MAX MÜLLER, after admitting "the extraordinary accounts of the intellect, the understanding, the caution, the judgment, the sagacity, acuteness, cleverness, genius, or even social virtues of animals," intrenches himself behind the "one palpable fact, namely, that, whatever animals do or do not do, no animal has ever spoken." This assertion is not strictly true. Parrots and ravens utter articulate sounds as distinctly as the average cockney, and in most cases make quite as intelligent and edifying use of them for the expression of ideas.

That no animal has ever made a natural and habitual use of articulate speech for the communication of its thoughts and feelings is a truism which it would seem superfluous to emphasize or italicize. Equally irrelevant to the point at issue is the statement that "in every book on logic language is quoted as the specific difference between man and other beings." It is not by the definitions of logicians that questions of this kind are to be decided. The Greeks called beasts speechless creatures (Tà loya) just as they called foreigners tongueless (ayλwTTO), meaning thereby persons whose language was unintelligible to them; and the epithet was no more appropriate in the former case than in the latter. It was for the same reason that the Roman poet Ovid, when banished to the Pontus, characterized himself as a barbarian, because his lan

guage was not understood by the inhabitants of that country, barbarus hic ego sum, quia non intelligor ulli. But such expressions must not be taken too literally.

Hobbes makes speaking the test of rationality,- homo animal rationale, quia orationale, and assumes both powers to be the exclusive property of man ; but his pithy statement is a quibble in fact as well as in form, and much better as a pun than as a psychological proposition.

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Language is our Rubicon," says Max Müller," and no brute will dare to cross it." Why not? Because, if he does, our definitions will transform him from a brute into a man. "In a series of forms graduating from some apelike creature to man," Max Müller maintains that the point where the animal ceases and the man begins can be determined with absolute precision, since "it would be coincident with the beginning of the radical period of language, with the first formation of a general idea embodied in the only form in which we find it embodied, namely, in the roots of our language."

In reply to the statement that "both man and monkey are born without language," Müller asks "why a man always learns to speak, a monkey never." This query, if it is to be regarded as anything more than a bit of banter, implies a gross misconception of the theory of evolution, as though it involved the

development of an individual monkey into an individual man. One might as well deny the descent of the dog from the wolf because a dog always learns to bark, a wolf never. In the course of ages, and as the result of long processes of evolution and transformation, monkeys have learned to speak, but when they have acquired this faculty we call them men.

Max Müller stops at roots or "phonetic cells" as "ultimate facts in the analysis of language," and virtually says to the philologist, "Thus far shalt thou go, and no farther, and here shall thy researches be stayed." "The scholar," he declares," begins and ends with these phonetic types; or, if he ignores them, and traces words back to the cries of animals or to the interjections of men, he does so at his peril. The philosopher goes beyond, and he discovers in the line which separates rational from emotional language, conceptual from intuitional knowledge, in the roots of language he discovers the true barrier between Man and Beast."

The philologist, who recognizes in the roots of language the Ultima Thule beyond which he dare not push his investigations, confesses thereby his incompetency to solve the problem of the origin of language, and must resign this field of inquiry to the zoöpsychologist, who, freeing himself from the trammels and illusions of metaphysics, seeks to find a firm basis for his science in the strict and systematic study of facts. Imagine the folly of the physiologist who should say to his fellow-scientists: "In your researches you must begin and end with cells. If, in studying organic structures, you go back of cells and endeavor to discover the laws underlying their origin, you do so at your peril. Beware of the dangerous seductions of cytoblast and cytogenesis and treacherous quagmires of protoplasm."

Nevertheless, this attitude of mind is natural enough to the philologist, who

is so absorbed in the laws which govern the transmutations of words that he comes to regard these metamorphoses as finalities, and never goes behind and beyond them. We must look, therefore, not to comparative philology, but to comparative psychology, for the discovery of the origin of language. Philology has to do with the growth and development of speech out of roots, which are assumed to be ultimate and unanalyzable elements, like the purely hypothetical particles which the physicist calls atoms; but as to the nature and genesis of roots themselves the philologist of today is as puzzled and perplexed as was the old Vedic poet when, in the presence of the universe and its mysterious generation, he could only utter the pathetic and helpless cry, "Who indeed knows, who can declare, whence it sprang, whence this evolution?"

Doubtless the emotional stage precedes the intellectual or rational stage in the growth of language, but the former mode of expression does not cease when the latter begins, nor is it possible to draw a fixed and fast line of demarcation between them. Pâ and mâ are the roots of pâtṛi and mâtṛi, and mean in Sanskrit to protect and to form, indicating the function of the father as the defender, and of the mother as the moulder, of children. But how did they come to have these significations? Surely the infant who first used these expressions and they are universally recognized as belonging to the vocabulary of babes-did not associate with them the ideas which philologists now discover, and which grammarians and etymologists at a very early period put into them. How arbitrary these inferences are is evident from the variety of interpretations of which such words are susceptible. Thus ma means also to measure; hence the moon, as the measurer of time, was called mâtri; and from this point of view the term for mother was explained as referring to her

office as the head of the household, who kept the keys of closet and pantry, and meted out to the servants and other members of the family the things necessary for them. It is furthermore a suspicious circumstance touching the habits of the Indo-Aryan's progenitors that pâ means to drink, and pâtṛi signifies a drinker; and for aught we know the verbal coincidence may not be accidental. As regards mâ, it means also bleating as a goat, and occurs in this sense in the Rig-Veda; and it is probable that in this onomatopoetic expression we come nearer to the real origin of the word for mother.

There is a vast deal of vague speculation and untenable assertion concerning the origin and formation of roots in language. In Sanskrit, for example, there are three radical words gar, meaning respectively to swallow, to make a noise, and to wake. It is conceivable, says Max Müller, that the first two of these roots may have been originally one and the same, and that gar, from meaning to swallow, may have come to mean the indistinct and disagreeable noise which often attends deglutition, and which in speaking is called swallowing letters or words. Yet the third root, he adds, can hardly be traced back to the same source, but has the right to be treated as a legitimate and independent companion of the other roots. From this example he deduces the general principle that if roots have the same form, but a different meaning, they are to be regarded as originally different, notwithstanding their outward resemblance. He then passes from etymology to embryology, and reasons from analogy that "if two germs, though apparently alike, grow, under all circumstances, the one always into an ape and never beyond, the other always into a man and never below, then the two germs, though indistinguishable at first, and though following for a time the same line of embryonic development, are different from the begin

ning, whatever their beginning may have been."

In this statement he begs the whole question at issue; and the philological illustration which he brings to bear upon an anthropological theory for the purpose of refuting it is itself exceedingly questionable, since nothing is easier or would be more natural than to derive gar, to wake, from gar, to make a noise; so that all three roots not only may have had, but probably did have, a common origin. In no case can it be positively affirmed that roots of the same form are not of the same origin, however widely they may differ from one another in signification.

One of Darwin's grandchildren, as Mr. Romanes states, called a duck "quack,' and by a special and easily intelligible association called water also "quack." The same term was afterwards extended to all fowls and winged creatures and to all fluids. A French sou and an American dollar were called "quack on account of the eagle stamped upon them, and the same name was then given to all coins. Thus "quack" came to mean bird, fly, angel, wine, pond, river, shilling, medal, etc., and it is easy to trace every step of the process by which it acquired these various significations.

According to Max Müller's reasoning, "quack" in the sense of duck or bird must have a radically different origin from "quack" in the sense of pond or shilling. But how do we know that all roots having the same form, but different meanings, may not have originated in this manner? Because we can no longer trace a word through all phases of its development and metamorphosis is no proof that the development and metamorphosis never took place. The evolution of the word "quack" in the vocabulary of the aforesaid child shows furthermore that a purely onomatopoetic root is not always sterile, but may be prodigiously and puzzlingly prolific, germinating in the mind of the primitive

man, and springing up and bearing fruit fifty or a hundred fold.

When we speak of a train of cars as "telescoped," this use of the word has nothing in common with its primary and etymological meaning, and can be understood only by a knowledge of the construction of a telescope out of concentric tubes sliding into each other. Again, the telescopic chimney of a war vessel is not a point of far-seeing observation, as the composition of the qualifying word would imply, but a chimney that may be shoved together endwise, and thus put out of reach of the enemy's shot.

Dr. Hun records in The Monthly Journal of Psychological Medicine (1868) the case of a girl who invented a language of her own, and taught it to her younger brother. Papa and mamma used separately meant father and mother; but when linked together in the compound papa-mamma they meant church, prayer-book, praying and other acts of religious worship, because the child saw her parents going to church together. Gar odo meant "Send for the horse," and also paper and pencil, because the order for the horse was often written. Bau signified soldier and bishop, because both seemed to be more gorgeously dressed than other persons. Here the clothes made the man, and furnished the sole basis of his classification. It needed only the simplest and most superficial point of association in order to attach the most diverse significations to the same word.

To the objection that these examples are mere childish whimseys, and that languages never originate and grow up in this manner, it may be replied that such an assertion assumes the very point to be proved. Mr. Horatio Hale maintains that the aboriginal tongues of South America and South Africa were produced in precisely this way. He thinks, too, that the numerous tribal dialects west of the Rocky Mountains had their origin

in the isolation of orphaned children, and that such a result is possible, and indeed inevitable, wherever the climate and other external conditions are favorable to the survival of small children bereft of their parents and separated from their kinsmen.

Again, Max Müller observes, in explanation of the manner in which roots were formed, that, "after a long struggle, the uncertain phonetic imitations of special impressions became the definite phonetic representations of general concepts." Thus "there must have been many imitations of the falling of stones, trees, leaves, rivers, rain, and hail, but in the end they were all combined in the simple root pat, expressive of quick movement, whether in falling, flying, or running. By giving up all that could remind the hearer of any special sound of rushing objects, the root pat became fitted as a sign of the general concept of quick movement." There was a great number of "imitative sounds of falling, out of which pat was selected, or out of which pat, by a higher degree of fitness, struggled into life and fixity." So, too, the prolific root mar, to grind or to break, "must be looked upon as tuned down from innumerable imitations of the sounds of breaking, crushing, crunching, crashing, smashing, mashing, cracking, creaking, rattling and clattering, mauling and marring, till at last, after removing all that seemed too special, there remained the smooth and manageable Aryan root of mar."

Now, pray, when did this remarkable evolution, which implies the close and continuous exercise of rare powers of comparison and abstraction and the perfect maturity of the intellectual faculties, take place? "Language," we are informed, "presupposes the formation of concepts," and "all such concepts are embodied in roots." The formation of these concepts, then, must have preceded, logically and chronologically, the formation of the roots in which they are