10 PROF. BLACKIE ON THE PRINCIPLE OF ONOMATOPCEIA IN LANGUAGE. 



so often fail to see what directly lies before us. The same national habit of 

 thought which led Forchhammer to find in the Iliad a geological account of the 

 struggle betwixt land and water in the Troad, and leads Professor Muller to 

 discover in the same great historic tradition a mythological fight between light 

 and darkness, seems to determine the position of this distinguished philologer 

 in reference to the original formation and growth of roots in language. How 

 they were formed he nowhere tells us ; he does not pretend to know ; but of one 

 thing he feels assured, that there is more of mystery in the matter than the easy 

 mimicry of natural sounds can explain. " Are not Abana and Pharpar rivers of 

 Damascus? may I not wash in them and be clean?" He will have nothing to do 

 with word-painting, because it is too simple a process, seems to deal with facts 

 rather than with ideas, and is not at all nrysterious. For my own part, I think 

 all is mysterious with language in one sense, nothing in another. It is as natural 

 for men to speak, as for birds to sing, and fountains to flow ; and that when 

 they did speak, they spoke originally from imitation of natural sounds, and a 

 cunning adaptation of the expressive power of the audible element, not only to 

 things audible, but also to things visible and tangible, I shall continue to believe 

 till some principle shall be propounded that may explain all known facts in a 

 manner equally obvious and satisfactory. 



I have only to say in conclusion, that my faith in imitation as the great 

 principle in the formation of the original stock of human speech, is not in any 

 degree affected by the vexed question whether man was originally created full- 

 grown or a baby, whether he made language for himself, or got it, as some think 

 there is a peculiar piety in imagining, ready-made from the Deity. I do not 

 believe that Adam got language ready-made from his Creator, for the very plain 

 reason that we get nothing ready-made from the Creator, but we make it our- 

 selves after a fashion, by the indwelling power of His infinite virtue and grace, 

 who is never far from the meanest of His creatures. But even if the Supreme Being 

 did make a present to our primal sire of a ready-made language (though I think 

 this contrary to the words of Moses in Genesis ii. 19), still the fact remains 

 that the grand vocal organism so presented, bears on its front the most evident 

 marks of an onomatopcetic or imitative construction. Those, therefore, who hold 

 that God made human language must maintain that He made it on the same 

 principle on which I maintain that man made it ; for the facts are undeniable ; 

 and surely it cannot be more pious to suppose that the Father of all men coined 

 words for the use of His reasonable children in a manner altogether arbitrary, 

 rather than on the principle of a reasonable congruity, and a beautiful adaptation. 



