to a miraculous beginning, we should thereby make all science vain.
The phantasmal character of speech in these nebulous
Continuity of evolution
stages is in striking contrast with the immense periods of time which they undoubtedly involve. It is no more practicable to fix the moment when man became aware of using words for the purpose of being understood, than to find the same moment in the consciousness of a child. Yet it is certain that the organs of speech are long unconsciously directed towards that result.
Renan has emphasized the fact that these processes differ with different races.[1] But they are always preparatory to that epoch in the growth of every race when it conceives its own language as a whole, and deliberately sets about adapting it to its moral purposes : the birth-time at once of nationality and literature. And between the infancy of words and this entrance on their higher function of carrying arts, sciences, and faiths, evolution is continuous ; and in certain great respects the same for all races, however different the details, or numerous the points of growth.
Systems have been devised to show that an organic relation exists between each of the simplest pho
Theories of organic relations.
netic elements and a special form of emotion, or
c i ass o f conceptions.[2] But the beginnings of language could hardly have dealt in states of mind so simple and clear as this correspondence requires. More probably they expressed a confused mingling of emotions which no analysis of ours can possibly unravel.
- ↑ This is denied in Goldziher's Hebrew Mythology, ch. i. (1877), from the stand-point of cosmical mythology; but the argument appears quite insufficient to disprove special psychological distinctions.
- ↑ See Hegel's Theory of the Emotional Meaning of the Vowel Sounds, and Grimm's Scale of Sound and Color Correspondences, given in Benlœw's Aperçu de la. Science Compar. des Langues (1872), pp. 104, 105. Also the curious speculations in the Preface to Richardson's English Dictionary.
