Excerpt from The Ancient Literature of America

The anthropologist or student of man, may investigate him as he would any other Object of natural history, classifying him with tail-less apes and erect bears, noting the form of his skull, the angle of his face, the colour of his skin, and the texture of his hair. To such a biologist man is an animal and nothing more. Another enters the field of sociology, viewing the intelligent animal in his relations with his fellows and with nature at large. Here a thousand interesting features present themselves, in domestic and tribal organization, marriage and funeral ceremonies, rites and superstitions, manners and customs, house building, domestication of animals, the chase and war, husbandry, the manufacture of canoes, pottery, and implements of many kinds. A third, calling himself a phil Ologist, discovers that the animal talks, although Mr. Garner. Who has been making special studies in Africa, in his recent book called The Speech of Monkeys, contends that language is not peculiar to human beings. There is one way of communicating thought which uncivilized man shares with the brute, and this has been very fully illustrated by the late Colonel Garrick Mallery in his treatise on Sign and Gesture Language. Mr. Garner has perhaps succeeded in detecting something approaching to articulation in the cries of apes, but, until he can formulate a monkey grammar, the soul of speech will be wanting in his system. Moliere's Bourgeois Gentilhomme spoke prose without knowing it, and wild tribes. Of men are ignorantly guilty Of grammar, and, what is more strange, Of good grammar. An English child is reported as answering an intimation that her mother wanted her, with the words, Her aint callin' me us don't belongto she, in spite of the board schools. Such a thing would be next to impossible in the case of an American Indian child, who unconsciously uses most correct speech, and in narration employs a style elevated and ornate. The occurrence of ungrammatical sentences in the language of a native almost invariably marks him as a foreigner who has acquired it late in life.

About the Publisher

Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com

This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.