RELATIONS OF SPEECH TO HUMAN PROGRESS 523 



fascinating one, and any anthropologist who could travel the 

 world over and study vocal exclamations among various back- 

 ward peoples, and the early sounds uttered by very young 

 children before imitative speech was acquired, might, I think, 

 make a good deal of it. 



It is evident that tone has a great deal to do with the matter, 

 and it seems probable that we have here a much more persistent 

 relic of the pre-human stage of vocal communication than is 

 found among actual words. Tone indicating emotion appeals 

 to our feelings — which are primeval — far more than any mere 

 words, and is at once understood, even by the lower animals. 

 Indeed it is largely made use of throughout nature. By it such 

 animals as dogs will give a greatly increased range of expres- 

 sion to a very limited collection of vocal sounds. Possibly the 

 agglutinative languages such as Chinese, where tone plays such 

 a large part, and the same identical word may mean a dozen 

 different things in accordance with the tone in which it is 

 uttered, bear more traces of the original pre-human " speech " 

 than the languages of the western world. 



One very obvious advantage of the beginning of true speech 

 is the power it immediately gave of sharing and storing up 

 experiences. Let us imagine our ancient and almost inarticulate 

 forefather arriving at the common lair after an encounter with 

 some wild beast from which he had escaped with difficulty. 

 His scared look and blood-stained skin provoke cries of distress 

 and wonder, and he is led — probably through the sympathetic 

 curiosity of the " women " — to give some sort of a narrative of 

 what has occurred. His words are very few. A growl, roar, 

 or grunt, with a few characteristic movements, represent the 

 specific beast that attacked him. Probably imitated sounds 

 mostly stood for nouns in his " composition," and gestures took 

 the place of verbs, while adjectives giving the degree of his 

 pain and terror would be conveyed by a mimicry of his own 

 animal cries of distress uttered at the time. The total result, 

 however, would be that the young pre-human things sitting 

 on their heels open-mouthed round about him, could not fail to 

 learn, even from such a halting account of an adventure, a 

 great deal that would be of service to them if they ever found 

 themselves in a kindred plight. 



From what we know of all the lower savages such narratives 

 of the day's adventures are an almost invariable custom around 



