imited its meaning have
been removed. In the Chinese the problem is a much simpler one. We need
simply to take the existing words out of their place in the sentence and
let them stand alone, and we have root words at first hand. We may go
through the whole range of human speech and, with more or less
difficulty, arrive at a similar result. In short, the evidence seems
conclusive that the language of mankind began in the use of isolated
words of vague and broad significance, and that all the subsequent
development of language consisted in the combination of these words,
with a modification and limitation of their meaning, the families of
speech differing principally in the method of combination devised.

It must, indeed, be said that in isolating the root forms of modern
languages we reach conditions still far removed from those of primitive
speech. These roots are in a measure packed with meaning. Time has added
to their significance, and they lack the simplicity they probably once
possessed. In particular, they have gained ideal senses, entered in a
measure into that broad language of the mind which has been gradually
added to the language of outer nature. The recognition of the existence
of mind and thought doubtless came somewhat late in human development.
Man long knew only his body and the world that surrounded it. Step by
step only did he discover his mind. And when it became necessary to
speak of mental conditions, no new language was invented, but old words
were broadened to cover the new conditions. The mind is analogous to the
body in its operations, ideas are analogues of things, and it was
usually necessary only to add to the physical significance of words the
corresponding ideal significance. In this way a secondary language
slowly grew up, underlying and subtending the primary language, until
the words invented to express the world of things were employed to
include as vast a world of thoughts.

In getting down, then, to the language of primitive man we are obliged
to divest the root forms of speech of all this ideal significance, and
confine them to their physical meanings. In dealing with the languages
of the least advanced existing tribes of mankind, indeed, little of this
is requisite. The language of the mind with them has not yet begun its
growth or is in its first simple stages. Only half the work of the
evolution of language is completed. There is, indeed, no tribe so
undeveloped as to use the pri