ON ETHNOLOGY. 
287 
impression made by outward objects on the mind, as much as the formative 
power of the reacting mind. It is the mind which creates and forms ; but 
this power of the mind is one reacting only upon impressions received from 
the world without. We believe Leibnitz perfectly right in his great saying 
against Locke: “ Nihil est in intellectu <|uc>d non ante fucrit in sensu, nisi 
ipse iiitellectus.” We are moreover convinced that the power of the mind 
which enables us to sec the getitis in the individual, the whole in the many, 
aad to form a word by connecting a subject with a predicate, is the same 
which leads man to timi God in the universe, and the universe in God. Lan- 
gu^e and religion are the two poles of our consctousnrss, muluaUy presup¬ 
posing eadi other. The one is directed to the changing phenomena of the 
vorld, in the conviction of their unity, the otlmr to the unchangeable, 
ahsolate Oae, with the subsumption of all that is cbnttgi-able and relative 
Slider him. But we are not now to imter into these higher spheres of spe¬ 
culation; we have here to deal with the origin and tlie principle of tiie pro- 
gressof speech, and to show that the pritiievul facts of language, and all those 
phenomena which we have examined in the jireccding section, are not only 
Mplainod by our assumption, but proved to flow of necessity from a simple 
Md constant law. 
Now we found, that the further we go in the examination of the most 
Mrient formations, the more we perceive that every sound had originally 
iraeMiog, and every unify of soiimls (every syllublc) answered to a unity 
of object in the outward Avorld for the worUI of the iiiiml. We found this to 
hfl tlie character of the Chinese language. Wo again found, beginning with 
the latest formations, that irifloxions, apparently mere modifications of the 
sound of a Word, were in most cases reducible to prepositions or postposi- 
hons, and these again and all particles to full roots, or nouns and verbs. We 
found that every word had first u substantial object in the outward world, 
snd received only in process of time an application to tlic inward. 
Ill order to arrive at the law wliich we are endeavouring to find, let us 
hrat assume, as Geology dors, that the same principles wliich we see 
*orking ill the development, were also at work at the very beginning, 
luwlified in degree and in form, but csM-ntially the same in kind. We leave 
It here quite undecided, whether there was one beginning, or whether there 
*ere tttiny beginnings of speech,—M'hether one only of the great families of 
^ukind began the work from the first elements of speech, and handed it 
to othem who successively developed if, or whether there are many 
each tribe forming its own materials of speech, and cteveloping 
•hem more or less, according to their peculiar nature and history. If 
Tw u latter supposition, we shall find ourselves obliged to assume 
the starting-point of ad has been essentially the sa«u', onlj' that the 
jwteriab praployi^ have been quite distinct from the beginning. Different 
niw of languages will then, acconling to this system, represent at the 
I different stages in lines of parallel development. According to 
mt supposition, on the contrary, they all, with the exception of one, 
Q8 lave found sometluDg of speech, and inateriaK more or less, already 
ippeu and fixed, which they had to work upon, when entering into the 
‘ process of their nascent nationality. 
general asaumpUoB is this. The supreme law of progress m 
*n language shows itself to be the progress from the substantial isolated 
umlevelopcij expression of a w hole sentewoe, towards such a 
as makes every single word subservient to the 
idea of a sentenc®, and shapes, modifies and dissolves it accordingly. 
*^6iiage IS the produce of inward necessity, not of an arbitrary or con- 
