work—hurling the thunderbolt, shouting in thunder, hidden by dark clouds, and smiling in the serene blue of the sky with its brilliant scintillations? All this and much more became perfectly intelligible, the step from the visible to the invisible, from the perceived to the conceived, from nature to nature’s gods, and from nature’s god to a more sublime unseen and spiritual power. All this seemed to pass before our very eyes in the Veda, and then to be reflected in Homer and Pindar. [9] Herr Geheimrath von Spiegel now lives at Munich. Some details of this restored picture of the world of gods and men in early times, nay, in the very spring of time, may have to be altered, but the picture, the eidyllion remained, and nothing could curb the adventurous spirit and keep it from pushing forward and trying to do what seemed to others almost impossible, namely, to watch the growth of the human mind as reflected in the petrifactions of language. Language itself spoke to us with a different voice, and a formerly unsuspected meaning. We knew, for instance, that _ewig_ meant eternal, but whence eternal. Nothing eternal was ever seen, and it seemed to the philosopher that eternal could be expressed by a negation only, by a negation of what was temporary. But we now learnt that _ewig_ was derived in word and therefore in thought from the Gothic _aiwar_, time. _Ewigkeit_ was therefore originally time, and “for all time” came naturally to mean “for all eternity.” Eternity also came from _aeternus_, that is _aeviternus_, for time, i. e. for all time, and thus for eternity, while _aevum_ meant life, lifetime, age. But now came the question, if _aevum_ shows the growth of this word, and its origin, and how it arrives in the end at the very opposite pole, life and time coming to mean eternity, could we not by the same process discover the origin and growth of such short Greek words as ἀεἱ and aἰeἱ? It seems almost impossible, yet remembering that _aevum_ meant originally life, we find in Vedic Sanskrit _eva_, course, way, life, the same as _aevum_, while the Sanskrit _âyush_, likewise derived from _i_, to go, forms its locative _âyushi_. _Âyushi_, or originally _âyasi_, would mean “in life, in time,” and turned into Greek would regularly become then aἰeἱ, lifelong, or ever. It was not difficult to find fault with this and other etymologies, and to ask for an explanation of αἰἑν and αἰἑς, as derived from the same word _âyus_. It is curious that people will not see that etymologies, and particularly the gradual development in the form and meaning of words, can hardly ever be a matter of mathematical certainty.