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. * * * * *