THE EVOLUTION OF LANGUAGE '■z^-j 



They are indeed so essentially one and the same 

 that the Greek language has one word for them 

 both. He gave it to him, because he could not 

 be man, that is, a social being, without it." Yet 

 he is too profound a student of words to fail 

 to qualify this, and had he failed to do so every 

 page in his well-known book had judged him. 

 " Yet," he continues, " this must not be taken to 

 affirm that man started at the first furnished with 

 a full-formed vocabulary of words, and as it were 

 with his first dictionary and first grammar ready- 

 made to his hands. He did not thus begin the 

 world with names ^ but with the power of naming : 

 for man is not a mere speaking machine ; God did 

 not teach him words, as one of us teaches a parrot, 

 from without ; but gave him a capacity, and then 

 evoked the capacity which He gave."^ 



If the theory just given as to the formation of 

 Language, or at least as to the possible formation 

 of Language, be more than a fairy tale, there is 

 another quarter in which corroboration of an im- 

 portant kind should lie. Hitherto we have examined, 

 as witnesses, the makers of words ; it may be 

 worth while for a moment to place in the witness- 

 box the words themselves. A chemist has two 

 methods of determining the composition of any 



^Archbishop Trench, The Study of Words^ pp. 14, 15. 



