xternal sounds, as in
the case of thunder, musical tone, the sheet of tin, and the bell? Is it
not, in fact, more probable?

In respect to the question whether _sucre_ and _sucre_ were introduced
into Language because of their resemblance to the idea of sweetness,
Professor Mueller gives a valid negative answer. He shows that the word
is derived from the Sanskrit _'sarkhara_, 'which,' as he says, 'is
anything but sweet sounding.'

The question whether the words under consideration (_sucre_, _sucre_)
are really sweet-sounding words, Professor Mueller decides by implication
in the affirmative, and, perhaps, quite unconsciously, by the very act
of contrasting them with another word which, as he affirms, is not at
all sweet sounding.

But this is by far the more important point than that of the mere
historical genesis of the word; and a point which really touches vitally
the whole question of the nature and Origin of Language.

How should any word be either _sweet-sounding_ or _not sweet-sounding_?
Sound is a something which has no _taste_, and sweetness is a something
which makes no _noise_. Now the very gist and crux of this whole
question of Language consists in confounding or not confounding a case
like this with _mere_ Onomatopoieia, or the direct and simple imitation
of one sound by another. All that Professor Mueller says against the
Origin of Language in this 'bow-wow' way is exceedingly well said; and
it is important that it should be said. But unconsciously he is now
confounding with the Bow-wow, something else and totally different; and
something which is just as vital and profound in regard to the whole
question of the origin and true basis of the reconstruction of Language,
as the thing with which he confounds it is trivial and superficial.

The point is so important that I beg the reader's best attention to it,
in order that he may become fully seized of the idea.

I can imitate very closely the buzz of a bee, by forcing the breath
through my nearly-touching teeth. A mimic can imitate the natural sounds
of many animals, and other sounds heard in Nature. This _mere imitation_
is what Lingual Scholars have dignified by the high-sounding and rather
repulsive technicality, _Onomatopoieia_. In the early and simple period
of Lingual Science much has been made, in striving to account for the
Origin of Language, of this faculty of imitation, and of the fact that
there are undoubtedly certain words in every langu