THE LAWS OF SPEECH. 201 



powers of a human being living a solitary existence, of themselves 

 develop a language ? There are of course but few facts to which we 

 may appeal on this head, but such facts as we do possess militate 

 powerfully against such a belief. Solitary man would be a speechless 

 creature ; and hence, may we not logically assign to social tendencies 

 and a gregarious nature a large share and a most undoubted influence 

 in the production of language ? 



But by what theory can we urge that the language of man has 

 become developed from the acts, or roughly expressed emotions, of 

 lower existence ; seeing, that, on any theory of development, we require 

 reasonably to believe that such a faculty as language, paralleled by 

 the " expressions " of lower life, must have originated in the higher 

 development of the latter ? Two theories find favour in the eyes of 

 philologists, being known respectively as the " ding-dong " and the 

 "bow-wow" hypotheses. Briefly stated, the "ding-dong" theory 

 founds its explanation of the origin of speech on the idea that the 

 conscious nature and mind of man responded to external impressions 

 very much as a bell responds when struck, and that in this way the 

 roots of language were formed in the shape of a number of "sound- 

 types." But the mental constitution of man is not analogous to the 

 bell. Each conception of mind would not necessarily give origin to 

 one stable and fixed sign or symbol of its presence and nature. More 

 reasonable by far . is it to suppose that the choice of a sound to 

 represent an idea originated in some mental act responding to the 

 object suggesting the idea much in the same manner as an infant, 

 on hearing a dog bark or a cow low, should thereafter indicate the 

 one by saying " bow-wow," and the other by the primitive " moo." 

 Nor must we lose sight of a distinction which has not been insisted 

 upon sufficiently, and in many cases overlooked entirely, in discussions 

 on this subject namely, that the simple sounds of which a primitive 

 language must have consisted, would be derived primarily from the 

 comparatively few objects by which early man was surrounded. The 

 more complex combinations of sounds found in the language of after 

 ages would naturally be a later development, when primitive man's 

 concepts and thoughts increased in number and diversity of range, 

 and when he possessed a wider sphere of action, and lived in the 

 presence of multifarious and amid varied surroundings. 



Sounds, then, were derived from the actions or objects they 

 were intended to indicate. Such is the " bow-wow " theory of the 

 origin of language, otherwise named the " mimetic " or " imitative '" 

 or, if we prefer the learned equivalent, the " onomatopoetic " 

 hypothesis. Mr. Darwin states the general ground of the "bow- 

 wow " theory in plain terms when he says : " I cannot doubt 

 that language owes its origin to the imitation and modification of 

 various natural sounds, the voices of other animals and man's own 



