M. Renan had put forth, among the many theories which distinguish his
celebrated work on the Semitic languages, one which seemed to M. Cuoq as
mischievous as it was unfounded. M. Renan held that no races were
capable of civilization except such as have now attained it; and that
these comprised only the Aryan, the Semitic, and the Chinese. This
opinion was enforced by a reference to the languages spoken by the
members of those races. "To imagine a barbarous race speaking a Semitic
or an Indo-European language is," he declares, "an impossible
supposition (_une fiction, conradictoire_), which no person can
entertain who is familiar with the laws of comparative philology, and
with the general theory of the human intellect." To one who remembers
that every nation of the Indo-European race traces its descent from a
barbarous ancestry, and especially that the Germans in the days of
Tacitus were in precisely the same social stage as that of the Iroquois
in the days of Champlain, this opinion of the brilliant French
philologist and historian will seem erratic and unaccountable. M. Cuoq
sought to refute it, not merely by argument, but by the logic of
facts. In two works, published successively in 1864 and 1866, he showed,
by many and various examples, that the Iroquois and Algonkin languages
possessed all the excellences which M. Renan admired in the
Indo-European languages, and surpassed in almost every respect the
Semitic and Chinese tongues. [Footnote: See _Jugement Errone de
M. Ernest Renan sur les Langues Sauvages:_ (2d edit.) Dawson
Brothers, Montreal: 1870; and _Etudes Philologiques sur quelques
Langues Sauvages de r Amerique. Par N. O., Ancien Missionaire_. Ibid:
1866. Also _Lexique de la Langue Iroquoise, avec notes et
appendices. Par J. A. Cuoq, Pretre de St. Sulpice_. J. Chapleau &
Fils, Montreal: 1882. These are all works indispensable to the student
of Indian languages.] The resemblances of these Indian languages to the
Greek struck him, as it had struck his illustrious predecessor, the