920 Dynamic Theory. 



still formed the scanty body of the jargon of the wild savages who were 

 the ancestors of the Aryan race, it would be no wonder if many of 

 them lost such traces of onomatopoeia as they may have had in the be- 

 ginning. Consider again the root tup, to strike ; it is also written stu, 

 stup, stud and tud. We have still another form, which was in use a 

 few generations ago, then dropped, and now lately revived. It is cer- 

 tainly onomatopoeic. It is the word thud, meaning the sound of a 

 heavy, soft body falling on a hard surface ; for example, as the reporter 

 might state it, ' ' the man fell from the seventh story to the pavement, 

 with a sickening thud. " So might some such sound have reverberated 

 through the cranium of an ancient savage, and imitated itself through 

 his vocal organs as tud. 



A larger number of abstract words than we might at first suppose, 

 may have been suggested by natural sounds, since there is scarcely any 

 sort of physical action which is not at some time or other accompanied 

 by some sort of sound. But to whatever imitations of sounds, whether 

 constant or occasional, or to what fancies, or temporary freaks, or sud- 

 den whims, language is indebted for its original stock of words, we can 

 at this late day hardly feel sure of any, except such as are yet mani- 

 festly onomatopoetic. 



The Aryan tongues are adapted to express the advanced ideas of civ- 

 ilized people, and therefore are as much bej'ond the savage languages 

 they sprung from as civilization is beyond savagism. As ideas of things 

 change, their names and the manner of speaking of them change. The 

 gas which accumulates in wells sometimes, used to be called choke-damp. 

 That significant name is now almost superseded by the equally signifi- 

 cant carbonic acid gas. The first describes what it can do ; the latter 

 tells what it is, and could not have been applied till chemistry had 

 found out the facts of its composition. We call our Earth " the Globe" 

 about as often as anything else, but this name could never have been 

 applied till men learned its true shape. As far back as civilized lan- 

 guages can be traced, we find proofs of this process of renaming so as 

 to express the growing ideas of things. 



Our word moon is traced to an Aryan root ma, to measure. Sanscrit 

 for moon is mas, for month it is masa; I measure is mami, a measuring 

 stick is ma-tram, which in Greek becomes metron, and in English is 

 meter. In Greek, moon is mene, month is men. In Latin, month is 

 mensis. In Gothic, moon is mena, and month is menoth. In Anglo- 

 Saxon, moon is mona, and month is monadh. ( M. Miiller. ) Thus, the 

 moon is a measurer, and the time she (or rather he) measures is a 

 month. But certainly no one will pretend that men refrained from giv- 

 ing a name to the moon until they had become familiar with its period- 

 ical movements, and had instituted festivals and observances timed by 



