320 
isolation and agglutination, without indeed complicating the 
matter by any grammatical or linguistic doubts or inquiries, we 
see at a glance that if mankind have sprung from a single pair 
of ancestors, these progenitors may, with equal propriety, have 
called the dog kwan , kalb , tsm , lik, or x ; and that if, for 
instance, white, black, red, and yellow men had an ancestry 
originally distinct, any primeval ancestor might have employed 
any one of these sounds for his purpose. 
So we circle round to the a priori truth that the first man 
might have called his dog Barker or Biter, Bunner or Watcher, 
or Swallower. As many appropriate ideas, so many appro- 
priate names. Again, even if we knew that any particular dog- 
word, e.g., lik , was the representative of the original term, we 
might be still far from the knowledge of what that term was ; 
since, as Sokrates observes in the Kratylos , “ names have been 
so twisted in all manner of ways, that I should not be surprised 
if the old language were to appear to us now to be quite 
like a barbarous tongue. Kemember that we often put in 
and pull out letters in words,” in accordance with the Laws of 
Least and Most Effort. Lastly, the primeval language may be 
extinct, not merely in the sense of being unused in conver- 
sation and literature, but as having none of its not directly 
onomatopoetic forms, or even very near approximations to 
them preserved in any manner. The number of extinct 
dialects must be immense, and curious accidents at times pre- 
serve them more or less ; thus “ Humboldt saw in South 
America a parrot which was the sole living creature that could 
speak a word of the language of a lost tribe.”* * * § So Dante’s Adam 
declares : — 
“ The language, -which I spoke, was quite worn out 
Before unto the work impossible 
The race of Nimrod had their labour turn’d.” + 
Prof. Sayce considers Akkadian to have been a decaying speech 
as early as B.C. 3000. J But the fact that we are ignorant what 
were the earliest vocal combinations employed verbally, is no 
absolute bar to the discovery of the origin of language ; for 
this, when made, would show, to a great extent, how any 
possible prehistoric presentive § word acquired its special 
meaning. 
* Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd edit., p. 181. 
t Paradiso , Pollock’s translation. 
X Introd. Sci. Lang., ii. 368. 
§ I.e., a word used for a thing or an idea, as opposed to a “symbolic” 
word, or one which by itself presents no meaning to the mind. 
