pitch. They
could make houses, etc., with their axes only by long-continued
industry.[231] South American Indians made tools for printing tattoo
patterns on the body. They were blocks, on each face of which a pattern
was raised, perhaps a different one on each side.[232] It should be
noticed what prodigious power a large body of men can put forth when
they all work at the same task and are greatly interested in it. They
begin by the same process, but the process differentiates and improves
in their hands. Each gains skill and dexterity. They learn from each
other, and the product is multiplied.

+135. Language.+ Language is a product of the folkways which illustrates
their operation in a number of most important details. Language is a
product of the need of cooperative understanding in all the work, and in
connection with all the interests, of life. It is a societal phenomenon.
It was necessary in war, the chase, and industry so soon as these
interests were pursued cooperatively. Each group produced its own
language which held that group together and sundered it from
others.[233] All are now agreed that, whatever may have been the origin
of language, it owes its form and development to usage. "Men's usage
makes language." "The maxim that 'usage is the rule of speech' is of
supreme and uncontrolled validity in every part and parcel of every
human tongue."[234] "Language is only the imperfect means of men to find
their bearings in the world of their memories; to make use of their
memory, that is, their own experience and that of their ancestors, with
all probability that this world of memory will be like the world of
reality."[235] The origin of language is one of those origins which must
ever remain enveloped in mystery. "How can a child understand the
combinations of sound and sense when it must know language in order to
learn them? It must learn to speak without previously knowing how to
speak, without any previous suspicion that the words of its mother mean
more than the buzzing of a fly. The child learns to speak from an
absolute beginning, just as, not the original man, but the original
beast, learned to speak before any creature could speak."[236] The
beasts evidently did not learn to speak. They only learned to use the
beast cries, by which they transmitted warnings, sex invitations, calls
to united struggles, etc. The cries answered the purpose and went no
further. Men, by virtue of the expanding power in them wh