Chapter II: Part 2

The upper part of these two pages contained originally 91 glyphs, perhaps to be read _from right to left_, the same as 21 and 22. The faces look to the right, the usual _pre_fixes and the few numerals are also on the right of their respective compounds. Many of the glyphs are the same as those on pages 2 to 11, reversed right for left. Glyph 23-a-11 should be specially noted. At first sight the numeral prefix, 6, appears to belong, postfixed, to glyph 23-a-17. But on investigation we find the same compound, a _yax-chuen_ with [Hieroglyph] prefix, also at 21-a-8 and 24-a-26, in each case with the 6 attached. The [Hieroglyph] affix just below this number 6 is also plainly a _pre_fix to glyph 23-a-12; so that glyph 23-a-ll must be read [Hieroglyph] and include the 6 as prefix. At 24-a-26, [Hieroglyph] the same glyph is written left to right.

There are also a few other glyphs on these pages which cannot be regarded as right to left. Such for instance, as [Hieroglyph] at 23-a-19 and 24-a-17. In this glyph the affix [Hieroglyph] at the side is properly a prefix (perhaps the possessive), and I do not recall any instance of its use as a postfix. In the affixes, the superfix and prefix positions may as a general rule be regarded as wholly identical; also the subfix and postfix positions. But also as a general rule the two pairs are I believe not to be interchanged, any more than we interchange prefixes and endings in English; this rule is not universal for all affixes, as some seem able to go anywhere, but it is one I have always regarded in my glyph classifying. As to [Hieroglyph] it is to be noted that this is a symmetrical glyph and as there can be no doubt that these glyphs were equally legible to the Maya reader written in either direction, it may well be regarded as unimportant, and not to be rated even as an error. [Hieroglyph] is a still stronger similar case. Here the wing [Hieroglyph] affix to the right is certainly a postfix, the superfix is in the usual left to right order, [Hieroglyph] and the main element written left to right, as in all its other instances. And [Hieroglyph] is again in point.

The face-_tun_ compounds on these pages, and also on the opposite side of the manuscript, should be particularly noted.

Below the constellation band, inscribed on a wavy green band (the waters of space?) are seven repetitions of [Hieroglyph] or the sun glyph [Hieroglyph] within the shields.[31-*] Between each appeared probably two black 8's. The sun-shields are about to be seized by different animals, dragon, tortoise, bird, etc., a seeming evident suggestion of either an eclipse, or the passage of the sun into some zodiacal sign. Another series of seven sun-shields, on the green band, separated by numeral 8's, and attacked by animals and a skeleton, crosses the lower part of the pages.

Between these two bands we find a series of columns of five day-signs each preceded by red numerals. Allowing for the space erased I have restored the last column to the right, and part of the preceding. This gives 12 columns only, whereas at least 13 are required. There may have been a 12th column to the left of page 23, where there is just the proper space for this,[32-*] leaving the dragon's body to curve above the column so as to pass to page 22. The series may have continued on across page 25; 13 columns on pages 23, 24, and 7 more filling page 25, would make a full cycle of 20 columns. And in this connexion it should be noted that the dragon's body with constellation band goes almost to the edge of page 24 with no sign of ending or turning, such as might be expected if the chapter ends here. And if the constellation dragon continues over page 25, the column series may well have done the same.

Before discussing this series it will be of advantage to review what the Codex gives us on the question of reading left to right or right to left.

First, in both the Dresden and Tro.-Cort. the glyph faces look to the left; and, as shown by the calculations, reading is from left to right, with a very few possible exceptions, such as the tables on Dres. 24, 64, 69, etc.

In the Perez, as shown by the tonalamatls on 15 to 18, the 52 year-bearers on 19 and 20, and the katun-series on 2 to 12, the general direction of the reading is also left to right.

Above or below each of the red number columns of these pages 23, 24, is to be found a blue number. These numbers make a katun-series, starting with 4, decreasing by 2, if we read it left to right. It is not, to be sure, accompanied by the customary Ahau-sign, [Hieroglyph], but, taken in connexion with the marked parallelism of the glyphs, face-tun glyphs and also others, on these two pages with those on pages 2 to 11, already discussed, the possibility that a katun-series is a part of this subject-matter must be considered.

On the other hand, the glyphs in the upper part of all four pages 21 to 24 face to the right, and, as already set out in detail, are practically all written in _reverse position_ as regards their prefixes, etc. And so also does the Eb-glyph in the day-columns we are now considering face to the right. These columns, unlike those on page 21, which include all of the 20 day-signs, only include 5 of the day-signs: Kan, Lamat, Eb, Cib and Ahau; Eb being the only non-symmetrical one of these.

We have thus quite strong evidence, especially as provided by the position of the prefixes, for a right to left reading, opposed by the direction of this katun-number series--if it be one. In Egyptian writing, of course, the direction of the reading changes with the facing of the figures.

To return now to the columns themselves, all the day-signs in any one column have each the same red numeral, so that we have: 8 Cib, 8 Ahau, 8 Kan, 8 Lamat, 8 Eb; and so on. The red numerals to each column also decrease by 2 towards the right, pari passu with the blue numerals. If we read each column downwards, it will form a closed circuit or round, returning into itself, with intervals of 104 days, from 8 Cib to 8 Ahau, etc., and again from 8 Eb back to 8 Cib. But if we next try to go to the next column, the series breaks, for from 8 Eb to 6 Lamat is only 76 days. We get a like break whether we read upward or downward, or right to left. Taking the columns separately then, the entire series (whether made up of 13, 20 or any other number of columns) cannot be made to read in one regular series, with a constant interval between the successive days of the whole.

But, if we restore two columns, making 13 columns, and then read horizontally _across_, either right to left, or left to right, one line after another, the first day of the second line follows the last of the first, and after going through the whole 65 terms, we return again from the last of the last line to the first of the first--always with a constant interval. In other words, this section could be written around a wheel. If we read left to right, the distance from (10 Kan) to 8 Cib, etc., is 232 days; 232x65=15,080. Or if from right to left,[33-*] the interval from (12 Lamat) to 1 Cib, etc., is 28 days; 28x13 = 364, x5 = 1820. That both of these products are multiples of 260 is a truism, and cannot in any way require us to see a tonalamatl reckoning as the basis of this passage. Nor is each separate day-column a tonalamatl in fifths, as so often found.

Finally, if we should assume that the series went on across page 25, to a full katun-round of 20 terms, the circuit would be broken; line 2 would not regularly follow line 1, and so on. The probabilities then, as derived from the succession of the days, seem almost conclusive that this is a section of 65 terms, to be read horizontally, in whichever direction. And then, since the subdivision of 15,080 days (or 1820, if read right to left) into 65 terms, _necessarily_ gives us successive day-_numbers_ decreasing (or increasing) by 2, the likeness to the katun-series may be only apparent--a simple truism. Or, on the other hand, in view of the glyph similarities (a point which I think should always be given close attention), there _may_ be some relation to the katun-series--all in spite of the right-left or left-right difficulties.

What part the blue[34-*] number series plays, I cannot say. Dr. Seler,[34-[+]] suggests that they are "corrections," to set each term ahead 20 days. This states a fact, but does not give any explanation. Each blue number is 6 less than its red column, and 7 Kan _is_ of course 20 days later than 13 Kan.

FOOTNOTES:

[24-*] Dr. Foerstemann (_Comm. z. Par. Mayahds._) speaks of the background to the central figure on page 16 as black, instead of red; he also describes the number columns as made up of red and black numerals only. There are many similar errors in his Commentary, due to his ignorance of the colors, and to the obscurity of the photographic reproductions.

[28-*] Where to place the Tro.-Cort., in view of the _apparent_ Kan, Muluc[TN-3] Ix, Cauac years indicated on pages 34-37, and the 13 Cumhu immediately next to 13 Ahau on page 73 (13 Ahau 13 Cumhu falling only possibly in a year 12 Lamat) I am not ready to say.

[29-*] Mr. Bowditch suggests to me that the numbers 1 2 3 3 5 6 6 are to be read with each of the day signs in their respective columns, and, being placed in the middle, may apply both to the upper and lower sets. The strongest objection I can see to this is that the numbers are black, instead of the usual red. In this case, instead of intervals of 8 and 16, giving rounds of 5x8=40 and 5x16=80 days, we would have intervals of 156 and 208 (from 1 Ymix to 1 Muluc, etc.), giving rounds of 780 and 1040 days respectively. Or, if read _upwards_, we would have 52 and 104 day intervals (1 Ben to 1 Chicchan, etc.), and rounds of 260 and 520 days. But whichever be the case, the page is _sui generis_, and its why is still beyond us.

[31-*] I have retained the usual term "shields" for the flaring forms which embrace the sun glyph, though without accepting its appropriateness. They might with equal likelihood be conventionalized wings.

[32-*] Dr. Foerstemann ignores the space on the right of page 24, and restores two columns to the left of page 23 in order to make up the thirteen columns; but, as shown by the edges of the pages in the photographs, one column restored in each place will just fill the obliterated space.

[33-*] Dr. Seler's reading; _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, I, 515.

[34-*] The blue is a true blue, quite distinct from the turquoise blue elsewhere, and is found in the case of these numbers only.

[34-[+]] _Gesammelte Abhandlungen_, I, 515; "Zur mexik. Chronologie."

THE MAYA GLYPHS

Up to date our knowledge of the meanings of the glyphs is still to all intents and purposes limited to the direct tradition we have through Landa, and the deductions immediately involved in these. We know the day and month signs, the numbers, including 0 and 20, four units of the archaic calendar count (the day, tun, katun and cycle), the cardinal point signs, the negative particle. We have not fully solved the uinal or month sign, which seems to be _chuen_ on the monuments and a _cauac_, or _chuen_, in the manuscripts. We are able to identify what must be regarded as metaphysical or esoteric applications of certain glyphs in certain places, such as the face numerals.[35-*] But every one of these points is either deducible directly by necessary mathematical calculation, or else from the names of certain signs given by Landa in his day and month list, and then found in other combinations, such as _yax_, _kin_, etc. That we have as many of the points as we have, and still cannot form from them the key--that we cannot _read_ the glyphs--is a constant wonder; but a fact nevertheless.

The innumerable efforts to identify the glyphs by their superficial appearance, calling the banded headdress a "pottery decoration," and explaining the face-glyph of the North thereby, because in Maya _xaman_ is north and _xamach_ a tortilla dish (to say nothing of others still more fanciful, by a host of writers), have broken down, as was to be expected. I mention this instance because it illustrates fully the results of superficial analysis, united with a seeming ineradicable tendency even among those most able students who have added the most to our stock of Maya knowledge (among whom Dr. Brinton was certainly one of the foremost), to treat these glyphs as carelessly done, to disregard the differences between manifest variants, or else to talk freely, whenever a passage does not fit the explanation which is being worked out, of scribal errors.

In the first place, _if_ these glyphs are to be interpreted primarily by the Yucatecan Maya dialect (one in which we have most ample printed and MS. lexicographic material), and if in that dialect no other words at all resembling _xaman_ and _xamach_ are found, as we are told, then (_if_ the Mayas named the north star, or the North, by a pun on a tortilla dish) wherever this banded headdress is found, we must assume the text to be treating either of the North, or of tortillas. That might safely be left to break down of its own weight; but we shall also see that the explanation is given in total disregard of manifest, important variants. This banded headdress appears ornamenting at least [Hieroglyphs] five separate and distinct faces; one a wholly human face, the others with various other definite characteristics, the most frequent and prominent of which are the monkey-like face and mouth we see in the [Hieroglyph] glyph for the north, and a sort of bird's plumage covering the back of the head. These two are separate, are never combined, and must be classified rigidly apart. We have therefore three elements, the monkey face, the plumage covering (if we may call it so), and the banded headdress. It is obvious that while the monkey face may be specific of the North, the bands are not specific at all, but general.

It is with the greatest diffidence that I suggest any interpretations on my own part as yet, but it is of course certain that the distinction of masculine and feminine existed in the spoken language, and it must exist somewhere in the glyphs. And it will have to be a prefix, not a postfix; for what I may call the syntax of glyph formation must follow that of the speech. At the bottom of Dres. 61 and 62 are seven identical Oc-glyphs with subfix, and with prefixes. Five of these prefixes are faces with the woman's curl, recognized on the figured illustrations. One is a face with the banded headdress. Remembering that this headdress occurs not infrequently on a plain human face with no other characteristic, it is not a far guess that it may have denoted a freeman, a lord, entitled to such a headdress. In this event it may on the one hand serve as a simple masculine definitive, the prefix _ah-_, and on the other, to attach the idea of lordship to other glyphs with which it is incorporated, as: the North Star, or region, the Lord of the Firmament.

This illustration serves to show what seems to me an essential preliminary of the work we have in hand, and the part to which I have so far devoted most effort. The glyphs must be determined, compared and classified, and what I have called the "syntax" of their composition, studied. The particles and their positions, the various _incorporated_ elements, are of the utmost importance, though they are very frequently ignored. _They are the written picture of the spirit of the spoken language._ The task I have most looked forward to in this connexion has of course been with the Dresden, but having started upon the Perez for the reasons I have given, it was a smaller task in itself, and could be brought to completion within less time, while serving as part of the larger work. As the determination and classification of the glyphs had to proceed all as one work, it has enabled me not only to complete my Index for this codex, but also to print the text in type, and to verify and bring out such facts regarding the color questions as was possible to do--both of them stages needed in the general work. In doing it I have studied with my hands as well as with eyes, and I have been well repaid. The actual labor has not been small, but it has been worth it all if only to see before the eyes something of what this Codex must have been when fresh and new. For as I have said, while in my colored restoration I may have made some mistakes of eye, for which the photographs will be a check, I have _guessed_ nothing.

The classification of the glyphs meets of course with some difficulties in detail, but it can readily be cast into a quite simple general outline. Something over 2000 different compound forms are found in the three codices. The simple elements composing these are perhaps 350 in number, and may be divided broadly into main elements and affixes or particles. First of course come day and month signs, which, with _kin_, _tun_, _kal_, and a few marked variants, use up 50 numbers. Next will come the faces, about 75 simple elements. Next the animal and bird heads and figures, about 50 numbers. Next the hands, crosses, etc., and the list of conventional or geometric forms, another 75. Then some 75 particles.

The cards required for the first 50 numbers, including only compounds formed from day-signs and excluding day-signs used simply as such, amount to practically one half of the number required for the whole index. Certain elements, notably the _kin_, the _tun_, the monkey-face with banded headdress, already referred to, the face with tau-eye, the _yax_, the cross, produce a great number of compounds--a fact of note, as it is evident that the number of compounds, having due regard to our limited material, is an index to the relative position of the idea in the Mayan vocabularies. Some of the day-signs produce practically no compounds, others a great many. The compounds fall readily into a system of primary and secondary derivatives, by which their relations may be easily studied, and their proportions recognized.

Coming to the distinguishing of variants, one first meets the fact that the three codices differ. The writing of the Dresden and Perez is regular and accurate, the Perez exceedingly so. Every different variant must here be accounted for. In Tro.-Cort. the writing is crude and careless, so that we have many evident abbreviations which are not genuine variants. In the next place, certain regular differences occur in this or that glyph or particle, between the forms of the different manuscripts. Thus the Perez uses [Hieroglyph] and the others [Hieroglyph] and so on. A comparison of the compounds shows that these must be the same. The regular variations between the three manuscripts and variations of abbreviation, when well evidenced, may be eliminated.

The day-signs have many variants, mostly quite simple, and all checked positively by the use of the form in some day-series. Ix has many forms. There are at least three entirely different Cimi forms: [Hieroglyphs][TN-4] There are found two different forms of the closed eye, one of which certainly is Cimi, the other occurs regularly in such different compounds (and I think never as a simple day-sign), as to make it necessary to separate it; [Hieroglyph] it has probably a different meaning entirely--perhaps that of sleep.

* * * * *

A noteworthy technical line is to be found in the drawing of the glyphs. Whereas in the case of the day-signs, faces, and conventional forms in general, certain variations of handwriting, etc., are evidently permitted, but only within certain definite lines, in some few animal glyphs no two instances are just alike. In other words, the glyphs in general are conventions with established meanings--actual writing;[39-*] but we also have _pictures_ of birds or animal forms, where the writer is not following convention, but nature. The freedom of style used in the latter case only serves to emphasize the conventionality of the former, and to separate the entire system from either picture or rebus writing. See the following fish-glyph forms:

[Hieroglyphs]

These pictures are almost exclusively in uncompounded forms, whereas the conventional glyphs, whether human, animal or otherwise, are subject to the general rules of incorporation.

Writing is a system of conventional forms with established meanings, corresponding to and reflecting the structure of the spoken language; some picture elements whose value as such has remained either wholly or partly present in the minds of those who use them, are not inconsistent with genuine writing; when present they add vividness to the writing, and emphasize its ideographic character. A combination of picture forms only, may be used as means of communication to a certain degree, but can never constitute _writing_; that, like speech, must provide for the expression of the relationships and categories that make up the structure of language.

Egyptian writing, which is of course _true writing_, contains elements of every class. It has symbols and also pictures, not only of things or creatures, but of actions as well, "contracted to a narrow space, made cursive"; these pictures, although still ranking as such, stand for _words_--they can be _pronounced_, and have syntax, which is the crucial test. Egyptian next has unrecognizable forms, whose meaning has become a simple convention, but which still stand for _words_, or particles. It has elements which are not pronounced for themselves, but only serve as determinatives. (Such a use of determinatives is not limited to hieroglyphic writing, but is possessed also by alphabetic; the second _o_ in the word _too_ is strictly a determinative, to distinguish the adverb _too_ from the preposition _to_, both pronounced alike. Tibetan has an elaborate system of silent letters used as grammatical determinatives.) And then Egyptian writing finally has pure alphabetic elements.

As to Maya, I think it far more than likely that, when at last deciphered, it will be found to contain most if not all of these classes--_mutatis mutandis_. There seems every evidence that it is made up of pictures with probably both concrete and abstract meanings; word-conventions; and grammatical particles. It is at least probable that there are also silent determinatives and not unlikely that there is also a pure phonetic or alphabetic element. That the latter element is not the basic one may I think be now regarded as established.

FOOTNOTES:

[35-*] The Tibetan use of symbolical words in place of numerals is worth noting here, even though we do not know the Maya face numerals well enough as yet for any comparison. See Csoma de K["o]ros, _Tibetan grammar_, Calcutta, 1824, pp. 155 _et seq._; also Ph. Ed. Foucaux, _Grammaire Tibetaine_, Paris, 1858, pp. 157 _et seq._

[39-*] "These [the Maya glyphs] do not represent a real script, as is so often maintained, but are only pictures which have been reduced to the appearance of letters, contracted to a narrow space, made cursive."!--Dr. Eduard Seler, _Codex Vaticanus No. 3773_, page 65.--Well?

CONCLUSION

_Introite, nam et hic dii sunt._

It is not my desire to add, as a conclusion to a comment bearing on the restoration and interpretation of Mayan hieroglyphic texts, any general discussion of the data which tradition and the early Spanish writers have left us of the mythology, rites and customs of the American races; and still less to run out a line of attractive analogies between isolated instances of their words, symbols or works, with those of any of the various nations of the other hemisphere; nor to build up any theory of descent or intercourse with any of these latter as today known to history. The subject before us is on its very face too vast; the written and traditional data are entirely too scanty and too little understood; and while we are still obliged to designate the various gods and personages of the Codices as god A, B, etc., and are unable to fix definitely[41-*] a single inscribed date in terms of our chronology, or tell the event attached to it, fancied comparisons amount to little. And the favorite "linguistic" method is more fragile yet, especially when the uncertainties of spelling and transliteration are considered, and above all the frequent total ignorance of the past history and changes the different words compared must have gone through since the time when by any possibility a physical transmission from one locality to the other could have taken place. These ought to be commonplaces of research, but it is to be feared that they have not quite yet become so.[42-*] There is no need to give instances of such false analogies which have served as the bases for a multitude of filiation theories, all equally well "supported" by details, and all mutually exclusive. Nor on the other hand can we deny the existence actually of a very great number of resemblances and identities which cannot be ignored, but must imply connexions of some kind. The English nation is not a Hebrew people because it had a prime minister Disraeli, nor Greeks because they have a Queen Alexandra, nor Romans because of certain local names. Such facts even when real, and established as such, may only be evidence of a single continental culture or transcontinental intercourse.

It has been the dictum of a certain school of archaeology, still very much in general favor, that all these identities are to be explained as the natural result of the innate tendencies of untutored men, on their evolutionary rise, at certain cultural stages, to imagine the same myths and invent the same rites. From this as a principle I wholly dissent; it simply does not meet the facts. There are of course many facts to which it does apply, such as those that both Chinese and Americans made paper, tanned leather, made feather ornaments, used star and flower names for their children, and so on: facts which had been used to prove Chinese and American identity, and to which Dr. Brinton justly added in retort that they also slept at night, wore clothes when it was cold, and so on. But there is a very great number of facts, a number constantly growing with research, which cannot be so dismissed. Such are the employment of abstract symbolism, the erection of great structures all having a definite and identical astronomical bearing and evident use, the common possession of so-called myths all telling the one story, and only slightly modified locally, such as the birth-stories of Huitzilopochtli and of Herakles, and the stories of the travail of Latona pursued by the Python and of the Woman clothed with the Sun in _Revelation_; or the universal tradition of seven ancestral caves or cities in America, compared with the Tibetan and Puranic stories of the seven lotus-leaves of ['S]veta-dvipa, the first continental home of the race; the _Hacha de cobre_ of the Miztecs and the ever-turning spear of jade of the Japanese story of the place where the gods first descended on earth; or the whole question of the origin of the Zodiac. These things, and a host of others, need a different explanation--all the more since the more we are learning of them the more we find that they enclose facts of which the hypothetical "savage children" could not, _ex hypothesi_, have been aware--some facts indeed which our very latest modern science is only now learning.[43-*]

But while dissenting now wholly from this theory (of "coincidentalism") one cannot but hold in all respect those who in their time held it. It is the duty of the savant to make the best logical use he can of what he has, and he cannot be criticised for not using finer scales than the time affords. And this theory was needed as an answer to the absurdities, brought out in utter disregard of physical possibilities, postulating off-hand migrations and filiations and evolutionary advances totally impossible within the periods allowed for their completion, and utterly without parallel in any known part of the world or page of history. And yet, when this theory had its birth, the most of Christendom was still enthralled by the Ussherian chronology of the creation and history of the whole divine universe, which simply did not have room in it for all these things to happen naturally and connectedly.

And if it is urged that present science had already say a generation ago, a second's time we might say in the life of humanity, begun to emancipate our ideas of time and evolution, still it is the fact that that increase in breadth of vision has so far applied to every known thing but man himself. The old belief that gave the world 6000 years of life, at least put thinking man at its beginning; the modern nightmare gives us a world for hundreds of millions of years without _thought_, and makes human civilization an ephemeral episode of a few seconds of universal duration. Disregarding, one is forced to say wilfully, the fact that every single one of their own arguments in favor of anthropoid descent for man would equally support a theory that the anthropoids are debased offshoots of human stocks,[45-*] biology still demands such a lapse of time for its physical evolution that its adherents oppose and belittle to the utmost every bit of evidence of any antiquity even for the physical frame of man. We have, to say nothing of the rest of the world, Egyptian civilization now pushed back 10,000 years, and (together with others as we slowly uncover them) as far removed as ever from barbarism, if not indeed growing greater as we go back; but we are not allowed anything but apelike, half arboreal savages 50,000 years ago. And yet every observed _fact_ shows us savage or worn-out races everywhere throughout the world deteriorating and dying out, and nowhere any savages progressing or, unaided by outside influence, developing what we know as civilization. We see everywhere the rise and fall of nations, races and civilizations, and their utter blotting out; and we refuse to accept that process as a universal law through which the destiny of the human race is working itself out. In fact, we do not seem to believe that the human race has any destiny; it may have beginning and an end, but no destiny.

And so although this modern scientific school began as a reaction against the narrowness of theological limitations, both of time and greatness, so hampered and hypnotized has our thought been by both, that man is of nearly as little universal account with one as with the other, and we find a seemingly ineradicable repugnance to admit that any people had "developed" writing before the least possible time ago we can fix it, usually this side of the year 1 of the Christian era. And thus we have M. Terrien de Lacouperie's "450 _embryo_ scripts and writings"--which another fifty years may show to be nearly as many fragments of one or a few great stocks of ancient hieroglyphs. Of course it is impossible to derive the American races or civilizations from the Chinese, Phoenicians, Hittites, or any of the cultures of the other hemisphere, if we limit the latter to what we know of their history within the past two or three thousand odd years, and American civilization to the past fifteen hundred years. The matter is somewhat greater than that--just as man is somewhat greater than a fool of natural caprice.

There is one point from which this question of American origins, at least of American place in human society and civilization, can be studied in its broader lines, even with what materials we have. It is that of language in general. All these other matters we have touched upon are necessary 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 of any language is not to be found in a comparison of its forms or methods with those of any other, but in its fitness as a vehicle for the expression of deeper life, of the best and the greatest that is in those who use it, and above all in its ability to react and stimulate newer and yet greater mental and spiritual activity and expression. The force behind man, demanding expression through him, and him only, into the human life of all, is infinite--of necessity infinite. There is no limit, nor ever has been any limit, to what man may bring down into the dignifying, broadening and enriching of human life and evolution, save in his own ability to comprehend, express, and _live_ it. And the brightness and cleanness of the tools whereby he formulates his thought, as well as the worthiness and fitness of the substance and the forms into which he shapes it for others to see, are the essentials of his craft. For such is the economy of nature, which wastes nothing in reality, that a fit vehicle will be taken possession of by its own tenant; and the unfit left to and be taken by those who can use no better.

Before, then, taking up the great formal classes into which language at large is usually divided, it will be necessary to say a few words as to the foundations of form itself in language, that we may then proceed to consider these classes from the standpoint of their inner meaning rather than solely of the outer form; and by seeking to understand the mental and spiritual equipment and life of those that used them, may perhaps in turn be better fitted finally to enter into the genius of their written and spoken languages, and to interpret through them in the detail more of the ideas which those forms were both fitted and used to express. Such a method is essential for the understanding of any language or culture, but it is absolutely necessary in the case of these non-Aryan tongues, so great is the distance both of time and thought which separates us from them. If we set out to compare the forms by which they expressed their thought with those within which we develop ours, or approach these cultures and peoples in the attitude of alien criticism, study their "interesting ways" through a mental lorgnette and impale their dead forms on the needles of our collection, we shall not only show ourselves less broad in culture than many of them, but we shall simply close and lock the doors of discrimination and understanding before us. The question is not, How do their forms and ways appeal to us? but, How did those forms, and ways, achieve their underlying objects, and what was the _thought_ behind them?

Life is action, and without activity whatever powers lie within any conscious being are only potential. Activity is the bridge between the inner man and the outer world, by which he impresses his thought, in forms, on chaos or the atoms about him, receiving in return increased knowledge and experience of all he touches, and knowledge of himself through the results of his own actions; and it is the bridge between man and man. For this reason the verb, the word of action, is the most important and most developed part of speech. The three hypostases of life, as of language, are the self, activity, and the world; and it is for the expression of all the possible varied relations between these three, that all the forms of any language come into being. And from the way in which these forms are developed, and the relative importance which is given to this or that form of thought or activity, the character of the people, their grasp of nature, and their own conception of themselves and their relation to the world, can be seen.[49-*] Some languages have the strong impress of impersonality, without any loss of virility; others are strongly egotistic and self-assertive, with perhaps the braggart's lack of genuine strength. Each spoken language that we know has its own color and tone, to which our thought must respond, if we would know and use it well. To speak good Swedish, for instance, requires clear thinking to an exceptional degree. To show this, the form "come here," which is the ordinary English expression, is simply _bad grammar_ in Swedish; the use of "come _hither_" (_kom hit_, instead of _kom haer_) is imperative. We have the "hither" in English, but it has become stilted, and the linguistic distinction lost. Compare also the use of _fa_, as a common auxiliary; nor are these exceptions, but, on the contrary, characteristic examples. Also to enunciate the language rightly one must hold the back and neck erect and the muscles firm.

In some languages the speaker thinks of himself and his completed action as inseparable, as a single idea, as the Latin _edi_ for I have eaten; in others he thinks of himself subconsciously as possessing the results of his action, as our _I have eaten_; and in others, as among the Irish peasantry, he separates himself and his action entirely, as _I am after eating_. In some grammars, as in Maya, the verbal concept starts with the past; in others, as our own, we live in the present; in the Welsh, the future is the chief tense. The mere choice of _shall_ or _will_ as the first person future auxiliary denotes a specific mental quality.

Now the expression of all these infinite shades of relationtionship[TN-5] between the self, the activity and the world, is achieved in two ways: position or placement--syntax; and form. The customary division of languages is into Monosyllabic, Agglutinative, Incorporating, and Inflectional, and this division will suit our purpose, though it must be used with care. It is held in the ordinary theory that these classes must represent successive stages of linguistic perfection, each in turn being higher in the scale than the other, they having grown one from the other as the race advanced. By the theory the monosyllabic is lower than the agglutinative, and inherently less useful. But the theory does not work out in practical application to the facts we have to deal with, for while we cannot find still left in the world any agglutinative languages representative of sufficient culture to bring into our present consideration, we do find a monosyllabic in the highest rank, and meeting the highest cultural requirements. In short, the latter may be theoretically the inferior tool, but the genius of thought behind is greater than the form. One man can draw a masterpiece with a burnt stick, another only paint a daub with all the brushes made. Once again we must not judge by our preconceived preferences of form.

Omitting therefore the modern remnants of agglutinating languages, outside of America, as affording us no literary material of value for our study, we shall find at once drawn across all the other great classes a single broad line of division, between the ideographic and the literal--the same as already mentioned. And the moment we draw this line as an exponent of the mental and spiritual thought-life of the different peoples, we shall find it not only molding their language forms, both written and spoken, but manifest as well in their art, philosophy, and even their social polity. And of course we must be fair in our comparisons, and not set a Chinese coolie in the concrete against an English statesman, nor any concrete example of another kind of culture in its decay with the highest bloom to which we believe our own type to be able to carry us.

It would be absurd to say that the ratiocinative, literal mind is higher than the ideal. One man sees directly the meaning of the things, the events and situations before him; another reasons it all out. And contrary to many of our current beliefs, the former is often the man of action; he sees at a flash to the heart of the matter, and gets things done. His thought, his activity, is vivid; and his words are likely to be so as well. The idealist, if he be broadminded, and not merely sentimental, is indeed likely to be the practical man. And the type of mind that is made manifest to us by these great non-Aryan languages and their forms, is the former. Of course idealism in its decadence becomes negative, inactive, self-consuming and no longer creative. But in its bloom the direct vision may be even more active, more practical, than are the reasoned processes.

Much ink and paper has been spent over the question whether the Chinese hieroglyphs are ideograms or phonograms, whether the character , for instance, conveys to those using it primarily the idea of Heaven, or the spoken word _T'ien_. It is necessarily both, in a sense; it would not be written language otherwise. And it is equally true that the letter-combination _Heaven_ is in a way as much to us a picture of the idea as of the sound; but the difference of procedure is radical. The glyph is related to the idea directly, the spelled word only through the formal combination of symbols for single vocal speech-elements, meaningless when separate. The relation of spoken sound to glyph is wholly adventitious; the relation of the idea to the spelled word is equally adventitious. The ascent, if we so call it, of written speech from the ideographic to the alphabetic, is the descent of the thought further into material forms.[53-*] And while it may be (and in the course of universal evolution rightly so) necessary for our thought to descend into the bondage of matter and form, for its knowledge and experience, and for the development of matter and form into fitter vehicles of thought, nevertheless the process is a binding and for a time an enchaining one, and the thought is, for a time at least, likely to be lost in the confusion of forms.

Thus we may lay down as our fundamental proposition that a hieroglyphic form of writing is better fitted to, and must properly, in the period of its natural development, accompany the imaginative processes of mind. Or, since imagination to our literal thought implies in some degree the fanciful (though wrongly so in essence), we might perhaps better say that that form of writing is the fit attendant and exponent of those functions of mind which cognize the inner meanings of the facts of life directly, rather than those which study them through the correlation of their phenomena. And also, that the development by any people of an alphabetic out of a hieroglyphic system, does not imply a greater advance in linguistic perfection on their part, but indicates a corresponding mental and inner change of attitude towards ideas and things, and a different conception of the self as related to them all.

It is not at all necessary to assume that the knowledge gained by one method is deeper or more exact than the other. True science may exist as fully under one set of circumstances as the other. If we will take the type of the so-called most primitive form, the monosyllabic--the Chinese, we shall find all this evidenced in the clearest manner. To note but one illustration, a study of the scientific and philosophical ideas involved in and conveyed by the word _k'ung_, for Space, ether, the fundamental substratum of sound or vibration, as well as the "interetheric" central point of balance and power, will disclose an understanding that has nothing to fear from modern comparisons.

And the very fact that Chinese has had to depend on placement of its monosyllables to express all the relations for which speech is called upon, instead of relying on changes of form, seems to have, and indeed has so stimulated the development of pure linguistic power that the language is actually as perfect and clear a medium of cultured and learned intercourse, as is the Sanskrit, the supreme type of the so-called most developed form, the inflectional. And by reason of its possession of the ideographic element it has a vividness which the Sanskrit has not. No language can be a highly developed one which does not provide in some way for the expression of all possible needed relations between the three fundamental postulates of life and activity--the self, the action and the world; and Chinese does this in spite of its monosyllabic structure by the development of its syntax of position. And it should be remembered further that Chinese syntax, in strict correspondence to the genius of the language, is not the same formal thing that syntax is with our inflectional tongues, but includes, or rather is primarily based on the _harmonic adjustment of the inherent basic ideas of or within the words_. The Chinese monosyllables are then not the naked separate things they are in the dictionary, but the whole phrase or sentence is on the contrary as much a unit as one of ours; and often more so.

This integral unity of the whole sentence or expression, dominated by a perspective of ideas rather than of forms, which is achieved in Chinese by the elaboration of placement, is also characteristic of the structure of the languages of the American continent; but, these languages being polysyllabic, the vividness and unity are attained by a method described as Incorporation, whereby the accessories of relation are so included in or attached to the leading word that the whole expression assumes the form and sound of a single word. And a similar process takes place with the various elements of a compound sentence. So that although this one of the divisions of language approaches very closely to the Inflectional in its external forms, it yet has held to the vividness and essential characteristics of the ideographic method. And it is a point of the utmost importance for the decipherment of the Maya glyphs, to note as has been stated before, that their syntax of combination must follow that of the spoken language, which we know.

There is one broad line of division marking all the languages and civilizations of the world--the line between the ideographic and the literal; it marks the use of hieroglyphic or of alphabetic writing, and it denotes a culture so widely different from ours, modes of thought so distinct, views of life and man's relation to it one might almost say so opposite to ours, as to point unmistakably to a most distant past, and a former world-culture probably as wide-spread in its day as is now ours--or more so. And it is one of the strangest and most remarkable of the phenomena we are considering, that the two divisions have overlapped each other in time to such a degree that whereas we have in Sanskrit, the most perfect type of Aryan, or inflectional languages, the oldest of them all; on the other hand we have in Chinese an equally perfect linguistic medium of the other type, kept alive into our own times.

When we consider the development and status of the American civilizations which have been revealed to us, and especially when we have once opened our minds to the possibility that world-civilizations different in their time from ours in ours, may for all we know have existed and been blotted out ages ago, leaving linguistic traces, and perhaps perpetuating cultural remnants in a few parts of the earth, it is impossible not to recognize the breadth of the problem we are considering. All over the American continent at the time of the Discovery we see cultures and systems whose time had come. Back of most of the North and South American tribes we find the remains of mighty and utterly extinct civilizations--only their dim memory left. In the centers of higher culture from Mexico to Peru we see the ancient civilization brought further down to our own times; but there also, in process, all the incidents of break-up and an expiring greatness. Internecine strife, invasion from outside, changes of center, are all going on, and all marked by a _steady decrease_ in everything that means civilization. Of the ancient mathematical and astronomical knowledge a corner of which is revealed to us by the Maya glyph remains, only a distorted fragment appears in the Mexican, where also hieroglyphs have yielded to a cruder rebus-writing. The stately and incomparable compositions and architecture of Palenque, Copan and Quirigua have yielded to the ball courts and local strifes of Chichen Itza--all this following the very course of changing historical succession preserved in the Chronicles. The later the date, the lower in every case the culture; this is impossible not to recognize, nor have we traces of any different course of events. Of course we see the rise of the Aztec nation, a small cycle, but like the Gothic upon the Roman, it comes at the end of the general American break-up--an incursion of barbarians settling on and preserving for us fragments of the culture that preceded them, just as has happened over and over again all over the world. And the same with the Incas in Peru. And yet even the Mexican culture demands our high respect, comparing favorably with European of the same period. Indeed it was actually far ahead of the latter in matters of education and many points of polity.