I 
ON ETHNOLOGY. 
315 
may be said to consist in jiexihiUfy and dasticUy. And if I were to desig¬ 
nate in the same way the principle of most of the leading non-Sanscritic 
features in the etymological department, I should call it analytical distinct' 
ness: flexibility, elasticity, analytical distinctness—and are not these the 
qualities whicli most nearly represent the character of the whole Celtic 
nation?—But the idea I have touched upon in the phrase analytical di¬ 
stinctness requires some farther explanation, for which 1 must solicit the kind 
attention of my hearers. 
When we compare our modern European languages, iho English and 
1 French for instance, with the ancient, especially the Latin and Greek, we 
are struck by one marked dilfcreoco in their gratnmatical characters, namely, 
the different manner in which they express relative or incidental notions or 
ideas. By the terra relative or ineideiital we designate and distinguish 
from the other great class of notions, which w call substantive, all those 
norions or ideas which, at the same time that they exclusively represent phe¬ 
nomena of a certain geneial and categorical meaning, moreover represent 
each of them, not with reference to itself, but only to two or several other 
pheenomena which of course always belong to the clus of snbstatitive notions. 
For instance, In tlic sentence, ttte horse is struck by a i^tear, — cqi/us tangitur 
telo — the three substantive notions of which, os of its substantial elements, 
the proposition is composed, are expressed by the words horsey strttek, spear, 
whereas the four particles /Ac, is, hy, a, express the relative or incidental 
notions of the sentence, which evidently does not receive from them the 
addition of any new iudopeodent element, but merely the connexion and de- 
termination of the three aliove-inentionod. And the equivalent Latin sen- 
) tenee which 1 have nu-nlioned will at once have directed the attention of 
my he<arers to the nature of the difl'erenoe which we have stated to exist be¬ 
tween ancient and tnodcru languages, in expressing relative or incidental 
notions. The notions in the above sentence belonging to that class are in 
English reuderedhy four separate and auxlliaiy words placed beside the prin¬ 
cipal, whereas in Latin they are remlcred through the inflexion, as it is gene¬ 
rally called, of the latter. But what is inflexion ? It is’a system of etymolo¬ 
gical combinations, by which any one of tliose olementiwy parts of imitative 
articulation which (by a metaphorical term referring to ibo analogy existing 
between the development of filants and words) arc usually called roots, and 
more especially any one of those r*)uts which expioas substantive ideas, and 
which tor this reason we may call sidfstanlive nots, becomes, in connected 
speech, regularly allied witli one or several of another class of roots which 
differ from the funner, both in form and meaning, the oue being generally 
slighter than that of Mibstaniivo roots, and consisting not, as most of those, 
in a double, but in o simple articulation, the other (the meaning) being always 
that of an Incidental or relative idea, 'rhe place occupied by the incidental 
root may be either betbro or after tbo subetantive root: in the former case 
it is called and j:j the latter, which is by far the nmre general, suffix. 
And having thusdefineil the term inflexion—which in a more appropriate sense 
refers particularly to the mode of interchange which takes place between 
several incidental roots as becoming aUernately attached to one substantive 
root—we may say that the ^tat difiercncc alluded to, between ancient and 
, modern languages, consists in the former expressing incidental notions by 
auxiliary tconis, and the latter by auxtiUary roots: for instance, in the ex¬ 
ample above given, the notions expressed in English by the words the, is, 
by, a, are expressed in Latin rw|)ectively by the tliree suffixes (one of them 
double) ns, it-ur, o. 
The comparative advantages and disadvantages of these two methods may 
be easily understood. The one, uniting the incideutal with the substantive 
