_morfem_, _semem_, etc.), and
corrects many errors of definition made by his predecessors,
acknowledges the difference between the two forms; still his whole
admirable work, analytical and critical as it is, is devoted to this
phase of language as a mere phenomenon, a set of forms which serve as a
medium of communication. From this standpoint, we know all there is to
know about language when we have classified its forms. But from the
other, the study is ever leading us into the regions and depths of man's
consciousness, his creative activity as it goes out to the world; and
the true definition of language, from this position, "can hence only be
a genetic one." (von Humboldt, _Gesammelte Werke_, VI, 42)

It is further not unworthy of note that, except where directly required
in treating of verbal categories, nearly all of the enormous number of
illustrations which Dr. Noreen chooses for his points, are _nouns_,
names of _things_, and vary rarely verbal forms, words of action and
_doing_. But it is simply a fact that all the _potency_ of language is
in the verb, and almost all there is of language, in a philosophic
sense, lies there. The verb is the bridge of communication and action
_upon_ external things, just as is language itself, going out of man.
And it is also noteworthy that the recognition of this position of the
verb, together with these other matters of which we are speaking, seems
nearer at hand and clearer to those students who are led beyond Aryan
languages to the study of American and Asiatic, especially Central and
Northern Asiatic. For instance, G. v. d. Gabelentz, _Die
Sprachwissenschaft_, and other works.

[53-*] It was not until after this paper was already in type that my
attention was directed to the complete agreement of this and the
succeeding sentences with the following passage in _The Secret Doctrine_,
by H. P. Blavatsky, London, 1888, vol. II, page 199. After saying that
some of the Atlantean races spoke the agglutinative languages, the
passage continues: "While the 'cream' of the Fourth Race _gravitated_
more and more toward the apex of physical and intellectual evolution,
_thus_ leaving as an heirloom to the nascent Fifth (the Aryan) Race the
inflectional, highly developed languages, the agglutinative decayed and
remained as a fragmentary fossil idiom, scattered now, and nearly limited
to the aboriginal tribes of America." Note the words I have italicized,
marking the evolution of the "infle