouns are employed to 

 represent the verb-substantive in all the known dialects, 

 exactly as in Coptic, but with less variety of modification. 

 In this construction it is not necessary that the pronoun 

 should be of the same person as the subject of the proposition. 

 It is optional in most dialects to say either ego ego, nos nos, 

 for ego sum, nos sitmus, or ego tile, tios illi. The phrase ' Ye 

 are the salt of the earth,' is, in the Syriac version, literally 

 ' You they {i.e. the persons constituting) the salt of the earth.' 

 Nor is this employment of the personal pronoun confined to 

 the dialects above specified, it being equally found in Basque, 

 in Galla, in Turco-Tartarian, and various American languages. 

 .... It is true that the Malayan, Javanese, and Malagassy 

 grammarians talk of words signifying to be; but an attentive 

 comparison of the elements which they profess to give as 

 such, shows clearly that they are no verbs at all, but simply 

 pronouns or indeclinable particles, commonly indicating the 

 time, place, or manner of the specified action or relation. It 

 is not therefore easy to conceive how the mind of a Philippine 

 islander, or of any other person, can supply a word totally 

 unknown to it, and which there is not a particle of evidence 

 to show that it was ever thought of. ... A verb-substantive, 

 such as is commonly conceived, vivifying all connected 

 speech, and binding together the terms of every logical 

 proposition, is much upon a footing with the phlogiston of the 

 chemists of the last generation, regarded as a necessary 

 pabulum of combustion, that is to say, vox ct prcetcrca nihil. 

 . . . If a given subject be 'I,' 'thou,* * he,' 'this,* 'that,' 

 'one ; ' if it be ' here,' ' there,' ' yonder,' ' thus,' ' in,' 'on,* 'at,' 

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