Now this discovery completes the system to which the Egyptian has brought us. It is decisive proof that the Arian and Semitic stems are, in respect to their forms. and roots, so far cognate as to oblige us once more to assume a community of origin.

The series of development thus obtained is therefore, so far as the organic languages of Asia and Europe are concerned, an historical one, a fact, not an idea.

But then, what becomes of the Chinese? It is a language without forms and without parts of speech, whereas all other languages have both. Every Chinese syllable is a word, and every word a complete root, which may be a noun or verb according to its position in the sentence; consequently a not yet individualised stem. Here, therefore, there can be no question about affinity of grammatical forms, for there are no purely formative words in the Chinese, and there is no grammar beyond the syntax, that is, beyond the law of the architectonic arrangement of single words.

Now we find such Chinese roots in use in the neighbouring Turanian languages which represent the beginnings of organic life, or the formation of the word as an organic part of speech. This first stage of organic formation must clearly be that of uniting several roots by the unity of tone (accent) into the unity of a word as a part of speech, consequently into a noun or verb. But one particle does not affect the other, it is merely agglutination. Such are the most ancient Tibetan, such those of the Indian tribes of North America. In these agglutinative languages, it is a fundamental law that the stem which is to be more closely defined by those agglutinations is nowise affected by them. The Semitic suffixes and affixes affect the root, and they themselves have no independent signification as single words. In the other case, on the contrary, they retain their full radical meaning.

B.

DEDUCTIONS FROM THE PRECEDING REMARKS AS TO THE METHOD AND IMPORT OF THE HISTORICAL ANALYSIS OF THE EGYPTIAN LANGUAGE.

FROM what has been already advanced, the order in which the above three main stems of language are to be arranged in the historical series becomes self-evident.

We have consequently to investigate three degrees of affinity in languages, which are not only possible and imaginable, but actually existing; and the true, that is the real, philosophy of language must establish formulas for these three degrees:

The affinity of forms.

The affinity of roots.

The affinity of stems.

The first is that which exists between all branches of a great family of languages: consequently,

Semism, with its Khamitic antecedent stage; and
Arism, with its Turanian antecedent stage.

The second is that which exists, either with or without traces of the first, between the two great main families of the Asiatico-European formative languages.

The third is that which proves to be a reality upon a comparison between the Tibetan family of the Turanian stem and the Chinese.

The sentence-language, or syllabic word-language, out of which the earliest form of Khamism directly issued, has altogether perished in Central Asia; but the philosophical analysis of the Egyptian language shows that Semism and Arism represent a difference not amounting to total separation: the two are, as it were, the western and eastern poles of the above-mentioned vast and fruitful development in Central and Western Asia and in Europe.

Next to the inorganic language (the Chinese) come the oldest of the Turanian formations: historically, therefore, all the languages of the latter stem, in so far as they have remained purely agglutinative. For this latter principle is necessarily opposed to the admission of the Semitic system of affixes, or the Arian one of terminal syllables. But if the former principle be abandoned, the language ceases de facto to be Turanian, and consequently does not come under discussion here.

Khamism, the stage antecedent to Semism, exhibits a development corresponding to the Turanian which we require. Its importance, however, is of a very special kind. The Egyptian alone furnishes authentic proof of the identity of the Semitic and Iranian. In it also we find a fixed chronological point which goes very far back, and a continuous series of records during three thousand years.

Now should we succeed in defining the position, as to date, of any language by the internal fundamental quality of its construction in relation to other languages which are scientifically investigated, we should thus have laid the foundation for defining an epoch in primeval time. In that case we might venture to hope that we had obtained, for the first time, an authentic basis for the historical development of primeval humanity; not merely in the idea, but according to actual affinity, and according to epoch, capable of being fixed chronologically with more or less precision. This fact would be of a certain importance. The final corollary would be the scientific demonstration of the unity of mankind, naturally and historically, as well as the unity of language and all the traditions and customs dependent upon it. It would also prove that the human race must have required a far longer period of existence for Chinese to grow into Iranism, than those who hold the ordinary rabbinical notions are

willing to admit ; notions which have only originated and been maintained from want of thought, and from confusion in religious or ecclesiastical views. Every separate stratum of language which can be pointed out implies an epoch; a new one cannot be formed until the earlier has died out and become a humus for the growth of another. The organic law of nature must run its course.

In this way, lastly, an immovable basis for the general internal history of man would be obtained; that is to say, for the understanding of it as an organic development of the idea of the Humanity.

We must therefore endeavour to give a sketch of the outlines of such a method, for the especial aim and object of this work.

C.

OUTLINES OF A PHILOSOPHICAL METHOD OF DETERMINING APPROXIMATELY THE AGE OF THE PRIMITIVE WORLD BY MEANS OF LANGUAGE, WITH ESPECIAL REFERENCE TO EGYPT.

THE facts before us establish beyond all dispute the reasonableness and probability of the assumption that the Egyptian language is connected with the historical languages of Asia, and that it represents the deposit of a type of language which served in the primeval country as the point of transition for new formations.

This brings us, therefore, to the threshold of an inquiry which, to many who have gone with us thus far, may at the first blush seem too adventurous. We mean to undertake to determine the place which the above formation of language occupies in time, although we have stated expressly that any certain chronology prior to

Menes is out of the question. Many persons will be unable to shake off the impression that we must be leading them into a path from which there is no means of extricating ourselves.

For my own part, I am, on the contrary, convinced by the results of my researches, that this inquiry not only admits of being satisfactorily established in theory, but that we possess the means of applying the theory successfully to the immediate object of our research. It can be shown that by means of Egypt the bridge is found which was wanted for passing from the historic to the ante-historic and primeval, with a computation of dates. I cherish the belief, also, that every educated reader, who does not shrink from the trouble of carefully examining the method here to be developed, will find sufficient help, in the materials which have been and still are to be adduced upon the best authority, to enable him to test it for himself. It is true, that, in order to keep within the compass of this work, I must refer him to the general outlines of the historical philosophy of language, which were sketched out, in my latest English work, upon the basis of a Preliminary Essay in 1847.

The historic age is computed by years; primeval time is computed by epochs. The first thing to be done is to find the unit for the primeval world which corresponds to years. This is obviously the difference between the beginning of one life or generation of men and the next; or, according to the calculation which upon the whole is found correct both for the Old and New World, the third of a century.

This unit is not an arbitrary one. In language, especially, every thing is a tradition from generation to generation; consequently progress is so likewise. Language progresses as soon as the movement of organic life is felt within it. But it progresses as from mother to child, from the elders of a community to the youth, from priest