on one side that although settled languages retain their grammatical character, every agglutinate language must once have been monosyllabic, or radical, and every inflectional language once agglutinate; and on the other side it is averred that the assertion is incapable of proof, for no historical evidence exists of any one type ever having passed from one of these stages to another. Now if speech is a perfected gift of the Creator, how happens it that we find language in every stage of development or relapse, from the cluckings of Thlinkeets to the classic lines of Homer and of Shakspeare? In his physiological structure, so far as is known, Man is neither more nor less perfect now than in the days of Adam. How then if language is an organism, is it, unlike other organisms, subject to extreme and sudden change? In animated nature there are two principles; one fixed and finished as an organism, subject to perpetual birth and decay, but incapable of advancing or retrograding; the other, elemental life, the germ or centre of a future development. The one grows, the other unfolds. We have no evidence that instincts and organic functions were more or less perfect in the beginning than now. If therefore language is an instinct or an organism, a perfect gift of the Creator, how can it exist otherwise than in a concrete and perfect state like other instincts and organisms?

The absurdity that human speech is the invention of primitive man—that upon some grassy knoll a company of half-clad barbarians met, and without words invented words, without significant sounds produced sounds significant of every object, therein by mutual consent originating a language—may be set aside. Of all conjectures concerning the origin of language, the hypothesis that words are an artificial invention is the least tenable. And what is most surprising to us, at the present day, is that such men as Locke and Adam Smith and Dugald Stewart could for a moment have entertained the idea. Obviously, without language there could be no culture, and without culture, words never could have been invented. Words are the symbols of objects and ideas. Certain words may be arbitrarily selected, and, by the tacit agreement or general concurrence of society, may be made to signify certain things. And in this sense words may originate conventionally. But though words may have been conventionally selected, they were never selected by conventions. We then have the discoveries of modern philologists, not only to positively deny the infallibility of the common-origin theory, but to bring forward a number of other claimants for the greatest antiquity, as well entitled to a hearing as the Hebrew.

UNIVERSALITY OF SPEECH.

Diversity in the origin of speech does not of necessity imply diversity in the origin of race. Thus with a unity of race, circumstances may be conceived in which independent tongues may have arisen in different localities; whereas with a diversity of race, but one language hypothetically may have been given to all. A common origin is probable, a diversity of origin is possible; neither can be proved or disproved. The radical differences in the structure of the three great types, the monosyllabic, the agglutinate, and the inflectional; and the inherent heterogeneities of the several families of the same type, as of the Chinese and Siamese, of the American and Turanian, or even of the Arian and Semitic, would seem to present insurmountable obstacles to the theory of a common origin; while on the other hand the wonderful mutations of types and trunks, the known transformations of language, and the identifications by some philologists, of the same stock in each of the three progressional stages, render the theory of a unity of origin in language equally probable. Therefore the question of unity or diversity of tongues, as we speak of unity or diversity of race, can be of but little moment to us. Language shows the connection between nations widely separated, leads us back beyond tradition into the obscure past, follows the sinuosities of migrations, indicates epochs in human development, points towards the origin of peoples, serves as a guide in following the radiation of races from common centres. Yet a similarity in the sound, or even in the construction of two words, does not necessarily imply relationship. Two totally distinct languages may have borrowed the same word from a third language; which fact would never establish relationship between the borrowers. When like forms are found in different languages, in order to establish a relationship, historical evidence must be applied as a test, and the words followed up to their roots.

Stripped of technicalities, the question before us is reduced to a few simple propositions. All men speak; there never yet was found a nation without articulate language. Aside from individual and abnormal exceptions, no primitive tribe has ever been discovered, where part of the people spoke, and part were speechless. Language is as much a part of man, as any physical constituent; yet unlike physical organs, as the eye, the ear, the hand, language is not born with the individual. It is not in the blood. The Caucasian infant stolen by Apaches, cannot converse with its own mother when restored to her a few years after.

Therefore speech is not an independent, perfected gift of the Creator, but an incidental acquirement. Furthermore language is an attribute of society. It belongs to the people and not to the individual. The child before mentioned, if dropped by the Apaches among the bears and by them nurtured and reared, is doomed to mutism or bear-language. Man was made a social being; speech was made as a means of communicating intelligence between social beings; one individual alone never could originate, or even preserve a language.

But how then happens it, if man did not make it, and God did not give it him, that human speech is universal? With the organism of man the Creator implants the organs of speech. With the elemental and progressional life of man the Creator implants the germ of speech. In common with the element of progress and civilization, innate from the beginning, speech has developed by slow degrees through thousands of cycles and by various stages, marching steadily forward with the forward march of the intellect. Comparative philology, in common with all other sciences, accords to man a remote antiquity. Bunsen estimates that at least twenty thousand years are required for a language to pass from one rudimentary stage to another.

The mind receives impressions and the soul intuitions, and to throw them off in some form is an absolute necessity. Painful impressions tend to produce bodily contortions and dolorous sounds; pleasant impressions to illumine the features and to make musical the voice. And not only is this compressed emotion destined to find expression, but to impress itself upon others. Emotion is essentially sympathetic. Why certain objects are represented by certain sounds we can never know. Some think that between every word and the object or idea which it represents, there was in the first instance an intimate relationship. By degrees certain natural articulations became associated with certain ideas; then new names were suggested by some fancied analogy to objects already named. Everything else being equal, similar conditions and causations produce similar impressions and are expressed by similar sounds. Hence a certain uniformity between all human tongues; and a tendency in man to imitate the sounds in nature, the cries of animals, the melodies of winds and waters, accounts for the origin of many words.

From giving expression in some outward form to our inward emotion there is no escape. Let us now apply to the expression of feeling and emotion the same law of evolution which governs all social and intellectual