354 
familiarity with foreign tongues assists in explaining ; and he 
speaks with much insight of “ the physical similitudes of 
language to things which exist in nature.”* 
There are a number of highly interesting and important 
questions connected with the study of language which, of 
course, I have not been able even to refer to here. One of them 
is the determination of the character of primitive religion by 
linguistic means ; but I can only say, with Kratylos in the 
Dialogue, “ You do not suppose that I can explain any subject 
of importance all in a moment; at any rate, not such a subject 
as language, which is, perhaps, the greatest of all.” Suffice it 
if I succeed in indicating what language is, and how to be 
studied, and what are the errors in some of the theories of its 
origin. I conclude with a suggestion of the process by which 
any particular sound became a phonetic type, that is to say, an 
ordinary word : — 
I. Man is an imitative being ; and, having reason, his imita- 
tions are not purposeless but connected with design. 
II. The circumstances of his first utterances are not to be 
regarded as if he had been a vocal statue, i.e ., as if sound had 
been the sole aspect and constituted the whole of the pheno- 
menon. 
III. When circumstance stimulated him to the exercise of 
his latent power of speech, he uttered a sound which he 
regarded as appropriate to the occasion ;f and accompanied the 
utterance by certain special movements, not accidental but 
designed, as being, in his opinion, suitable and characteristic of 
the idea he was endeavouring to express. Thus, not relying 
wholly on sound, the use of which as language was necessarily 
strange to him, he partly worked out his meaning pictoriaiiy by 
pantomimic action. 
IV. The sound and the action were contemporaneous, and 
mutually suggestive or provocative ; the action suggesting the 
particular sound, the sound the particular action. 
V. A sound having been once used by man in a definite 
connexion, and that not merely accidentally but because it had 
approved itself for the purpose to his judgment,^ its re-user 
generally followed in the same connexion as of course ; as such 
re-user was also supported or provoked by the recurrence of the 
* Peri Mysterion, vii. 4. 
f Yide sup. as to howto ascertain the principles which determined his choice. 
% This “judgment” would, in a great number of cases, be almost entirely 
instinctive : that is to say, man would not be conscious of deliberation in 
the matter. It does not take a good cricketer more than a second to decide 
how to play a swift round-hand ball. 
