rship! you will say, and so many others have said. Not
at all. It is a simple result of verbal ambiguity. The word for rabbit
in Algonkin is almost identical with that for _light_, and when these
savages applied this word to their divinity, they agreed with him who
said, "God is Light, and in Him is no darkness at all."

These languages offer also an entertaining field to the psychologist.

On account of their transparency, as I may call it, the clearness with
which they retain the primitive forms of their radicals, they allow us
to trace out the growth of words, and thus reveal the operations of the
native mind by a series of witnesses whose testimony cannot be
questioned. Often curious associations of ideas are thus disclosed, very
instructive to the student of mankind. Many illustrations of this could
be given, but I do not wish to assail your ears by a host of unknown
sounds, so I will content myself with one, and that taken from the
language of the Len[=a]pe, or Delaware Indians, who, as you know, lived
where we now are.

I will endeavor to trace out one single radical in that language, and
show you how many, and how strangely diverse ideas were built up upon
it.

The radical which I select is the personal pronoun of the first person,
_I_, Latin _Ego_. In Delaware this is a single syllable, a slight nasal,
_N[)e]_, or _Ni_.

Let me premise by informing you that this is both a personal and a
possessive pronoun; it means both _I_ and _mine_. It is also both
singular and plural, both _I_ and _we_, _mine_ and _our_.

The changes of the application of this root are made by adding suffixes
to it.

I begin with _ni'hillan_, literally, "mine, it is so," or "she, it, is
truly mine," the accent being on the first syllable, _ni'_, mine. But
the common meaning of this verb in Delaware is more significant of
ownership than this tame expression. It is an active animate verb, and
means "I beat, or strike, somebody." To the rude minds of the framers of
that tongue, ownership meant the right to beat what one owned.

We might hope this sense was confined to the lower animals; but not so.
Change the accent from the first to the second syllable, _ni'hillan_, to
_nihil'lan_, and you have the animate active verb with an intensive
force, which signifies "to beat to death," "to kill some person;" and
from this, by another suffix, you have _nihil'lowen_, to murder, and
_nihil'lowet_, murderer. The bad sense of the root is here pus