Now, by a “verb” I understand a word that signifies either an action or a state; and by a “root” I understand—here agreeing with Prof. Max Müller himself—“an element of human speech,” so far as this has been hitherto reduced by philological analysis. Again, I hold—in this also agreeing with him—that “as soon as a root is used for predication it becomes a word, whether outwardly it is changed or not.” (“Science of Thought,” p. 440.) Well, if we are agreed upon these points, I do not see how there can be any “contradiction in terms” when I stated the fact “of all roots being verbs.” In the first place, if one were to agree with Prof. Max Müller himself in holding that originally every root was “something real, something that was actually used in conversation” (Ibid. p. 420), there can be no contradiction in terms if we translate this into saying that originally every root was a word—for the mere quibble that not until it was spoken did the root become a word does not affect the matter, any more than if we were to say the same of any word now in use, which has given birth to a progeny of other words. But even if we disagree with Prof. Max Müller, and suppose that roots are merely “phonetic elements,” or the residual extract of a group of originally allied words, we should still be correct in saying that the “concepts” which they “embody” are all concepts which now admit of being expressed in equivalent words. So much for the “contradiction in terms,” which is alleged to arise if we speak of roots as _words_. Touching the second point, or the accuracy of saying that the words which roots express are always _verbs_, my defence is sufficiently easy. For to say, as my critic says, that “in giving the meaning of roots scholars generally employ the infinitive or the participle,” appears to me a most unphilosophical observation, since it appears to indicate that in the opinion of its writer the significance of a verb is but conventionally given to a root by the verbal form into which it is thrown by scholars. But the fact is that, even if they tried, scholars could rarely deprive a root of its significance as a verb, no matter into what verbal form they might choose to throw it. Take any root at random, such as HA _to go_. However much we may ring the changes, as “to go,” “going,” “goer,” it is impossible to get rid of the fundamental significance of the root as a verb. And although it is, of course, possible to select a root which presents a more equivocal interpretation, the cases in which this can be done are, comparatively speaking, not numerous, and apparently never such as to exclude the probability of its having primarily conveyed the force of a verb. For instance, HUR _to fall_, may be regarded either as a verb or a noun-substantive; but we cannot say that there is anything to render more probable the view of the root having been originally expressive of a fall than of the act of