TRANSACTIONS OF SECTION H. 787 



Many of tlie words employed in eavly speech were undoubtedly formed, in the 

 first instance, through the tendency of man to imitato the natural sounds he heard 

 around bim. To these sounds, with various modifications, was assigned a special 

 conventional value, and they were then added to the growing vocabulary. By 

 this means a very decided forward step was taken, and now primitive man became 

 capable of giving utterance to his perceptions by imitative sounds. 



Max Miiller, although bitterly opposed to the line of thought adopted by the 

 ' Imitative School ' of philologists, has expressed their views so well that 1 am 

 tempted to use the words he employed in explaining what he satirically branded 

 as the ' Bow-wow Theory.' He says: 'It is supposed that man, being yet mute, 

 heard the voices of the birds, dogs, and cows, the roaring of the sea, the rustling of 

 the forest, the murmur of the brook, and the whisper of the breeze. He tried to 

 imitate these sounds, and finding his mimicking cries useful as signs of the object 

 from which they proceeded, he followed up the idea and elaborated language,' 



Hood 1 humorously and imconsciously illustrates this doctrine by a verse 

 descriptive of an Englishman, ignorant of French, endeavouring to obtain a meal 

 in France : — 



' " Moo ! " I cried for milk ; 

 If I wanted bread 

 My jaws I set agoing ; 

 And asked for new-laid eggs 

 By clapping hands and crowing.' 



But, although much of early articulate speech may have arisen by the development 

 of iuterjectional sounds and the reproduction, by the human vocal organs?, of 

 natural sounds, it is very unlikely that these aftbrded the only sources from which 

 w^ords were originally derived. Eomanes insists upon this, and, in support of his 

 argument, refers to cases where children invent a languag-e in which apparently 

 imitative sounds take no part. He likewise alludes to the well-known fact that 

 deaf mutes occasionally devise definite sounds which stand for the names of 

 friends. In the light of such exidence, he very properly asks, ' Why should it be 

 held impossible for primitive man to have done the same? ' 



The value of spoken language, as an instrument of thought, is universally 

 admitted, and it is a matter incapable of contradiction that the higher intellectual 

 efforts of man would be absolutely impossible were it not for the support which is 

 afibrded by articulate speech. Darwin expresses this well when he says : ' A 

 complex train of thought can no more be carried on without the aid of words, 

 whether spoken or silent, than a long calculation without the use of figures or 

 symbols.' Such being the case, I think we may conclude that the acquisition of 

 speech has been a dominant factor in determining the high development of the 

 human brain. Speech and mental activity go hand in hand. The one has reacted 

 on the other. The mental effort required for the coining of a new word has been ■ 

 immediately followed by an increased possibility of further intellectual achieve- 

 ment through the additional range given to the mental powers by the enlarged 

 vocabulary. The two processes, mutually supporting each other and leading to 

 progress in the two directions, have unquestionably yielded the chief stimuUrs to 

 brain development. 



More than one Philologist has insisted that ' language begins where inter- 

 jection ends.' For my part I would say that the first word uttered expressive of 

 an external object marked a new era in the history of our early progenitors. At 

 this point the simian or brute-like stage in their developmental' career came to au 

 end and the human dynasty endowed with all its intellectual possibilities began. 

 This is no new thought. Romanes clearly states that in the absence of articulation 

 he considers it improbable that man would have made much psychological 

 advance upon the anthropoid ape, and in another place he remarks that ' a man- 

 like creature became human by the power of speech.' 



The period in the evolution of man at which this important step was taken is 



' Quoted from r/ie 67/'!i7!M (i/Xa?!yi<tfv).(?, by Hensleigh Wedgwood, 1866. 



