[17] Renan, p. 147.
[18] There are some noble remarks to this effect in Schlegel’s Philosophische Vorlesungen. Wien. 1830. Hebrew scholars will readily remember cases of the importance attached by the sacred writers to the mere sound of words; a remarkable instance may be seen in Jer. i. 11, 12, and a curious play on sounds occurs in the second verse of Genesis.
[19] Grimm, s. 12.
[20] “I am by no means clear that the dog may not have an analogon of words.”—Coleridge. Similarly Plato attributes a διάλεκτος to animals, adducing some very interesting proofs. See Clemens Alexandr. Strom. i. 21, § 413. See, too, Thomson’s Passions of Animals. “They also know, and reason not contemptibly.”—Milton.
[21] μέροπες βροτοί.—Homer, passim.
[22] As in the instance of Balaam.—Numb. 22. Cf. Tibull. ii. v. 78. Hom. Il. τ. 407, &c.
[23] Dr. Latham points out that this statement requires modification; e.g., it is doubtful whether a howl, and not a bark, is not the organic and instinctive sound uttered by dogs. (Encycl. Brit. Art. Language.) Still we do not anticipate that any one will dispute the general proposition. See Heyse, System der Sprachwissenschaft, § 25.
[24] Grimm, 13, 14. “Language,” he adds (p. 17), “can only be compared to the cries of animals, in respect that both are subjected to certain physical conditions of organism.”
[25] “On a très judicieusement remarqué sur celle-ci,” says M. Nodier, “que la seule induction qui en résultât naturellement, fort concluante pour la langue primitive et immodifiable des chèvres ne prouvoit rien en faveur de la première langue de l’homme; puisque les chèvres formoient elles-mêmes d’une manière très-distincte les deux articulations dont ces enfants avoient composé leur étroit vocabulaire.” Sir Gardner Wilkinson discredits the whole story, and supposes that it originated among the Greek ciceroni in Egypt, because he thinks that children, unless artificially instructed, would not have been able to get beyond the labial sound “be.” (Rawlinson’s Herodotus, i. 251.) Surely this is merely a begging of the question. The fact that the inference from the experiment was one unfavourable to the national vanity of the Egyptians, is only one of the reasons which induce us to credit its reality. Larcher (ad loc.) rightly regards the ος as merely the Greek termination.
[26] “Mutum et turpe pecus.”—Hor. Sat. i. 3. 99. Similar views are to be found in Diod. Sic. i. 1; Vitruv. Archit. ii. 1. “Thrown as it were by chance on a confused and savage land, an orphan abandoned by the unknown hand that had produced him.”—Volney. Epicurus thought that men spoke just as dogs bark, φυσικῶς κινούμενοι.