have been mere cries or calls, but which gradually gained some
definiteness of meaning, as signifying some of the varied conditions of
the outer world. This is the conclusion to which philologists have now
very generally come. The recognition that language consists of root
words, variously modified and combined, leads back irresistibly to a
period in which those roots had not yet begun to be modified and
combined. The roots are the hard, persistent things in human speech.
Grammatical expedients are the net in which these roots have been caught
and confined. Free them from the net, and it falls to pieces, while the
roots remain intact, the solid and persistent primitive germs of speech.

Yet in isolating root language as the basis of grammatical language we
go far toward closing the gap between animal and human speech. It is
still, doubtless, of considerable width, yet the distinction is no
longer one of kind, but is simply one of degree. Primitive man had a
much greater scope of language than is possessed by any of the lower
animals, and the vocal sounds used had a clearer and more definite
significance; but their nature was the same. They doubtless began in
calls and cries like those in use by animals, and though these had
increased in number and gained more distinct meanings, the difference in
character was not great. In short, the analytic method employed by
modern philologists has gone far to remove the supposed vast distinction
between brute and human speech, and has traced back the language of man
to a stage in which it is nearly related in character to the language of
animals. The distinction has been brought down to one of degree,
scarcely one of kind. A direct and simple process of evolution was
alone needed to produce it, and through that evolution man undoubtedly
passed in his progress upward from his ancestral stage.

The language of the lower animals is a vowel form of speech. It lacks
the consonantal elements, the characteristic of articulation. In this
man seems to have at first agreed with them. The infant begins its vocal
utterances with simple cries; only at a later age does it begin to
articulate. If we may judge from the development of language in the
child, man began to speak with the use of sounds native to the vocal
organs, and progressed by a process of imitation, endeavoring to
reproduce the sounds heard around him: the voices of animals, the sounds
of nature, etc. This tendency to imitate is n