100 Proceedings of the Royal Society 
sound. It is also not only an easy but a natural and necessary pro- 
cess of the human mind in the formation of general concepts to use 
the material presented by mere sensuous impressions ; and thus, 
while we expressly deny the perverse doctrine of the sensationists 
that mind can be explained from sense, or the imperial unity of 
thought be generated from a multiplicity of external impressions, 
we can see no difficulty in deriving such general concepts as char- 
acter and type , for instance, from the roots \apao-croi and TuVrco, 
which originally were mere mimetic reproductions of an external 
sound, as in our word scratch. Language, therefore, was formed by 
the gradual extension of words originally expressing sensations and 
feelings to intellectual purposes ; and there is nothing ignoble in 
this, for the mind uses the materials supplied by sense just as the 
architect uses the stones dug by the quarryman or the lime carried 
by the hodman. Neither can one at all see the logical justice of 
Max-Miiller when he exposes the historical falsehood of some of 
Wedgwood’s onomatopoetic etymologies; for the erroneous applica- 
tion of a principle does not in the least imply that the principle 
itself is erroneous; and, besides, the oldest roots to which certain 
very recent forms of Komanesque words may be traced back in 
Sanscrit can be shown in not a few cases to have been the product 
of that very mimetic process which Muller so persistently ignores. 
But while Muller seems actuated by some strange prejudice in his 
stout determination to make no use of the onomatopoetic element so 
thickly strewn in language, Professor Whitney has introduced no 
little confusion into this matter by talking of language as an insti- 
tution , and reviving the doctrine of the old Greek Sophists, that 
language is tfeVei, not cret. Every simile limps; but if we must 
have similes, it is far nearer the truth to talk of language as a 
growth and a living organism than to call it an institution. In 
some sense language is certainly a growth ; in no sense is it an in- 
stitution. Institutions like the Sabbath, for instance, are then 
creatures of positive law ; but language is a direct efflux of plastic 
reason, and no more an institution than the song of the nightingale 
or a sonata of Beethoven. As to the connection between Darwinism 
and the origin of language, while the Darwinian philologers, with 
Schleicher at their head, will no doubt find a special delight in 
tracing the splendid roll of a Platonic period from the grumph of 
