Nor are our means of penetrating the past even thus exhausted. A third
chain yet more subtle and more marvellous has been found to link us to
an ancestry immeasurably remote. This unbroken chain consists of the
words from our own mouths. We speak as our fathers spoke; and they did
but follow the generations before. Occasional pronunciations have
altered, new words have been added, and old ones forgotten; but some
basal sounds of names, some root-thoughts of the heart, have proved as
immutable as the superficial elegancies are changeful. "Father" and
"mother" mean what they have meant for uncounted ages.

Comparative philology, the science which compares one language with
another to note the points of similarity between them, has discovered
that many of these root-sounds are alike in almost all the varied
tongues of Europe. The resemblance is too common to be the result of
coincidence, too deep-seated to be accounted for by mere communication
between the nations. We have gotten far beyond the possibility of such
explanations; and science says now with positive confidence that there
must have been a time when all these nations were but one, that their
languages are all but variations of the tongue their distant ancestors
once held in common.

Study has progressed beyond this point, can tell us far more intricate
and fainter facts. It argues that one by one the various tribes left
their common home and became completely separated; and that each
root-sound still used by all the nations represents an idea, an object,
they already possessed before their dispersal. Thus we can vaguely
reconstruct that ancient, aboriginal civilization. We can even guess
which tribes first broke away, and where again these wanderers
subdivided, and at what stage of progress. Surely a fascinating science
this! And in its infancy! If its later development shall justify present