the noun-cases which their addition to the verb had caused to be construed with it. We see them coming into distinct existence in the oldest languages of the family, as the Sanskrit; and their increase of number and consequence ever since is apparent. Conjunctions, though we nowhere find them absolutely wanting, are of secondary origin, being among the most characteristic products of the historical development of speech. To be able to put clauses together into periods, with due determination of their relation to one another, is a step beyond the power to put words alike determinately together into clauses.

These are the Indo-European "parts of speech: " that is to say, the main classes of words, having restricted application and definite connection, into which the holophrastic ('equivalent to a whole phrase ') utterances of a primitive time have by degrees become divided; the separated parts, members, of what was once an undistinguished whole. But there is one other class, the interjections, which are not in the same and the proper sense a "part of speech;" which are, rather, analogous with those all-comprehending signs out of which the rest have come by evolution. A typical interjection is the mere spontaneous utterance of a feeling, capable of being paraphrased into a good set expression for what it intimates: thus, an ah! or an oh! may mean, according to its tone, ‘I am hurt,' or 'am surprised,' or 'am pleased,' and so on; only there is no part of it which means one of the elements of the statement while another part means another. Yet, such creatures of conventional habit in regard to expression have we become by our long use of the wholly conventional apparatus of language, that even our exclamations have generally a conventional character, and shade off into

exclamatory utterance of ordinary terms. A man's feelings must be very keenly touched in order to draw out of him a purely natural interjection, in which absolutely no trace of the acquired habits of his community shall be perceptible. And the interjectional employment of common words, or of incomplete phrases, is a very common thing in the general use of speech; emotion or eagerness causing the usual set framework of the sentence, the combination of subject and predicate, to be thrown aside, and the conspicuous or emphatic elements to be presented alone—a real abnegation of the historical development which, under the growing dominion of consciousness over instinct and of reason over passion, has wrought the sentence out of the root.

In this too brief and imperfect sketch of the history of Indo-European speech, no attempt has been made to define the order in which the parts of the inflectional development followed one another. Success is not to be hoped for in any such attempt until the history of less highly developed and of almost undeveloped languages shall be far better understood than it is at present. For, to reason these matters out on Indo-European ground alone is at any rate impossible: the period lies too far back, its evidences are too fragmentary and difficult of interpretation; we are not competent to judge them. As to the impossibility of determining the absolute time occupied by the history, enough, perhaps, has been already said: that it should have taken less than a very long time, there is no reason whatever for believing. The whole was a series of successive steps, of which one led to another and these to yet others; a growth of habits which were in themselves capacities also; and each step, the formation of each habit, was a work of time, not less in the olden time

than it would have to be in the modern period: though whether a work of not less time, we can hardly venture to say, since the rate of growth may fall under the government of conditions which we cannot, as yet, fully appreciate.

There has also been, so far as synthetic structure is concerned, an evident climax, followed by an anti-climax, in this history. During the immense prehistoric period, and prior to the separation of the branches from one another, the inflectional system of the noun, and less distinctly that of the verb, reached a fullness which has since undergone a gradual reduction. Not that there has been generally a diminution of ability to express distinctions; but means of another kind have been more and more resorted to: auxiliaries, form-words, instead of suffixes, formative elements in words; and these later means we are accustomed to call analytic, as distinguished from synthetic. He might have loved and he will be loved, as contrasted with their Latin equivalents amavisset and amabitur, may be taken as typical examples of the two modes of expression. This fact has been adduced as evidence against an original radical condition of language, by some scholars, who prefer to assume a primitive period of excessive polysyllabism. But with evident injustice; the argument would be a good one only if no such thing as the making of forms were known in language, but only their wearing-out and loss. If we see how collocation and combination and integration and mutilation and corruption all work in succession on the same material in every part of language, producing forms and destroying them again, it is plainly within the competency of the changing circumstances and habits of the language-making community to give the history of development a

climactic form. The constructive methods, once inaugurated, are made effective up to the provision of a sufficient apparatus for the expression of relations; and for a time, until this point is reached, their efficiency is greater than that of the destructive processes, which also have been all the time at work-then the relation is gradually reversed, and there is more wearing-out than replacement by synthetic means, though this latter also never entirely ceases; collocations remain such, instead of going on to combination and integration; there is still abundant new provision, but it is of another sort. The habit of construction has changed; though to a very different degree in the divided parts of the great community. If there is a law which governs this climactic phase of development, it has not yet been worked out and exhibited; nor is it likely ever to be so, although we can trace some of the determining influences which have contributed to bring about the effect.

It is time now for us to leave the family which has so long occupied us, and to review, in a much briefer manner, the structure of the other grand divisions of human language. But, founding upon the example of historic growth which we have just been studying, it is desirable first to turn our attention to some general features of the doctrine of linguistic structure.

CHAPTER XI.

LINGUISTIC STRUCTURE:

MATERIAL AND FORM IN LAN-
GUAGE.

The distinction of material and form; examples: number, gender, case, etc., in nouns; comparison and concord of adjectives; time, mood, and other distinctions in verbs. Form by position. Inferences. National and individual prejudices; comparative value of different languages. A language represents the capacity of its makers. Rude beginnings of all speech.

To understand, in a general way, the structure of Indo-European speech, in its character and its uses, is to us no difficult task; the subject is already more or less familiar. Though the parts of this structure which our own language still possesses are but fragmentary, they are at least akin with the rest, and lead the way to the knowledge of the whole. It is comparatively a question only of less and more; and many of us know the more, as exhibited in those tongues of the family which have retained a larger share of the original structure, or have supplied its loss more fully. We cannot, however, go on profitably to examine the character of other languages without discussing a little, by way of introduction, the principles of grammatical structure. It will be possible to do this, sufficiently for our purpose, in a wholly simple and unpretentious manner, drawing illustration from phenomena with which