f the nations with whom we are to compare them, and the changes
which they themselves have undergone. Without erecting these several
standards of comparison, no certainty can attend the labor. All nations
and tribes upon the face of the globe, whom we can make sponsors for
the American tribes, are thus constituted the field of study, and we
have opened to our investigations a theme at once noble and sublime.
Philosophy has no higher species of inquiry, beneath Infinitude, than
that which establishes the original affinities of man to man.

We perceive, in casting our minds back on the track of nations from
whom we are ourselves sprung, a strong and clear chain of philological
testimony, running through the various nations of the great Thiudic[1]
type, until it terminates in the utmost regions of the north. This
chain of affiliation, though it had a totally diverse element in the
Celtic, to begin with, yet absorbed that element, without in the least
destroying the connection. It runs clearly from the Anglo Saxon to the
Frisic, or northern Dutch, and the Germanic, in all its recondite
phases, with the ancient Gothic, and its cognates, taking in very wide
accessions from the Latin, the Gallic, and other languages of southern
Europe; and it may be traced back, historically, till it quite
penetrates through these elementary masses of change, and reveals
itself in the Icelandic. Two thousand five hundred years, assuming no
longer period, have not obliterated these affinities of language. Even
at this day, the Anglo Saxon numerals, pronouns, most of the terms in
chronology, together with a large number of its adverbs, are well
preserved in the Icelandic. And had we no history to trace our national
origin, the body of philological testimony, which can be appealed to,
would be conclusive of the general question.

[1] Forster.

Does Asia offer similar proofs of the original identity, or parentage
of its languages with America? This cannot be positively asserted. But
while there is but little analogy in the sounds of the lexicography, so
far as known, it is in this quarter of the globe, that we perceive
resemblances in some words of the Shemitic group of languages, positive
coincidences in the features of its syntax, and in its unwieldy
personal and polysyllabical and aggregated forms; and the inquiry is
one, which may be expected to produce auspicious results. On the
assumption of their Asiatic origin, therefore, it is evi