Page:Ralcy H. Bell - The Mystery of Words (1924).pdf/36

 respond to needs as surely as tools supply wants: in brief, whatever else they may be, they certainly are tools.

Nothing is truer than that necessity is the mother of invention. Words were invented because they were needed; they have been used by man throughout the great part of his long history; all the while he has used them he has modified them; he has borrowed, discarded, and created others. Words in themselves, therefore, are not as mysterious as is the faculty for the making of them. Their deeper physiological mysteries are all the more interesting because they are related solely to man amongst all the other dwellers of earth.

No one dares to assume that man is the highest type of consciousness existent; but it does seem true that the faculty of speech raises him supremely above all his dumb fellows of this world; and the mystery of it is that anatomically he is not superior to some others, while admittedly he is inferior to many. With respect to language, man is a demi-god