It is a fact, then, that all case-endings arose from adding on meaningless words to the end of the word, the noun or pronoun--_Mann_, _des mann-es_, _dem Mann-e_; _hom-o_, _hom-inis_, _hom-ini_: the addition to the root in every case was once a distinct word of the auxiliary kind, or derived from such a word. The meanings of case-endings such as these cannot, it is true, be discovered now, for they came into existence long before such languages as German or Latin were spoken, and their meanings were lost sight of in ages which passed before history. But that time when the terminations which are meaningless now had a meaning, and the period of transition between this state and the state of a language which is full of grammatical changes inexplicable to those who use them, form distinct epochs in the history of every language. And it is just the same with verb-endings as with the case endings--_ich bin_, _du bist_, really express the ‘I’ and ‘thou’ twice over, as the pronouns exist though hidden and lost sight of in the _-n_ and _-st_ of the verb. In the case of verbs, indeed, we may without going far give some idea of how these endings can be detected. We may say at once that Sanskrit, Persian, Armenian, Greek, Latin, French, Italian, Spanish, German, English, Norse, Gaelic, Welsh, Lithuanian, Russian, and other Slavonic languages are all connected together in various degrees of relationship, all descended from one common ancestor, some being close cousins, and some very distant. Now in Sanskrit ‘I am’ is thus declined:-- _as-mi_ I am. _a-si_ thou art. _as-ti_ he is. _’-smas_ we are. _’s-tha_ ye are. _’s-anti_ they are.