THE ORIGIN OF LANGUAGE 49 



her wonderful life, but until some one, who was in 

 contact with society, as she was not, found means of 

 teaching her she had no language. If two children 

 could be imagined to have grown up together without 

 ever hearing any speech, it is quite possible that they 

 might learn to communicate with each other such 

 simple ideas as touched their simple life, but it is 

 sure that they would not develop such a complicated 

 system as our language, which has been the result of 

 the accumulated efforts of thousands of generations. 

 All races of mankind develop a language, but they 

 do not receive it by organic heredity. 



That the child acquires its power to use language 

 by imitation, that is, by social inheritance, no one 

 can doubt, for we see it as a matter of daily expe- 

 rience. But the real question is not so much how our 

 children acquire language as how primitive man first 

 obtained his language. Primitive man at the first 

 could certainly have had nothing to imitate. How 

 did his language start? What sort of a language 

 was it? Did it consist of few simple words, expres- 

 sive of the vaguest ideas such as those used first by 

 a child, and was its history that of a gradual refining 

 of those notions into a real language! Or was lan- 

 guage given to mankind originally by some force 

 which furnished it ready for use ? Was it furnished 

 man as a congenital inheritance, or did he learn 

 slowly by trial and transmit his knowledge by teach- 

 ing? The answer to this question can hardly be 

 doubtful considering the nature of language ; but the 

 facts derived from the study of philology are espe- 

 cially cogent and give valuable and interesting evi- 

 dence upon the matter. 



The Evidence from Philology. — There is naturally no 



