ormal thing that syntax is with our inflectional tongues, but includes,
or rather is primarily based on the _harmonic adjustment of the inherent
basic ideas of or within the words_. The Chinese monosyllables are then
not the naked separate things they are in the dictionary, but the whole
phrase or sentence is on the contrary as much a unit as one of ours; and
often more so.

This integral unity of the whole sentence or expression, dominated by a
perspective of ideas rather than of forms, which is achieved in Chinese
by the elaboration of placement, is also characteristic of the structure
of the languages of the American continent; but, these languages being
polysyllabic, the vividness and unity are attained by a method described
as Incorporation, whereby the accessories of relation are so included in
or attached to the leading word that the whole expression assumes the
form and sound of a single word. And a similar process takes place with
the various elements of a compound sentence. So that although this one
of the divisions of language approaches very closely to the Inflectional
in its external forms, it yet has held to the vividness and essential
characteristics of the ideographic method. And it is a point of the
utmost importance for the decipherment of the Maya glyphs, to note as
has been stated before, that their syntax of combination must follow
that of the spoken language, which we know.

There is one broad line of division marking all the languages and
civilizations of the world--the line between the ideographic and the
literal; it marks the use of hieroglyphic or of alphabetic writing, and
it denotes a culture so widely different from ours, modes of thought so
distinct, views of life and man's relation to it one might almost say so
opposite to ours, as to point unmistakably to a most distant past, and a
former world-culture probably as wide-spread in its day as is now
ours--or more so. And it is one of the strangest and most remarkable of
the phenomena we are considering, that the two divisions have overlapped
each other in time to such a degree that whereas we have in Sanskrit,
the most perfect type of Aryan, or inflectional languages, the oldest of
them all; on the other hand we have in Chinese an equally perfect
linguistic medium of the other type, kept alive into our own times.

When we consider the development and status of the American
civilizations which have been revealed to us, and especially when we