VOICE ARTICULATE LANGUAGE. 481 



It spoke only after its master had pronounced the word, and appeared 

 to do so only on compulsion, although it was not ill used. 1 In the 

 "Dumfries Journal," Scotland, for January, 1829, mention is made of 

 a dog, then living in that city, which could utter distinctly the word 

 "William," the name of the young man to whom it was much attached. 2 

 There is no doubt, however, that in numerous animals speech would be 

 impracticable, owing to defective organization, even were they gifted 

 with adequate intellect. 



It is difficult perhaps impossible to say, how man came to select 

 certain sounds as the types of certain intellectual acts ; nor is it a mat- 

 ter which strictly concerns the physiologist. It may be remarked, 

 however, that whilst some contend, that speech is a science which was 

 determined upon, and inculcated, at an early period of the world, by 

 one or more superior persons acting in concert, and inducing those 

 around them to adopt their articulate and arbitrary sounds ; others 

 affirm, that it has grown progressively out of the natural language, 

 as the increasing knowledge and wants of mankind demanded a more 

 extensive vocabulary. 3 The first view is that of Pythagoras and Plato; 

 but it was opposed by Lucretius and the Epicureans, on the ground, 

 that it must have been impossible for any one person or synod of per- 

 sons to invent the most difficult and abstruse of all human sciences 

 with the paucity of ideas, and of means of communicating them, which 

 they must have possessed ; and that even allowing they could have 

 invented such a science, it must still have been utterly impossible for 

 them to teach it to the barbarians around them. 



The opinions of those philosophers who confine themselves to the 

 phenomena of nature, and hold themselves uncontrolled by other au- 

 thority, accord with those of the Epicureans. 



In the origin of language, it is probable, that words were suggested to 

 mankind by sounds heard around; by the cries of quadrupeds; notes 

 of the birds of the forest ; noises emitted by the insect tribe ; audjble 

 indications from the elements, &c. These, being various, probably 

 first of all suggested discriminative names, deduced from the sounds 

 heard. It is this imitation of the noise made by objects, that consti- 

 tutes the figure of speech called onomatopoeia, the "vox repercussa 

 nature" or "echo of nature," as Wachter 4 has defined it. Daily ex- 

 perience shows us, that this source of words is strictly physiological. 

 Children designate a sonorous object by an imitation of the sounds 

 rendered by it ; and the greater number of sonorous bodies have had 

 names, radically similar, given to them in languages differing most 

 from each other. We say the serpents "Am;" the bees " hum ;" the 

 storm "blusters;" the wind "whistles;" the hogs "grunt;" the hen 

 " cackles;" the man "snores," &c., words used, originally, not perhaps 

 in these very shapes, but varying according to the varying idiom of 

 language, to imitate the sounds elicited by those objects. Such words 



1 Letter to the Abbe Saint Pierre, Oper. ii. 180. 



3 Sharon Turner's Sacred History of the World, p. 280, Amer. edit., New York, 1832. 



3 Harris's Hermes, 3d edit., Book iii. p. 314, London, 1771 ; Beattie's Theory of Language, 

 p.' 246, London, 1803, and Good's Book o'f Nature, ii. 254, London, 1834. 



4 Glossarium Germanicum, Lips., 1737. 



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