• 1. Distribution and cultural connection of the Malayan races; 2. General consideration of the course of man's development; 3. The same, continued; 4. Effects of exceptional mental power; 5. Conjoint action of individuals and nations; 6. The same, continued; 7. Transition to closer consideration of language; 8. Form of languages; 9. Nature and constitution of languages as such; 10. Sound-system of languages; 11. Inner linguistic form; 12. Combination of sound with inner linguistic form; 13. The procedure of language more fully explained; 14. Isolation, inflection and agglutination of words; 15. Verbal unity more closely examined; 16. Accent; 17. Incorporative system of languages; 18. Congruence of sound-forms in languages with grammatical requirements; 19. Main division of languages, according to the purity of their formative principle; 20. Character of languages; 21. Power of languages to evolve felicitously from one to another; 22. Retrospect on the course of the inquiry so far; 23. Nature and origin of less perfect language-structure; 24. The Chinese language; 25. Whether the polysyllabic language-structure has evolved from the monosyllabic.

"The editor's introduction contains a fine summary of Humboldt'd career." Notes on Linguistics