Later on I will give abundant evidence of a similar state of matters in the case of other existing languages presenting a low order of development—especially those of savages. But perhaps it is even of more importance to prove that the most highly developed of all languages—namely, the Indo-European group—still bears unmistakable evidence of having passed through this primitive phase. This is a statement which it would be easy to substantiate by any number of quotations; but I will only call the testimony of one witness in the person of Professor Max Müller, whose evidence on this point may be regarded as that of an opponent. “Nothing, it is true, can exist in language except what is a sentence, _i.e._ that conveys a meaning; but for that very reason it ought to have been perceived that every word must originally have been a sentence. The mere root, _quâ_ root, cannot be called a sentence, and in that sense a mere root may be denied the dignity of a word. But as soon as a root is used for predication, it becomes a word, whether outwardly it is changed or not. What in Chinese is effected by position or by tone, namely, the adaptation of a root to serve the purposes of words, is in the Aryan languages achieved by means of suffixes and terminations, though often also by change of tone. We saw that, in an earlier stage, the Aryan languages, too, could raise a root into a word, without the aid of suffixes, and that, for instance, _yudh_, to fight, could be used in the five senses of the act of fighting, the agent of fighting, the instrument of fighting, the place of fighting, and the result of fighting. For the sake of distinction, however, as soon as the necessity began to be felt, the Aryan language introduced derivative elements, mostly demonstrative or pronominal.” “The imperative may truly be called the most primitive sentence, and it is important to observe how little in many languages it deviates from what has been fixed upon as the true form of a root ... _va_, weave, whether as a reminder or as a command, would have as much right to be called a sentence as when we say, ‘Work,’ _i.e._ ‘Let us work.’ ... From the use of a root in the imperative, or in the form of a general assertion, there is a very easy transition to its employment in other senses and for other purposes.... A master requiring his slaves to labour, and promising them their food in the evening, would have no more to say than ‘Dig—Feed,’ and this would be quite as intelligible as ‘Dig, and you shall have food,’ or, as we now say, ‘If you dig, you shall have food.’”[224]