how valuable to linguistic research would prove the study of this group of languages.

I think there is no doubt but that it points unmistakably to that very ancient, to that primordial period of human utterance when men had not yet learned to connect words into sentences, when their utmost efforts at articulate speech did not go beyond single words, which, aided by gestures and signs, served to convey their limited intellectual converse. Such single vocables did not belong to any particular part of speech. There was no grammar to that antique tongue. Its disconnected exclamations mean whole sentences in themselves.

A large part of the human race, notably, but not exclusively, the aborigines of this continent, continued the tradition of this mode of expression in the structure of their tongues long after the union of thought and sound in audible speech had been brought to a high degree of perfection.

Although I thus regard one of the most prominent peculiarities of American languages as a survival from an exceedingly low stage of human development, it by no means follows that this is an evidence of their inferiority.

The Chinese, who made no effort to combine the primitive vocables into one, but range them nakedly side by side, succeeded no better than the American Indians; and there is not much beyond assertion to prove that the Aryans, who, through their inflections, marked the relation of each word in the sentence by numerous tags of case, gender, number, etc., got any nearer the ideal perfection of language.

If we apply what is certainly a very fair test, to wit: the uses to which a language is and can be put, I cannot see that a well-developed American tongue, such as the Aztec or the Algonkin, in any way falls short of, say French or English.

It is true that in many of these tongues there is no distinction made between expressions, which with us are carefully separated, and are so in thought. Thus, in the Tupi of Brazil and elsewhere, there is but one word for the three expressions, “his father,” “he is a father,” and “he has a father;” in many, the simple form of the verb may convey three different ideas, as in Ute, where the word for “he seizes” means also “the seizer,” and as a descriptive noun, “a bear,” the animal which seizes.

This has been charged against these languages as a lack of “differentiation.” Grammatically this is so, but the same charge applies with almost equal force to the English language, where the same word may belong to any of four, five, even six parts of speech, dependent entirely on the connection in which it is used.

As a set-off, the American languages avoid confusions of expression which prevail in European tongues.

Thus in none of these latter, when I say “the love of God,” “l’amour de Dieu,” “amor Dei,” can you understand what I mean. You do not know whether I intend the love which we have or should have toward God, or God’s love toward us. Yet in the Mexican language (and many other American tongues) these two quite opposite ideas are so clearly distinguished that, as Father Carochi warns his readers in his Mexican Grammar, to confound them would not merely be a grievous solecism in speech, but a formidable heresy as well.

Another example. What can you make out of this sentence, which is strictly correct by English grammar: “John told Robert’s son that he must help him”? You can make nothing out of it. It may have any one of six different meanings, depending on the persons referred to by the pronouns “he” and “him.” No such lamentable confusion could occur in any American tongue known to me. The Chippeway, for instance, has three pronouns of the third person, which designate the near and the remote antecedents with the most lucid accuracy.

There is another point that I must mention in this connection, because I find that it has almost always been overlooked or misunderstood by critics of these languages. These have been free in condemning the synthetic forms of construction. But they seem to be ignorant that their use is largely optional. Thus, in Mexican, one can arrange the same sentence in an analytic or a synthetic form, and this is also the case, in a less degree, in the Algonkin. By this means a remarkable richness is added to the language. The higher the grade of synthesis employed, the more striking, elevated, and pointed becomes the expression. In common life long compounds are rare, while in the native Mexican poetry each line is often but one word.

Turning now from the structure of these languages to their vocabularies, I must correct a widespread notion that they are scanty in extent and deficient in the means to express lofty or abstract ideas.

Of course, there are many tracts of thought and learning familiar to us now which were utterly unknown to the American aborigines, and not less so to our own forefathers a few centuries ago. It would be very unfair to compare the dictionary of an Indian language with the last edition of Webster’s Unabridged. But take the English dictionaries of the latter half of the sixteenth century, before Spenser and Shakespeare wrote, and compare them with the Mexican vocabulary of Molina, which contains about 13,000 words, or with the Maya vocabulary of the convent of Motul, which presents over 20,000, both prepared at that date, and your procedure will be just, and you will find it not disadvantageous to the American side of the question.

The deficiency in abstract terms is generally true of these languages. They did not have them, because they had no use for them,—and the more blessed was their condition. European languages have been loaded with several thousand such by metaphysics and mysticism, and it has required several generations to discover that they are empty wind-bags, full of sound and signifying nothing.

Yet it is well known to students that the power of forming abstracts is possessed in a remarkable degree by many native languages. The most recondite formulæ of dogmatic religion, such as the definition of the Trinity and the difference between consubstantiation and transubstantiation, have been translated into many of them without introducing foreign words, and in entire conformity with their grammatical structure. Indeed, Dr. Augustin de la Rosa, of the University of Guadalajara, who is now the only living professor of any American language, says the Mexican is peculiarly adapted to render these metaphysical subtleties.

I have been astonished that some writers should bring up the primary meaning of a word in an American language in order to infer the coarseness of its secondary meaning. This is a strangely unfair proceeding, and could be directed with equal effect against our own tongues. Thus, I read lately a traveller who spoke hardly of an Indian tribe because their word for “to love” was a derivative from that meaning “to buy,” and thence “to prize.” But what did the Latin amare, and the English to love, first mean? Carnally living together is what they first meant, and this is not a nobler derivation than that of the Indian. Even yet, when the most polished of European nations, that one which most exalts la grande passion, does not distinguish in language between loving their wives and liking their dinners, but uses the same word for both emotions, it is scarcely wise for us to indulge in much latitude of inference from such etymologies.

Such is the general character of American languages, and such are the reasons why they should be preserved and studied. The field is vast and demands many laborers to reap all the fruit that it promises. It is believed at present that there are about two hundred wholly independent stocks of languages among the aborigines of this continent. They vary most widely in