SENSE AND SPEECH IN MAX. 253 



1st. How man has been led to employ phonetic means to 

 express his thoughts ; and 



2d. On what principle he made choice of certain radicals 

 to express certain conceptions. 



_: n. Man, like the animal, has been endowed with an in- 

 stinctive disposition to employ those organs or instruments 

 which are subject to the will. "We cannot doubt, therefore, 

 that the employment of the mechanism for articulation is 

 provided for in a co-ordinate instinctive impulse. This instinct 

 however, is only operative when the sense of hearing is 

 sufficient, and the perfect use of its appropriate mechanism 

 can only be attained under the guidance of the ear. The child, 

 through its organs of hearing, is induced and enabled to imi- 

 tate the articulation and intonation of those around it, and by 

 the same instrumental means it controls and rectifies its own 

 imperfect utterances. Speech, therefore, although based on the 

 conscious principle of humanity, and provided for in an in- 

 stinctive corporeal mechanism, is actually acquired by a 

 combined course of self-tnition and education. 



o. In learning to speak, the child is supplied, through its 

 organs of hearing, with the radicals of its native language, 

 already developed into the grammatical forms of that tongue. 

 The tenacity with winch phonetic types, or root-forms, 

 retain their value in the successive developments of language, 

 is involved in the question as to the principle on which choice 

 was made of a certain type of articulate combination, to 

 express certain conceptions. That such choice was the result 

 of a selection and retention of the most suitable out of 

 numerous provisional forms, appears to be an assumption tend- 

 ing to complicate unni ceasarily the entire subject. 1 myself 

 should li" inclined to assume, as a probable solution, that there 

 exists in the human constitution, a co-ordination between the 

 possible articulate combinations, and a special phase of the 

 conscious principle, in the same sense as thai co-ordination, 



