The measure of the excellence of a language, therefore, is the clearness, definiteness and energy of the ideas which it awakes in the nation. Does it inspire and incite their mind? Has it positive and clear tones, and do these define sharply the ideas they represent, without needless accessories? Does its structure present the leading elements of the proposition in their simplicity, and permit the secondary elements to be grouped around them in subordinate positions, with a correct sense of linguistic perspective? The answers to these queries decide its position in the hierarchy of tongues.[18-*] As its capacity for expression is no criterion of a language, still less is the abundance or regularity of its forms. For this very multiplicity, this excessive superfluity, is a burden and a drawback, and obscures the integration of the thought by attaching to it a quantity of needless qualifications. Thus, in the language of the Abipones, the pronoun is different as the person spoken of is conceived as present, absent, sitting, walking, lying, or running, all quite unnecessary specifications.[19-*] In some languages much appears as form which, on close scrutiny, is nothing of the kind. This misunderstanding has reigned almost universally in the treatment of American tongues. The grammars which have been written upon them proceed generally on the principles of Latin, and apply a series of grammatical names to the forms explained, entirely inappropriate to them and misleading. Our first duty in taking up such a grammar as, for instance, that of an American language, is to dismiss the whole of the arrangement of the “parts of speech,” and, by an analysis of words and phrases, to ascertain by what arrangement of elements they express logical, significant relations.[19-†] For example, in the Carib tongue, the grammars give _aveiridaco_ as the second person singular, subjunctive imperfect, “if thou wert.” Analyze this, and we discover that _a_ is the possessive pronoun “thy;” _veiri_ is “to be” or “being” (in a place); and _daco_ is a particle of definite time. Hence, the literal rendering is “on the day of thy being.” The so-called imperfect subjunctive turns out to be a verbal noun with a preposition. In many American languages the hypothetical supposition expressed in the Latin subjunctive is indicated by the same circumlocution. Again, the infinitive, in its classical sense, is unknown in most, probably in all, American languages. In the Tupi of Brazil and frequently elsewhere it is simply a noun; _caru_ is both “to eat” and “food;” _che caru ai-pota_, “I wish to eat,” literally “my food I wish.” In the Mexican, the infinitive is incorporated in the verb as an accusative, and the verb is put in the future of the person spoken of.