factors in the question of human evolution, and the
position of America cannot be considered apart from them, and all of
them. But Language touches both the glyphs directly and also all these
other things, and is itself of surpassing interest and importance as a
human study.

* * * * *

From one point of view Language is man himself, and it certainly is
civilization. Without it man is not man, a Self-expressing and social
being. It is, as von Humboldt laid down, not an act but an activity, or
energy, not a thing done, but a doing. It is the constant effort of the
conscious self to formulate thought. It is the use of the energy of
creation, of objectivation, a veritable many-colored rainbow bridge
between the inner or higher man and the outer or lower worlds. And it is
not only the expression of Man as man, but in its varied forms it is the
inevitable and living expression of each man or body of men at any and
every point of time. Itself boundless as an ocean, it is in its infinite
forms and streams and colors and sounds, the faithful and exact exponent
both of the sources and channels by which it has come, and of the banks
in which it is held, racial, national or individual. It is living or
dead, forceful or weak, pure or foul, refreshing or flat, healing or
poisonous. It limits us, but yields to our force. Every word or form
comes to us with the thought impress of every man or nation that has
used or molded it before us. We must take it as it comes, but we give it
something of ourselves as we pass it on. If our intellectual and
spiritual thought is aflame, whether as nation or individual, we may
purify it, energize it, give it power to form and arrange the atoms
around it--and we have a new literature, a new and beneficent, creative
social vehicle of intercourse, mutual understanding, and human
unification. Or if our mental or spiritual life is stale, and petty, or
egoistic, or seeking for enjoyment only rather than action; if we have
nothing in us to give the words and forms we use, but only some national
force left to use and play with them, we for a while refine, and paint,
and pettify, and elaborate into meaningless subtleties of form, every
one of which in turn reacts upon our mental and spiritual life,
distracting and enchaining us, until at last the nation and its
language--die out; for neither can live without the other.

Now it is evident that the criterion of the perfectness o