Before passing to another example, a few words seem necessary here. It is evident that the scheme of radicals to represent the above table of words is the following: T LP LPT PT PTR TR TRN (TRP) once TR K RK K KB KBR BR KR K RK K K It is equally evident that this scheme would be improved, if it were not actually completed, had we the words meaning Stone in all the other languages of the earth, four hundred more or less. In which case assuming only the three principal contacts and keeping within the range of triliterals, it might be represented thus: Р PTK P K TK T P KP K T TK T P KP P P KP P KP K K K K K TK TK T T But if, as we see by the above chart would take place, instead of only the three primary contacts P, T, K, we must add the lingual L or Ras distinct from T, and in fact a fourth primary element, while N plays a prominent role as primary grammatical affix, it is easy to imagine the great extent to which the perfected scheme will descend. The point of remark, however, is this:-the scheme is not one made up artificially like a row of arithmetical numbers or algebraic figures, to see how many different compounds of three or four or five elements exist arithmetically in the abstract; on the contrary, it results from a process of alternate growth and decay, of alternate additions and elisions, or of alternate expansions of expression and contractions, under the influence of two very different, opposite but co-ordinated laws of speech, by one of which the human mind endeavours always to enlarge and make more precise its words for better comprehension, and by the other to shorten and sweeten them for use. Thus language has a phyllotaxis of its own, by which its stem is regularly occupied to the utmost possibilities of the occasion. As to the aboriginal meaning of these words for STONE, or which came first, or what radicals are original prefixes and what are affixes, these are recondite questions not involved in this discussion, and perhaps impossible to answer. It may, however, not be uninteresting to point out as a possible key to some of these riddles, the form PTR, PTL, contracted to P'R, P’L, (Romance Peiro, Coptic Pial, c. Boina, Piorna, Pjun, Fualla, &c. &c. in the chart), which explains at all events the Greek Tρ, as P. Tor, the tor, the tabor, the taurus, the tower, meaning the rock or stone; and shows why the Apostle of the keys was chosen to bear the church. The sermon was on the mount. But these suggestions are foreign from the subject of this paper. The Greek dog seems to be as true an inversion of tor, or tel, as the Tangutch RTo evidently is. And here mention cannot be omitted, however casually, of the intimate mythological connection between the ideas of STONE and MAN in language. RT was the Egyptian, ROT the Coptic word for both, while ReT meant form, species, sculpture; and herein lies the explanation: the principal bardic use of stone was to represent the human form divine, whether in sculpture on the native rock or propylon wall, or as set up in ambrose stones alone or in circles, or as termini, caryatides, images, or columns in the temple. Idolatry being ancestral worship, the stone PaTaR had the same name as father, warp, and all standing stones were legendary giants, or patriarchs turned to stone in some past age of human magic |