e expressions
called out by particular types of emotional experience. The
validity of the last two theories has been rendered particularly
dubious. The very instances of imitative words cited,
words like "cuckoo," "crash," "flash," were, in their original
forms, quite other than they are now. And that words are
not immediately apposite expressions of the emotions which
they represent, has been generally recognized. In gesture
language, the gesture has to remain fairly imitative or
expressive to be intelligible. But an examination of half a dozen
casual words in contemporary languages shows how arbitrary
are the signs used, and how little appositeness or relevance
they bear in their sound to the sense which they represent.
The detailed study of the perfectly regular changes that so
largely characterize the evolution of language, have revealed
the inadequacy of any of these views. There seems to be, in
fact, no explanation of the origin of the language any more
than there is of the origin of life. All that linguistic science
can do is to reveal the history of language. And in this
history, human language stands revealed as a highly refined
development of the crude and undifferentiated expressions
which, under emotional stress, are uttered by all the animals.

LANGUAGE AS A SOCIAL HABIT. Language, as has repeatedly
been pointed out, is essentially social in character. It is, in
the first place, primarily an instrument of communication
between individuals, and is cultivated as such. In human
speech, interjections like "Oh!" or "Ah!" are still involuntary
escapes of emotion, but language develops as a vehicle of
communication to others rather than as a mere emotional outlet
for the individual. Even if it were possible for the mythical
man brought up in solitude on a desert island to have a
language, it is questionable whether he would use it. Since
language is a way of making our wants, desires, information
known to others, it is stimulated by the presence of and
contact with others. Excess vitality may go into shouting or
song,[1] but language as an instrument of specific utterance
comes to have a more definite use and provocation. Man,
as already pointed out, is a highly gregarious animal, and
language is his incomparable instrument for sharing his emotions
and ideas and experience with others. The whole process
of education, of the transmission of culture from the
mature to the younger members of a society, is made p