4x6 
Analyses of Books . [July, 
in Sanskrit, it would have been impossible to guess the original 
material meaning of the root As, to be.” Mr. Massey replies : 
— “ The African languages show that asu, to breathe, is not a 
primary of speech ; no vowel is primary in the earliest formation 
of words. In Egyptian ses is to breathe, and in Africa beyond : 
znzu has the same meaning in the Nupe, Esitako, Gugu Basa 
tongues ; zuezui in the Param, yisie in the Kupa, and zo in the 
Ebe.” 
He continues — “ It has been asked how did Da (Sanskrit) 
come to mean giving ? Professor Noire holds that primitive man 
said accidentally Da. And here we have a ‘ root ’ of language ! 
But da is only a worn-down form of word found in Sanskrit. It 
is the Egyptian Td, to give and take, and also a gift. The full 
hierogylyphic word is Tat, and it belongs to the stage of mere 
duplicated words and gesture-signs. It is written as the hand, 
which is the Tat ideograph; English daddle for the fist, ntata 
for the hand in the Meto and Matatan, and tata in the Igu 
tongue. Long before the abstract idea of giving was conveyed 
by da or td, the tat was presented in gesture-language with the 
offering, or in the aCt of offering. . . . Language certainly did 
not originate with the c roots ’ of the Aryanists, which are the 
worn-down forms of earlier words. It did not begin with 
‘ abstract roots,’ nor with dictionary words at all, but with 
things, objects, gesture-signs, and involuntary sounds.” We 
may here remark that the very term “ root ” conveys an analogy 
fatal to its advocates. The plant does not originate with the 
root, but with the seed, and puts out the root subsequently. 
Elsewhere, as a further explanation of his meaning, the author 
says : — “ That which we can talk, say, and write was first enacted, 
and the most primitive customs were the sole records of such 
aCting by men who performed those things that could not other- 
wise have been memorised. These customs had their origin in 
gesture-language ; they constitute the drama of dumb humanity, 
and volumes might be filled in showing the (to us) unnatural- 
looking results of an origin that was quite natural.” 
The following passage refers to a recent blunder into which 
philologists tumbled blindly : — “ Comparative philology, working 
with words in their later phase, divorced from things is respon- 
sible for the false inference that until recent times, later than 
those of the Veda, the Avesta, the Hebrew, and Homeric 
writings, men were deficient in the perception of colour; that 
there was, in faCt, a condition of Miopoeia answering to their in- 
sanity of Mythopoeia. Geiger has even affirmed that the lan- 
guage-maker must have been blue-blind. Max Muller has affirmed 
that the blue heaven does not appear in the Vedas, the Avesta, 
or the Old Testament. It is true that language did not com- 
mence by naming those mere appearances of things in which 
the comparative mythologists take such inordinate delight. 
Many early languages have no word for blue as a colour, and 
