This is effected by making the subject of the verb an inseparable prefix, and by inserting between it and the verb itself, or sometimes directly in the latter, between its syllables, the object, direct or remote, and the particles indicating mode. The time or tense particles, on the other hand, will be placed at one end of this compound, either as prefixes or suffixes, thus placing the whole expression strictly within the limits of a verbal form of speech. Both the above characteristics, I mean Polysynthesis and Incorporation, are unconscious efforts to carry out a certain theory of speech which has aptly enough been termed _holophrasis_, or the putting the whole of a phrase into a single word. This is the aim of each of them, though each endeavors to accomplish it by different means. Incorporation confines itself exclusively to verbal forms, while polysynthesis embraces both nouns and verbs. Suppose we carry the analysis further, and see if we can obtain an answer to the query. Why did this effort at blending forms of speech obtain so widely? Such an inquiry will indicate how valuable to linguistic research would prove the study of this group of languages. I think there is no doubt but that it points unmistakably to that very ancient, to that primordial period of human utterance when men had not yet learned to connect words into sentences, when their utmost efforts at articulate speech did not go beyond single words, which, aided by gestures and signs, served to convey their limited intellectual converse. Such single vocables did not belong to any particular part of speech. There was no grammar to that antique tongue. Its disconnected exclamations mean whole sentences in themselves. A large part of the human race, notably, but not exclusively, the aborigines of this continent, continued the tradition of this mode of expression in the structure of their tongues long after the union of thought and sound in audible speech had been brought to a high degree of perfection. Although I thus regard one of the most prominent peculiarities of American languages as a survival from an exceedingly low stage of human development, it by no means follows that this is an evidence of their inferiority. The Chinese, who made no effort to combine the primitive vocables into one, but range them nakedly side by side, succeeded no better than the American Indians; and there is not much beyond assertion to prove that the Aryans, who, through their inflections, marked the relation of each word in the sentence by numerous tags of case, gender, number, etc., got any nearer the ideal perfection of language. If we apply what is certainly a very fair test, to wit: the uses to which a language is and can be put, I cannot see that a well-developed American tongue, such as the Aztec or the Algonkin, in any way falls short of, say French or English.