344 EMERITUS PROFESSOR J. S. BLACKIE ON 



have strongly affected his nature. Hence, the whole family of words, in 

 grammars stupidly called onomato-poetic, in which we recognise the germ of the 

 dramatic element in literature, as in the ejaculatory element we may recognise 

 the germ of the lyrical element. This whole class of words, representing 

 originally all sorts of natural sounds, is manifestly the product of the native 

 dramatic instinct of the human creature, and, though starting originally from im- 

 pressions of sound, readily adapts itself by analogy to cognate impressions of the 

 other senses, and even to emotions of the mind, and in this way claims a much 

 larger domain in the field of every cultivated speech than would at first sight seem 

 to belong to it. 



IV. Our next proposition brings us to a higher and a characteristically 

 human platform. When I call an ox, bo — bov — baa, as in Greek, Latin, and 

 Gaelic, this, as a mere echo of an animal sound, might be repeated by a parrot, 

 or any other animal with imitative instinct and apt vocal organisation. But 

 the moment I use this imitative sound to express the name, not only of the indi- 

 vidual animal which I just heard utter the sound, but the notion, idea, or type of 

 a whole class of animals uttering the sound, I plant myself on a platform of in- 

 tellect of which no animal, not even the cleverest monkey, is capable. The 

 genesis of the idea in the human soul is a matter of which neither sensation nor 

 sensibility can give any account ; sensation is always the occasion, never 

 the cause, of the idea. Four eggs, for instance, are no doubt felt to be four by 

 a dog, or bull, or by a man ; but the leap from that to the mathematical 

 proposition, 2 + 2 = 4, is infinite, and cannot be overbridged by any ingenuity. 

 In forming the idea of an ox or a cow, the vovs or Xdyos, which differentiates a 

 man from a brute, acts plastically from its own dominant centre, and uses 

 sensuous impressions merely as a multiform material on which the unity of an 

 intelligent type is impressed; here we have the birth of human, that is intellec- 

 tual language, a language expressive, not of sensations or of feelings, but of 

 thoughts and ideas, which are as general as mathematical definitions, and are the 

 pure creations of thinking. In forming them man acts as a god creating an 

 organism ; and this truth, so habitually ignored by a certain narrow school of 

 physical scientists in these latter days, is not the least striking manifestation of 

 the philosophic depth which lies at the bottom of that text — Gen. i. 27, " God 

 made man in his own image." Here we see distinctly the reason why brutes 

 have no language in the sense that we talk of human language. The vital 

 forces which belong to them, being purely of sensational and emotional origin, 

 are satisfied by the lowest form of vocal expression which we call cries ; their 

 language is in the main ejaculatory, and in some part also imitative. But 

 there being no X0705 or vovs in them that craves for expressing in intelligible 

 I' >rm, the words significant of types and general ideas, of course no such form 

 appears ; and man stands emphatically differentiated from them as the only 



