It will be observed that neither theory brings any aid to the attempt of Professor Max Mueller and others to demonstrate etymologically the original unity of the human race.  Mr. Wedgwood leaves this question aside, as irrelevant to his purpose.  M. Renan combats it at considerable length.  The logical consequence of admitting either theory would be that the problem was simply indemonstrable.

At first sight, so imaginative a scheme as that of M. Renan is singularly alluring; for, even when qualified by the sentence we have quoted, we may attach such a meaning to the word motivee as to find in words the natural bodies of which the Platonic ideas are the soul and spirit.  We find in it a correlative illustration of that notion not uncommon among primitive poets, and revived by the Cabalists, that whoever knew the Word of a thing was master of the thing itself, and an easy way of accounting for the innate fitness and necessity, the fore ordination, which stamps the phrases of real poets.  If, on the other hand, we accept Mr. Wedgwood’s system, we must consider speech, as the theologians of the Middle Ages assumed of matter, to be only potentiated with life and soul, and shall find the phenomenon of poetry as wonderful, if less mysterious, when we regard the fineness of organization requisite to a perception of the remote analogies of sense and thought, and the power, as of Solomon’s seal, which can compel the unwilling genius back into the leaden void which language becomes when used as most men use it.

There is a large class of words which every body admits to be imitative of sounds,—­such, for example, as bang, splash, crack,—­and Mr. Wedgwood undertakes to show that their number and that of their derivative applications is much larger than is ordinarily supposed.  He confines himself almost wholly to European languages, but not always to the particular class of etymologies which it is his main object to trace out.  Some of his explanations of words, not based upon any real or assumed radical, but showing their gradual passage toward their present forms and meanings, are among the most valuable parts of the book.  As striking proofs of this, we refer our readers to Mr. Wedgwood’s treatment of the words abide, abie, allow, danger, and denizen.  When he differs from other authorities, it is never inconsiderately or without examination.  Now and then we think his derivations are far-fetched, when simpler ones were lying near his hand.  He makes the Italian balcone come from the Persian baia khaneh, an upper chamber.  An upper chamber over a gate in the Persian caravanserais is still called by that name, according to Rich. (p. 97.) Yet under the word balk we find, “A hayloft is provincially termed the balks, (Halliwell,) because situated among the rafters.  Hence also, probably, the Ital. balco, or pulcoy a scaffold; a loftlike erection supported upon beams.”