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THE SPEECH OF THE GODS
of his mind, a finger-post pointing either heavenwards to man's divine progenitors, or apewards to the prognathons and hairy chimpanzee.
On the one hand we shall expect to discover spiritual relation between sounds and the various powers, forms and colors and the universe, the value of which was intuitionally perceived by the earliest Aryans; on the other, we shall look to find the echoes of the grunts and squeals of our poor relation perched on a treebranch mumbling his acorns.
Roots, say the theorists, were at first either a matter of convention, or were formed by imitating the sounds of nature, and by exclamations and interjections. The chief objection to the first theory (which indeed was never very seriously defended) is that, contrary to hypothesis the Aryan roots, as a whole, do not express the wants and notions of such a primitive people as we were led to postulate. We find for example comparatively few words, such as bow, arrow, and tent, while there are a great many expressing abstract or reflective ideas, like shine, to fly, to know, to burn. The second also is all very well as a theory, but at the first rude contact with fact it collapses. We find very few words which could possibly be formed according to its principles, and this for the simple reason that there are no distinctive sounds in nature accompanying the majority of the ideas expressed in these Aryan roots.
The theory which we put forward, on the other hand, is that sounds have by nature a spiritual or innate relation with various colours, forms or qualities,
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