ancestors were
often amused, but to the results of sober and scientific inquiry.
"Nothing," says Professor Max Mueller, "necessitates the admission of
different independent beginnings for the material elements of the
Turanian, Semitic, and Aryan branches of speech; nay, it is possible
even now to point out radicals which, under various changes and
disguises, have been current in these three branches ever since their
first separation." Of the truth of this I have convinced myself by
some original investigation, and also of the farther truth that of
this radical unity of all human tongues there is more full evidence
than many philologists are disposed to admit, and that the results of
future study must be to connect more and more with each other the
several main stems of language. Whether this results merely from the
psychical unity of the human race, or from the historical derivation
of languages from one root, is not so material as the fact of unity;
but that the latter is implied it would not be difficult to show.[126]
Let us examine for a little these results as they are presented to us
by Latham, Mueller, Bunsen, and other modern philologists.

A convenient starting-point is afforded by the great group of
languages known as the Indo-European, Japhetic, or Aryan. From the
Ganges to the west coast of Ireland, through Indian, Persian, Greek,
Italian, German, Celt, runs one great language--the Sanscrit and the
dark Hindoo at one extreme, the Erse and the xanthous Celt at the
other. No one now doubts the affinity of this great belt of languages.
No one can pretend that any one of these nations learned its language
from another. They are all decided branches of a common stock. Lying
in and near this area are other nations--as the Arabs, the Syrians,
the Jews--speaking languages differing in words and structure--the
Semitic tongues. Do these mark a different origin? The philologists
answer in the negative, pointing to the features of resemblance which
still remain, and above all to certain intermediate tongues of so high
antiquity that they are rather to be regarded as root-stocks from
which other languages diverged than as mixtures. The principal of
these is the ancient Egyptian, represented by the inscriptions on the
monuments of that wonderful people, and by the more modern Coptic,
which, according to Bunsen and Latham, presents decided affinities to
both the great classes previously mentioned, and may be regarded as
st