languages, when conducted with
accuracy and caution, may give us an approximate idea of the degree
of culture which the people had reached when these separations took
place, and so furnish us with the beginnings of history, which is
nothing but the development of civilization. For language, especially
in the period of its formation, is the true image and organ of the
degree of civilization attained; its archives preserve evidence of
the great revolutions in arts and in manners, and from its records
the future will not fail to draw information as to those times
regarding which the voice of direct tradition is dumb.

Indo-Germanic Culture

During the period when the Indo-Germanic nations which are now
separated still formed one stock speaking the same language, they
attained a certain stage of culture, and they had a vocabulary
corresponding to it. This vocabulary the several nations carried
along with them, in its conventionally established use, as a common
dowry and a foundation for further structures of their own. In it
we find not merely the simplest terms denoting existence, actions,
perceptions, such as -sum-, -do-, -pater-, the original echo of the
impression which the external world made on the mind of man, but
also a number of words indicative of culture (not only as respects
their roots, but in a form stamped upon them by custom) which are
the common property of the Indo-Germanic family, and which cannot
be explained either on the principle of an uniform development
in the several languages, or on the supposition of their having
subsequently borrowed one from another. In this way we possess
evidence of the development of pastoral life at that remote epoch
in the unalterably fixed names of domestic animals; the Sanscrit
-gaus- is the Latin -bos-, the Greek --bous--; Sanscrit -avis- is
the Latin -ovis-, Greek --ois--; Sanscrit -asvas-, Latin -equus-,
Greek --ippos--; Sanscrit -hansas-, Latin -anser-, Greek --chein--;
Sanscrit -atis-, Latin -anas-, Greek --neissa--; in like manner
-pecus-, -sus-, -porcus-, -taurus-, -canis-, are Sanscrit words.
Even at this remote period accordingly the stock, on which from the
days of Homer down to our own time the intellectual development of
mankind has been dependent, had already advanced beyond the lowest
stage of civilization, the hunting and fishing epoch, and had
attained at least comparative fixity of abode. On the other hand,
we have as yet no certain proofs of