ages. This, indeed, would be only a portion of the study of the history and origin of the diffusion of animals, if we were to include man among the animals whose dispersion we thus investigate; for language is one of the most clear and imperishable records of the early events in the career of the human race. But the peculiar nature of the faculty of speech, and the ideas which the use of it involves, make it proper to treat Glossology as a distinct science. And of this science, the first part must necessarily be, as in the other sciences of this order, a classification and comparison of languages governed in many respects by the same rules, and presenting the same difficulties, as other sciences of classification. Such, accordingly, has been the procedure of the most philosophical glossologists. They have been led to throw the languages of the earth into certain large classes or Families, according to various kinds of resemblance; as the Semitic Family, to which belong Hebrew, Arabic, Chaldean, Syrian, Phoenician, Ethiopian, and the like; the IndoEuropean, which includes Sanskrit, Persian, Greek, Latin, and German; the Monosyllabic languages, Chinese, Tibetan, Birman, Siamese; the Polysynthetic languages, a class including most of the North-American Indian dialects; and others. And this work of classification has been the result of the labour and study of many very profound linguists, and has advanced gradually from step to step. Thus the Indo-European Family was first formed on an observation of the coincidences between Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin; but it was soon found to include the Teutonic languages, and more recently Dr. Prichard* has shown beyond doubt that the Celtic must be included in the same Family. Other general resemblances and differences of languages have been marked by approDr. Prichard, On the Eastern Origin of the Celtic Nations.

1831.

priate terms: thus August von Schlegel has denominated them synthetical and analytical, according as they form their conjugations and declensions by auxiliary verbs and prepositions, or by changes in the word itself: and the polysynthetic languages are so named by M. Duponceau, in consequence of their still more complex mode of inflexion. Nor are there wanting, in this science also, general laws of phenomena; such, for instance, is the curious rule of the interchange of consonants in the cognate words of Greek, Gothic, and German, which has been discovered by James Grimm. All these remarkable portions of knowledge, and the great works which have appeared on Glossology, such, for example, as the Mithridates of Adelung and Vater, contain, for their largest, and hitherto probably their most valuable part, the phenomenal portion of the science, the comparison of languages as they now are. And beyond all doubt, until we have brought this comparative philology to a considerable degree of completeness, all our speculations respecting the causes which have operated to produce the languages of the earth must be idle and unsubstantial dreams.

Thus in all Palætiological Sciences, in all attempts to trace back the history and discover the origin of the present state of things, the portion of the science which must first be formed is that which classifies the phenomena, and discovers general laws prevailing among them. When this work is performed, and not till then, we may begin to speculate successfully concerning causes, and to make some progress in our attempts to go back to an origin. We must have a Phenomenal science preparatory to each Etiological one.

8. The Study of Phenomena leads to Theory.-As we have just said, we cannot, in any subject, speculate successfully concerning the causes of the present state of

things, till we have obtained a tolerably complete and systematic view of the phenomena. Yet in reality men have not in any instance waited for this completeness and system in their knowledge of facts before they have begun to form theories. Nor was it natural, considering the speculative propensities of the human mind, and how incessantly it is endeavouring to apply the Idea of Cause, that it should thus restrain itself. I have already noticed this in the History of Geology. "While we have been giving an account," it is there said, “of the objects with which Descriptive Geology is occupied, it must have been felt how difficult it is, in contemplating such facts, to confine ourselves to description and classification. Conjectures and reasonings respecting the causes of the phenomena force themselves upon us at every step; and even influence our classification and nomenclature. Our Descriptive Geology impels us to construct a Physical Geology." And the same is the case with regard to the other subjects which I have mentioned. The mere consideration of the different degrees of condensation of different nebulæ led Herschel and Laplace to contemplate the hypothesis that our solar system is a condensed nebula. Immediately upon the division of the earth's surface into botanical and zoological provinces, and even at an earlier period, the opposite hypotheses of the origin of all the animals of each kind from a single pair, and of their original diffusion all over the earth, were under discussion. And the consideration of the families of languages irresistibly led to speculations concerning the families of the earliest human inhabitants of the earth. In all cases the contemplation of a very few phenomena, the discovery of a very few steps in the history, made men wish for and attempt to form a theory of the history from the very beginning of things. 9. No sound Theory without Etiology.-But though

man is thus impelled by the natural propensities of his intellect to trace each order of things to its causes, he does not at first discern the only sure way of obtaining such knowledge: he does not suspect how much labour and how much method are requisite for success in this undertaking: he is not aware that for each order of phenomena he must construct, by the accumulated results of multiplied observation and distinct thought, a separate Etiology. Thus, as I have elsewhere remarked *, when men had for the first time become acquainted with some of the leading phenomena of Geology, and had proceeded to speculate concerning the past changes and revolutions by which such results had been produced, they forthwith supposed themselves able to judge what would be the effects of any of the obvious agents of change, as water or volcanic fire. It did not at first. occur to them to suspect that their common and extemporaneous judgment on such points was by no means sufficient for sound knowledge. They did not foresee that, before they could determine what share these or any other causes had had in producing the present condition of the earth, they must create a special science whose object should be to estimate the general laws and effects of such assumed causes;—that before they could obtain any sound Geological Theory, they must carefull cultivate Geological Etiology.

The same disposition to proceed immediately from the facts to the theory, without constructing, as an intermediate step, a science of Causes, might be pointed out in the other sciences of this order. But in all of them this errour has been corrected by the failures to which it led. It soon appeared, for instance, that a more careful inquiry into the effects which climate, food, habit and circumstances can produce in animals, was requisite

* Hist. Ind. Sci., B. XVIII. c. v. sect. 1.

in order to determine how the diversities of animals in different countries have originated. The Etiology of Animal Life (if we may be allowed to give this name to that study of such causes of change which is at present so zealously cultivated, and which yet has no distinctive designation, except so far as it coincides with the Organic Geological Dynamics of our History), is now perceived to be a necessary portion of all attempts to construct a history of the earth and its inhabitants.

10. Cause, in Palætiology.—We are thus led to contemplate a class of sciences which are commenced with the study of Causes. We have already considered sciences which depended mainly upon the Idea of Cause, namely, the Mechanical Sciences. But it is obvious that the Idea of Cause in the researches now under our consideration must be employed in a very different way from that in which we applied it formerly. Force is the cause of motion, because force at all times and under all circumstances, if not counteracted, produces motion; but the cause of the present condition and elevation of the Alps, whatever it was, was manifested in a series of events of which each happened but once, and occupied its proper place in the series of time. The former is mechanical, the latter historical, cause. In our present investigations, we consider the events which we contemplate, of whatever order they be, as forming a chain which is extended from the beginning of things down to the present time; and the causes of which we now speak are those which connect the successive links of this chain. Every occurrence which has taken place in the history of the solar system, or the earth, or its vegetable and animal creation, or man, has been at the same time effect and cause;-the effect of what preceded, the cause of what succeeded. By being effect and cause, it has occupied some certain portion of time; and the times