r. When we ask the reason why this principle of analogy prevails
in all the vast domain of language, there is no answer to the question;
or no other answer but this, that there are innumerable ways in which,
like number, analogy permeates, not only language, but the whole world,
both visible and intellectual. We know from experience that it does not
(a) arise from any conscious act of reflection that the accusative of
a Latin noun in 'us' should end in 'um;' nor (b) from any necessity of
being understood,--much less articulation would suffice for this; nor
(c) from greater convenience or expressiveness of particular sounds.
Such notions were certainly far enough away from the mind of primitive
man. We may speak of a latent instinct, of a survival of the fittest,
easiest, most euphonic, most economical of breath, in the case of one of
two competing sounds; but these expressions do not add anything to our
knowledge. We may try to grasp the infinity of language either under
the figure of a limitless plain divided into countries and districts by
natural boundaries, or of a vast river eternally flowing whose origin is
concealed from us; we may apprehend partially the laws by which speech
is regulated: but we do not know, and we seem as if we should never
know, any more than in the parallel case of the origin of species, how
vocal sounds received life and grew, and in the form of languages came
to be distributed over the earth.

iii. Next in order to analogy in the formation of language or even
prior to it comes the principle of onomatopea, which is itself a kind of
analogy or similarity of sound and meaning. In by far the greater number
of words it has become disguised and has disappeared; but in no stage of
language is it entirely lost. It belongs chiefly to early language, in
which words were few; and its influence grew less and less as time went
on. To the ear which had a sense of harmony it became a barbarism which
disturbed the flow and equilibrium of discourse; it was an excrescence
which had to be cut out, a survival which needed to be got rid of,
because it was out of keeping with the rest. It remained for the most
part only as a formative principle, which used words and letters not as
crude imitations of other natural sounds, but as symbols of ideas which
were naturally associated with them. It received in another way a new
character; it affected not so much single words, as larger portions of
human speech. It regula