the first form of expression, and that sounds were first used
to call attention to the sign made; and by an association of ideas the
sounds became a factor of expression, and were used to emphasise signs.
As we ascend the scale of life, sounds become more abundant, and signs
less significant, and in the middle types they appear to be of nearly
equal value, while in the higher tribes of man sounds are the normal
mode of expression, and signs or gestures are used to emphasise them;
and thus we see that signs and sounds in the development of the faculty
of expression have quite changed places. This is consistent with the
observed facts within the limits of human speech. There are tribes of
mankind whose language is scarcely intelligible among themselves unless
accompanied by signs; and it is said of some of the African tribes that
their gestures are more eloquent than their speech. It appears to me
consistent to believe that speech appears in the animal organism
simultaneously with the vocal organs, and that the desire of expression
must have preceded this. [Sidenote: PRESENT CONDITION OF SPEECH] The
condition of the vocal organs depends upon the type of speech which they
are used to utter, and the speech depends upon the quality of thought it
is intended to express. That type of speech used by the Caucasian race
within the space of a few centuries has developed from a vocabulary
limited to a few thousand words into the polished languages of modern
Europe, comprising new types and tens of thousands of new words, until
to-day our own language contains more than two hundred and twenty
thousand words, very few of which, however, if any, are entirely new.
The phonetic elements on which is built up this huge vocabulary do not
very greatly exceed in number those found in the lowest types of human
speech in the world. The total number of these sounds does not much
exceed two score in the highest forms of human speech; and about half
this number can be shown as the vocal products of some species of the
lower animals. Some philologists claim that the blending of consonant
and vowel sounds is the mark which distinguishes human speech from the
sounds uttered by the lower animals. To show how poorly this gigantic
superstructure of fossilised science is supported by the facts, I have
developed such effects in the phonograph from a basis of sounds purely
mechanical, and without the aid of any part of the vocal apparatus of
man or animal.