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Thus M. Steinthal attributes the appearance of language to the unconscious action of psychological laws; and as these laws acted spontaneously in the first human beings, it is quite clear that these speculations involve no approval of the untenable Epicurean belief in a long period of mutism and savageness. We cannot but think that the beauty, ingenuity, and simplicity of these views will commend them to general acceptance.

We may here give one or two passing hints of the way in which these laws were influenced by organism.

One very simple fact is, that of course the impressions, &c., which come earliest would naturally be connected with the sounds that come earliest. For instance, the words for father and mother, which are alike half the world over, are, as we should have expected, formed of easy and simple[78] syllables; being indeed the first labial sounds of the infant lisping: had we found in any of them the letters which represent late-coming and difficult sounds,[79] we should have been justly surprised.