Page:Language and the Study of Language.djvu/417

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LECTURE XI.

Origin of language. Conditions of the problem. In what sense language is of divine origin. Desire of communication the immediate impulse to its production. Language and thought not identical. Thought possible without language. Difference of mental action in man and lower animals. Language the result and means of analytic thought, the aid of higher thought. The voice as instrument of expression. Acts and qualities the first things named. The "bow-wow," "pooh-pooh," and "ding-dong" theories. Onomatopœia the true source of first utterances. Its various modes and limitations. Its traces mainly obliterated. Remaining obscurities of the problem.

In the last lecture, we took up and considered certain matters which seemed naturally to present themselves to our attention in connection with our survey of the divisions and characteristics of human speech. We first examined the various systems of classification of languages, according to morphological form or to general rank, weighing briefly the value of the distinctions upon which they are founded; and we arrived at the conclusion that no other mode of classification has anything like the same worth with the genetical, or that which groups dialects together by their historical relationship. We then passed on to the subject of the general relations between linguistic science and ethnology, the history of human races. We saw that between the study of language and that of physical characteristics, as tests of race, there can be no discordance and jealousy, but only an honourable emulation and mutual helpfulness; that each, feeling its own limitations and imperfections, needs and seeks the assistance of the other; claiming, also, all the aid which recorded