even, perhaps, many times multiplied-that universal acceptance of this conclusion also is not, it appears, much longer to be avoided. And if thus driven to the acknowledgment that man, though the youngest of the animal creation, has trodden the earth for ages-ages which may well seem interminable to the historian, brief as the geologist will deem them—we cannot but feel how immensely diminished is our reasonable hope of attaining definite and certain knowledge respecting even the main facts of this prolonged history, how helpless we stand in presence of a past so remote, how feeble is our power of penetration into its dark depths.

These considerations, however, render even more indispensable than before the cordial and effective coöperation of all the classes of inquirers who are directing their efforts toward the common end. Hitherto, it must be acknowledged, they have not worked together in entire harmony. As is but natural between departments of science of so recent and hasty development, each, while confident of its own value and authority, distrusts those of the rest; physicists and linguists, especially, showing too much disposition to misunderstand and disparage each other's methods and results. Within the limits of each, moreover, division of opinion yet prevails upon points even of prime consequence-which is not without its effect in weakening the confidence of outsiders. A complete mutual understanding, and the full harmonizing of conflicting claims and views, it is obvious, can only be attained when the methods of each department are perfected, and its main results firmly established; but it ought not to be difficult, even now, to bring about a better state of things in these respects than actually exists. We propose, then, after making such an inquiry into the nature of language as shall show us what is its competence as a witness in ethnological questions, to compare briefly its advantages with those of physical science, laboring especially to direct attention to the deficiences of both, and to the need in which each stands of all the aid which it can derive from the other.

How and how far language shall be accepted by us as a proof or indication of race, must depend upon our view of what language is, and what its relation to the beings who

use it. Respecting this point, fundamental as is its importance, there still prevails no small difference of opinion, not only among scientific men generally, but even among professed linguistic students. One very distinguished naturalist, for example, holds that language is to man what his song is to the bird, what their roar, growl, bellow, are to lions, bears, oxen, and that resemblances of language no more indicate actual genetic connection among different tribes of men than resemblances of note indicate the common descent of the different species of thrushes, or of bears, inhabiting different parts of the world. Substantially the same view-namely, that language is the immediate and necessary product of physical or ganization, and varies as this varies; that an Englishman, a Frenchman, and a Chinaman talk differently because their brains and organs of articulation are unlike one another, and all Englishmen, or all Frenchmen, or all Chinamen, talk alike because their nervous and muscular systems minutely correspond-has been distinctly put forward by at least one linguist of the highest rank and reputation; and others, not less respected, teach impliedly the same thing, by holding that language is beyond the reach of the conscious agency of men, that human effort can neither make nor change it. These doctrines would rule out language altogether from any share in the solution of ethnological questions: it would become simply a physical characteristic, one among the many which by their common presence inake up man, and by their variations make the dif ferent varieties of men; and it would be for the physicist alone to determine, here, as in the case of the other physical characteristics, how far the common possession of the quality indicated specific unity, or the difference in its form indicated specific variety. That, however, those who think thus totally misapprehend the nature and value of language is, in our view, undeniable, and may be proved by a brief and simple argument, which will bring the truth of the case plainly to light. Let us take a little specimen of language, and examine it, to see how we came into possession of it, and by what means it acquired and maintains its existence as language.

We select the brief phrase, men like money. There are hundreds of existing languages into which this phrase can be

translated, or which have their own means of expressing the same mental judgment, and not another one of them would express it in this way. What is the reason why we use this particular expression, instead of any one among the hundreds of others? Was it because of some peculiarity in our physical organization, whereby, when we saw men walking about us, and distinguished them from other walking creatures, from horses and dogs, from women and children, we were impelled to apply to them the name man, instead of mann, homme, homo, anthropos, hombre, kanaka, and so on? Most obviously not: it is because we got the word from those about us who were already employing it as the sign of the idea. It cost the guardians of our childhood a little effort at teaching, and ourselves a little effort at learning, to put us in possession of it. It was a task imposed upon our memory so to associate this particular combination of sounds with the conception of a man, that, when the latter was formed in our minds, the other came along with it; that, when any one uttered the word, the conception would immediately stand before us. Very likely, when we first began to use it, our articulating organs were not sufficiently trained to utter the whole of so difficult a combination, and we said mă, learning only later to add the final nasal. Not less probably, we were yet longer in mastering the irregular mode of formation of the plural men, and for a year or two we said, often or always, mans; but this, too, was a difficulty which we at length overcame, conforming our own usage to that of correct speakers about us.

Now there is not a single one of the many hundred words for man which are current in different communities on the earth, that we could not have learned to associate with the same conception, to understand and to employ as sign of that conception, as easily as this one. There is not a human being on earth, be he of what race he may, who could not have acquired this sign, as readily as the one which he now actually uses. The whole matter is one of conventional usage, determined by the custom of the people among whom one's lot is cast. Each one is a living proof of this. There is hardly a person among us who does not know other signs besides man, which he can substitute for this upon occasion. Here, we all say

man, because the usage of the community requires it: if we went to France, we should say homme for precisely the same reason. And we might live so long among those who say homme, and away from those who say man, that the former should be to us the more closely associated and naturally sug gested sign of the two; we should begin, as we say, to think in French instead of in English. Had we commenced the process of substitution early enough, before we had gotten the English sign so thoroughly learned that nothing could ever drive it ont of our memories, we might have forgotten this and all other English words, and learned to talk French as if we were Frenchmen. Any child of English-speaking parents can be made to speak French as its mother-tongue, by simply giving it a French nurse, and taking care that it learns no English. Children of Americans resident in foreign parts grow up bilingual, learning one way of expressing any given conception in their home, another out of doors. Of the thousands and millions of foreign immigrants who land upon our shores, the multifarious dialects disappear after the first generation, except where the incomers gather together in communities, and keep up a linguistic usage of their own for a shorter or longer period.

The word man, then, is no physical product, no result of an impulse in any manner dependent on peculiarities of our corporeal structure: it is an arbitrary and conventional sign for a certain idea; we have acquired and we employ it because it was usual in the community of which we form a part, and with whom we wish to communicate; we learned it of our predecessors, and shall teach it to those who come after us; its existence as an item of speech is kept up only by men's usage, by a historical tradition.

The same thing is true of the words like and money, and of every other word composing our language or any other language. Every spoken tongue is a congeries of signs for thought, deriving their significance from the intelligent consent of speakers and hearers, and sustained in currency by the same

means.

But, it will be asked, is there then no reason why any word means what it does, save the arbitrary will and conventional

assent of the language-speakers? Has its etymology nothing to do with its significance? We answer-as regards its present use, nothing; the etymological reason for a name was of force only at the time of its selection and adoption. The distinction here indicated is an important one, and is too apt to be lost sight of by those who are engaged in the study of language. No doubt there was a reason why each constituent of every spoken language was assigned to the office which it now fills; it had to win its way to general acceptance and use before it became a part of language, and the etymological ground was the principal one which procured its currency; but, when that currency was once attained, when the mental association which binds together idea and sign was once formed, the etymology was no longer of consequence, and was dropped out of memory. What child asks after the derivation and ground of significance of the words he learns? It is enough to him that others use them, and that, if he would converse with those about him, he must do the same. And if he asked, in how few cases would he get an answer, in how excessively few a satisfactory one! If the actual use of a word were in any degree dependent on its etymology, then every human being would have to be an etymologist, able, on challenge, to render a reason for the word that comes forth from him. But it is not as we speak, it is only as we turn and reflect upon what we have spoken, that we recognize its reasons—and then only very fragmentarily. Of the vocables composing our language, the larger part can have their history and mutations of form and meaning traced back a little way; some small portion, by the most skilled and learned linguists, almost to the beginnings of human speech: but all as a matter of curiosity, of scientific interest, not as bearing in any direct manner on the practical use of speech. The student of physics learns to call a certain force galvanism, and it is doubtless a satisfaction to him to know that the name commemorates the Italian physician who took the first steps toward discovering this force: but the information is not essential; he would say galvanism all the same if he had never heard of Galvani; as, indeed, thousands actually do. How many of those who talk about electricity know that it literally means 'the quality of being