amped character to the Language itself; and would be wanting in
that profusion of synonymes which gives an artistic and life-like
character to the lingual growths of the past.

Both of these objections arise, as we shall hereafter see, from an
erroneous impression of the nature of Language based on Analogy, coupled
with a misconception of the real character and constituents of existing
Languages. It is the purpose of the present papers to correct these
false notions. In order to do so--and, what is essential to this, to
present a clear exposition of the true character of the Language under
consideration, and of its relations to the Lingual Structures of the
past and present--it is necessary to give a preliminary examination to
the fundamental question of the Origin of Speech. By means of this
examination we shall come to understand that the existence and general
use of a Universal Language with the elements of which Nature has
herself furnished us, would not involve the abrupt or total abandonment
of the Tongues now commonly employed; but, on the contrary, while
preserving all that is substantially valuable in each, would enable us
to acquire a knowledge of them with a facility which Comparative
Philology, as now developed, lays no claim to impart.

How, then, did Language originate? In setting out to answer this
question, Professor Max Mueller says, in his _Lectures on the Science of
Language_:[A]

[Footnote A: Lectures on the Science of Language, delivered at the Royal
Institution of Great Britain, in April, May, and June, 1861, by Max
Mueller, M. A. From the second London edition, revised. New York: Charles
Scribner, 124 Grand street. 1862.]

'If we were asked the riddle how images of the eye and all the
sensations of our senses could be represented by sounds, nay, could
be so embodied in sounds as to express thought and to excite
thought, we should probably give it up as the question of a madman,
who, mixing up the most heterogeneous subjects, attempted to change
color and sound into thought. Yet this is the riddle we have now to
solve.

'It is quite clear that we have no means of solving the problem of
the origin of language _historically_, or of explaining it as a
matter of fact which happened once in a certain locality and at a
certain time. History does not begin till long after mankind had
acquired the power of language, and even the most ancient