Where, then, does this explanation of the problem leave us? Does it go to the bottom of the matter? Is it sufficiently distinct and satisfactory? In brief, does it give us any clear understanding of the Origin of Speech? Does it not rather leave us at the crucial point of the whole inquiry, with the essence and core of the subject untouched and shrouded in mystery? Some indefinite hundreds of roots, obtained, it is assumed, by means of some indescribable and unknown mental instinct! This is the sober and contented answer of Philology to the investigator who would know of the Sources of Language, and its constituent elements. But of the component parts of these roots--the true and fundamental constituent elements of Speech, without a knowledge of which there can be no basic and conclusive comprehension of the meaning of roots--and of the nature of the method by which these elements become expressive of thoughts or ideas, there is no word. Language, as it now rests in the hands of the Comparative Philologists, is in the same state that Chemistry was when Earth, Air, Fire, and Water were supposed to be the ultimate constituent elements of Matter, ere a single real ultimate element was known as such. But Chemistry, _as a science_, had no existence prior to the discovery of the simple constituents of Physical creation. In like manner, a _Science_ of Language must be founded on a knowledge of the nature and _meaning_ of the simple elements of Speech. Until this knowledge is in our possession it is only on the outskirts of the subject that we are able to tread. Roots are, it is true, the actual bases of Language, so far as its concrete, working, or synthetical structure is concerned; in the same sense that _compound_ substances are the main constituents found in the Universe as it really and naturally exists. But, although the proportion of simple chemical elements, in the real constitution of things, is small, as compared with that of compound substances; yet it is only by our ability to separate compound substances into these elements that we arrive at an understanding of their true character and place in the realm of Matter. So it is only by our ability to analyze roots--the compound constituents of Language--into the prime elements which have, except rarely, no distinctive and individual embodiment in it, that we can hope to gain a clear comprehension of the nature of Language itself, or of its most primitive concrete or composite foundations.