The main propositions of the work--whose force and significance, of course, cannot be felt in this dry enumeration--are that language issues from the spontaneity of the human spirit,--"spontaneity, which is both divine and human"; that its origin is simultaneous with the opening of consciousness in the human race; that it preserves a constant parallel with consciousness, that is, with the developed spirit of man, in its nature and growth; and that, by consequence, its first form is not one of analytic simplicity, but of a high synthesis and a rich complexity. The whole mind, he says, acts from the first, only not with the power of defining, distinguishing, separating, which characterizes the intellect of civilized man; his objects are groups; he grasps totalities; sees objects _and_ their relationships as one fact; tends to connect his whole consciousness with all he sees, making the stone a man or a god: and language, in virtue of its perpetual parallelism with consciousness, must be equally synthetic and complex from the start. He finds himself opposed, therefore, first, to those, "like M. Bonald," who attribute language to a purely extraneous, not an interior, revelation; secondly, to the philosophers of the eighteenth century, who made it a product of free and reflective reason; thirdly, to the German school, who trace it back to a few hundred monosyllabic roots, each expressing with analytic precision some definite material object, from which roots the whole subsequent must be derived by etymologic spinning-out, by agglutination, and by figurative heightening of meaning. His work, accordingly, should be read by all sincere students of the question of Language in connection with the statements of Professor Mueller, as he represents another and a typical aspect of the case. He denies the existence of a "Turanian" family of tongues, such as Mueller sought to constitute in Bunsen's "Outlines"; pronouncing with great decision, and on grounds both philosophical and linguistic, against that notion of monosyllabic origin which assumes the Chinese as truest of all tongues to the original form and genius of language, he is even more decided that not the faintest trace can be found of the derivation of all existing languages from a single primitive tongue. From general principles, therefore, and equally from inspection of language, he infers with confidence that each great family of languages has come forth independently from the genius of man. His results in Philology correspond, thus, with those of Mr. Agassiz in Natural History. They suggest multiplicity of human origins. From this result M. Renan does not recoil, and he takes care to state with great precision and vigor the entire independence of the spiritual upon the physical unity of man,--as Mr. Agassiz also did in that jewel which he set in the head of Nott and Gliddon's toad.