Similar lines of research suggest themselves in other directions. You all know what a fuss has lately been made about the great Pyramid as designed to preserve the linear measure of the ancient Egyptians. The ascertaining of such measures is certainly a valuable historical point, as all artistic advance depends upon the use of instruments of precision. Mathematical methods have been applied to American architectural remains for the same purpose. But the study of words of measurement and their origin is an efficient auxiliary. By comparing such in the languages of three architectural people, the Aztecs of Mexico, the Mayas of Yucatan, and the Cakchiquel of Guatemala, I have found that the latter used the span and the two former the foot, and that this foot was just about one-fiftieth less than the ordinary foot of our standard. Certainly this is a useful result. I have made some collections for a study of a different character. Of all the traits of a nation, the most decisive on its social life and destiny is the estimate it places upon women,--that is, upon the relation of the sexes. This is faithfully mirrored in language; and by collecting and analyzing all words expressing the sexual relations, all salutations of men to women and women to men, all peculiarities of the diction of each, we can ascertain far more exactly than by any mere description of usages what were the feelings which existed between them. Did they know love as something else than lust? Were the pre-eminently civilizing traits of the feminine nature recognized and allowed room for action? These are crucial questions, and their answer is contained in the spoken language of every tribe. Nowhere, however, is an analytic scrutiny of words more essential than in comparative mythology. It alone enables us to reach the meaning of rites, the foundations of myths, the covert import of symbols. It is useless for any one to write about the religion of an American tribe who has not prepared himself by a study of its language, and acquainted himself with the applications of linguistics to mythology. Very few have taken this trouble, and the result is that all the current ideas on this subject are entirely erroneous. We hear about a Good Spirit and a Bad Spirit, about polytheism, fetichism, and animism, about sun worship and serpent worship, and the like. No tribe worshipped a Good and a Bad Spirit, and the other vague terms I have quoted do not at all express the sentiment manifested in the native religious exercises. What this was we can satisfactorily ascertain by analyzing the names applied to their divinities, the epithets they use in their prayers and invocations, and the primitive sense of words which have become obscured by alterations of sounds.