THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE 213 



little distance from its neighbours, hears the low- 

 growl of a lion. That growl, of course, is Language, 

 and the buffalo understands it as well as we do when 

 the word " lion " is pronounced. Between the word 

 "lion" spoken, and the object lion growled, there is 

 no difference in the effect. Suppose, next, the buffalo 

 wished to convey to its comrades the knowledge that 

 a lion was near, a lion and not some other animal, it 

 might imitate this growl. It is not likely that it 

 would do so ; some other sign expressing alarm in 

 general would probably be used, for the discrimina- 

 tion of the different sources of danger is probably an 

 achievement beyond this animal's power. But if 

 Primitive Man was placed under the same circum- 

 stances, granting that he had begun in a feeble way 

 to exercise mind, he would almost certainly come in 

 time to denote a lion by an imitated growl, a wolf by 

 an imitated whine, and so on. The sighing of the 

 wind, the flowing of the stream, the beat of the surf, 

 the note of the bird, the chirp of the grasshopper, 

 the hiss of the snake, would each be used to express 

 these things. And gradually a Language would 

 be built up which included all the things in the 

 environment with which sound was either directly, 

 indirectly, or accidentally associated. 



That this method of word-making is natural 

 is seen in the facility with which it is still used 



