nal therein. For instance, the numeral six is in Sanskrit shash, in Persian shesh, in Latin sex, in German sechs. Mother is in Sanskrit matr, in Greek méter, in Latin mater, in Persian madar, in German mutter. Mouse is in Sanskrit musha, in Greek mus, in Latin mus, in Persian mush, in German maus. The following are a few other simple words which run through the entire series, viz: two, seven, eight, nine, father, brother, foot, knee, name, nail, yoke, sugar, star, is, reacheth, beareth, mixeth, licketh, thou and no. The discovery of this family likeness between the different Indo-European languages, the very ones with which the student was most familiar, and which, at first sight, presented the most formidable obstacles to a union, was an important step towards proving the radical connection of all. Another step in advance was taken by Lepsius, in demonstrating that the ancient Egyptian tongue, while it is neither a Semitic nor an Indo-European dialect, yet sustains a fraternal relationship towards both families. On this point the Chevalier Bunsen (certainly the highest authority) does not hesitate to say that t+ "It must be considered as demonstrated that this affinity cannot be explained by mere internal analogy; that, on the contrary, it is historical in the strictest sense of the word, viz: physical or original. I mean that the affinity alluded to cannot rationally be explained by a real or supposed general analogy of languages as the expressions of human thought, nor by the later influence of other nations and tongues. Now the Egyptian name of Egypt is Chêm, the land of Cham, which in Egyptian means black. Can we then have found in Egypt the scientific and historical meaning of Cham, [Ham,] as one of the tripartite divisions of postdiluvian humanity? The Egyptian language attests an unity of blood with the great Aramaic tribes of Asia, whose languages have been comprised by scholars under the general expression Semitic, or the languages of the family of Shem. It is equally connected by identity of origin with those still more numerous and illustrious tribes which occupy now the greatest part of Europe, and may, perhaps, alone or with other families, have a right to be called the family of Japhet. I mean that great family to which the Germanic nations belong, as well as the Greeks and Romans, the Indians and Persians, the Slavonic and Celtic tribes, and which are now generally called the Indo-European nations. The most ancient traditions of Europe certainly speak of Japhet, for Japetos is, according to the Greeks, the father of the great Titan or benevolent man of God who brought the celestial fire to his suffering brethren on earth."* * Report of the British Association for 1847, p. 254. It will be observed that these conclusions are in absolute harmony with the ethnological chart in the tenth chapter of Genesis, as translated by Mr. Gliddon. In fine, the knowledge of the Egyptian language, makes it probable that all the nations which from the dawn of history to our day have been the leaders of civilization in Asia, Europe and Africa, had one beginning. So far we stand on firm ground. What follows is more problematical. Recent researches have gone far to show that the Tatars, Mandshus and Lungasians belong to one great stock; that the Turkonians, as well as the Tchudes, Fins, Laplanders and Magyars or Hungarians, present another stock closely united, and that both these families are originally connected with each other. It seems probable that the aboriginal languages of India and the Basque, (Biscyan,) are members of the great family. To the whole group is given by some philologists the appellation Turanian, and to the Indo-European tongues the title Iranian, both being considered as two great branches from one root, viz: the language of Japhet. Again, Wilhelm Von Humboldt has established the connection between the Polynesian and the Malay or the dialect of Malacca, Java and Sumatria, and that this Malay language itself bears the character of another branch of the great Japhetic family. In the preface to Eastwick's translation of that invaluable work, Bopp's Comparative Grammar, the editor says: "The Vergleichende Grammatik, originally published in separate parts, has not yet reached its termination. In his first plan the author comprised the affinities of Sanscrit, Zend, Greek, Latin, Gothic and its Teutonic descendants. To these, after the conclusion of the first part, he added the Slavonic. He has since extended his researches to the analogies of the Celtic and Malay-Polynesian dialects, but has not yet incorporated the results with his general grammar." Thus does the family of languages of which our own is a member continually tend to enlarge its bounds. The languages of the New World for a long time seemed to present insuperable obstacles in the way either of a reduction into one group or an assimilation to the known families of the eastern * See above, page [11.] hemisphere. The number of dialects is incredible, and many of the American tribes spoke a language unintelligible to their nearest neighbors. But here too, the universal law of aggregation was found to prevail, and a close examination of the structure pervading the aboriginal forms of speech has left no room to doubt that, with the exception of the Esquimaux and other Arctic tribes, they all make up one individual family, closely knitted-together in all its parts by that most essential of all ties—grammatical analogy. This analogy consists chiefly in the peculiar methods of modifying, conjugationally, the meanings and relations of verbs by what has been called agglutination or the insertion of syllables. This grammatical structure most nearly allies them with the Turanian branch of the great Japhetic family, although, "in inflections and other grammatical details, the North American Indian dialects partially coincide with individual Indo-European languages in the same way as those languages partially agree among themselves."* So little, comparatively, is known of the American tongues, that for the present only a general classification as a branch of the Japhetic family can be expected. In regard to Africa, Egyptology has shewn that the language of the hieroglyphics is as certainly the primitive formation of the Euphrates and Tigris, fixed in Africa and preserved by the Egyptians as the Icelandic is the old Norse fixed in that island. "The Semitic itself occupied Abyssinia, and the Berber language evidently belongs to the same stock. But what shall we say of the rest of Africa? "Here late researches have opened a new and great field of the most interesting character. We allude, in particular, to the labors of Tuts* * Von Gablentz, Ewald, * chek, * * * * Kraff, * * * * and Venn. These and similar works about the southeastern languages of Africa, have entirely destroyed those unfounded notions of an infinite number of rude and poor tongues. We now know that dialects of the Galla language, which in the North joins the Abys sinian, a very fine specimen of grammatical structure and euphonic formation, are spoken at least as far as the fifth degree south of the Equator; that it penetrates deeply into the continent along the eastern coast of Africa; that it is joined by the noble Caffre idioms, which also enter far into the interior, and that the Congo idioms on the western coast, if not *Johnes on the Human Race, p. 168. cognate, are at least very analogous in structure, as the Galla and Caffre are decidedly among themselves. "They, besides all, bear on them vestiges of primitive affinity, according to our principles, with the great tripartite stock. But if we are asked, do these languages belong to Chamism [the Hamitic or Egyptian development], or do they stand on the degree represented by Semitism [or the Hebrew]? We are obliged to answer, neither the one nor the other. On the contrary * * * * * we must confess that they stand on Japhetic ground. The primitive state of Chamism, exhibiting the germ both of Semitism and of Japhetism, is evidently left behind in those advanced formations. There is a further development, but that development does not run in the Semitic line. In the Semitic formations, the copula is constantly expressed by the pronomial form (he) [e. g. John he good, not John is good], whereas in the Iranian as well as the Turanian it is not, therefore all Japhetic languages have already the more abstract and therefore the more advanced verbal form (to be.) In this decisive characteristic those African tongues side with the Japhetic. And so they do in the whole system of conjugation in opposition to the Semitic conjugation, as explained above. As the American, and in a certain manner, all Turanian languages are distinguished by their system of incorporation, and in particular of agglutination of words, together with that of postposition; thus these African idioms bear the type of prefixes and indicate the congruence of the parts of speech by changes in the initials of words."* There remains one group of tongues which had not yet been linked by any scientific method to the other families of human speech, and that directly or indirectly connected with the great tripartite family of mankind. This consists of the Chinese and cognate, monosyllabic, inorganic tongues. The Chinese language consists of about 20,000 words of one syllable each, all ending in A, E, I, O, U, NG, or N.† According to its position, a syllable may very often be noun, adjective or verb. Terms are multiplied by variation of the accent and tone of voice. The nouns have no inflections. In consequence of this rudimentary condition, the Chinese has been by some conjectured to be a surviving monument of antedeluvian speech. Be that as it may, its study is yet in its infancy and there is no scientific proof that the gap between its formation and all others cannot be * Bunsen on the results of recent Egyptian researches in reference to Asiatic and African ethnology and the classification of languages. Report of British Association for 1847, p. 298. Murray on languages, vol. 1, p. 188. filled up. The inference from the general results of philological research is, that it will be. As the result of the whole investigation all known tongues may be resolved into three classes only, according to the classification proposed by A. N. Von Schlegel and adopted by Bopp. I. Languages with monosyllabic roots, but incapable of composition, and therefore without grammar or organization. To this class belongs the Chinese, in which we have nothing but naked roots, and the predicates and other relations of the subject are determined merely by the position of words in the sentence. II. Languages with monosyllabic roots, which are susceptible of composition. To this class belongs the Indo-European family, and all others not included under I and III, and preserved in such a state that the forms of the words may still be resolved into their simplest elements. III. Languages which consist of dissylabic roots and require three consonants as the vehicles of their fundamental signification. This class contains the Semitic languages only. But class II, (Ham and Japhet,) has, as we have seen, been proved to be radically connected with class III (Shem), leaving only class I at present insoluble. Such is the argument, briefly and we trust fairly stated, in favor of the unity of the human race, derived from the study of languages. It is undoubtedly the strongest on that side of the question which can be brought forward. But it is open to some obvious objections. 1. The Chinese, Thibetan and Japanase tongues, essentially the same now as they were 5,000 years ago, and spoken by more than one third of the human race, are confessedly diverse in their essence from all the others. 2. Language is a necessary consequence of the human organization; in other words, all men speak, because all men have the organs of speech. But as these organs are capable of giving utterance only to a certain limited number of original sounds, it follows of necessity that these sounds must sometimes coincide in the expression of the same idea. Again, things and their relations, objects, with their properties, changes and actions are every |