. The same caution which applied
to _shi_, applies again to _eul-shi_. As soon as you change it, by adding
or dropping a single letter, it is no longer twenty, but either something
else or nothing. We find exactly the same in other languages which, like
Chinese, are called monosyllabic. In Tibetan, _chu_ is ten, _nyi_ two;
_nyi-chu_, twenty. In Burmese _she_ is ten, _nhit_ two; _nhit-she_,
twenty.

But how is it in English, or in Gothic, or in Greek and Latin, or in
Sanskrit? We do not say _two-ten_ in English, nor _duo-decem_ in Latin,
nor _dvi-da'sa_ in Sanskrit.

We find(26) in Sanskrit _vin'sati_.
in Greek _eikati_.
in Latin _viginti_.
in English _twenty_.

Now here we see, first, that the Sanskrit, Greek, and Latin, are only
local modifications of one and the same original word; whereas the English
_twenty_ is a new compound, the Gothic _tvai tigjus_ (two decads), the
Anglo-Saxon _tuentig_, framed from Teutonic materials; a product, as we
shall see, of Dialectical Regeneration.

We next observe that the first part of the Latin _viginti_ and of the
Sanskrit _vin'sati_ contains the same number, which from _dvi_ has been
reduced to _vi_. This is not very extraordinary; for the Latin _bis_,
twice, which you still hear at our concerts, likewise stands for an
original _dvis_, the English _twice_, the Greek _dis_. This _dis_ appears
again as a Latin preposition, meaning _a-two_; so that, for instance,
_discussion_ means, originally, striking a-two, different from
_percussion_, which means striking through and through. _Discussion_ is,
in fact, the cracking of a nut in order to get at its kernel. Well, the
same word, _dvi_ or _vi_, we have in the Latin word for twenty, which is
_vi-ginti_, the Sanskrit _vin-'sati_.

It can likewise be proved that the second part of _viginti_ is a
corruption of the old word for ten. Ten, in Sanskrit, is _da'san_; from it
is derived _da'sati_, a decad; and this _da'sati_ was again reduced to
_'sati_; thus giving us with _vi_ for _dvi_, two, the Sanskrit _vi'sati_
or _vin'sati_, twenty. The Latin _viginti_, the Greek _eikati_, owe their
origin to the same process.

Now consider the immense difference--I do not mean in sound, but in
character--between two such words as the Chinese _eul-shi_, two-ten, or
twenty, and those mere cripples of words which we meet with in Sanskrit,
Greek, and Latin. In Chinese there is neither too much, nor too little.
The word speaks for itself, and require