Page:Primitive Culture Vol 1.djvu/179

Rh language they are used in connexion with. From the observation of these, there have arisen speculations as to the origin of language, treating such expressive sounds as the fundamental constituents of language in general, and considering those of them which are still plainly recognizable as having remained more or less in their original state, long courses of adaptation and variation having produced from such the great mass of words in all languages, in which no connexion between idea and sound can any longer be certainly made out. Thus grew up doctrines of a 'natural' origin of language, which, dating from classic times, were developed in the eighteenth century into a system by that powerful thinker, the President Charles de Brosses, and in our own time have been expanded and solidified by a school of philologers, among whom Mr. Hensleigh Wedgwood is the most prominent. These theories have no doubt been incautiously and fancifully worked. No wonder that students who found in nature real and direct sources of articulate speech, in interjectional sounds like ''ah! ugh! h'm! sh! and in imitative sounds like purr, whiz, tomtom, cuckoo,'' should have thought that the whole secret of language lay within their grasp, and that they had only to fit the keys thus found into one hold after another to open every lock. When a philosopher has a truth in his hands, he is apt to stretch it farther than it will bear. The magic umbrella must spread and spread till it becomes a tent wide enough to shelter the king's army. But it must be borne in mind that what criticism touches in these opinions is their exaggeration, not their reality. That interjections and imitative words are really taken up to some extent, be it small or large, into the very body and structure of language, no one denies. Such a denial, if anyone offered it, the advocates of the disputed theories might dispose of in the single phrase, that they would neither be pooh-poohed