That savagery and barbarism represent a _degenerate_, rather than a _primitive_, state, is proved by the fact that savage tribes, in general, despite their brutish degradation, possess languages too perfectly elaborated and systematized to be accounted for by the mental attainments of the men who now use them, languages which testify unmistakably to the superior intellectual and cultural level of their civilized ancestors, to whom the initial construction of such marvelous means of communication was due. “It is indeed one of the paradoxes of linguistic science,” says Dr. Edwin Sapir, in a lecture delivered April 1, 1911, at the University of Pennsylvania, “that some of the most complexly organized languages are spoken by so-called primitive peoples, while, on the other hand, not a few languages of relatively simple structure are found among peoples of considerable advance in culture. Relatively to the modern inhabitants of England, to cite but one instance out of an indefinitely large number, the Eskimos must be considered as rather limited in cultural development. Yet there is just as little doubt that in complexity of form the Eskimo language goes far beyond English. I wish merely to indicate that, however we may indulge in speaking of primitive man, of a primitive language in the true sense of the word we find nowhere a trace.” (Smithson. Inst. Rpt. for 1912, p. 573.) Pierre Duponceau makes a similar observation with reference to the logical and orderly organization of the Indian languages: “The dialects of the Indian tribes,” he says, “appear to be the work of philosophers rather than of savages.” (Cited by F. A. Tholuck, “Verm. Schr.,” ii, p. 260.)