Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/456

434 are now worth nothing, or so nearly nothing as not to deserve recording. But we have no reason to suppose that any language of roots alone was ever otherwise than scanty and feeble; those are greatly mistaken who imagine that the beginnings of speech were produced in a profusion, a superfluity, which later times have rather tempered down and economized than increased. We can see clearly also that the imitative principle, on the one hand, has its natural limits, and, on the other hand, would soon begin to admit the concurrence of a new principle of word-making: namely, the differentiation and various adaptation of the signs already established in use. There would come a time, before very long, when a designation of certain ideas would be more easily won out of existing material than by the creation of new; and this facility would rapidly increase as the body of accepted expression was augmented; until finally the condition of things was reached which we find prevailing during the historical periods of language, when additions to our store of expression are almost exclusively elaborated out of modes of expression in previous use, and onomatopœia is resorted to only in rare and exceptional cases.

The imitative principle is limited in kind as well as in extent of action, and it may sometime become a practical inquiry what were the individual conceptions to which the first signs were fitted. In the present state of advancement of linguistic science, as also of our knowledge of the earliest human conditions, such an investigation, though an interesting one, would doubtless lead to no valuable result.

The view of language and of its origin which has been here set forth will, as I well know, be denounced by many as a low view: but the condemnation need not give us much concern. It is desirable to aim low, if thereby one hits the mark; better humble and true than high-flown, pretentious, and false. A considerable class of linguistic scholars, fearful lest they should not otherwise make out language to be a sufficiently exalted and sacred thing, confound it with thought, and arrogate to the instrumentality a part of the attributes which belong only to the agent; thus becoming involved in inconsistencies and absurdities, or blinding