ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 123 



In philology, North America presents the richest field in 

 the world, for here is found the greatest number of lan- 

 guages distributed among the greatest number of stocks. 

 As the progress of research is necessarily from the known to 

 the unknown, civilized languages were studied by scholars 

 before the languages of savage and barbaric tribes. Again, 

 the higher languages are written and are thus immediately 

 accessible. For such reasons, chief attention has been given 

 to the most highly developed languages. The problems 

 presented to the philologist, in the higher languages, cannot 

 be properly solved without a knowledge of the lower forms. 

 The linguist studies a language that he may use it as an 

 instrument for the interchange of thought ; the philologist 

 studies a language to use its data in the construction of a 

 philosophy of language. It is in this latter sense that the 

 higher languages are unknown until the lower languages 

 are studied, and it is probable that more light will be thrown 

 upon the former by a study of the latter than by more 

 extended research in the higher. 



The vast field of unwritten languages has been explored 

 but not surveyed. In a general way it is known that there 

 are many such languages, and the geographic distribution of 

 the tribes of men who speak them is known, but scholars 

 have just begun the study of the languages. 



That the knowledge of the simple and uncompounded 

 must precede the knowledge of the complex and com- 

 pounded, that the latter may be rightly explained, is an 

 axiom well recognized in biology, and it applies equally 

 well to philology. Hence any system of philology, as the 

 term is here used, made from a survey of the higher lan- 

 guages exclusively, will probably be a failure. " Which of 

 you by taking thought can add one cubit unto his stature," 

 and which of you by taking thought can add the antecedent 

 phenomena necessary to an explanation of the language of 

 Plato or of Spencer. 



The study of astronomy, geology, physics, and biology, 



