ON ETHNOLOGY. 
293 
First. The original or primitive language must consist of inorganic 
words, each word presenting a whole undivided sentence, incapable of suf¬ 
fering any connexion with or modification by the preceding or following 
word. 
Secondly. The principle by which a language is produced, the reac¬ 
tion of the mind upon the impressions of the outward world, is also the prin¬ 
ciple of its development: consequently every language must either remain 
quite fixed in its inorganic slate, or arrive at a more or less perfect organic 
state. 
Thirdly. This organic formation has as its aim and goal the languages 
with inflexions, the system we find harmoniously developed In Sanscrit and 
Greek, and the cognate languages. 
Fourthly. The intermediate phenomena must be arranged in a series, 
as steps of the general development from the inorganic U> the organic. 
Fifthly. Inflexions can only be explained os worii-out affixes, or as inde¬ 
pendent particles, and these as decaycil full (nominal or verbal) roots. 
With these results wc shall now return to the investigation of the pro¬ 
blem which wc found placed before us, — the classification of languages, in 
particular as to tlic language of Kgypt,—an<l look hack to those two different 
systems respecting the historical origin of languages, to which we alluded 
above. We are reduced to the following (Hleinma:—Either there has been 
an infinite number of such beginniugs, out of which different tribes have 
sprung, and with them different languages, each doing originally the same 
work, and continuing and advancing it more or less according to its particu¬ 
lar task, its natural powers and its historical destinies; or the beginning of 
speech was made only once, in the beginning of human time, in the dawm of 
tile mental day, by one favoured race (however it was originally formed) in a 
genial place of the cartli, the garden of Asia. Of such centres we have in 
the primeval facts of ethnology three; the western one, having Mount 
Ararat as a southern, and Mount Caucasus as the northern centre ; the 
eastern one, or the mountainous table-land of Tibiit, with its eastern and 
southern slope; fiiiallv, the middle one, the Hindukush, with the Iranians 
and Turanians around it. 
Within the circumference of this district the human race first developed 
and spread itself, either equally from all three points, as the one assumption 
would lead us to suppose, or from one first, according to the otlicr of the two 
})ossibIe scientific assumptions. 
On one supposition or on the other, the development of language must 
have been connected with different crises, such as must modify social exist¬ 
ence, ami therefore spoecli. The rising of new nationalities must produce 
new languages. In consequence of such Inward or outward, natural or 
political, and religions catastrophes, colonies went out, and swarms of men 
issued forth to distant countries, bearing with them the heirloom of their first 
fatherland in their speech, and carrying it on from that starting-point with 
their own individual strength, under more or less favourable circumstances. 
On this supposition there will he in some races a more continuous and 
organic development, rctiuuing more of uninterruptcrl consciousness of the 
past; whereas olheratend rapidly to a premature or conventional develop¬ 
ment; others again preserve this old state with unbending tenacity. One 
race will distinguish ibelf thus above all others by a full development from 
the inorganic to the orj.'anic formation. .Although it becomes thus in the 
course of ages the most perfect organic lauguage, the race will, by virtue 
of the harmonic development of all its parts towards one, and that the 
highest end, preserve more of the ancient heirloom than others less perfect, 
