ng. It appears to be the
most reasonable plan to assume for the Aryan languages a period that
approaches the Chinese, in which roots had the same sound and the same
form as the corresponding noun, adjective, and verb. Even in Sanskrit
roots appear at times still unchanged, although it is quite right that as
soon as they take on grammatical functions, they should no longer be
called roots. Much may be said in favour of both views, without arriving
one step nearer our goal. If we now only remember that the whole Sanskrit
language has been reduced to 121 primitive ideas, and that the roots
denoting these (which are of course much more numerous) are not imitations
of sound in the strict sense of the word, but sounds about whose origin we
may say much but can prove little, we have at least a {~GREEK SMALL LETTER PI~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMICRON~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER UPSILON~} {~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER OMEGA WITH PERISPOMENI~} for our
researches. I myself, like my deceased friend Noire, have looked upon
roots as _clamor concomitans_, that is, not as sound-imitations, but as
actual sounds, uttered by men in common occupations, and to be heard even
now. Why, however, the Aryans used and retained _ad_ for eat, _tan_ for
stretch, _mar_ for rub, _as_ for breathe, _sta_ for stand, _ga_ for go, no
human thought can find out; we must be content with the fact that it was
so, and that a certain number of such roots--of course much greater than
the 121 ideas expressed by them--constitute the kernels from which has
sprouted the entire flora of the Indian mind.

If we now return, to our _is_,--Sanskrit _as-ti_, Greek {~GREEK SMALL LETTER EPSILON WITH PSILI AND OXIA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER SIGMA~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER TAU~}{~GREEK SMALL LETTER IOTA~}, Latin
_est_,--we see that it originally meant "to breathe out." This blowing or
breathing was then used for "life," as in _as-u_, breath of life, and from
life it lost its content until it could be applied to everything existing,
and meant nothing more than the abstract "to be." There are languages that
possess no such pale word as "be" and could not form such a sentence as
"It is warm." The auxiliary verb "to have" is also lacking in many
languages, especially the ancient, such as Sanskrit, Greek, and even
classical Latin. If the words failed, the ideas failed as well, and such
languages had to try and fulfil their requirements in other ways. If there