PSYCHOLOGY 281 



and how did man first come by his speech ? for the myth of its 

 being a gift implanted by Divine Grace at birth has been long 

 ago disproved by physiology. The child comes into the world 

 devoid of consciousness, and, after this has been acquired, has 

 to learn the language of its parents and brothers and sisters ; 

 moreover, not only is there this ontogenetic development of 

 speech repeated in each individual but there is a phylogenetic 

 development for the whole race. The French authority Bordier 

 holds that the palaeolithic reindeer hunter had no speech, and 

 thinks that it must be concluded from the numerous bone-flutes 

 discovered that he communicated . by whistling. But these 

 palaeolithic men had a relatively large cranial capacity which 

 would admit of a very well-developed brain, and this fact com- 

 pletely disposes of Bordier's view. Darwin l rightly says that 

 " the largeness of the brain in man relatively to his body com- 

 pared with the lower animals may be attributed in chief part 

 to the early use of some simple form of language". This is 

 not the place to recapitulate a historical synopsis of all the 

 theories as to the origin of language. That the human language 

 did not arise from a single stem was clearly held by the 

 thoughtful poet-philosopher Lucretius (De rerum Nat., v., 

 1050):- 



Cogere item pluris unus victosque domare 



Non poterat, rerum ut perdiscere nomina vellent. 



Nee ratione docere ulla suadereque surdis, 



Quid sit opus facto, iacilest; neque enim paterentur 



Nee ratione ulla sibi ferrent amplius auris 



Vocis inauditos sonitus obtundere frustra. 



Necessity, Lucretius means, has given to language its form. 

 It must seem far more natural to attribute the origin of lan- 

 guage, not to a conscious design but to unconscious cerebral 

 activity, an instructive impulse shall we call it ? It may be that 

 animals only make imitative sounds, or that the uttering of 

 noises is excited mentally by other sense-impressions which 

 form the basis of those roots from which the human language 

 has developed in every race. 



The history of civilisation for thousands of years proves 

 that language as a natural phenomenon has not only under- 



1 Darwin, loc. cit., ii., p. 426. 



