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Analyses of Books. 
415 
language is derived not from abstract roots, but from signs and 
symbolic acftions far antecedent. He does away with the notions 
of a civilisation springing up suddenly or miraculously commu- 
nicated to man, and of a language rich and complete in its very 
origin. For the first time, perhaps, we have inquires into pri- 
mitive philology, mythology, and the early history of our species 
untainted by the preconceived notion of an absolute and quali- 
tative distindlion between man and the lower animals. The 
author’s results are in stricfl accord with those which modern 
naturalists have reached by totally different processes. We do 
not hesitate to say that if the substance of this work could be 
presented in a condensed form, freed as much as possible from 
“ scaffolding,” it would form a valuable — almost necessary — 
companion to Darwin’s “ Descent of Man,” the one work com- 
plementing and supporting the other. 
We must, however, remark that much remains to be done 
before Mr. Massey’s labours can be presented in such a form. 
At present there is neither title-page, index, table of contents, 
preface, nor introdu<5Iory chapter. Only the leisurely and conscien- 
tious reader, or the candid reviewer, will succeed in fairly grasping 
Mr. Massey’s current of thought ; this the rather because the 
conclusions reached will be, to many, grievously unwelcome. 
We find here successively discussed the natural genesis of the 
Kamite typology, the typology of primitive customs, the typology 
of the two truths, the typology of numbers, the typology of pri- 
mordial onomatopoeia and aboriginal African sounds, the typology 
of the mythical serpent or dragon, the typology of the mythical 
mount, the tree, the cross, and the four corners, and the typology . 
of the mythical great mother, the two sisters, the twins, the 
triads, trinity, and tetrad. 
As a specimen of the author’s method of conducing this great 
inquiry we make certain extracts from the chapter on the typology 
of onomatopoeia. Mr. Massey writes : — “ The Aryanists have 
laboured to set the great pyramid of language on its apex in Asia 
instead of on its base in Africa, where we have now to seek for 
the veriest beginnings. My appeal is made to anthropologists, 
ethnologists, and evolutionists, not to mere philologists limited 
to the Aryan area, who, as non-evolutionists, have laid fast hold 
at the wrong end of things. 
“ The Inner African languages prove that words had earlier 
forms than those which have become the ‘ roots ’ of the Aryan- 
ists. Max Muller has said that in the Sanskrit word Asu, which 
denotes the vital breath, the original meaning of the root ‘ /Is ’ 
has been preserved.” He writes : — “ As, in order to give rise to 
such a noun as asu, must have meant to breathe ; then to live ; 
then to exist ; and it must have passed through all these stages 
before it could have been used as the abstract auxiliary verb 
which we find not only in Sanskrit, but in all the Aryan lan- 
guages. Unless this one derivative, Asu, life, had been preserved 
