92 PROCEEDINGS OF THE CANADIAN INSTITUTE. 



to this Institute, as one of the most important results of my studies 

 in Hittite Palseography, the solution of the Etruscan problem." The 

 Hittite is Turanian and syllabic ; the Etruscan he has determined is 

 also -Turanian, and therefore syllabic. There can then be no doubt 

 as to the light which his studies in Hittite Palaeography throw on 

 the Etruscan problem. Let us satisfy ourselves of Piof Campbell's 

 reasoning: Etruscan is Basque, Basque is Tni-anian, Tuianian lan- 

 guages are syllabic, therefore Etruscan is syllabic also. We are not 

 responsible for Prof. Campbell's logic, we have only tried to reduce 

 it to the simplest terms ; but to himself nothing can be clearer, and 

 all that is necessary is to illustrate it by examples, and applying this 

 key, he imagines that he can imlock all the treasures of the Etruscan 

 language. All those bilingual inscriptions are of no value, nay they 

 are deceptive, no doubt intentionally so, possibly to perplex such men 

 as Miiller and Lepsius, Mommsen and Deecke. If we are not to 

 accept these bilingual insci'iptions as virtually duplicates, then we 

 cannot divine their meaning. In every other case bilingual inscrip- 

 tions have been of the utmost value, have been indispensable, and we 

 cannot undeivstand why they should be worthless here. Prof. Camp- 

 bell has however decided that they are worthless, and .hat the door 

 will only open to his key. Now the whole value of Prof. Campbell's 

 researches rests on the syllabic character of the Etruscan language ; 

 but we beg to differ from him, and we maintain that Etruscan is not 

 syllabic. But admitting with Prof. Campbell that these bilinguals 

 are worthless, yet apart from these, apart also from the fact that we 

 know the history of the Etruscan alphabet better perhaps than we 

 know the history of any other alphabet, we maintain that every cir- 

 cumstance is against the possibility of the Etruscan being syllabic. 

 Prof. Campbell seems ignorant of the life and growth of languages, 

 or at least of linguistic symbols. Languages pass through separate 

 and distinct stages in regard to the character and value of the signs 

 or symbols of thought. The first of these stages is the Ideographic, 

 or, as it is genercilly called, the Hieroglyphic. A man in his bai'bar- 

 ous state wishes to express his idea of a horse, and he draws the 

 picture of a horse ; of a man, and he draws the picture of a man. 

 This is the earliest form in which man has expressed his ideas, 

 wh ther for the purj>ose of communicating those ideas to others, or 

 of preserving them, and assisting his own memory. This figurative 

 wilting is presented in the inscriptions of Egypt and of Mexico. 



