512 NATURE OF ROOTS AND WORDS. 



city for developing that impulse which rests on a similar foundation. 

 In other words, the capacity for development, the onus prohandi of 

 which lies with the advocate of this view, is taken for granted. 



Let us attempt to follow Bleek, however, in the further develo]>- 

 ment of his theory. "Sound," he says,* "is a mere accessory to 

 feeling. Not only is there feeling without it, but it is comparativelj'^ 

 seldom that feeling is made perceptible to the ear." Precisely so ; 

 and yet from this comparatively rare manifestation of feeling he 

 would derive all language. But the converse of this is also true, 

 viz., that "it is comparatively seldom" that speech is the manifesta- 

 tion of feeling, though perhaps somewhat less seldom with primitive 

 than with civilized man. The object of the first communication 

 between man and man was not to convey feeling, but to satisfy 

 immediate and pressing wants, as we shall see again ftirther on ; and 

 to indicate these wants, it was necessary to give names to the things 

 that would satisfy them. If I should have an opportunity at some 

 future time of treating, as I propose to do, of the sources of lan- 

 guage, I shall give Bleek's synopsis of his own theory in full, that 

 my readers may judge of it for themselves. For the present, however, 

 I shall content myself with stating that he proceeds to develop 

 interjections from animal cries by the awakening of consciousness, and 

 then to develop all articulate speech from these latter, by a process 

 which I frankly confess my inability to understand. 



If this evolutionary theory be the true one, Schleicher is no doubt 

 perfectly justified in relegating the consideration of this question to 

 the domain of other sciences. But comparative lexicography has 

 given the death-bloA^ to the theory that interjections are the only 

 source of language, and has demonstrated the impossibility of such 

 origin for the great majority of Aryan roots at least. 



As long, however, as no more positive evidence than this can be 

 adduced in support of the development of speech from the inarticulute 

 cries of animals, the glottologist who desires to avoid the imputation 

 of mere theorizing, and to rely on facts alone, must look elsewhere 

 for the sources of language, and may reasonably refuse to carry back 

 his researches further than to the earliest period at which we have 

 positive evidence of the existence of man as Tuan ; that is, as a creature 

 endowed with higher attributes than the apes. The startling discoveries 

 made within the last forty years, by the explorations of geologists 



* Origin of Language : American Translation, p. 66. 



