646 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. XIV. No. 356. 



now primitive man became capable of giv- 

 ing utterance to his perceptions by imitative 

 sounds. 



Max Miiller, although bitterly opposed to 

 the line of thought adopted by the ' Imita- 

 tive School ' of philologists, has expressed 

 their views so well that I 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 mur- 

 mur 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 pro- 

 ceeded, he followed up the idea and elabo- 

 rated language." 



Hood* humorously and unconsciously 

 illustrates this doctrine by a verse descrip- 

 tive of an Englishman, ignorant of French, 

 endeavoring 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 inter jectional sounds and the reproduc- 

 tion, by the human vocal organs, of natural 

 sounds, it is very unlikely that these af- 

 forded the only sources from which words 

 were originally derived. Romanes insists 

 upon this, and, in support of his argument, 

 refers to cases where children invent a 

 language in which apparently imitative 

 sounds take no part. He likewise alludes 

 to the well-known fact that deaf mutes oc- 

 casionally devise definite sounds which 

 stand for the names of friends. In the 

 light of such evidence, he very properly 

 asks, ' Why should it be held impossible for 

 primitive man to have done the same ?' 



* Quoted from ' The Origin of Language, ' by Hens- 

 leigh Wedgwood, 1866. 



The value of spoken language as an in- 

 strument of thought is universally admit- 

 ted, and it is a matter incapable of contra- 

 diction that the higher intellectual efforts 

 of man would be absolutely impossible were 

 it not for the support which is afforded 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 that we may conclude that the acqui- 

 sition 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 imme- 

 diately followed by an increased possibility 

 of further intellectual achievement 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 stimulus to brain development. 



More than one philologist has insisted 

 that ' language begins where interjection 

 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 develop- 

 mental career came to an end and the 

 human dynasty endowed with all its intel- 

 lectual 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 an- 

 thropoid ape, and in another place he re- 

 marks that ' a manlike creature became 

 human by the power of speech. ' 



The period in the evolution of man at 

 which this important step was taken is a 



