and meaning
thereof did totally depend upon the good will and pleasure of the
first deviser and imposer of it."

Max Mueller, following Professor Heyse, of Berlin, published an
ingenious theory of primitive speech, to the effect that man had a
creative faculty giving to each conception, as it thrilled through his
brain for the first time, a special phonetic expression, which faculty
became extinct when its necessity ceased. This theory, which makes
each radical of language to be a phonetic type rung out from the
organism of the first man or men when struck by an idea, has been
happily named the "ding-dong" theory. It has been abandoned mainly
through the destructive criticisms of Prof. W.D. WHITNEY, of Yale
College. One lucid explanation by the latter should be specially
noted: "A word is a combination of sounds which by a series of
historical reasons has come to be accepted and understood in a certain
community as the sign of a certain idea. As long as they so accept
and understand it, it has existence; when everyone ceases to use and
understand it, it ceases to exist."

Several authors, among them Kaltschmidt, contend that there was
but one primitive language, which was purely onomatopoeic, that
is, imitative of natural sounds. This has been stigmatized as the
"bow-wow" theory, but its advocates might derive an argument from the
epithet itself, as not only our children, but the natives of Papua,
call the dog a "bow-wow." They have, however, gone too far in
attempting to trace back words in their shape as now existing to any
natural sounds instead of confining that work to the roots from which
the words have sprung.

Another attempt has been made, represented by Professor Noire, to
account for language by means of interjectional cries. This Max
Mueller revengefully styled the "pooh-pooh" theory. In it is included
the rhythmical sounds which a body of men make seemingly by a common
impulse when engaged in a common work, such as the cries of sailors
when hauling on a rope or pulling an oar, or the yell of savages in an
attack. It also derives an argument from the impulse of life by which
the child shouts and the bird sings. There are, however, very few
either words or roots of words which can be proved to have that
derivation.

Professor SAYCE, in his late work, _Introduction to the Science of
Language, London_, 1880, gives the origin of language in gestures,
in onomatopoeia, and to a limited extent in interjectio