falling; and inasmuch as there do not appear to be any roots which _can_ only have originally had the force of nouns or adjectives, while there are so many which _can_ only have originally had the force of verbs, we may fairly conclude that in the accidentally more equivocal cases the roots were likewise originally expressive of actions or of states. For, if not, why are there not as many roots which convey such meanings as _sky_, or _blue_ (which never can have had equivalents in the forms of verbs), as there are roots like HA, where we cannot doubt that the meaning from the first must have been the meaning of a verb? I am the more surprised at this head of Prof. Max Müller’s criticism, because it belongs to the very essence of his own theory touching “the origin of roots,” that they _must_ all originally have conveyed the meaning of verbs. Therefore from end to end of his own book he constantly alludes to roots as expressive of “actions”; never as expressive of objects or qualities. For instance: “All, or nearly all, the roots of Sanskrit, or rather of the Aryan family in general, express, as we shall see, acts, and more particularly the commonest acts performed by members of a primitive society.” (“Science of Thought,” p. 272.) And even in _The Monist_ article itself the same thing is stated thus: “Let us remember that a most careful psychological analysis had led Noiré to the conclusion that the germs of all conceptional thought were to be found in the consciousness of our own repeated acts. And let us place by the side of this, the well-ascertained fact that the germs of all conceptional language, what we call roots, express with few exceptions the repeated acts of men.” (_The Monist_, p. 580.) Again: “We begin with the fact that the great bulk of a language consists of words, derived, according to the strictest rules, not from cries, but from articulate roots. No one denies this. We follow this up with a second fact, that nearly all the roots express acts of men. No one denies that.” (p. 588.) Very well then, I submit that the only real distinction between Prof. Max Müller’s rendering of this “fact,” and my own rendering of it, consists in my having added “states” to “acts,” and observing that then the comparatively few outstanding roots may be included with the “nearly all” under the one category of “verbs.” For the distinction which he draws in _The Monist_ is not a real distinction: it is merely a verbal distinction. Here it is: “If Professor Romanes approves of my saying that roots stood for any part of speech, just as the monosyllabic expressions of children do, I can only say that, if I ever said so, I expressed myself incorrectly. A root never stands for any part of speech, because as soon as it is a part of speech it is no longer a root.” (_The Monist_, p. 585.)