not of his own
making. It was an instinct, an instinct of the mind, as irresistible as
any other instinct. So far as language is the production of that
instinct, it belongs to the realm of nature. Man loses his instincts as
he ceases to want them. His senses become fainter when, as in the case
of scent, they become useless. Thus the creative faculty which gave to
each conception, as it thrilled for the first time through the brain, a
phonetic expression, became extinct when its object was fulfilled.' 4.
'The number of these _phonetic types_ [root-syllables] must have been
almost infinite in the beginning, and it was only through the same
process of _natural elimination_ which we observed in the early history
of words, that clusters of roots more or less synonymous, were gradually
reduced to one definite type.'

Professor Mueller, in stopping with root-syllables (to the number of four
or five hundred), as the _least_ or ultimate elements to which Language
can be reduced, has, naturally enough, and along with all Comparative
Philologists hitherto, committed the error of _insufficient analysis_;
an error of precisely the same kind which the founders of Syllabic
Alphabets have committed, as compared with the work of Cadmus, or any
founder of a veritable alphabet. The true and radical analysis carries
us back in both cases to the _Primitive Individual Sounds_, the Vowels
and Consonants of which Language is composed.

It is clear enough that the analysis must be carried to the very
ultimate in order to reach the true foundation for an effective and
sufficient alphabetic _Representation_ of Language. Precisely the same
necessity is upon us in order that we may lay a secure and adequate
foundation for a _True Science of Language_. This will explain more
fully what was meant in a preceding paragraph, when it was stated that
the labors of Mr. Andrews begin, in this department of Language, just
where the labors of the whole school of Comparative Philologists have
ended. He first completes the analysis of Language, by going down and
back to the Phonetic _Elements_, the ulterior roots, the Vowels and
Consonants of Language. Then by putting Nature to the crucial test, so
to speak, to compel her to disclose the hidden meaning with which each
of these absolute (ultimate) Elements of Speech is inherently laden, he
discovers--what might readily be an _a priori_ conception--that these
_Elements_, and not any compound root-syllables whats