Page:Wit and Wisdom from West Africa (1865).djvu/15



able linguist has remarked, that the highest object of language-study is to obtain an insight into the characters and thought-modes of mankind. This may be effected in two ways: firstly, by an accurate acquaintance with the verbal forms in which its ideas find utterance; secondly, by the investigation of its literary compositions.

As regards the African tongues, too much labour has hitherto been lavished upon the adits and portals which lead to the temple of knowledge. Sir William Jones, in the last century, made the same complaint touching Asiatic dialects. The “true expression of the national spirit, containing the secrets of a race’s mental organisation,” and “revealing the origin of customs long forgotten,” is not to be sought in accidence or in vocabulary.

And they who maintain, as some have done, that “the