
1891.] Language and Max Miiller. 953 
give an insight to the thoughts of Paleozoic people. Those who 
have lived with savages, and are familiar with the puerility of their 
conceptions and their disposition to incessantly invent words and 
then forget them, are able to estimate gibberish at its proper 
value. When Chicago was a frontier trading post, log cabins and 
tents domiciled the people. Frame houses took the place of 
these as the village grew. Occasional small brick houses 
appeared as the town spread out; but scarcely a vestige of any of 
these dwellings remains among the towering masonry of the 
Chicago of to-day, with its million and a quarter of inhabitants. 
Too little attention has been paid to the fact that a growing, living 
language receives:accessions from all sides. Our modern English 
is a fearful jargon, combined from many ancient and modern lan- 
guages, civilized and savage; and necessarily so will speech be 
with a people who are living, expanding, in a restless age, accu- 
mulating ideas from all parts of the world. It is a very common 
mistake of the theologically biased, who imagine that language 
had a directly divine origin, that simplicity of construction of a 
tongue indicates this and is to be admired; when the fact of the 
matter is, irregularity of declension and conjugation are invaria- 
bly produced by the mingling of people who ‘tie different 
languages. 
The Australian savage language is S ir and 
simple, in keeping with its poverty of ideas. The Spanish lan- 
guage is probably the most beautiful, resonant, inflexible, of any 
of Latin descent. But what is there in the Spanish language ?_ 
The inquisition, in destroying thousands of thinkers in that 
country, male and female, helped to fix and impoverish Spanish 
brains and tongues. There is always wanting a proper consid- 
eration of the fact that, so far from being dependent upon 
language, far too often language has deranged thought, intro- 
duced confusion where even the deaf and dumb have thought 
more clearly. Gesticulation is an important means of communi- 
cation between savages, so much so that the Australian primitive 
people could not understand each other in the dark; and the 
Chinese frequently resort to writing to make teenies better 
understood. 

