Strages; Sragenie, a defeat, Strah, fear,

terror.

Cruor, blood violently spilt; Crov, blood: the old word was Sanguis, which was retained for the fluid. Marior, I die; Morù, I kill. Fugo; Vuigonat, to put to flight. Vibro; Vuibrosat, to dart. Rapio; Hrabit, to plunder.

Labo, I fall; Slaboy, weak; Slabo, weakly.

Placo, I appease; Placat, to cry, to weep.

Mollio, I soften; Moliu, I beg, I pray. Immolo, I sacrifice ;-Vuimoliu, I obtain by my prayers.

Pugno, I fight; Pinaiu, I drive, push.

Seco; Secu, I cut.

I

Domus ; Dom, a house.

Pons, a bridge; Ponesti, to bear up.

Arare; Arat, to plough.

1

I

Nubes, clouds; Nebesa, heaven.
Mensis; Mesiats, month.
Ether, air; vaetr, wind.
Boreas; Burac, tempest, storm.
Carnufex, an Executioner; Carnat, to
cut off the ears.

I might add a great many more, for I collected above five hundred similar instances which I communicated to Mr. Karamzin, a great many years ago, when he was writing his history of Russia. But I suppose the preceding will be deemed sufficient. I must however add a few, which are intended to prove that this branch, at least, of the great Scythian family, has made a greater progress in civilization, than some writers are willing to allow,

Scribo, I write; Screbu, I scratch, I engrave.

Pingo, pinxi, pingere, to paint, to draw; pishu, pisat, to write. Recitare, to recite; citat (pronounced chitat, as the Italians) to read.

I shall close this article with a transla

tion of the principal proper names of the first Romans.

Roma; Hrom, hroma, thunder. Romulus; Hroma-losk, light of thunder, glittering of thunder.

Remus; Hremu, I roar, or rumble, like thunder.

Tullus; Tul, quiver, luc, a bow.
Tarpeius; Terpeyou, I suffer.
Flaminii; Plameniy, blazing.
Atratinus; Atraten, armed cap-a-pè.
Sempronius; Sempronitsayou, I pierce
seven through.

Mucius; Muciù (pronounced like the
Italian) I torment.

Marcius; Marshciùs (id.) I frown.
Cassius; Cossius, I look awry.

build.

I think fitter names could not be chosen for such people.

To these I must add those of some of their Divinities.

Feretrius; Peretria, who beats to atoms, who crushes,

Mars, Martis; Smert, Smerty, death.
Gradivus; Gradivoy, of towns.
Ceres; Zreya, who ripens.

like.

Nor; Noch, night.

Dies; Den, day.

Somnus; Son, sleep.

Sal; Sol, salt.

Gener, a son-in-law

Vinum; Vino, wine and brandy.

Generosus, noble;

;} Gena, a wife.

Vadum; Vada, water. Mare; More, the sea.

Vulcanus; Volk agnia, the magician of fire.

Venus; Veno, a bride's portion, her marriage-money.

Rhea; Hreya, heating.
Smintheus; Zminny, of a serpent.
Divus, godlike; Divoy, wonderful.

I shall be glad if this opening should induce some learned man to go much deeper into this subject than I had leisure to do. There are many dialects of the Russian language, of which I know nothing but the names, and which might throw greater light on this matter. I shall only just hint in this place how very probable it is, that the first Romans had either brought over with them, or had composed, songs, and heroic poems, describing the wonderful feats of fictitious warriors; to whom they gave (as has been usual at all times), names of their own invention, but which had some reference to their history. These names were perhaps applied afterwards in jest to real persons, who retained them and transmitted them to their posterity. Those fictions, of which traces remained in stories told by nurses to amuse little children, were afterwards

taken up as historical traditions, by writers who were much more anxious to amuse others than to get sound information for themselves; and they have been handed down to us as real history, from an absurd admiration for every thing that was Roman, or that came from Rome.

The enthusiasm with which our great demagogues speak of the Romans, as of a nation which enjoyed a higher degree of liberty than any other, and which owed its greatness and its glory to the liberality of its constitution and laws, produces the worst effect imaginable, by giving a false colour to principles, as well as to facts. These prejudices have done unspeakable mischief in France. For the monsters who succeeded one another in the usurpation of her government, committed crime upon crime, and finally drowned themselves in the blood of their fellow-citizens, in the name of liberty and of their country! always invoking the soul of the elder Brutus, whom they supposed to have sacrificed his own sons, and of the younger Brutus, who was said to have sacrificed his own father, to that phantom!

THE rapid strides which physiology has made within the last fifty years, are a necessary consequence of the new direction given to natural history by the study of comparative anatomy. In the writings of Buffon, of Cuvier, of Hunter, Home, and Blumenbach, may be found the most important facts which form the basis of a science, long ridiculed for its idle conjectures, but now placed, in respect to certainty, upon a level with any, the most advanced trains of inquiry, not founded in mathematical demonstration.

The utility of consulting the organization of animals, as a means of illustrating the laws of life, is so evident, that we are tempted to wonder at the possibility of its having been so long overlooked but there is another branch of comparative inquiry, as prolific, perhaps, and as interesting, which remains to the present hour uncultivated and neglected.

:

ELIAN'S HISTORY OF ANIMALS. The investigation of the mental faculties of animals, if grounded upon an attentive observation of facts, could not fail to afford many important additions to our hitherto imperfect knowledge of the human mind; and would tend to clear away many of those errors in psy chological science, which have been occasioned by the theorizing spirit in which the subject has hitherto been examined. It is within a very few years only that the philosophic methods of the ancients have been in part laid aside, that the assumption of hypothetical first causes has fallen into disrepute, and that ideologists have turned their attention to phænomena, independently of all à priori notions concerning their origin. Already, however, the character of the science has been completely changed; and from an idle, unfruitful, and in some degree dangerous pursuit, it has become the source of various radical improvements in grammar, logic,

and many other branches of metaphysi"cal research. Its vague, fantastic re veries have been converted into a corps de d doctrine, embracing under one point of view, objects the most exciting to human curiosity, and the most important to human happiness.

To derive the maximum of advantage from this method of investigation, the union between the moral sciences and physiology must be still closer cemented; and to this end the examination of the animal intellect may contribute as affording a new chain of connection. Should no ulterior improvements result from such an application of natural history, the possession of a new standard for trying generalizations, and the possibility of verifying elementary notions by the test of a wider range of phenomena, would amply compensate for the labour of research.

The principal difficulty which opposes itself to an acquaintance with the sensorial faculties of animals, exists, in a great degree, in all inquiries respecting mind, other than those which concern the movements of our own conscious ness. In the intercourse between minds the most philosophically educated, it can rarely be ascertained that the same signs are accurately symbolical of the same ideas, that in speaking a common language, the words are used by both parties in the same significations. Definitions, however precise, are not always sufficient to give stability to discourse; for though it should be supposed that this valuable preliminary can be secured in the outset of discussion, it is impossible that, in the progress of debate, each individual shall continue rigorously to attach the same ideas, and none but the same, to the words which he continues to employ. "L'incertitude de -Ja valeur des signes de nos idées, est inThérente à la nature de nos facultés intellectuelles, et il est impossible que le même signe ait exactement la même valeur pour tous ceux qui l'emploient, let même pour chacun d'eux, dans les bdifférens momens où il l'emploie -Every new fact, every new feeling, which may be connected, however remotely, with our complex ideas, impresses upon language changes more or

In the works more particularly of Cabanis, Roussel, and De Tracy, are to be found the elements of stupendous reforms in philosophy. 400+ De Tracy, Elémens d'Idéologie, vol. II. p. 379. Voyez aussi, vol. I. chap. 17. NEW MONTHLY MAG.-No. 80.

less important and permanent changes that not only impede a mutual intelligence among men, but prevent the individual from at all times understanding himself. To this cause may be attributed much of that uncertainty which not only affects propositions remotely connected with human happiness, but extends to those most essential to our interests, when they do not affect them by an im mediate and organic influence. Were this cause of error thoroughly removed, it may be doubted whether two religions could subsist among civilized nations; it is impossible that there could be two systems of politics.

But if it be only by a coarse sort of approximation that we arrive at a knowledge of the ideas and affections of our own species, the obstacles may readily be imagined which oppose themselves to an acquaintance with the sensorial mechanism of the animal races. Fortunately, however, if the range of our enquiries be thus confined, the facts which may be ascertained are presented by a symbology often less equivocal than that of human languages. The language of action which all animated beings are compelled to exhibit, being independent of their volition, and arising uniformly the same under the pressure of similar circumstances, it is less susceptible of change by its own nature, than that which is purely conventional; and as it is understood, by a direct act of consciousness, identifying in ourselves, the connection between the feelings and their natural expressions, there is no room for error; the instant we can judge of our own sensations, and of the changes in our exterior which accompany them, it is impossible that we should be mistaken in translating the expressions of others. This natural system of signs belongs to the whole animal kingdom, and ceases only to be intelligible, when the organization becomes too extensively different, to admit of any similitude of affections. The writhing of a worm when trodden upon, is as clearly indicative of the pain it experiences, as the gesticulations of the happiest actor; the flight of the hare, or the roar of the lion, are perfectly understood by every living being interested in the intellectual movements of those animals. If, therefore, we cannot enter very deeply into the relative of combination possessed by every given species; if we are not able, in all instances, to follow the individual in the inferences it draws from externals, and the judgments it is VOL. XIV. 2 Q

powers

and

compelled to make of its own impres sions, we are certain as to the nature of the ideas connected with those feelings which we are enabled to read in the universal language of nature.

In the present state of philosophy, it is unnecessary to prove that animals feel. The reveries of certain individu als, and their affected doubts on this head, are now too universally disre garded to impede our progress in this step of inquiry. Perception, on the contrary, is uniformly taken as the common characteristic of animal life; and all beings that do not manifest this pro perty by movements indicating volition, are consigned either to the vegetable or mineral kingdom.

This faculty of perception establishes a connection between the individual that possesses it, and the external world, by which the percipient is enabled to conduct certain functional actions, so essential to its being, as that, without this auxiliary, the existence of the species would be physically impossible. The number and energy in which these functions may be requisite for the preservation of life, are not the same in every distinct species; and the demand for perception thus varying, there arises a corresponding difference in the developement of sensitive power. A keener sensibility to external causes than is necessary for the support of vitality, would prove a mere source of disease; while an insensibility to the presence of agents really affecting existence, would afford a sure means for the annihilation of the species.

Not only is each separate race of animals thus characterized by peculiar sensitive phenomena, but the same animal, at different epochs of its existence, exhibits proofs of a greater or less de velopement of intellect and energy, The metamorphosis of insects affords a remarkable illustration of this law. The voracious appetite of the caterpillar, the lethargic indolence of the chrysalis, and the volatile caprice of the butterfly, seem scarcely compatible with our notions of personal identity. All animals, at the epoch of puberty, experience, in a greater or less degree, similar changes in their propensities, sensibility, and mobility; and in disease, similar alterations of sensitive and locomotive power occur sufficient to effect a more or less

permanent change in the character of the individual *.

The general identity, however, of the living principle, and the sameness of its action in all animals, may be demonstrated upon more than one ground of argument. Whatever apparent varieties may subsist in the sensibility and activity of the different animated races, they are, in ultimate analysis, all reducible to the capability of consciousness, or perception of the contact of foreign bodies; and to a power of locomotion, enabling the percipient to change its position with respect to such bodies, so as to derive the greatest advantage from the presence of preservative causes, or to avoid the encounter of such as may be injurious.

The link of connexion between these powers can be no other than the sensations of pleasure and of pain. That sensation, which is both directly and indirectly indifferent to the percipient, cannot become a source of locomotion. The movements, therefore, which take place within the animal, independently of the co-operation of the individual; arise by a causation which is not at tended with consciousness.

Pleasure and pain necessarily imply volition, and volition as necessarily implies judgment. No determinate action could flow from a sense of pleasure or pain, if the percipient did not judge of its own sensations, at least as far as regards the qualities of good and evil. The perception of pleasure and pain is indeed in itself a judgment. The presence of food, for example, would not prevent an animal from dying of inanition, if the perception of that presence were not accompanied by a sensation of hunger, or of the pleasant flavour of the viand. Neither would these sensations suffice, unless they predisposed the percipient to a definite series of musculat actions; and these again would be unavailing, if the sentient being could notjudge of the qualities of bodies, or rather of the sensations they excite, and thus distinguish his food from other substances. All these several faculties enter necessarily and indissolubly into the mechanism of animal action; and without their co-operation perception is either a superfluous or an insufficient wheel in the machinery of vitality. Of

ticle "AME."

these phenomena we are conscious in ourselves, we see them clearly in the conduct of animals, and we infer them in every instance in which we operate upon the volition of other individuals. It is our consciousness of the inutility of perception when unaccompanied by a locomotive power, that induces us to deny this faculty to vegetables. but if it be useless without its ultimate object, it is equally so without the means that connect it with that object.

Wherever perceptibility is manifested, it must therefore be concluded, that the percipient is capable of distinct ideas of pleasure and of pain, through the agency of their exciting causes, in a proportion necessary to produce a congruous voluntary action; and that such volitions must proceed from a judgment formed of the quality of the sensations.

L

The justness of this conclusion is confirmed by considerations drawn from an entirely distinct chain of argument. If inquiry be commenced by an investigation of the powers of man, as the highest in the chain of intellectual existences, it will require little labour to prove, that the several peculiarities which have heretofore been rated as the results of distinct faculties, are, in fact, mere modifications of the one phenomenon of sensation, influenced by causes susceptible of a rigorous appreciation. Indeed, it is difficult to conceive any other clear notion of memory, imagination, judgment, and volition, than that memory consists in a sensation of an idea which has formerly been presented by the organs of sense; imagination, a sensation of ideas in a certain state of combination; judgment, the sensation of an idea being included in one more complex; and volition, a sensation of appetence or aversion. All these differ ent phenomena, then, are merely sensations, but sensations viewed under different points of consideration with relation to their causes and effects.

The faculty of perception necessarily implies these several modifications: for to perceive is to be conscious of a change produced in ourselves, by the intervention of a cause external to the sentient fibre: but to be conscious of a change is to remember the past, and to compare it with the present; and these presupposed faculties of memory and of judgment must be integral and essential parts of the act of sensation itself, and inseparable from its existence. Again,

* Elémens d'Idéologie, vol. I.

among the changes which externals may produce, one source of difference relates to pleasure or pain, and consequently to the mode of re-action they may excite in the percipient. Every sensation has its definite influence upon the body in exciting re-action, though we too commonly consider volition as subsisting only, when the new sensation induces a change, or tendency to change, in the muscular system. But either aversion, appetence, or indifference, must accompany every sensation according to its specífic nature; and it is impossible to conceive perception totally divested of one or other of these concomitants.

But if memory, judgment, and volition, are inseparable from sensation; imagination also is an integral part of the power of volition. For the percipient, in desiring to change its present situation, or to retain it, must have an archetypal idea of the effect to be, or not to be, produced; he must imagine himself in a given situation, in order to desire, or not desire, its attainment. The supposed faculties, then, to which these several phenomena have usually been attributed, can be nothing but mere abstractions, raised to the rank of realities by that fallacious influence of language which leads us to impute a positive existence to whatever is susceptible of bearing a name.

If this truth be admitted, and it seems difficult to contest the reasoning upon which it is founded, it follows that the phenomena are none of them peculiar to a particular species, but must be exhibited by every animal in the degree of developement proportionate to its capacity for varied impression.

In searching for the causes of the differences of intellectual power, which distinguish the various species of animated beings, the first circumstance to remark is the difference of structure in those organs through which impressions are received. There are indeed few, except among the lowest classes of animals, that do not in their actions exhibit proofs of possessing the five senses; although comparative anatomy does not always succeed in demonstrating the organs in which they reside. There is even reason for supposing that some species are provided with organs of sense, with whose operation and influence man must remain for ever unacquainted. It is impossible to be certain of the impressions conveyed through the multilenticular eyes, or by the antennæ of insects. In descending, however, through the