These are but illustrations of the method upon which are founded all conclusions touching these our ancestors, and the manner of our knowledge concerning them; far better obtained than merely by gazing upon the instruments which have fallen from their hands, or the monuments they might have raised to commemorate the dead. The difference, in truth, between relics such as these which lie enclosed in language, and the weapons and tombs of the Stone Ages, is exactly the difference between Shakespeare’s statue in Westminster Abbey or his bust at Stratford, and that ‘livelong monument’ whereof Milton spoke. By perfecting beyond the power of any other race the wonderfully complex faculty of speech the Aryans secured that their memory should be handed on the more certainly, and with far greater completeness, than by records left palpable to men’s eyes and hands. Many of their secret thoughts might be unlocked by the same key. Already the same means are being used to give us glimpses of their religious ideas. For the _names_ of the common Aryan gods can be arrived at by just the same comparative method: it may well happen that a name which is only a proper name in one language, can in another be traced to a root which unravels its original meaning. It was so, we saw, with the word _daughter_. Here the Sanskrit root seems to unravel the hidden--the lost, and so hidden--meaning in the Greek or English words. So with a god, the meaning of a name, concealed from the sight of those who used it in prayer or praise, becomes revealed to _us_ by the divining rod of the science of language.
And it is true, nevertheless, that the mine of wealth thus opened has as yet been but cursorily explored.[37] There are far more and greater fish in this sea than ever came out of it. Some day, perhaps, a strictly scientific method may be found for classifying and tracing the changes which words undergo. Sometimes a word is found greatly modified; sometimes it survives almost intact between the different tongues. Is there any reason for this? At present we cannot say.
The question might be answered by means of an elaborate classification under the head of the alterations which words have undergone,[38] and such a comparative vocabulary would lead to the solution of infinite questions concerning the growth of nations. We should be able to look almost into the minds of people long ago, better than we can examine the minds of contemporary races in a lower mental condition, and see what ideas took a strong hold upon them, what things they treated as realities, what metaphorically, and how large for them was the empire of imagination.