ARTICULATE SPEECH.
From the above we have seen that gesture and grimace on the one hand, and inarticulate cries on the other, make up very effective means of communication, and that the latter is in some respects a more efficient, and therefore to this day a more popular, avenue to convey and excite the emotions than any other. For a long time probably they sufficed for the wants of the human race. But sign-language has one great drawback : it requires the light for its exercise, whereas it is especially in the loneli ness of the night and darkness that man yearns for companionship and the exchange of thoughts. This as much as anything else was probably the motive that urged him to cultivate with particular assiduity his vocal organs and to train them to articulate speech. As has previously been suggested, this was at first principally by imitation, either of natural sounds or of his own inarticulate cries. An eminent authority on the subject, Erofessor W. D. Whitney, remarks : "Spoken language began when a cry of pain, wrung out by real suffering, was repeated in imitation, no longer as a mere instinctive utterance, but for the purpose of intimating to another ' I am suffering ;' when an angry growl, the direct expression of passion, was reproduced to signify disapprobation and threatening ; and the like." Articulate differs from inarticulate speech both in the phonetic laws on which it is based and in the faculties to which it is addressed. Articulate sounds are made up of a succession of vowels and consonants, the former emitting a continuous sound, which the latter cut and break in a variety of ways, thus forming what we call syllables. These, either standing alone or combined, make up words, each representing some perception or idea of the intellect. This is the meaning or signification of the word, and when it is uttered the same idea is evoked in the mind of the hearer, provided lie has already been taught the connection between the two. In most instances, as has been intimated, this connection is wholly arti ficial, and its knowledge is a matter of education. The sound represents
the thought, but the association is an imaginary and factitious one. Were it otherwise, were the relation between the two real and permanent, there would be but one language on the globe, and it would be unchangeable.
From this statement it will be apparent that while inarticulate lan guage addresses exclusively the emotional nature, articulate speech is directed primarily and solely to the intellectual faculties ; and this consti tutes a second and fundamental difference between the two varieties.
Influence of a Language on those Speaking importance of a study of languages for the purposes of ascertaining their relationship and tracing them to their common ancestral stock, and thus under certain re strictions demonstrating the affinities of nations, has already been adverted to (p. 49) as a prominent branch in the science of Ethnology. But this is by no means the only service which linguistics is prepared to furnish that science, perhaps not the most important one. The far more abstruse hut vital question remains to be considered : What influence has the lan guage of a nation on its thinking powers, and through these on all its capacities and fate ? Let it be remembered that the sounds, the genius, and the forms of a language are mainly traditional and hereditary ; they are heirlooms handed down from anterior generations ; and the national mind is chained to them by fetters which it cannot break, and does not seek to, because it is not aware of their existence. All its thoughts are cast in the moulds thus inherited, nor is it capable of receiving the conceptions of tongues which have wider schemes of linguistic life. For example, in many lower languages there is no passive voice, and no substantive verb ex pressing abstractly the notion " to be." It is quite certain that individ uals who have grown to adult years in the use of such tongues only, can never be brought to a clear comprehension of the ideas which we express by the grammatical forms mentioned.