Intellectual Identities of Mankind. 63 



tion, says: " He is a bold man who still argues that 

 in tertiary times there was a large area of conti- 

 nental land in the Pacific, that there was once a 

 Lemuria in the Indian Ocean, or a continental 

 Atlantis in the Atlantic!" Still, who knows? A 

 Mr. Heath may still contend that they are "knowa- 

 ble!" — a euphemism, you know, for the unknown, 

 and probably unknowable. Can you or I dispute 

 such a knowable, especially when so desirable ? As 

 well argue against a fond wish by the rule of three, 

 shake hands with a ghost, or knock down a phan- 

 tom! Tis " a great lesson!" exclaims the Duke of 

 Argyll, touching off the whole comedy in an inter- 

 esting review which he entitles so, " A great lesson!" 

 68. To proceed, if speech be taken in another 

 sense, as a certain collection of sounds or words, 

 called a special tongue, or language, it 

 may be thought that all tongues should 

 be traceable to one original tongue, or stock, if all 

 races came from one orginal pair. In point of fact, 

 philologists are now placing side by side, and are 

 showing to be strictly akin, various tongues which 

 before were thought irreducible in grammar, as well 

 as vocabulary. The degrees of kindred are already 

 marked in the Aryan family of languages. It re- 

 mains to be seen whether all the families, monosyl- 

 labic, agglutinative and inflexional, will yet be 

 brought to a common centre. But if they cannot, 

 that will only go to prove another point of historic 

 fact, an alternative thesis equally worthy of scien- 



