58 THE SUBANU. 
certain pressure upon the point of stoppage. Consonant possibility is a 
late acquisition in the course of vertebrate history. We are in a posi- 
tion to say positively that it is limited to the primates. An effort is 
making to establish the possession of at least the beginning of consonant 
possibility in certain of the apes. Just in passing, entering the note of 
recognition that this question is yet sub judice, we may properly say 
that the power to make the closures of the vocal organism whence con- 
sonants come into speech is the peculiar possession of the present type 
of man. ‘The qualification is forced upon us by the recent discovery of 
human remains in England, to which has been given the name Eoan- 
thropos, for if we may rely upon the collation of skull fragments upon 
which the genus has been erected we find abundant anatomical reason 
to believe that this was man who was speechless. 
It is an early postulate that speech makes the man. He who has 
the form and stature of a man but speaks not, he is an idiot and he 
gibbers. He whois but the beginning of a man and can not yet speak, 
he is an infant, zwfans because he can not speak, v7zco¢ since he has no 
words, the »yza téxva of Homer come to mind. It is only in the 
Semitic system that out of the mouths of babes and sucklings is strength 
established, and that is the imagery of revelation rather than the keen 
sense of primal observation. 
This is not merely a postulate of the classical tongues of our own 
high race. I find it in the use of an African folk with scarcely more 
than an entering foot over the threshold of human culture, as we may 
read in Ellenberger’s History of the Basuto, ancient and modern”’ at 
page XXI. 
Bantu is the plural of Muntu, the Kaffir and Zulu word for a human being. 
The equivalent in Sesuto is motho with the letter / to accentuate the intonation. 
But the word muniu or motho means more than that: it indicates the power 
of speech as well, a speaking being as distinct from monkeys or baboons, who 
have something like a human shape but can not speak. A child before it has 
learned to speak is ugoana, that is, a little being; mo, the prefix denoting 
being, being changed into ugo for the sake of euphony; and the diminutive 
suffix ana. But as soon as the child has learned to speak, the tho, denoting 
speech, is placed between prefix and suffix, and the little being becomes 
mothoana, a little being which can talk. 
Here we have two instances: one is derived from the childish estate 
of a culture which has come to high maturity, the other is drawn from 
a low culture plane where man is all child; the two are in accord. 
Who speaks, he is man. 
Nor is the possession of the consonants evenly divided among man- 
kind. ‘There are races which have but a few of the speech consonants 
in possession. ‘There are races, and in this category we are numbered, 
which have through disuse lost the power of forming certain consonants 
which once were in possession. We shall soon have to examine the con- 
