tudent of
linguistics than those which for generations have been cast in the
conventional moulds of written speech.

Their structure is more direct, simple, transparent; they reveal more
clearly the laws of the linguistic powers in their daily exercise; they
are less tied down to hereditary formulae and meaningless repetitions.

Would we explain the complicated structure of highly-organized tongues
like our own, would we learn the laws which have assigned to it its
material and formal elements, we must turn to the naive speech of
savages, there to see in their nakedness those processes which are too
obscure in our own.

If the much-debated question of the origin of language engages us, we
must seek its solution in the simple radicals of savage idioms; and if
we wish to institute a comparison between the relative powers of
languages, we can by no means omit them from our list. They offer to us
the raw material, the essential and indispensable requisites of
articulate communication.

As the structure of a language reflects in a measure, and as, on the
other hand, it in a measure controls and directs the mental workings of
those who speak it, the student of psychology must occupy himself with
the speech of the most illiterate races in order to understand their
theory of things, their notions of what is about them. They teach him
the undisturbed evolution of the untrained mind.

As the biologist in pursuit of that marvellous something which we call
"the vital principle" turns from the complex organisms of the higher
animals and plants to life in its simplest expression in microbes and
single cells, so in the future will the linguist find that he is nearest
the solution of the most weighty problems of his science when he directs
his attention to the least cultivated languages.

Convinced as I am of the correctness of this analogy, I venture to
predict that in the future the analysis of the American languages will
be regarded as one of the most important fields in linguistic study, and
will modify most materially the findings of that science. And I make
this prediction the more confidently, as I am supported in it by the
great authority of Wilhelm von Humboldt, who for twenty years devoted
himself to their investigation.

As I am advocating so warmly that more attention should be devoted to
these languages, it is but fair that you should require me to say
something descriptive about them, to explain some of their pecu