Language and Thought 523 



the left side of the brain, which is the motor centre for the right side 

 of the body, is more highly developed than its right side, which moves 

 the left side of the body. The investigations of Professors Fen it r, 

 Sherrington and Grunbaum have still more precisely defined the rela- 

 tions between brain areas and certain groups of muscles. One form of 

 aphasia is the result of injury to or disease in the third frontal convolu- 

 tion because the motor centre is no longer equal to the task of setting 

 the necessary muscles in motion. In the brain of idiots who are 

 unable to speak, the centre for speech is not developed 1 . In the 

 anthropoid apes the brain is similarly defective, though it has been 

 demonstrated by Professors Cunningham and Marchand " that there 

 is a tendency, especially in the gorilla's brain, for the third frontal 

 convolution to assume the human form.... But if they possessed a 

 centre for speech, those parts of the hemispheres of their brains 

 which form the mechanism by which intelligence is elaborated are 

 so ill-developed, as compared with the rest of their bodies, that 

 we can not conceive, even with more perfect frontal convolutions, 

 that these animals could formulate ideas expressible in intelligent 

 speech 2 ." 



While Max Midler's theory is Shelley's 



" He gave man speech, and speech created thought, 

 Which is the measure of the universe 3 ," 



it seems more probable that the development was just the opposite — 

 that the development of new activities originated new thoughts which 

 required new symbols to express them, symbols which may at first 

 have been, even to a greater extent than with some of the lower races 

 at present, sign language as much as articulation. When once the 

 faculty of articulation was developed, which, though we cannot trace 

 the process, was probably a very gradual growth, there is no reason 

 to suppose that words developed in any other way than they do at 

 present An erroneous notion of the development of language has 

 become widely spread through the adoption of the metaphorical 

 term roots for the irreducible elements of human speech. Men 

 never talked in roots ; they talked in words. Many words of kindred 

 meaning have a part in common, and a root is nothing but that common 

 part stripped of all additions. In some cases it is obvious that 

 one word is derived from another by the addition of a fresh element : 

 in other cases it is impossible to say which of two kindred words is 

 the more primitive. A root is merely a convenient term tor an 

 abstraction. The simplest word may be called a root, but it is 

 nevertheless a word. How are new words added to a language 



1 op. cit. p. 226. ■ op. cit. p. 288. 



3 Prometheus Unbound, n. 4. 



