Professor Curtius is so much impressed with the later origin of declension that he establishes one more period, the fifth, to which he assigns the growth of all compound verbal forms, compound stems, compound tenses, and compound moods, before he allows the first beginnings of declension, and the formation even of such simple forms as the nominative and accusative. It is difficult, no doubt, to disprove such an opinion by facts or dates, because there are none to be found on either side: but we have a right to expect very strong arguments indeed, before we can admit that at a time when an aorist, like ἔδεικ-σα, Sanskrit +a-dik-sha-t+ was possible, that is to say, at a time when the verb +as+, which meant originally to breathe, had by constant use been reduced to the meaning of being; at a time when that verb, as a mere auxiliary, was joined to a verbal base in order to impart to it a general historical power; when the persons of the verb were distinguished by pronominal elements, and when the augment, no longer purely demonstrative, had become the symbol of time past, that at such a time people were still unable to distinguish, except by a kind of Chinese law of position, between “the father struck the child,” and “the child struck the father.” Before we can admit this, we want much stronger proofs than any adduced by Curtius. He says, for instance, that compound verbal bases formed with +yâ+, to go, and afterwards fixed as causatives, would be inconceivable during a period in which accusatives existed. From +naś+, to perish, we form in Sanskrit +nâśa-yâmi+, I make perish. This, according to Curtius, would have meant originally, I send to perishing. Therefore +nâśa+ would have been, in the accusative, +nâśam+, and the causative would have been +nâśamyâmi+, if the accusative had then been known. But we have in Latin[34] _pessum dare_, _venum ire_, and no one would say that compounds like _calefacio_, _liquefacio_, _putrefacio_, were impossible after the first Aryan separation, or after that still earlier period to which Curtius assigns the formation of the Aryan case-terminations. Does Professor Curtius hold that compound forms like Gothic _nasi-da_ were formed not only before the Aryan separation, but before the introduction of case-terminations? I hold, on the contrary, that such really old compositions never required, nay never admitted, the accusative. We say in Sanskrit, +dyu-gat+, going to the sky, +dyu-ksha+, dwelling in the sky, without any case-terminations at the end of the first part of the compound. We say in Greek, σακέσ-παλος, not σάκοσ-παλος, παιδοφόνος, not παιδαφόνος, ὀρεσ-κῷος, mountain-bred, and also ὀρεσί-τροφος, mountain-fed. We say in Latin, _agri-cola_, not _agrum-cola_, _fratri-cīda_, not _fratrem-cīda_, _rēgĭfugium_, not _regis-fugium_. Are we to suppose that all these words were formed before there was an outward mark of distinction between nominative and