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From the earliest ages the origin of language has been a topic of discussion and speculation, and a vast number of treatises have been written upon it. But it is only in modern times that we have collected sufficient data to admit of any consistent or exhaustive theory, and the earlier[11] writers contented themselves for the most part with building systems before they had collected facts.

There have been three main theories to account for the appearance of language, and it will be both interesting and instructive to pass them in brief review. They are:—1. That language was innate and organic. 2. That language was the result partly of imitation, and partly of convention. 3. That language was revealed. It will be seen from our consideration of them, that none of these theories is in itself wholly true or adequate, yet that each of them has a partial value, and that they are not so irreconcilably opposed to each other as might at first sight be imagined.

1. It was believed by the ancients generally, and perhaps by the majority of moderns, that language was innate and organic; i.e., a distinct creation synchronising with the creation of man. The inferences drawn from this supposition led men to regard words as “types of objective reality, the shadow of the body and the image reflected in the mirror.”[12] The words were supposed to be not only a sign of the thing intended by them, but in some way to partake of its nature, and to express and symbolise something of its idea. Hence the very notion of arbitrariness was well-nigh expelled from language, and there was supposed to be a deep harmony[13] between the physiological quality of the sound and its significance—between the combination and connection of sounds with the connection and combined relations of the things they represented. Whoever, therefore, knew the names, knew also the things which the names implied.[14] However strange and even ridiculous these views may appear to our somewhat superficial and unphilosophical age, it is far more difficult to understand them truly than to speak of them contemptuously, and they led to a reverence for the use of speech which reacted beneficially in producing careful writing and accurate thought.