120 STUDIES, SCIENTIFIC AND SOCIAL 



we feel the motion in our heaving and falling chest, and 

 we may be sure that with early man, such motions, when 

 they helped the meaning of the words, were always fully 

 emphasized. 



Of the same general character as the words just con- 

 sidered, are the personal pronouns thou, you, he, they 

 all of which are pronounced with outward breathing, and 

 more or less outward motion of the lips, as compared with 

 /, me, we, us, which require only slightly parted lips, thus 

 clearly marking the difference between inward and out- 

 ward, self and not-self. In like manner, there is spoken 

 open-mouthed, and with strong outward breathing, while 

 here requires but a slightly open mouth, and is only 

 slightly aspirated. 



Mr. E. B. Tylor has called attention to " the device of 

 conveying different ideas of distance by the use of a 

 graduated scale of vowels/' as being one of great philo- 

 logical interest, on account of " the suggestive hint it gives 

 of the proceedings of the language-makers in most distant 

 regions of the world, working out in various ways a similar 

 ingenious contrivance of expression by sound." He then 

 gives a list of the words for this and that, here and there, 

 I, thou, and he, in twenty-three languages of savage or 

 barbarous tribes in both hemispheres, in all of which the 

 ideas of nearness and distance, or self and not-self, are 

 conveyed by the "similar ingenious contrivance " of 

 different vowel-sounds. 1 But he does not appear to have 

 observed that there is a method in the use of vowels, and 

 that they are not therefore merely " ingenious contri- 

 vances," or contrivances at all in the true sense of the word, 

 but are natural expressions of the difference of meaning 

 in the way here pointed out. This is decidedly the case 

 in eighteen out of the twenty-three languages given by 

 Mr. Tylor, the broad, open-mouthed sounds ah, o, and u, 

 being used to express outwardness or distance, while the 

 contrasted vowels e and i, occur whenever self-hood or 

 nearness is implied. In the other five languages the 

 vowels are apparently reversed, which may be due either 

 to a mistake of the compiler of the vocabulary--not at all 



1 Primitive Culture., vol. i., p. 199. 



