EVIDENCE OF LANGUAGE. 109 



Next comes the science of Language, of 

 which those who have made it a special study 

 affirm, that it affords the most conclusive 

 evidence of all, that the articulate voice of 

 Man has been sounding in the world during 

 vast though indefinite periods of time. "The 

 evidence of language," says Professor Max 

 Miiller, " is irrefragable, and it is the only 

 evidence worth listening to with regard to 

 ante-historical periods." And what does this 

 evidence go to prove ? Let us take one 

 example. "There was a time," says the same 

 author, " when the ancestors of the Celts, the 

 Germans, the Slavonians, the Greeks, and 

 Italians, the Persians and Hindus, were living 

 together beneath the same roof — separate 

 from the ancestors of the Semitic (Hebrew) 



