510 NATURE OF ROOTS AND WORDS. 



It is the object of this paper not to attempt to penetrate any 

 mystery, or to go behind the veil, but rather to show that there is 

 no veil to go behind, no mysteiy to penetrate ; and to point out the 

 fact that in the known phenomena of existing speech we have ample 

 materials for deciding on the nature of primitive language ; for I 

 firmly believe that the greater part, if not the whole, of the obscurity 

 in which this subject is shrouded, or supposed to be shrouded, has 

 been created by the dust raised by the disputants battling in behalf 

 of their respective theories, and from their failure to perceive that 

 while, on the one hand, no one theory is sufl&cient to account for all 

 the phenomena of speech, yet, on the other, all the theories advanced 

 contain a large amount of truth; and error commences in each case 

 at the point where any disputant endeavours to establish his own 

 theory as the only true rule of faith, to the exclusion of all others. 



I shall also try to point out that there is no necessity to have 

 recourse to miraculous phenomena of any sort in this inquiry. ThoSe 

 who support the theory of the directly divine origin of language are 

 not the only ones to call the miraculous to their assistance. To my 

 thinking, at least, Bleek's theory of the evolution of language is the 

 most miraculous of all ; and not far behind it in this respect is Pro- 

 fessor Max Miiller's attribution of the power of abstraction to man 

 in his primitive state : of both of which theories, more hereafter. 



Before inquiring, however, into the nature of primitive language, 

 it will bo necessary to define language itself, more especially in its 

 relation to the first language makers. Language and its object may 

 be defined as "the intelligible expression of thought in articulate sound 

 as a means of communication between man and m,an." 



Some writers define language as being the expression of thought 

 and feeling, but I would reply with Schleicher,* that the immediate 

 expression of feeling is not one of the primary objects of language, 

 and that language expresses feeling only in the form of an idea or a 

 thought.! 



Having now defined what language is, let us next determine where 

 our inquiries are to commence — at what stage of human progress. 

 There are extreme evolutionists, in linguistic- as in biological science, 



* Die deutsche Sprache, p. 4. 



t The interjections, of course, are the direct expression of feeling, and as such must b» 

 excepted from this statement in so far as they are to be considered as a constituent element of 

 language ; a point which will be subsequently discussed. 



