4 THE DOCTRINE OF DESCENT. 
method of linguistic research by recommending as its 
basis the study of the more recent and known lan- 
guages. And when, in the middle of last century, the 
two opinions, that language was invented or revealed, 
were sharply opposed to each other, and when Siissmilch 
(1764), in contradiction to Maupertuis and Jean J. 
Rousseau, had established that invention was not possi- 
ble without thought, nor thought without language, and, 
therefore, that the invention of language was a self-con- 
tradiction, Herder opportunely entered the lists with 
his work on language (1770), which formed an epoch in 
the science. 
According to him, language begins with imitations 
of sounds, at first almost unconscious; the tokens, 
as he expresses it, by which the soul distinctly recalls 
anidea. He makes language develop itself from the 
crudest beginnings, by the increasing need of such 
verbal tokens; and shows that with the development 
of mankind, the store of words must also have uncon- 
sciously and instinctively increased. The multiplicity 
of languages is due to the dispersion of nations, whose 
idiosyncrasies are reflected in the various languages. 
Thus Herder long ago pointed out the importance of 
a psychology of nations. He was joined by Wilhelm 
von Humboldt, whose opinions form the basis of the 
present science of language, and who held that the imi- 
tations of sounds are instinctively crystallized into words, 
and that with this formation of words and language 
thought commences. It follows from the nature of these 
beginnings, that language is the natural expression of 
the spirit of a people; that it does not stand still, but 
is for ever in process of transformation. 
