366 
Analyses of Books. 
[June, 
A Preface to, with Extracts from, a Book of the Beginnings . 
By Gerald Massey. London : Williams and Norgate. 
We have here specimens of a work which, if the author’s con- 
tentions can be maintained, is likely to effe<5t a grave modifica- 
tion in anthropology, not to speak of philology, mythology, and 
other studies more remote from our ordinary subjects. Hence 
we venture to say that it deserves a calm and serious examina- 
tion at the hands of competent judges. To make of such a book 
a mere peg upon which to hang jests far from “ sage-born ” is a 
mistake much to be regretted. 
Mr. Massey holds that Inner Africa — some region to the south 
of Egypt — is the cradle of civilisation and of language, and not 
Chaldaea, India, China, or the highlands of Central Asia, He 
considers that the Sanscrit and Prakrit languages are compara- 
tively modern. The “ Aryan hypothesis,” or, as one of his cor- 
respondents terms it, the “ Indo-Germanic nuisance,” he sets 
aside. He treats sun-worship, and consequently the solar myth, 
as posterior to moon-worship and star-worship. He goes farther 
back than the “ roots ” from which Prof. Max Muller and his school 
seek to derive language. Now we make no claims to authority 
as a philologian, but when weighing in the balance, and finding 
wanting, Prof. Muller’s alleged distinction between man and the 
lower animals, we felt compelled to say that it would be neces- 
sary to go much farther back than he has done. The most inti- 
mate knowledge of the composition, flow, and quantity of the 
water of the Thames and its tributaries does not enable us to 
dogmatise on the vapours from which such waters have been 
condensed, or on the currents which have wafted them hither. 
When Prof. Max Muller, in his reply to Prof. Huxley’s laudation 
of the new Birmingham College, sought — on the “ nothing like 
leather ” principle — to argue that things could not be rightly 
studied without a previous training in words, we, who hold that 
there is nothing in words beyond what their generally ignorant 
framers put into them, could only sigh at the illusion. We felt 
convinced that words would yet be thrust down to their true 
level as the mere “ counters of wise men.” It seems to us that 
Mr. Massey is operating in this direction. He writes — “ Such 
supposed roots as P&, Ta, and Ma, in Sanscrit are not roots at 
all, i.e., not primary, but reduced forms of earlier words found 
with their ideographic determinatives in the hieroglyphics, 
and with the roots vanishes the rootage.” “ The thing we most 
need to know at present is not what was the ‘ inward mental 
phase ’ that corresponded to the so-called ‘ roots ’ as the germs 
of human speech, but what are the outward and visible types by 
which the early men represented their thoughts to the best of 
their ability.” “ The types in which the earlier thinkers thinged 
