Through Vague Epochs
his lips. Nor did the words issue merely as sounds, but they came full-fledged as verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech which make up a language in its infancy.
The development of the faculty of speech was not owing to any difference in brain-structure, since anatomically it is the same with several groups of primates. But in man’s brain, the particles of gray matter in a part of the cortex when subjected to the incessant repetition of certain stimuli develop the power of speech. Why is this? We say, rather loosely, that the personality longs to communicate with its fellow in accordance with one of the feminine instincts of the race. Eagerness preceded effort. The first effort to speak was a shudder; the shudder became a gesture; and the first “language” was not of the tongue, but of the hand—a gestural speech. Thus language was born of the hand; and spoken language, even in its most perfect form, still retains a large gestural element. The source of words is the mind; their
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