I02 TRANSACTIONS iSgg-'oO 



If anyone were to represent to an Indian that his language 

 was very defective in not having any word for father or son, I do 

 not know what the red man would reply, but I know what he 

 might reply. He might say : " You want me to have words for 

 what never existed and never will or can exist. ' ' Your reply would 

 probably be : " Not at all ; fathers exist, sons exist." To which 

 the Indian might rejoin : "I never saw or heard of a father 

 that was not somebody's father, or a son that was not somebody's 

 son ; and I don't believe you ever did either. I have all the 

 words I want to describe the things I see around me, and do not 

 feel that I need any others." The Indian might not perhaps con- 

 duct the discussion in these terms, but this is certainly the posi- 

 tion he would take if he was conscious of his own case. By 

 looking at the matter from this point of view we are enabled to 

 see the really algebraical character of modern analytical speech, 

 in which general and abstract terms stand for x's and j/'s. We 

 may perhaps here glean a suggestion in regard to the education 

 of children. We ask them at school to write essays on such sub- 

 jects as the cow, the dog, the horse, when we do not invite them 

 to higher flights on such elegant topics as virtue, patriotism and 

 friendship. Much more suited would it be to their stage of de- 

 velopment it we were to ask them to write an account of some 

 particular cow, dog, or horse they happened to be acquainted 

 with. Then they could speak of what they knew, and could ex- 

 press themselves with conviction. I do not know of anything 

 likely to be more hurtful intellectually, and even morally, than 

 forcing the young to express themselves in vague and unfelt 

 generalisations. The young generalizer is generally a prig and 

 runs the risk of being a humbug. 



The agglutinative languages spoken chiefly by peoples of the 

 Turanian or Mongol stock, and of which Turkish is one of the 

 best examples, show a greater separateness in the elements of the 

 sentence than the polysynthetic forms of speech. In the ag- 

 glutinative languages words are compounded, but are not run to- 

 gether in fortuitous forms and combinations; and the separate parts 

 remain, as a rule, clearly distinguishable. The union is not of 

 that intimate character which produces internal change in the 

 words affected. Instead of such inflections as we see in Greek 

 and Latin, we see words which we would call prepositions affixed 



