600 The American Naturalist. [July, 
a brute which can say “is” (whatever it may think), for the 
simple reason that brutes do not employ articulate language. 
But languages belonging to the highest ancient civilizations, 
as “well as the languages of savages, have also no word for 
“is.” Taking one instance only, the Coptic, it has been 
observed! “what are called the auxiliary and substantive verbs 
in Coptic are still more remote from all essential verbal char- 
acter than the so-called verbal roots. On examination they 
will almost always be found to be articles, pronouns, particles 
or abstract nouns, and to derive their verbal functions entirely 
from their accessories or from what they imply. In fact, any 
one who examines a good Coptic grammar or dictionary will 
find there is nothing formally corresponding with our ‘am,’ 
‘art, ‘is, ‘was? The Egyptians had, however, at least half 
a dozen methods of rendering the Greek verb substantive 
when they desired to do so.” Instead of saying ‘Petrus est,’ 
‘Maria est,’ ‘Homines sunt,’ it is quite sufficient and per- 
fectly intelligible to say ‘ Petrus hic,’ ‘Maria hoce, ‘ Homines 
hi.” Theabove forms, according to Champollion and other 
investigators of ancient hieroglyphics, occur in the oldest 
known monumental inscriptions, showing plainly that the 
ideas of the ancient Egyptians as to the method of expressing 
the category ‘to be’ did not accord with those of some mod- 
ern grammarians..... Every Semitic scholar knows that 
personal pronouns are employed to represent the verb sub- 
stantive in all the known dialects, exactly as in Coptic, but 
with less variety of modification. .... The phrase ‘ Ye are 
the salt of the earth’ is in the Syriac version ‘ You they (i. e., 
the persons constituting) the salt of the earth. Nor is this 
employment of the personal pronoun confined to the dialects 
above specified, it. being equally found in Basque, in Gala, 
in Turco-Turanian and various American languages "eee 
“Malayan, Japanese and Malagassy grammarians talk of 
words signifying to be; but an attentive comparison of the 
elements which they profess to give as such, shows clearly that 
they are no verbs at all but simply pronouns or indeclinable 
particles commonly indicating the time, place or manner of 
1Garrett on the Nature and Analysisof the Verb. Proc. Philo. Soc., Vol. iii. 
‘ 
BF en 5 ty ge Seay 
ie pee La oaa nea Bee 
airhe eaa aay ee aN E SEE EG ARADO aD Beck BaP ge ON eens ee ee 
