220 THE ASCENT OF MAN 



why philology is often so helplessly at a loss in 

 tracking far-strayed words to their original sense, is 

 plain. In the nature of the case, the onomatopoetic 

 theory can never be proved in more than a fraction 

 of cases. So cunning is the mind in associating 

 ideas, so swift in making new departures, that the 

 clue to multitudes of words must be obliterated by 

 time, even if the first forms and spellings of the 

 words themselves remain in their original integrity 

 — which rarely happens — to offer a feasible point 

 to start the search from. 



But it is far from necessary to assume that all 

 words should have had a rational ancestry. On 

 the contrary many words are probably deliberate 

 artificial inventions. When not only every human 

 being, but every savage and every child has the 

 ability as well as the right to call anything it likes 

 by any name it chooses, it is vain in every case to 

 seek for any general principle underlying the often 

 arbitrary conjunctions of letters and sounds which 

 we call words. Words cannot all at least be 

 treated with the same scientific regard as we would 

 treat organic forms. When dissected, in the nature 

 of the case, they cannot be expected to reveal 

 specific structure such as one finds in a fern or a 

 cray-fish. A fern or a cray-fish is the expression 

 of an infinitely subtle and intricate adaptation, 



