e it is necessary that not merely for these languages but also
for those in other quarters of the globe, the facts should be collected,
sifted and tabulated. England rules an empire which contains a greater
variety of languages by far than were ever held under one sway before.
The Government of India is engaged in producing, under the editorship of
Dr Grierson, a linguistic survey of India, a remarkable undertaking and,
so far as it has gone, a remarkable achievement. Is it too much to ask
that, with the support of the self-governing colonies, a similar survey
should be undertaken for the whole of the British Empire?

Notwithstanding the great number of books that have been written on the
origin of language in the last three and twenty centuries, the results
of the investigation which can be described as certain are very meagre.
The question originally raised was whether language came into being
thesei or phusei, by convention or by nature. The first alternative, in
its baldest form at least, has passed from out the field of controversy.
No one now claims that names were given to living things or objects or
activities by formal agreement among the members of an early community,
or that the first father of mankind passed in review every living thing
and gave it its name. Even if the record of Adam's action were to be
taken literally there would still remain the question, whence had he
this power? Did he develop it himself or was it a miraculous gift with
which he was endowed at his creation? If the latter, then as Wundt says
("Volkerpsychologie", I. 2, page 585.), "the miracle of language is
subsumed in the miracle of creation." If Adam developed language of
himself, we are carried over to the alternative origin of phusei. On
this hypothesis we must assume that the natural growth which modern
theories of development regard as the painful progress of multitudinous
generations was contracted into the experience of a single individual.

But even if the origin of language is admitted to be NATURAL there may
still be much variety of signification attached to the word: NATURE,
like most words which are used by philosophers, has accumulated
many meanings, and as research into the natural world proceeds, is
accumulating more.

Forty years ago an animated controversy raged among the supporters of
the theories which were named for short the bow-wow, the pooh-pooh and
the ding-dong theories of the origin of language. The third, wh