240 THE ORIGIN OF HUMAN REASON. 



clearly, as Archdeacon Farrar says,* "words are not mere 

 imitations, but subjective echoes and reproductions." 



M. Noird's theory as to the origin of speech, so 

 favoured by Prof. Max Miiller, is designated f by Mr. 

 Romanes the " ' Yeo-he-ho ' theory ; " but he is ready to 

 accept it as one form of onomatopoeia. Yet he by no 

 means assigns the origin of speech to any or all forms 

 of onomatopoeia. " If even," he says,J " civilized children 

 . . . will coin a language of their own in which the element 

 of onomatopoeia is barely traceable ; and if uneducated 

 deaf-mutes will spontaneously devise articulate sounds 

 which are necessarily destitute of any imitative origin," 

 why, he asks, should primitive man be supposed to have 

 been only capable of mimicry .? Why, indeed ! 



As to children of our own day, he truly says,§ " Even 

 after the child has begun to learn the use of actual 

 words, arbitrary additions are frequently made to its 

 vocabulary which defy any explanation at the hands of 

 onomatopoeia — not only in cases where they are left to 

 themselves, but even where they are in the closest 

 contact with language as spoken by their elders." || 

 When not controlled by their elders, children left much 

 together may develop a newly-devised language, " un- 

 intelligible to all but its inventors." 



He declares that, in any case, words were originally 

 due \.o psychogenesis^ which we not only allow but assert. 



In his next two chapters Mr. Romanes occupies 



* p. 286. t p. 290. X p. 291. § p. 292. 



II He refers to his foot-note on his page 144. 



^ This term was, we believe, originally introduced by ourselves. 

 See " On Truth," pp. 440, 509, 510, 521 ; also "The Cat" (John 

 Murray), p. 526. 



